Category: Fall 2004 Newswire
Romney in D.C., Fights Wind Farm
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 – Gov. Mitt Romney took his fight against the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm to the White House yesterday.
Romney met with President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, to discuss the importance of coastal zoning to prevent the construction of wind farms such as the one proposed by Cape Wind.
Under the Coastal Zone Management Act, which creates offices in each coastal state, the state office must find a project is consistent with state regulations and activities before the Army Corps of Engineers can issue a permit for a project.
Coastal Zone Management officials in Massachusetts are currently evaluating the project.
Romney said he reiterated to Card his belief that the technological benefits of the Cape Wind project would not outweigh the negative impact the project would have on the scenery, culture and economy of a tourist destination like Cape Cod.
“If wind farms are going to be used to provide power for this nation, then one wind farm is going to lead to other wind farms,” Romney said. “Let’s not make the first one on the East Coast in Nantucket Sound.”
Romney was in Washington to speak about affordable housing for the Fannie Mae Foundation.
The Republican governor’s meeting with Card earlier in the day raised questions about a possible White House Cabinet position for Romney during Bush’s next four years.
“We didn’t discuss anything but my hard and fast commitment to serve my term,” Romney said of his discussion with Card. It was announced Monday that Card, a Massachusetts native, would be kept on in the Bush administration. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans resigned their posts the next day.
Romney also described any speculation about a 2008 presidential run as “too remote,” adding, “I’ve got a state to help lead.”
Committee Expressed Concern Over Military
By Erik Milster
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 -House Armed Services Committee members expressed concern Wednesday that the U.S. military is not retaining and recruiting enough troops to do its job.
Top officials from all four branches of the armed services, testifying at a committee hearing, acknowledged that they share some of those concerns.
"People are more important than machines and sometimes can wear far more easily," committee chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said in his opening statement. "So far, the retention numbers for our active forces remain high, in some cases exceeding expectations. But, we haven't met our targets in some portions of the reserve, and Guard. Retention and recruitment has always been an early indicator that the force may be overstressed. So we need to pay close attention to these numbers."
Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the Marine Corps Commandant, expressed concern that the amount of time his forces are deployed has gone up compared to their time off. "We are an expeditionary force accustomed to deployments," he said. "However, in the past two years we have gone from a deployment rotation of three-to-one (6 months out,18 months back) to our current one-to-one rotation (7 months out, 7 months back). This means that if you are in the operation forces you are either deployed or getting ready to relieve a unit that is deployed." Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Marines have activated more than 95 percent of its Selected Marine Corps Reserve units, he said.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, noted that while the Army is not entirely happy with its current rotation, allowing more frequent rotations would "cause a lack of continuity among troops." He also noted that the Army is in the process of restructuring and trying to become more stable and predictable in its rotations. Schoomaker also emphasized the importance of focusing not only on soldiers' needs but also on their families' comfort back home. All four military witnesses agreed that recruitment and retention are going to become more difficult.
Of the 2,307,000 service personnel in the U.S. military, almost 400,000 are deployed abroad in roughly 120 countries, including 141,500 in Iraq, according to committee staff.
Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) questioned witnesses about the swapping of body armor between soldiers arriving in the Middle East and leaving for home. "How do you ensure that incoming troops will have the equipment they need?" Meehan asked. Schoomaker replied, "Well, there is no need to swap suits between troops because we have produced over 400,000 new sets of individual body armor; now we are challenged with armored vehicles."
Meehan also touched on the current armor protection on Humvees, one of the most essential ground vehicles for the Army and Marine Corps. The current armor on many Humvees has been a major concern for Congress and the military, and they have been working to upgrade the vehicles with heavier-duty armor. The military hopes to have all its Humvees upgraded by next March.
According to Meehan, current production of new Humvees is at full strength, but production should have started sooner and thus prevented accidents that have occurred because of under-equipped Humvees. Meehan said he was also unhappy that the military is not keeping track of soldiers who are injured because of inadequate Humvee armor. "There have been seven soldiers from Massachusetts that have been wounded due to insufficient protection," he said.
The Marine Corps' Hagee agreed that "the demanding wear and tear on material - in addition to combat losses -- is a significant concern." Hagee said that over 30 percent of Marine Corps ground equipment and 25 percent of the corps' aviation inventory are deployed in combat and are "experiencing significant use in one of the harshest climates on the planet."
Meehan also complained at the hearing that "medical evaluations for returning troops consists of little more than a fill-in-the-blank form" and asked what was being done "to properly screen returning soldiers for post-traumatic stress syndrome."
