Big news day in Iowa politics. 4 articles on the our two targeted races. The Harkin campaign continues to try to clear its act, and the Norris race tries to draw its distinctions. The DM Register pagelink is: http://DesMoinesRegister.com/news/stories/c4789004/politics-front.html These are the texts of the 4 stories. Let me know any suggestions or actions you want. I will be working on sample LTEs on the two races. The Iowa Poll story is important, I think, because it is usually pretty representative of the moment it is taken, which was during this week of controversy. Iowans are usually careful to react to news like what has been happening, although when they do, it would be hard to get that turned around also. FYI and for what its worth! Lyle Krewson Iowa EVEC Coordinator Front Page, above the fold ‹ Campaign manager resigns over tape By THOMAS BEAUMONT Register Staff Writer 09/28/2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sen. Tom Harkin's campaign manager resigned abruptly Friday, becoming the second casualty in an unfolding controversy stemming from a tape-recorded meeting of Republican rival Greg Ganske and his financial supporters. The departure of Jeff Link from the Democratic senator's campaign came as Harkin acknowledged a junior research staffer asked a former Harkin congressional aide to record the Sept. 3 Ganske meeting at the Hotel Savery in Des Moines. The aide then passed the tape and a transcript to a newspaper reporter. While apologizing for the incident, Harkin downplayed its significance as "shenanigans" and the product of "youthful exuberance." "One young staffer got carried away and went over the line of acceptable campaign practices," Harkin told supporters and the news media at the Hotel Fort Des Moines on Friday. "Juvenile antics? Yes. Dennis the Menace capers? Yes. Criminal activity? Hardly." Republicans, meanwhile, said questions remain as to whether the Harkin staffer was the sole campaign worker involved. They have called for a criminal probe. While Harkin hopes Friday's campaign changes will put the controversy behind his re-election bid, major discrepancies exist between versions of what happened according to his campaign and according to the man believed to have recorded the meeting. Those differences could have a bearing on whether a crime was committed. Harkin said Friday that a 21-year-old campaign researcher asked a Des Moines businessman who had worked for Harkin in the 1970s to tape the meeting. But the businessman, Brian Conley, 53, of Des Moines, claims to have taped the meeting on his own and turned the tape over to the Harkin campaign in disgust over remarks Ganske made during the meeting. The Republican Party of Iowa and Ganske's campaign say Conley's recording of the meeting was illegal because he intended to use it to damage Ganske, a four-term congressman challenging Harkin's bid for a fourth term. Lawyers for Harkin and Conley say no laws were broken because the tape was made by an invited participant, which they say is legal. Iowa criminal-law experts have said that if someone has permission to be at a meeting, they can tape it and use it for any purpose as long as it is not to bring harm to anyone. Harkin said Rafael Ruthchild, whose responsibilities for the Harkin campaign included videotaping Ganske during public appearances, asked Brian Conley to record the meeting. Ruthchild resigned from the campaign Thursday, according to his lawyer, Steve Wandro of Des Moines. Ruthchild could not be reached for comment Friday. "These young people need careful management and supervision. My campaign manager (Jeff Link) has taken responsibility for this lack of management and supervision, and he has suggested that he step aside and a new management team be brought in," Harkin said. "I have accepted this suggestion." Harkin said he did not recall Conley's work for his U.S. House office in the mid-1970s and he hadn't spoken with him in many years. State Republican Party Chairman Charles Larson Jr. said Friday that Conley, an aide to Harkin's U.S. House staff in 1975 and 1976, was directed to tape the meeting by top members of the Harkin campaign. He cited a source he would not identify. Larson said Harkin's statement was "clearly an attempt to divert attention from the facts, pawn off responsibility onto a 'young staffer,' and then shrug it all off as a 'Dennis the Menace caper.' " "Are we supposed to believe this 'young man' acted alone in directing a 53-year-old business executive to change his voting registration, pose as a Ganske supporter, attend and secretly record a private meeting, and then transcribe and distribute it to the press?" Larson said. "Then I guess he would have us believe that Dennis the Menace controlled Mr. Wilson." John Frew, who ran Harkin's first Senate campaign in 1984, replaces Link with six weeks remaining until the election. Link, who is Harkin's former Senate chief of staff, also ran Harkin's 1996 campaign before managing the 2002 