2B
University Daily Kansan / Monday, December 9, 1991
Signals indicate Cuomo running for presidency
ANALYSIS
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Mario Cuomo is making a list and checking his calendar. Christmas is coming and so is the day he will be president, whether we will run for president.
Cuomo says he has not even tried to make a decision yet. But the signals he's sending are unmistakable: Cuomo is running. The only question now is whether New York's budget will force him to change his mind.
"If he announces he's not running, it's a withdrawal," said John White, the former Democratic Party chairman.
But White and just about everyone else in Democratic party circles thinks Cuomo will announce his candidacy. And the evidence is building.
Cuomo aides acknowledged Wednesday that they were assembling a campaign team of lawyers, strategists, fund-raisers—and soon.
The list is the latest sign that Cuomo is nearing his announcement. The admission that it exists is an important signal from the Cuomo camp—a public wantad of sorts that apparently worked.
"People are sending in resumes," said Cuomo political adviser John Marino. "The fax machines are busy."
Marinio is busy, too. He must figure out how quickly Cuomo can raise enough money to qualify for federal matching funds and how soon he has to return the millions in cruises states, some of which require petitions and delegate slates.
He also is busy trying to convince people that Cuomo, who surpasses the other Democrats in name recognition, is not likely to be an underdog because of his late start.
"We are way behind everyone else, and I'm just trying to play a little catch-up here," Marino said. "Mario Cuomo will be at a real competitive level, so he decides to run, and I'm trying to narrow that gap as much as possible."
A bigger gap that Cuomo and his
cooperatives are trying to close is the expectations gap.
Mario Cuomo
"We're way be h in d."
Cuomo said.
"These people are way ahead of us. They've got more money, they've
got speeches, consultants."
Cuomo has money and can raise more fast. He delivers speeches that leave audiences in awe. He has consultants. He will have something else the instant he officially enters the race: the front-runner's label.
The six other main candidates have been organizing in New Hampshire for two to eight months. Yet Cuomo still has a wide lead in early polls in the state. National polls show the same thing: Cuomo is the favorite.
So by waiting until the last possible minute to enter the race — New Hampshire's filing deadline is Dec. 20.
Cuomo can argue that he cannot be bound to such high expectations and had time to organize and campaign.
"The expectation has been built up that he'll just blow everybody away and that is not going to happen," said White. "He could win but he won't suggest as easily as some people might suggest."
Waiting also might keep Cuomou off of the biggest early event of the Democratic campaign, a nationally televised debate on Dec. 15. The sooner Cuomau appears on the same stage with the sooner they get to go after him.
"I don't believe he has to do it." Marino said of the debate. "And I don't think he's going to have the time to prepare."
The debate aside, Cuomo does not have much more time. Gary Hart entered too late in 1984 to file full document. He is known for lengthy Walter Miller's campaign.
Cuomo suggests that will not happen to him
"I'll beready," he said last week. His rivals should consider that a signal.
Jennifer Hoeffner / KANSAN
Craftsmanship
Brebeca Bashara of Des Moines, Iowa, constructs a pair of earrings with sterling wire and frosted glass stones. Bashara travels all over the country collecting stones to use in her jewelry. Bashara's work was featured in the arts and crafts show at the Kansas University Gallery last week.
Duke's impact will be through the anger he inspires
Associated Press
ANALYSIS
WASHINGTON — Anger has replaced hatred as David Duke's business.
Theformer Ku Klux Klan grand wizard jumped into presidential politics Wednesday with an angry message aimed squarely at an angry electorate. In doing so, he employed a glossary of buzz words right out of the Party's play book and made a lot of people, mostly politicians angry.
Duke was denounced as a racist, a bigot, a Nazi and a fraud, an unrepentant hater who has traded in his hooded robe for a business suit, his extremism for a venture into the political mainstream.
The Bush White House was attacking Duke even before he could announce his candidacy, and the Republican Party that Duke wants to lead joined in the chorus. "He's not a Republican, he's a charlatan," said Republican National Committee representative B.J. Cooper.
Voters will serve as the jury for those charges, in the primaries Duke is promising to enter next spring. But the anger and emotion Duke inspires is clear evidence of the impact he'll have on the 1992 campaign.
The ballot, Cooper's protests notwithstanding, will list Duke as a Republican.
The Democrats also got into the Duke-bashing act, led by Arkansas Gov Bill Clinton, a presidential candidate who took issue with Duke's claim that Clinton was borrowing his platform for welfare reform.
"I was interested in welfare reform when Duke was still burning crosses," Clinton said.
Indeed, Clinton has been a voice in the welfare debate for more than a decade. But in many ways that is beside the point.
When Bush, Clinton and the politics parties answer every Duke charge with a rebuttal or countercharge, they extend to him the legitimacy he so far enjoyed.
Yet ignoring Duke carries risks too.
Tonot rebuke him could be interpreted
as not disagreeing with him. It is the irony of many Duke-related ironies: The very background that critics say should disqualify Duke from politics forces them to debate him.
"He's certainly no threat to the president's ability to win the nomination," said Charlie Black, a member of Bush's strategy team. "But because this guy has such a backdrop background, we'll keep speaking against him."
In his announcement, Duke called for ending affirmative action programs, encouraging welfare mothers to use birth control and take drug tests, closing the nation's borders to immigrants, kicking gays out of the military and telling the Japanese, "you no buy ourrice, we no buy your cars."
meet TV sports analyst
DICK VITALE
Signing his book on the 1990-1991 NCAA Basketball Season.
A great gift for the KU sports fan.
Friday, December 13
Mt. Oread Bookshop
Kansas Union, Level 2
2:00-3:30 pm
864-4431