Schoomaker responded, "We are certainly making people aware of what their symptoms are and who they can contact for help."
After the hearing, Meehan said: "We are not adequately checking soldiers for post-traumatic stress syndrome when they return home. Checking off boxes of yes and no questions is not going to cut it."
Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), noting that "there has been talk of more deployment," asked Schoomaker, "Will we have enough troops if we need them?"
The Army chief of staff responded, "If we need more troops we ought to get them."
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Gregg WIll Chair Budget Committee
WASHINGTON 11/10/04- Senator Judd Gregg announced Wednesday afternoon that he will be the chairman of the influential Senate Budget Committee next session, a position that gives him jurisdiction over drafting and monitoring Congress' annual budget plan.
Gregg gives up the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and replaces Budget chairman Don Nickles (R-Okla.), who did not seek reelection. Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) will replace Gregg as chairman of the Health Committee. Gregg, who will remain a member of the health panel, is also on the Appropriations Committee.
"It's one of the pressure points, one of the significant pressure points, in the Congress where you can really get a handle on spending and where you can have an impact," Gregg said of the Budget Committee chairmanship.
Gregg said President George Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) asked him to take the position and that the primary reason he chose to change committee leadership roles was his concern for reining in the deficit and reforming entitlement programs.
Gregg said he wanted to put a budget in place that would cut the deficit in half within four years and establish mechanisms that would discipline Congress on fiscal policy, such as pay-as-you-go rules and caps.
"As we look into the future and ask what are the biggest public policy issues beyond fighting terrorism, [they are] getting the deficit under control and addressing the demographic tidal wave that is heading for us," Gregg said.
Gregg stressed that he would seek a bipartisan approach to drawing up a budget, saying he would go in "with a blank piece of paper."
Dante Scala, a political science professor at St. Anselm College, said he thought Gregg was suited for the position.
"He certainly brings to the table a reputation for fiscal constraint," Scala said. "He went against the President in his first term occasionally, because he felt like there were certain things that were budget busters."
Gregg was one of only seven Republican senators who voted against Medicare prescription drug legislation signed into law last December, saying that the long-term financial burdens outweighed the immediate benefits.
But in spite of their rare occasional differences, John Fortier, an expert on Congress at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, Gregg's close relationship with Bush would work to both their advantages.
"The Budget Committee is the beginning of the process ,and to the extent that [Gregg is] close to the President. there is an advantage with having coordination in advance," Fortier said.
The President is supposed to submit his budget for the next fiscal year to Congress by the first Monday in February, and the Budget Committees in the House and Senate are responsible for drafting an annual budget plan.
Gregg said he would apply New Hampshire principles in this task.
"You live within your means," he said, "and you do it without raising taxes."
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eRumors Running Rampant on the Internet
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 -With the invention of the Internet comes eRumors-electronic scuttlebutt that multiplies exponentially with the help of quick taps on the computer's mouse.
Rumor and urban legend are far older than the information revolution, but the high-speed performance of the World Wide Web makes it incredibly easy, not to mention fast, to spread rumors across not only a state but also the nation, if not the globe. Within minutes, rumors can fly from New York to California, Texas to Michigan, Kansas to Massachusetts. The rumors can then fall dormant, only to be recycled year after year, even if they lack timeliness or accuracy. And, of course, sometimes the rumors are true.
But ways to combat the spread of online gossip have also cropped up, as web sites have popped up that track and truth-test email exaggerations and fabrications.
One such site is www.truthorfiction.com , which former broadcaster Richard Buhler created in 1998. The Website's stated intention is "to provide Internet users with a quick and easy way to check out the accuracy of forwarded e-mails."
Another site intended to measure the accuracy of mass-forwarded e-mail messages is www.snopes.com . Barbara and David Mikkelson, who own and operate the site, write on their Web page: "Unlike the plethora of anonymous individuals who create and send the unsigned, unsourced e-mail messages that are forwarded all over the Internet, we show our work. The research materials we've used in the preparation of any particular page are listed in the bibliography displayed at the bottom of that page so that readers who wish to verify the validity of our information may check those sources for themselves."
Neither site has lacked for work.
Both Snopes.com and Truthorfiction.com strike down the validity of a widespread military draft e-mail rumor. In the months before the Nov. 2 elections, an e-mail circulating on the Internet stated that on June 15, 2005, a mandatory draft would begin. "The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately," the e-mail said.
The email, however, has no signature, no one to contact to question its contents.
While the e-mail accurately real congressional bills that propose a draft, it did not note out that the bills had been buried in committees since 2003 and that Congress is highly unlikely to approve such legislation, as bothwww.snopes.com and www.truthorfiction.com stated.