effort until Friday. Link could not be reached for comment. Friday's announcement came at the end of a week that began with Harkin and Link saying they had no knowledge of the taped meeting. Conley's name emerged Wednesday as the person believed to have made the tape under a much different scenario than outlined by Harkin. A Des Moines lawyer issued a statement Tuesday in which he said his client, now believed to be Conley, claimed to have attended the meeting by invitation and recorded it in lieu of taking notes. The lawyer, Brent Rosenberg, said his client did not go to the meeting intending to record it, but decided to hand his tape over to Harkin's campaign out of disgust after hearing comments Ganske made about his willingness to attack Harkin "with a smile on our face." David Wiggins, a West Des Moines lawyer hired by Harkin to look into the incident, said Conley approached Ruthchild with his invitation, and Ruthchild encouraged him to attend and record the meeting. Ganske and his campaign finance chairman spoke at the meeting, along with the White House's political director, who participated by speaker phone. Des Moines police began talking to members of the two campaigns Thursday as well as to Kathie Obradovich, the Lee Enterprises political reporter who received the recording and transcript from the Harkin campaign. Lee Enterprises publishes the Quad-City Times and other Iowa newspapers. In still another strange twist in this saga, Des Moines police Sgt. Bruce Elrod denied Friday published reports that a detective had said Conley had asked for immunity from criminal prosecution in exchange for his cooperation with the investigation. "The detective did not either confirm or deny that a request for immunity was made," Elrod said. Detective Bill Boggs was quoted by Obradovich as confirming the request for immunity. Boggs had called Obradovich in connection with the case. Wiggins, the attorney hired by Harkin, said it is common for a lawyer to immediately ask for immunity from prosecution as an investigation begins. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Front page, right column ‹ Harkin opens up sizable lead over Ganske By JONATHAN ROOS Register Staff Writer 09/28/2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin has widened his lead over Republican opponent Greg Ganske over the past three months, according to a Des Moines Register poll that was taken this week as Iowans were learning details of an unfolding campaign controversy. The Democratic incumbent has opened a 20-percentage-point lead over Ganske, a congressman from Des Moines, in the latest Iowa Poll of likely voters. His lead in late June was 9 points. Among adults who say they definitely will vote in the Nov. 5 election, 54 percent say they would support Harkin if the election were held now, and 34 percent would back Ganske. The rest would either prefer another candidate or are undecided. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Experts say it's too soon to know whether support for Harkin will be undercut by a Republican-initiated criminal investigation of a Sept. 3 incident in which a former Harkin congressional aide made an audiotape of a Ganske campaign meeting. A Harkin campaign staff member then passed the recording and a transcript along to Kathie Obradovich, a Lee Enterprises newspaper reporter, who gave Ganske's staff a copy. On Friday, Harkin's campaign manager quit, and Harkin said a junior staff member arranged for the taping, which was done by Brian Conley of Des Moines. The poll did not find significant shifts in opinion during the five-day period that it was taken. Polling began last Saturday, as reports of the taping incident began to surface, and was completed on Wednesday, when Conley acknowledged through his lawyers that he had taped the meeting and shared the recording with the Harkin campaign. Steffen Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University, said it's unlikely the eavesdropping controversy would make much of an immediate impression on voters. What is important is the long-term impact, he said. Hard-core Republicans will be convinced Harkin is not trustworthy, while hard-core Democrats will believe Harkin is under attack, Schmidt said. That leaves the voters who are undecided or just leaning toward one candidate. Most of those voters don't follow every detail of an evolving scandal, but are left with an overall impression that something wrong has happened, Schmidt said. For Harkin, "his campaign appears to be the aggressor, the offender here," said Schmidt. "Harkin is going to have a hard time getting that deleted from people's hard drives." J. Ann Selzer, the Register's pollster, said it will take Iowans some time to sort out the controversy, which "has kind of flopped both ways," so it's not surprising that the poll did not detect any significant opinion swings this week. Selzer said it would probably take a "smoking gun" revelation or a clear showing there has been a