Monday, August 21, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 21
Nation/World
For comments, contact Lori O'Otoole at 864-4810 or e-mail editor@kansan.com
Democrat, GOP conventions clash
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — The Republican convention was silken, timed to the minute, aimed at the middle. The Democrats' was not, tensions simmering. President
Clinton intruding
George W. Bush got a surge in the polls. Two weeks later, Al Gore did, too. It will be midweek before the surveys begin to settle down and provide a reliable late-summer snapshot of the race for the White House.
The debates lie ahead. So too, the intensive advertising.
"We all better take a deep breath. It's not even Labor Day vet." Bush said as the
Bush: The GOP convention showcased a unified party.
campaign left the competing conventions behind and pointed toward the fall.
Beyond the pageantry, the two parties staged conventions in different ways as they grappled with different strategic concerns.
The GOP program in Philadelphia was meticulously scripted from beginning to end to
appeal to voters in the middle. Bush arrived in Philadelphia at the head of a party hungry for victory and unusually unified. He had long ago wrapped up his party's nomination and secured the support of his chief rival, Sen. John McCain.
The GOP's conservative congressional leaders played scarcely a role as Bush's convention planners turned the podium over to Colin Powell, a black man widely rumored to be Bush's choice for secretary of state; Condoleezza Rice, a black woman who is his top national security adviser; and Rep. Jim Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, who spoke not about gay rights, but free trade.
"An inclusion illusion," the Rev. Jesse Jackson sniped from the Democratic National Convention platform a few weeks later.
Anticipating Gore's desire to step out on his own after eight years as Bill Clinton's understudy, GOP vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney sought to create a mental image of the two men frozen in time.
"Somehow we will never see one without thinking of the other." he said.
Two weeks later, in Los Angeles, Gore did what he could to rip that picture in half, without offending the Clinton supporters he will need this fall.
"I stand here tonight as my own man, and I want you to know me for who I truly am," he told the delegates and the nation in his acceptance speech.
The speech was crafted also to define Gore as the
same person he could find.
for working families and against the powerful interest, and contained a detailed set of policy differences with Bush for the fall. It was also the final act of a convention where the seams showed.
With Gore eager to underscore values, California Rep. Loretta Sanchez had to be pushed publicly by party officials to move a fund-raiser away from the Playboy Mansion.
Gore: The hopeful's speech focused on working families.
With Gore eager to stress his historic selection of a Jew, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, as his running mate, Rep. Maxine Waters of California questioned the Connecticut senator's support of affirmative action. She later said she was satisfied with Lieberman.
Edited by Clay McCuistion
Web sites offer votes to highest bidder
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Who says money can't buy votes?
Six people offered to sell their vote for president on the Internet last week, fetching as much as $10,100 before online auctioneer eBay canceled the bidding.
Meanwhile, another site is soliciting undecided voters to offer as a block to the highest bidder for each state. By Friday, bidders already offered $100 each for New York and California, which together have 87 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Federal and state laws prohibit the sale of votes, and eBay said it is cooperating with investigators from the Justice Department and Washington state, the home of one attempted seller.
"We'd like to think we've got a
good sense of humor, ... but these are people who are dealing with violations of federal law," eBay representative Kevin Pursglove said. "It's very serious."
An eBay user first notified the company about a sale Wednesday night, Pursglove said. He said eBay found and canceled others on Thursday because they violate company policies prohibiting sales of illegal goods. The site does not preapprove auctions, but will stop them if they violate its policies.
One offering under the header "Vote of One US Citizen" received 20 bids, the highest for $10,100. Another individual got one bid for $1, and a third received a bid for 99 cents. Three others had no bids, according to eBav records.
Justice Department officials did not return a call Friday about the
auctions.
Advocates of overhauling campaign finance already believe votes are for sale — to the largest campaign contributors.
Sheila Krumholz, research director at the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, said these attempted sales could be no more than an expression of frustration with the political system.
"Choices and votes are being made or at least impacted by money and by moneyed interests," she said. "Everybody knows money has had an undeniable impact in the system today."
But Deborah Phillips, chairman of the Voting Integrity Project in Arlington, Va., worried that such efforts undermine trust in elections, even if they are no more than an expression of frustration.
"It is just further contributing to this increased sense of cynicism that's so pervasive in America today — that my vote doesn't matter," she said. "It does matter a lot, and ordinary citizens should be outraged by this."
Voteaction.com, the site taking bids by state, promises to collect votes by absentee ballot, verify them and mail them "to the appropriate election district."
"The election industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to influence the presidential election," organizers said in a statement. "This system is an inefficient waste of money for the candidates and their supporters."
The site aims to improve the system "by bringing the campaign contributors' money directly to the voters."
- Edited by Clay McCusition
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