Many times these forwarded e-mail messages cause a flood of people to contact their congressmen stating their opposition.
"Upon receiving calls, letters and/or e-mails, we research their context and content," Congressman John F. Tierney, Salem-D, said on Wednesday. "As to the context, we assess whether the mass e-mails are based on a hoax-such as the supposed bill "602p" which allegedly called for a 5-cent per e-mail tax. "
Snopes.com and truthorfiction.com both declared this rumor false, with truthorfiction.com adding, "This as not just a rumor, but a hoax, an intentional e-mail of misinformation."
Similarly, both sites have looked into a controversial mass-forwarded e-mail involving the appointment and re-appointment of Dr. David Hager, a Kentucky obstetrician who opposes abortion, refused birth control pills to unmarried women and purportedly favors prayer and Scripture reading to cure menstrual pain, to the Food and Drug Administration's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee.
In the fall of 2002, Hager's name was the subject of a widely-circulated, well-written, anonymous e-mail that outlined his positions. The aim of the e-mail was to keep Hager from serving on a committee that decides matters concerning birth control, fertility drugs and over-the-counter abortion drugs.
The message, which appears on the Web sites of the Society for Women's Health Research and the Coalition of Labor Union Women, asserts that "Hager's track record of using religious beliefs to guide his medical decision-making makes him a dangerous and inappropriate candidate to serve as chair of this committee."
Erin Rowland, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, said her organization regularly receives the e-mail. "It started in 2002 when Dr. Hager was first rumored to be the new appointment to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. He was [subsequently] nominated to be the chair," Rowland said.
Rowland said she thought the e-mail was successful because Hager's nomination as chairman was withdrawn, although he still serves on the committee.
When Hager was up for re-appointment to the committee in June 2004, the e-mail resurfaced in hundreds of e-mail inboxes.
Hager, who said in an interview on Wednesday that his life had been threatened as a result of the attacks made in the e-mail message, added: "What people believe is what they see on the Internet and hear in the media. I think people need to do more research when they come across these things."
But Buhler, who has studied rumors for 30 years, said he was able to verify the email's assertions Hager's beliefs about birth control by using "a communication sent to us by Dr. Hager in 2003, when we inquired."
Hager said of the e-mail attacks, "It's not something that you try to go out and defend yourself on."
While Truthorfiction.com and Snopes.com both stamped this mass forwarded e-mail as true, they were able to explain the nuances not elaborated on in the e-mail. Both stated that Hager said he does prescribe birth control pills to unmarried females and that he does not prescribe prayer and Scripture reading to females suffering from menstruation.
Buhler writes on his Web site that the Internet has been both the best and worst thing that has happened to rumors. Because of the rapid and rampant growth of rumors circulated through the Internet, he said the public is hearing and passing on more false rumors than ever. But there is also more information available to deflate false rumors.
"We've all had the experience of forwarding what we thought was a timely, interesting, funny or alarming e-mail, then feeling the sting of five or six replies telling us the story is hogwash," Buhler wrote onwww.truthorfiction.com .
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N.H. Delegation Sees Quick Lame Duck
By Dennis Mayer
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 - New Hampshire's congressional delegation expects a quick and easy lame-duck session when Congress reconvenes next week to take care of pending legislation.
During the session, so called because congressmen who were not re-elected will attend, Congress needs to act on the nine of the 13 spending bills that have not passed. Congress also is expected to raise the federal government's debt ceiling, currently set at $7.4 trillion, which was reached last month. Legislators also may pass an intelligence reform bill that would reorganize the intelligence community and create a national intelligence director. A conference committee is currently working to reconcile the different versions of the bill passed by the Senate and the House.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said he hoped that Congress would quickly finish its work.
"We have to pass a debt ceiling and an appropriations bill, which we should be able to do without a lot of controversy, and it would be nice to get the intelligence bill, done," Gregg told reporters in a conference call.
Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., one of the legislators trying to hammer out a compromise between the House and Senate versions of the intelligence overhaul, said he expected action on the appropriations bills, but that the intelligence bill had only a "50-50" chance of passing, due to a "small but vocal minority" of House conferees who disagree with the spending powers the Senate version of the bill would bestow on the new intelligence director.
Sununu added that he thought the debt ceiling needed to be adjusted, and that he expected a measure to pass.
"I think that will be addressed without much fanfare," he said.
Congressman Charlie Bass, R-2 nd District, said he expected that during the lame-duck session, the Republican leadership would focus on organizing the 109 th Congress, which will convene in January.
"That's going to take a lot of time and attention from the leadership," he said.
As such, he said he expected that most pending legislation, including the intelligence bill, would be deferred, especially considering that the Republicans will have a bigger majority next term in both houses.
The situation of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who lost his re-election bid to John Thune on Nov. 2, makes any significant legislative action even less likely, Bass said.
"How is the Senate going to operate with a minority leader being a lame duck?" he said.
Bass said he expected that Congress would pass a debt ceiling, and a "continuing resolution" that would provide for the government to continue operating with spending at fiscal 2004 levels. Congress already passed such a resolution - the new fiscal year actually started October 1, and a continuing resolution has kept the government running since then. That resolution expires on Nov. 20, and will need to be extended for any appropriation bills that do not pass, or the federal government will shut down.
Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-1 st District, said he thought most of the work done in the lame-duck session would be on the intelligence bill, and that a resolution of the differences between the two bills was possible.
"There are some differences between the House and the Senate" versions, he said. "Everything I'm hearing is that the conference committees have been working to resolve them."
Vets Remember at WWII Memorial
WASHINGTON, Nov 10 – On a chilly yet sunny Wednesday morning, dozens of white-haired men and women solemnly strolled around the recently opened World War II Memorial. Wrapped in warm coats, some walking with the help of canes and many wearing caps loaded with patriotic pins, the veterans’ eyes moistened as six-decades-old memories converged with the fresh images of the fight in Iraq.
This Veterans Day is the second consecutive the country celebrates at war, and it is expected to draw crowds to the monument plaza, the last to open on the National Mall, that pays tribute to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served in 1941-1945.
Among the first to arrive at the memorial was Edward Roser, a 76 year-old Navy Seabee veteran from West Shokan, N.Y. This year, Roser said, he plans to pay respects not only to the men he met while serving in the South Pacific but also to those deployed in Iraq.
“We all are veterans, we all do the same thing: defend our country,” a somber Roser said.
Amid heavy combat in the insurgent city of Fallujah -- and with over 1,140 combat deaths in the 21-month-long war in Iraq -- veterans present in the capital for the multiple wreath laying ceremonies taking place Thursday said they will have their minds and hearts with the families of those serving in the Gulf.
Walking along the sober granite plaza of the World War II Memorial in the company of his wife and daughter, Richard Neal, a veteran pilot from North Canaan, Conn., said he planned to say a Veterans Day “prayer for all the boys and girls in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
As with much of the country, conflicting views about the war in Iraq can be found in this veterans’ spot, which is located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
While James E. Shugars, 78, a veteran from North Carolina, saw the action in Iraq “as an opportunity to get some democracy in an area a lot older than Western civilization,” fellow veteran George H. Smith, from Iowa, said he believed the country “should have never started the war. Instead we should have cooperated with the United Nations.”
Aside from their personal stances on the Iraq war, a common thought among World War II veterans is that their monument was long overdue. Approved by Congress in 1995, the $175 million monument was opened to the public on April 29 and dedicated in a ceremony that drew 150,000 veterans on Memorial Day weekend. And while the official Veterans Day ceremonies will take place across the Potomac River in Arlington National Cemetery, the new monument will have private ceremonies for veterans’ families.
“I wanted to come here ever since it was opened,” Neal said. “I just wished they would have built this place earlier so that more veterans could have seen it.”
Neal, who was deployed in England and will celebrate his 80 th birthday this weekend, is one of the 210,000 men and women from Connecticut who served in World War II.
Over 4,500 state residents died overseas.
The state’s commissioner of Veterans Affairs, Linda Schwartz, also said the memorial has come late for the majority of the people who served that war. “Around 1,300 World War II veterans are passing away every day,” she said.
The aged men and women strolling along the wreathed columns shared the place with scores of high school students and eighth graders who didn’t pay close attention to the inscriptions on pride, freedom and brave actions but rather mingled and played by the fountain.
“Young people don’t know anything about what happened in the Second World War,” Smith said. “That is why it is so important that we have a memorial, like Vietnam and Korean veterans do.”
As Schwartz sees it, “the monument is necessary because if it wasn’t for that generation the world would be much different.”
Meanwhile Neal, Shugars, Smith and Roser, all veterans of the Second World War, returned the compliment to the men and women in Iraq. “They are worth all the respect we can give them,” Shugars said.
Environmental Groups Elaborate Defensive Posture
By Ken St. Onge
WASHINGTON – Expecting significant challenges by an increased Republican congressional majority, environmental groups are likely to find themselves locked in a defensive battle over spending and legislation with both Congress and the Bush administration during the next two years, their leaders said at a briefing Wednesday.
Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters, dismissed a recent statement by Mike Leavitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, that the Nov. 2 election victory was a mandate for President Bush’s environmental agenda. Her group’s “state partners are preparing for a devolution on environmental policy from the Bush administration,” she said.
Added Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust: “The environment is likely to be one of the top targets in the next Congress.… The strategy will be to help corporate allies,” who will argue that “we don’t know when we will have the majorities that we have again. Now we want environmental laws weakened.”
Technical maneuvering in the packaging of bills by the party leadership poses one of the biggest threats to environmental legislation, Marchant Wentworth, legislative representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said. Existing environmental law could be restructured by adding riders to unrelated bills such as military appropriations for Iraq or by referring legislation to committees more inclined toward deregulation.
Although in a defensive posture, the groups outlined a series of strategies they could follow in the next two years to counteract environmental deregulation. They will try to put pressure on the administration to work toward a global climate change accord like the Kyoto Protocol, Clapp said, which could help the President, who rejected it, as he tries to bridge gaps with allies who were signatories to that agreement.
The environmental groups may also lobby moderate Republicans, such as incoming Budget Committee chairman Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who in the past have shown support for environmental legislation. Republicans have a majority in both the House and Senate but are still vulnerable to dissent by moderates. That could lend those members added political weight, Clapp said.
“The Judd Greggs of the world are concerned with their drinking water,” Wentworth said.
Gregg, at a press conference Wednesday announcing his promotion to chairman, declined to speculate on the implications his new position would have on issues such as drilling for oil in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Another strategy the environmental advocates identified was working with state-level groups to promote local initiatives. Callahan, noting the success that state ballot referenda had on bringing pro-environment voters to the polls on Nov. 2, said her group supported 147 ballot initiatives on land conservation in 25 states, 111 of which passed. Those efforts would continue to be a part of its broader strategy on encouraging environmental reform.
In Massachusetts, for example, 10 towns (including Groveland and Middleton) adoptedthe Community Preservation Act on Nov. 2. Already in effect in a number of areas statewide, (including North Andover, Boxford and Georgetown) the initiative authorizes ? a local property tax surcharge to generate money for open space, affordable housing, historic preservation and recreation. The state provides matching grants for the funds raised through the surcharge.
During the final period before the election, Clapp said, Bush attempted “to green up” his record, visiting swing states such as Florida and Michigan, where he announced significant new funding to clean up the Everglades and the Great Lakes .
Those efforts, Callahan said, suggest that a lack of support for environmentalism can be a political vulnerability.
“It’s dangerous for politicians to have to defend rolling back clean air and environmental enforcement,” she said.
But now that the elections have passed, Clapp said, it’s less clear how that dynamic will play out.
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Republicans and Democrats Look at Future of New Hampshire Primary
By Thomas Rains
WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 9 - As the dust settles on the 2004 presidential race, some party insiders are turning back to where the campaigns began-New Hampshire-to look for ways to improve the primary process.
The Granite State's first-in-the-nation primary status has been threatened in recent years by other states attempting to preempt it or overshadow it. Michigan tried after the 2000 election, and Delaware, New York and California have tried too. However, no state has succeeded.
The Democratic National Committee is planning a commission to study the effectiveness of holding the first primary in New Hampshire. And, with the loss of Sen. John Kerry, who had promised to help the state keep its place at the front of the line, the status is even more up in the air.
"On the Democratic side [committee] Chairman Terry McAuliffe had to dispense with a challenge from Michigan" after the 2000 elections, said Michael Chaney, president and chief executive officer of the New Hampshire Political Library.
The bipartisan, non-profit Political Library was established in 1997 by the late Gov. Hugh Gregg, father of Sen. Judd Gregg, as a way of helping to protect New Hampshire's unique political status.
For Republicans, things will be the same in 2008.
The "Rules Committee for the [Republican National Committee] soundly reinstated rules for the Republican primary in 2008," said Chaney, a delegate to the Republican National Convention last summer in New York. "They recognize tradition and history."
In addition, President George W. Bush made it clear that he would protect the primary's first-in-the-nation status.
"There are a number of people," Chaney said, "who are already thinking about running." At the Republican National Convention last summer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona Sen. John McCain, New York Gov. George Pataki and others with rumored presidential aspirations spoke to the New Hampshire delegates over breakfast.
Since then, McCain has made stops in New Hampshire unrelated to his campaign visits for Bush.
In response to Michigan's challenge, McAuliffe agreed to appoint a commission to examine the primary process after the 2004 general election but before the end of the year. According to Chaney, this commission would include Democratic committee members, academics and past candidates.
One argument against New Hampshire and Iowa-with its early caucuses- is that they do not represent a good cross section of the nation as a whole.
New Hampshire and Iowa's populations are 95.1 percent and 92.6 percent Caucasian, respectively, while the population of the United States as a whole is only 69.1 percent Caucasian, according to The Almanac of American Politics . Some wonder if this would hinder African-American candidates with viable resumes in the future, such as Democratic freshman Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or J.C. Watts, former Republican congressman from Oklahoma.
Michigan's population, on the other hand, is 78.6 percent Caucasian and New York is 62 percent, according to The Almanac .
Terry Shumaker, executive director of the New Hampshire branch of the National Education Association and a Political Library board member, argues that the Granite State is as representative as a state is going to be, even if the demographics do not match.
"We are urban and rural. We are agricultural and industrialized," he said in a telephone interview. "No state is going to be completely representative."
Rich Ashooh, however, claims this argument is just a frequently-used red herring. Ashooh, a vice president at BAE Systems, was a delegate to the Republican National Convention last summer in New York and is a board member at the Political Library.
"New Hampshire has never pretended to be representative of the nation," Ashooh said in a telephone interview. He added: "If you take the early phase of the primary-caucus process in total, you start to get a pretty good representation of the nation."
This early phase includes the Iowa caucuses before the New Hampshire primary and the South Carolina primary afterwards.
This early phase has become crowded in recent years due to "frontloading," or other states moving their primary ahead on the calendar to receive more attention from candidates.
Kerry's narrow, comeback victory in the Iowa caucuses gave him the momentum to win in New Hampshire's primary a week later after being down in the polls by more than 30 points earlier in the campaign. He then virtually wrapped up the nomination before "Super Tuesday" just two months later when several large states around the country held their primaries on the same day. If the primaries had been spread out with more time in between each of the early ones, some say it would have given candidates such as John Edwards and Howard Dean a better chance to recover from their losses in New Hampshire and Iowa.
To solve the frontloading problem and give the candidates more time to campaign with less traveling, some have suggested a regional primary system that would group states together according to their region of the country for primaries at the same time. By doing this, candidates could focus on several states at one time.
Already things could be changing. California decided recently to return its primary back to June from March. Initially they moved up their primary in an attempt to attract the candidates there.
Currently Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a "true believer" in the New Hampshire primary according to Chaney, is pushing for western states to adopt a regional process, and the National Association of Secretaries of States also has advocated a regional system.
All of the regional primaries would come after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and the regions would rotate every four years, according to Chaney. This, he said, would fix the problem of frontloading in the primary calendar and would retain the "small rural character and political tradition" that allows for weeks of one-on-one campaigning to all the residents of the Granite State.
Ashooh and others argue that New Hampshire is important because it is different.
New Hampshire does not have one "single driving issue" that could "tip the scales" by good pandering by a candidate with plenty of money to spend on big-time advertising. For example, Ashooh added, candidates can do well in Iowa if they are strong on farming issues, while union worker issues play well in Michigan. But, in New Hampshire most of the major issues are of concern, but there is not a focus on one of them.
In fact, the New Hampshire Political Library prides itself on the fact that a small-time candidate can make a big name for himself in the Granite State without "big money and big media," as Ashooh put it.
Howard Dean became a national figure because of media coverage of the New Hampshire primary, Ashooh said. "John McCain is a national icon, and it's all because of New Hampshire. He was not a big money candidate. He was not personally wealthy." he added.
"It is possible to run in New Hampshire for president with a minimal amount of resources and do well," he said, while adding that this is not possible in larger states where television advertising can help candidates more than in New Hampshire.
"Participatory democracy is alive and well" in the Granite State, Shumaker said. "The New Hampshire primary is not to pick the winner," he added, saying that it was about giving the candidates a chance to "work out the kinks" and "assemble a campaign team."
"It's like spring training," Shumaker said of the campaigns preparing on the small stage of New Hampshire, "because if you do well, you'll have to go national."
"If the United States cherishes its tradition of giving anybody a shot at the presidency," Ashooh said, it has to keep New Hampshire's primary first in line because it allows for candidates who are not well-known nationally to reach out and meet the voters one-on-one.
This also means the candidates are scrutinized more thoroughly by the voters.
Literature for the Political Library describes the scene of a fresh presidential candidate preparing for a discussion of his "newly unveiled economic plan," which "is apparently familiar to some in the audience, as he sees copies dog-eared from close readings."
This may be a fictionalized setting, but according to Shumaker it rings true.
"A lot of successful candidates and unsuccessful candidates have said that they were better presidents and better candidates" because of the "retail" politicking required in the New Hampshire primary, he said.
Shumaker was the co-chair of then-Gov. Bill Clinton's New Hampshire campaign in 1992 and said the would-be president was forced to develop his economic policy proposals more fully while campaigning there, and this helped him later in the national campaign.
Columbus Mayor Campaigns for Diabetes Testing
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2004 - Even before Michael B. Coleman was mayor of Columbus, he worked up to 14 hours a day. But he also smoked and ate too much -- and at the wrong times of the day. But around 1993, he noticed something was wrong. He was running out of steam by the middle of the day, and found it hard to get his work done.
"I didn't understand what was going on with me," said Coleman.
He eventually went to a doctor and found out he was diabetic, one of more than 13 million Americans who are diagnosed with the disease, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Coleman, who has quit smoking and has adopted a healthier lifestyle, said having the disease no longer slows him down. But he said that medication - and better testing - also has been critical to not letting the disease slow him down.
"I feel better than I ever have," said Coleman, who has type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. Type 1 diabetes is usually found in children and young adults.
That's the lesson he will be talking about when he kicks off a campaign encouraging diabetics to get the disease under better control in order to avoid more serious complications, which can include heart and kidney disease. Diabetes is also a heavy financial burden if not treated well - more than $130 billion is spent on diabetes-related complications.
The campaign, called "A1C<7%," is being sponsored by the United States Conference of Mayors and "Aim. Believe. Achieve," a collection of organizations tackling the growing problem of diabetes.
Coleman will speak at the official opening of the campaign Thursday in the nation's capital. Forty-nine mayors from across the country are promoting the campaign in their own cities.
Though there are national television and radio spots planned, more ads featuring individual mayors will run locally. While in Washington, Coleman will record the television spot that will run in the Columbus area and attend other events related to the diabetes campaign.
Experts associated with the campaign - as well as Coleman himself - stress the need for taking the A1C test, which takes into account a diabetic's blood-sugar level over a three month period, rather than on a daily basis, which can be more unreliable due to fluctuations. Under 7 refers to the percentage at which a person's blood-sugar level is under control.
Dr. James Gavin, a diabetes specialist with the Morehouse School of Medicine and on the steering committee of the campaign, said only about 60 percent of those with diabetes were getting the A1C test - but not always regularly. "Not enough people are getting it, and they're not getting it often enough," he said.
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Cape Link to House ‘Haven’
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8- The news ticker crawling across the television in Barry Sullivan's office in the U.S. Capitol confirmed what he already knew: John Kerry was conceding the presidency to George Bush and the Republicans had increased their majority in both the House and Senate.
"When I first got here, it was great," said Sullivan, who for 20 years has managed the House Democratic cloakroom in the Capitol. "We had a huge majority."
But at 57, the South Boston native - with lifetime ties to Falmouth Heights and a stubborn Boston accent - has witnessed the control of the House slip from legendary Massachusetts Democrats like Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and Joseph Moakley to a new breed of Republican leadership.
"You could see things starting to turn," he said, describing an upstart Republican named Newt Gingrich barking insults at O'Neill as he sat in the Speaker's chair in the House chamber during the 1980s. "They were just throwing bombs at him and it started snowballing."
The Democrats lost a nearly 50-year control of the House in 1994 and according to Sullivan, bipartisan work has grown increasingly strained, with Democrats looking for a legislative voice.
"There's a different strategy when you're in the minority," Sullivan said. "There's not much you can do procedurally. You have to play defense."
The House of Representatives Democratic cloakroom that Sullivan runs is a wood-paneled inner sanctuary for his party's members located just off the floor of the House. Even congressional staffers are restricted from entering.
"Members only" munch on hot dogs and commiserate between votes. They sink into leather armchairs and stretch out on sofas, with older members nodding off when House sessions stretch into the night. They make calls from a wall of old-style phone booths, read the papers and banter about their hometown sports teams.
When MSNBC's Chris Matthews needs colorful details for his next book, he calls Sullivan. If he's lucky, Sullivan returns the call.
"It's almost a safe haven," said Kevin Ryan, describing the clandestine clubhouse. Ryan is chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-South Boston, and held the same post for former Rep. Joseph Moakley, a 15-term House member from South Boston who retired in 2001 to fight an unsuccessful battle with leukemia.
"Knows what's going on"
Like Sullivan, Ryan grew up in South Boston and the two worked together at a Faneuil Hall bar in the late 1970s before Moakley tapped them both for jobs in Washington. Ryan said he sends any new Democratic members directly to Sullivan.