pattern of "dastardly deeds" by a candidate to produce a huge opinion shift. Poll participant Stuart Fischer, a 41-year-old Republican from Le Mars who plans to vote for Ganske, said Thursday night he's fed up with the negative campaigning in the bruising Senate race and warns that the taping incident could hurt both candidates. "I think it was kind of a setup, but it's one of those things you read and hear about and wonder," Fischer said. "I don't think either side is going to come out smelling like a rose in that situation." Patricia Blakesley, a 54-year-old Democrat from Manchester, said her support for Harkin is firm. She believes Ganske has overreacted to the taping incident. "I am really not happy about the campaign that either of the candidates is running," said Blakesley, a homemaker. "A lot of voters just want them to talk about the issues and not about each other." The new Iowa Poll shows 27 percent of likely voters who support Ganske and 25 percent of those who back Harkin could still be persuaded to vote for another candidate in the Senate contest. Harkin's lead over Ganske has fluctuated considerably. Last December the Iowa Poll showed the Democratic incumbent outdistancing his Republican challenger by 23 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup. Ganske fended off a challenge from Bill Salier to win the Republican nomination in the June 4 primary. The victory may have given Ganske a bounce in the late June Iowa Poll, which showed Harkin leading Ganske, 50 percent to 41 percent. Ganske also was a mystery to much of the Iowa electorate at that point. Said Selzer: "You had people saying they would vote for him who did not know him." As more people have focused on the race and the candidates have waged dueling ad campaigns, overall perceptions of Ganske have turned more negative. In the new poll, 28 percent of likely voters say they don't know enough about Ganske to say how they feel about him. That's down from 45 percent in June. Among those who do have an opinion, 51 percent say they have favorable feelings about Ganske and 49 percent look upon him unfavorably. In June, nearly two-thirds of likely voters said they had a favorable opinion of the Republican nominee. Harkin, still the much better-known candidate, fares better. He is viewed favorably by 67 percent of those likely voters who have an opinion about him. That's a drop of 4 points from June. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Inside page article ‹ Man next to Conley at meeting says he didn't see a tape recorder By THOMAS BEAUMONT Register Staff Writer 09/28/2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Retired Des Moines physician Ken Schultheis said Brian Conley displayed no tape recorder when he sat beside him at a U.S. Senate campaign meeting for Republican Greg Ganske on Sept. 3. Conley is suspected of making a recording of the meeting and giving it to the campaign of Ganske's Democratic opponent, Sen. Tom Harkin. Harkin's campaign has admitted sending the transcript to a newspaper reporter, which prompted Republicans to allege wrongdoing. "We sat elbow to elbow and I didn't see one," said Schultheis. Schultheis said he introduced himself to Conley, who sat alongside him near the speaker's table at the Hotel Savery, where Ganske and his finance director sat when they addressed the two dozen previous financial donors in attendance. Schultheis, 60, said the event was not a fund-raiser for big-dollar donors, but "more of an informational meeting." Schultheis said he had contributed no more than $500 to Ganske's Senate bid. Conley, a Democrat who had previously registered as a Republican, contributed $50 to Ganske last summer. Conley, who has declined repeated requests for comment, turned the tape over to the Harkin campaign because he was upset at some of Ganske's comments, according to one version of events. "I certainly didn't appreciate the claim that he was surprised or angered by the comments," Schultheis said. "He didn't look angry to me." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Latham/Norris article, front section, page 4 or so ‹ Politics Latham-Norris contest heats up 4th U.S. House District candidates clash on budget, farm bill, other issues By LYNN OKAMOTO Register Staff Writer 09/28/2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ U.S. Rep. Tom Latham of Alexander is more convinced than his Democratic challenger, John Norris, about the need to go to war with Iraq. "I am convinced . . . that there is a very real and credible threat today," said Latham, 54. "There is no question the case has been made by Saddam Hussein himself that he should be eliminated. He has thumbed his nose at the United Nations, at the world. He is someone who is a real threat to peace." Norris, 44, a former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Vilsack and U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, said war should always be a last resort. However, he acknowledged he is not