Republican National Committee

The $52 million the Obama campaign raised in June is a good deal more than John McCain's $22 million, and much better than the $30 million number reported earlier in the week, which an Obama bundler had advised me was very low.

But the relevant bar is really whether it’s enough to fund the 50-state, mega-scale campaign Obama is running, and enough, compared with what McCain has, to make up for the loss of public financing.

At least in the opinion of one Democratic consultant I spoke to today, it is.

The consultant, speaking on background, said the total amount of money at Obama's disposal, when combined with the D.  read more »

From R.N.C. spokesman Danny Diaz: “Senator Clinton said her vote on Iraq was one of ‘conviction’ and the ‘right decision.’ Candidate Clinton says just the opposite on the stump. Clearly, voters in New Hampshire cannot trust Senator Clinton or Candidate Clinton as neither is willing to be honest with them.”

Nearly 15 years after her disastrous failure to drive a universal health-care coverage policy from one perch in the White House, Hillary Clinton put herself at the center of the health-care debate yesterday as a part of her effort to return there.

 

In the basement of the Broadlawns Medical Center, a hospital that specializes in treating the uninsured in Des Moines, Ia., Clinton stood in front of backdrop that said "American Health Choices Plan” to detail her long-awaited $110 billion plan mandating that all Americans should qualify for health insurance.  read more »

Some members of the City Council were predictably outraged to learn this week—on the front pag  read more »

On the still-hot topic of the NYPD's undercover surveillance leading up to the Republican National Convention in 2004, I' got a couple of starkly different reactions from members of the City Council.

Charles Barron, who was one of three current or former Council members named in the police report, was outraged to have been the target of a spy operation. But Peter Vallone, Jr. told me, essentially, that he had it coming, saying that "any group Charles Barron is associated with" probably should be monitored.

-- Azi Paybarah

Charles Barron, one of three lawmakers cited in NYPD intelligence reports leading up to the Republican National Convention, has a suggestion for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

-- Azi Paybarah

Former state Attorney General and current City Councilman Oliver Koppell, for one, doesn't think there was anything wrong with the widespread police surveillance conducted in the run-up to the Republican National Convention. The police surveillance reports, news of which has provoked a strong reaction on liberal blogs, included the names of three people who served in the City Council: Charles Barron, Bill Perkins and Larry Seabrook.

"Vigorous advocacy can turn into violent acts," Koppell explained.

-- Azi Paybarah

The New York County Republican Organization last night elected Jennifer Saul Yaffa, a GOP national committee member, as county chair, a Manhattan Republican insider confirmed.

Yaffa succeeds James Ortenzio, who helped organize the Republican National Convention. They're both considered close to Pataki, which seems to be a quality in rare abundance these days.

-- Azi Paybarah

What exactly is wrong with the Republicans?  read more »

What exactly is wrong with the Republicans?    read more »

Here, Howard Dean explains why he won't appear on television alongside the RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, basically using the argument Jon Stewart used to deconstruct Crossfire.

-- Azi Paybarah

I haven't seen this picked up anywhere yet, but it's kind of amazing.

In preparation for a fund-raiser on Friday, the Republican National Committee sent personal information about donors - including their race - to the Secret Service and, accidentally, to a New York Sun reporter.

Two of the people on the list had their race listed as "Muslim." One other person was listed as "Asian" and the rest -- shockingly -- were Caucasian.

The RNC said that it was a mistake for them to have listed "Muslim" as a race, but said that in trying to provide racial information about the donors, they were only following directions from the Secret Service.

A Secret Service spokesperson had this explanation:

Until a year ago, the Secret Service did require race as part of its standard background check for guests at events involving the president. Following complaints, including one from the White House press corps, the practice ended. But the Secret Service requested racial information for Friday's luncheon, a spokesman for the agency, Eric Zahren, said.

-- Azi Paybarah

Sex-filled emails from Mark Foley. A damaging book about the Iraq War from Bob Woodward. And a nuclear North Korea. What a perfect time to get invited to a political briefing at the White House.

This one is taking place tomorrow, paid for by the Republican National Committee.

The invitation was mostly sent out to female GOP operatives, according to a source who passed it along. First stop for the invitees is the chic Hay-Adams Rooftop Terrace for a bite to eat. Then, the "luncheon will be followed by a White House tour at one o'clock. A briefing by White House strategists at 2:30."  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

It turns out, according to the Downtown Express, the sculptor of the newly unveiled "Joie de Vivre" at Zuccotti Park, got arrested last year at the Republican Convention "for saying," he says, "Bush lied." Okay, so did a lot of people, but this guy also happens to be married to Kate Levin, the Mayor's cultural affairs commissioner.

By the way, the 70-foot-high bright red sculpture is not an "X." "It's a series of tetrahedrons that are open at the ends."

-Matthew Schuerman

"On September 11, I cannot tell you the number of times I said, 'Thank God President Bush is the leader of our country.'"

It's a familiar line, right? Rudy, you may recall, said something rather similar during the Republican National Convention.

And it worked so well that George Pataki seems to have borrowed it. The line above is from the Gov's stump speech, delivered Wednesday evening in New Hampshire and rebroadcast yesterday evening for eager CSPAN viewers. (Don't ask.)

The cable channel's Road to the White House program featured a solid half-hour of Pataki standing in front of a red wall greeting county and city Republican Party chairs at the New Hampshire GOP's holiday reception. (Part I: Of course I remember meeting you before. "Great time." Part II: Grin and Grip. Part III: Thanks, see you soon, it's cold in New York too. If possible, the whole affair seemed less fun than mediating a transit strike.)  read more »

And God, it seems, had a lot of good feedback on 9/11 about His role in 2000 in Florida.

Even before the results are in, one of the questions coming out of the Bloomberg campaign is: Whither Kevin Sheekey?

Nobody who knows Mike's closest political advisor expects him to move back over to the Government payroll. And despite occasional rumors, I don't think he's likely to be running Mike's '08 Presidential campaign.

Sheekey could pull a Zenia Mucha, take a glamorous, behind-the-scenes corporate job (Mucha, Pataki's advisor, is at Disney), and keep an informal advisory role with Bloomberg.

But I'm not sure the guy behind two Mayoral victories and a Republican National Convention -- all of them, by the way, efforts on the scale of a presidential campaign, with budgets at least in the high eight digits -- will be on the sidelines in 2008.  read more »

And there's one campaign that, for a number of reasons, makes particular sense along these lines: John McCain's.

Just speculation. Sheekey emails that he's too superstitious to talk about this stuff today.

It's not quite the Time Magazine stamp of approval he's been spreading all over his campaign literature, but Mike has been getting some attention lately on MyDD.com, a widely read liberal blog, which is linking to this clip of his speech to the Republican National Convention. The comments on MyDD reflect how a lot of youngish, tech-friendly New York liberals feel: they don't want to vote for Mike, but don't think Freddy's their kind of Democrat.  read more »

Just the other day my friend Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent me  read more »

The congressman from the Bronx and, later, Queens, whose obituary appears today, has an additional distinction: He gave Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey his start in politics. Scheuer also gave Sheekey a trove of colorful anecdotes, but when I spoke to the late Congressman at his Washington home before the Sheekey-led Republican National Convention, all he would say was that he recalled the Bloomberg aide as "a nice young man."  read more »

Ed Cox may not be the best-known figure among the Republicans hoping to challenge Hillary Clinton next year. He does, however, seem determined to surround himself with the most connected campaign team, announcing today the hiring of the Rove-connected consulting firm Olsen & Shuvalov to help with national fund-raising. While it is not standard practice for statewide candidates in New York to trumpet ties to Karl Rove & Company, Bush for President and the Republican National Committee - as Cox does in his latest release - it makes perfect sense if you're trying to convince certain G.O.P. officials that you're not a lightweight who needs to be moved aside for Jeanine Pirro. Your move, Mr. Minarek.  read more »

The general feeling among GOP types we spoke to about Bill Weld over the weekend was more Bob Kerrey, less Bobby Kennedy.

But the news did put us in mind of a conversation we had with Weld during the Republican National Convention, where we found him leaning up against a wall during a Republican Majority for Choice event:

"I can't talk about it until after the election," he was saying, "But I've been out of office for seven years. I've tried to do something different every half-dozen years, so I'm over my quota."

We tried to get him to elaborate.

"Call me after the election," he said.

We told him we'd call after the election.  read more »

"I doubt you'll be interested in me then," he said.

But we were, and he didn't return the call!

We've long thought that the NYPD's clumsy, and perhaps illegal, detention of protesters (and random people standing near them) on a West Side pier during the Republican National Convention was more of a black eye for the mayor than City Hall really noticed, amid the general relief that there was no rioting or terror during the convention. At the time, Bloomberg compounded the sense that he has a blind spot on the First Amendment by comparing protesters to terrorists, which we griped about at great length here.

Now Newsday has a telling piece of a storyline that will play out through the election, as lawsuits pile up and details emerge:  read more »

"[Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had pledged July 25 in a written agreement that the West 15th Street pier would be used only as a "secondary" facility, records show. Instead, Hudson River Park Trust director Connie Fishman complained, just about every detainee was being held there."

According to the Board of Elections, only 13 percent of the city's 3.7 million registered voters are  read more »

: 1BR, G.O.P. Vu…Author: Anna Schneider-Mayerson

Page: 1  read more »

PQ: none

Whenever Republican leaders complain about the power of money in politics, the source of their conce  read more »

On an early December morning, several weeks before Republican Party officials announced that they wo  read more »

Among the many problems facing the Democratic Party, according to former Vice President Al Gore, is  read more »

New York City has emerged as the front-runner in the race to host the Republican National Convention  read more »

If there is anything that modern conservatives hate more than fair taxation, it's a fair fight.  read more »