"Down here, members are looking for somebody who knows what's going on," Ryan said. "Barry controls the cloakroom and it's a place of information."
Sullivan grew up immersed in the golden age of Irish clout in Boston that dominated during much of the last century. His father, Leo Sullivan, was a central player of the era, serving on Beacon Hill as a representative and then state senator, as register of deeds for Suffolk County, and as Boston police commissioner. In 1960, he escorted president-elect John F. Kennedy from Logan International Airport to the Boston Garden for his victory rally.
But while Sullivan's father loved South Boston, he also loved Cape Cod, and every June he would escape there with his family the day school ended. At the same summer rental on Amherst Avenue in Falmouth Heights, Barry delighted in the Cape's simple pleasures with his older brother and sister.
Grew up in the Heights
Sullivan described Little League highlights at the old ballfield in the Heights, racing Beetle Cats off the Falmouth Yacht Club docks and waterskiing at Great Pond when the ocean was too rough. He shagged fly balls for the Falmouth All-Stars before they became the Commodores and worked the scoreboard for a buck a game. Later, he was a lifeguard at Surf Drive and tended bar at the old Casino-by-the-Sea nightclub.
In 1961, Sullivan followed his brother to St. John's Prep, an all-boys boarding school in Danvers. Two years later, his father - whom Sullivan credits for his interest in politics - died of a heart attack, the same year President Kennedy was shot.
"I had a bad year that year," Sullivan said, describing the homesickness that set in. "My father died and Kennedy was assassinated. I was 15 years old."
But his father's old friends - especially Moakley, then a relatively new member of Congress - would keep an eye on "Leo's son."
Sullivan took a job as a page on Beacon Hill, serving four Republican state senators, including Allan "Chappy" Jones, a brash Cape Cod senator who frequently had Sullivan meet him at John's Capeside Diner near the Sagamore Bridge to chauffeur him to Boston.
He left that job to finish a political science degree at Boston State College - now the University of Massachusetts at Boston - and was making good money tending bar when he bumped into Moakley on the street in 1979.
"You've got to get out of the bar business," Moakley told his friend's son. "Tip O'Neill is the speaker of the House. He served in the Legislature with your father. Would you consider coming to Washington?"
With his mother's blessing, Sullivan packed his Toyota Celica and left South Boston. Four years later, he was assistant manager in the Democratic cloakroom and in 1988, Tip O'Neill appointed him manager, a post he has held since.
Scheduler and strategist
His responsibilities vary. One part master scheduler, he makes sure Democrats know when recorded votes will occur, posting the "Best Guesstimate for Last Vote" sign, a beacon to House members itching to catch a flight to their home states. One part strategist, he attends exclusive party leadership meetings so he understands the overall direction of the party.
His desk - a carefully arranged clutter of pager systems, telephones and Red Sox clippings - is command central and he is the last face representatives see before entering the House chamber through the cloakroom's swinging door.
Sullivan knows his regulars and has a story about them all, from California Rep. Nancy Pelosi primping before the recently installed vanity table and the Bronx's Rep. Jose Serrano needling the Massachusetts delegation (and Sullivan) about a certain Sox collapse, to the secret tuna stash that snack bar attendants would keep for Tip O'Neill.
Sullivan also oversees 20 high school pages, who help the Democrats in the House, and announces votes to the representatives, a job that initially forced him to work on curbing his distinctive Boston accent.
Pronouncing the r's
"I have trouble with the ahhs," Sullivan said, admitting that the practice didn't help in pronouncing names like Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. "Like when I call for a vote on the Mahky amendment, the southerners don't understand what I'm saying. They'll say, 'Jesus, Sullivan, what are you talking about?'"
Kevin Ryan used words like "trustworthy" and "loyal" to describe why Sullivan has been reappointed cloakroom manager with each change in party leadership since 1988.
Sullivan met his wife, Barbara, in 1983 when she was a security guard for the House Chamber and her father, William Hughes, was a House Democrat from southern New Jersey.
She said that when they leave Washington, they will retire to the Cape, a place she has grown to love. Every August during the congressional recess, the Sullivans visit Falmouth, where Sullivan takes their three sons bluefishing at Horseshoe Shoal and to see Falmouth Commodores baseball games. Sullivan remains a member of the Falmouth Men's Club.
U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., said Sullivan, with his flawless imitation of Tip O'Neill and a fierce loyalty to the Red Sox, is a throwback to the old days in the House and a consummate professional.
"He's really an integral part of the system," Delahunt said. "It's always reassuring working with Barry. It's like being home."