privy to information about Iraq that's been made available to members of Congress. "We have to make sure that this threat is real," Norris said. "If it's real and American lives are threatened, I'll support the president. We should never go to war because we want to go to war. It should always be because we have to." The two candidates for Iowa's 4th U.S. House District clashed on national security, the budget, Social Security and the farm bill Friday, in one of their first joint appearances of the campaign. Both candidates took part in a taping of Iowa Public Television's "Iowa Press." Norris was in the studio in Johnston, while Latham appeared by satellite from Washington, D.C. Here's an overview of their exchange: BUDGET: Norris accused Latham of "irresponsible fiscal moves," including tax cuts to millionaires. "The real issue here is Tom Latham said he wouldn't dip into the Social Security trust fund, and he has," Norris said. "That he wouldn't deficit-spend, and he has. That he wouldn't raise the debt ceiling, and he has." Latham shot back that he and Congress have acted responsibly. He said he didn't like having to raise the debt ceiling, but it had to be done. He said increased security following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will cost the federal government about $270 billion in additional spending over two fiscal years. "Apparently, he would prefer a government shutdown," Latham said of Norris. "The fact of the matter is, we have had six balanced budgets. We have paid off over $450 billion in the national debt." Latham said tax cuts that Norris referred to were for small-business owners. He said he would support deficit spending if necessary to protect national security because the cost to America would be too great otherwise. "I fought all my career to get federal spending under control, but this is a national security issue," he said. e in the budget problem and in the solution." Whitaker contends Fitzgerald did not take an active role in the debate and did not advise the Legislature and the governor publicly about what he thought the options were. Fitzgerald said the budget troubles hit all states. Iowa, he said, fared better than most. "The treasurer doesn't project revenue growth for the state," Fitzgerald said. "But I have been very outspoken with the governor and the Legislature that when we need to cut spending to balance the budget, we do it." In a low-profile race, name recognition often is a key factor. Usually the advantage belongs to the incumbent. But Whitaker was an academic All-American on the University of Iowa football team. He wears a 1991 Rose Bowl ring on his right hand, which he acknowledges is gaudy. But he said he'd get little political mileage from standing up and announcing, "Vote for me, I played football for the Hawkeyes." He said votes would come from people who agreed with him that College Savings Iowa needs improvement or who agreed more state money should be invested in banks with Iowa ties. "People know who I am, for the most part," Whitaker said. "But if all I get is the Republican Hawkeye vote, I'm not going to win. I need to make sure it's part of my story - I'm very proud of my accomplishments at Iowa - but that's not why I'm running." The election for treasurer and other statewide offices is Nov. 5. The treasurer in 2001-02 was paid $87,990. SOCIAL SECURITY: Norris accused Latham of wanting to privatize Social Security. Latham emphatically denied the accusation. "I have never said that," Latham said. "I have said that we are going to look at options for younger people. . . . But there's no talk by anyone about privatizing Social Security." A plan by President Bush would allow workers under 50 to invest a portion of their payroll tax in the stock market, rather than having it go toward the Social Security trust fund. Democrats call this "privatization," while Republicans deny that charge. FARM BILL: Latham, a farmer, explained why he voted against the farm bill. "The policy is written to help the largest farmers only," he said. "It does nothing to help folks today who are facing a drought situation." Latham said under the farm bill that passed, the largest hog producers could qualify for $450,000 of taxpayer money to build more facilities. "It is simply outrageous," he said. Norris criticized Latham for supporting a version of the farm bill that was even worse. "He complains about having subsidies for the large hog confinement operations," Norris said. "The bill he voted for had three times as many." MEDICARE: Both candidates said they support a bill in the U.S. Senate that would give Iowa's hospitals and physicians a temporary boost of about $130 million in Medicare reimbursement. "This is very, very important, and I think the top priority for us is to get this reimbursement issue taken care of," Latham said. "This is maybe a start," Norris said of the bill. "It's a drop in the bucket." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask]