Harold Ickes

It was quite some show that Harold Ickes put on in Washington on Saturday.  read more »

I just spoke to Sarah Kovner, a longstanding Clinton ally who attended a fund-raiser for Barack Obama last night.

Kovner said she had not yet made a contribution to the Obama campaign, but she added, "I certainly will, as will everyone I know."

Kovner, who said she had mostly focused her energies on Senate and Congressional races this year, is not ambiguous about her reasons for supporting Obama.  read more »

Sarah Kovner, a longtime supporter of Hillary and Bill Clinton, a close associate of Harold Ickes and a lion of New York's liberal political establishment, attended a fund-raiser for Barack Obama last night, according to two attendees.  read more »

In July 2007, the Clinton campaign’s then-chief-strategist Mark Penn sat in his gleaming white and aquarium-walled chief executive’s office at the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller talking about a mistake he thought Howard Wolfson had made in responding to comments from a prominent Obama supporter.

“It’s very important in politics not to make the same mistake too many times,” Penn said at the time.  read more »

The Clinton campaign apparently decided not to dismiss North Carolina after all. From a release:

The Clinton campaign today announced President Bill Clinton will campaign for Hillary in North Carolina, this Friday, March 21, attending events in Charlotte and Raleigh. Additional details to be announced.

In another effort to control a big news day with a news-making attack on the Obama campaign, the Clinton campaign just now accused the Obama campaign in a conference call of actively blocking a re-vote in Michigan and passive-aggressively stymieing another primary in Florida.

Harold Ickes said "we understand on very, very good authority" that Michigan legislators believe both campaign's consent would be necessary for a re-vote. He said that since the Clinton campaign was publicly in favor of a re-vote, the Obama campaign must be blocking the effort.  read more »

“I got the disturbing news this morning that Senator Clinton is probably going to write off North Carolina,” said Representative G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina.

He was referring to a quote by Clinton campaign senior adviser Harold Ickes that appeared in the New York Times today, which the Obama campaign responded to on a conference call this afternoon. Ickes said, while discussing Barack Obama’s primary wins in states that traditionally vote Republican in the general election:

"Most of those states haven't voted Democratic in a presidential since the Johnson landslide over Goldwater in 1964, and we don't see that changing. They're great states, but Idaho, Nebraska and the Carolinas are not going to be in the Democratic column in November."

Introducing the topic of Obama’s strength in North Carolina, which holds a primary on May 6 (and is the next primary after Pennsylvania), communications director Robert Gibbs said, “[Clinton] has, quite frankly, denigrated small states, denigrated caucus states and…southern states.”  read more »

Matthew Nugen is not supposed to exist.

Mr. Nugen, Barack Obama’s 36-year-old national political director, is also a shadow operative charged with winning over individual superdelegates, something the Obama campaign is officially not interested in doing, since they also say that superdelegates should be guided by the will of voters instead of come-ons from campaigns.  read more »

Harold Ickes definitely doesn’t buy the argument that Mark Penn isn’t responsible for everything that has happened to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

“Mark Penn has run this campaign,” said Ickes in a brief phone interview this morning. “Besides Hillary Clinton, he is the single most responsible person for this campaign.

“Now, he has been circumscribed to some extent by Maggie Williams,” said Ickes, who then pointed out that that was only a recent development.  read more »

Does Harold Ickes complicate Hillary Clinton’s appeals to Puerto Rican superdelegates?

Francisco Domenech, a superdelegate supporting Hillary Clinton in Puerto Rico, thinks that Ickes, her point-man on the wrangling of superdelegates, may find himself having to explain his work on behalf of one side of the flammable issue of Puerto Rico's national status.

Domenech, who supports statehood for Puerto Rico, pointed out that the three remaining undecided superdelegates in Puerto Rico are all proponents of maintaining commonwealth status. Ickes, who became a lobbyist after working at President Bill Clinton's deputy chief of staff, was an adviser to former Governor Pedro Rossello in the battle for statehood.  read more »

An attendee at a meeting of top Clinton campaign fund-raisers with Clinton staff this afternoon at Weil, Gotshal & Manges said that there was a fair amount of frustration in the room over the campaign's handling of the race.

"People are just so resentful and feel the campaign has not fought back effectively," said the attendee. "They feel the campaign has been outmaneuvered by somebody who is going to lose in November."  read more »

Two Hillary items not to miss: The Washington Posts's disclosure yesterday of the fact that Harold Ickes is setting up what amounts to a parallel Democratic Party to the one run by Howard Dean (whom they obviously don't trust), using George Soros's money for one of those fancy voter databses that some credit with giving the Republicans an edge last cycle. (Others credit voters.)

Also, Greg Sargent has a look on The American Prospect's blog at Mark Penn's briefing with donors, at which her pollster talked up that WSJ/NBC poll that has her as the nation's leading Democrat.

My typos and Ben's absence have angered the spirits who control The Politicker. Thankfully, Nicole and tech guru Jake Brooks have brought peace back to the site.

Unfortunately, there are still some hard feelings (or bugs in the system, whichever explanation you prefer). So for now comments and track backs are not available. Sorry.

You can always email or IM your thoughts. Thoughtful comments (like Harold Ickes observation) will be reposted.

--Azi Paybarah

We've heard a bit of muttering lately on the, er, slightly superficial question of Freddy's facial hair. When, we were asked, was the last time New York elected a mayor with a moustache?

The results of our extensive research aren't encouraging for the former Bronx Borough President. The last mustachioed mayor, John P. O'Brien, was a Tammany man who served less than a year in 1933 before being thumped by the clean-shaven Fiorello LaGuardia. O'Brien had a modest, Ferrer-like 'stache. If Freddy does decide to stick with it, though, perhaps he should go all the way and grow what we'll call a Van Wyck in honor of the first Mayor of Greater New York.

Henry Stern, who follows such things, explained to us the disappearance of moustaches from American politics in the second half of the 20th Century.

"Moustaches were dealt a heavy blow in the 1940s by the Fuhrer and by Governor Dewey," he said. "Harold Ickes [the FDR aide] described Dewey when he was running against Roosevelt as 'the little man on the wedding cake.'"

We can think offhand of two major moustaches on the city's political scene, belonging to Bernie Kerik and to the News's Bill Hammond. Neither man, we venture, will soon be running for public office.

As for Stern, he was agnostic on whether the moustache affects Freddy's chances of getting elected.  read more »

"If it became an impediment, I'm certain he would shave it," he said.

CORRECTION: We're really slipping here. Dinkins, of course, had a moustache! Not a Van Wyck, but no missing it. Things are looking up for Freddy.

Let's just get this out of the way now: She's running.Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has a re-electi  read more »

New York's two political giants, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, seemed for a moment after Novemb  read more »

As Democrats continue to ponder the wreckage of Campaign 2004, Harold Ickes Jr., a confidant of Bill  read more »

A top Democratic strategist is criticizing a central theme of Senator John Kerry's campaign for Pres  read more »

Carl McCall's sparsely furnished campaign office on Park Avenue South has been a pretty gloomy place  read more »

No doubt about it, the Hillary Express appears to be running smoothly at last.  read more »

Not long ago, Raymond Harding–head of the influential Liberal Party and a key confidant of Mayor R  read more »

Even for the hardest-core of New York political addicts, it is getting ever so slightly stale to wai  read more »

As she ruminates about whether to jump into a bruising Senate race, Hillary Rodham Clinton has thril  read more »