July 27, 2001
Potomac Watch
Hillary Leads Dems
To a Gall Stoning
By PAUL A. GIGOT
This is the week Hillary Rodham Clinton made her partisan Senate bones. She ordered a contract hit on one of President Bush's nominees, and she did it, remarkably, with almost no one noticing.
Her target was Mary Sheila Gall, the president's pick to chair the usually obscure Consumer Product Safety Commission. Ms. Gall is hardly an ogre from central casting. A single mother of two adopted kids, she's gray-haired, prim and given to awkward attempts at humor.
But Hillary has been working since April to make her the first Bush nominee to be rejected by the Senate. And, voila, at a Wednesday confirmation hearing Ms. Clinton's Democratic frontmen portrayed Ms. Gall as a mortal danger to mothers and babies everywhere.
This Gall stoning is an example of Hillary's growing Senate clout. She's quickly become a back-stage liberal power, the leader of those urging Majority Leader Tom Daschle to take a harder anti-Bush line. She was one of those who wanted no compromise on HMO regulation and who battled hardest against the tax cut. In public she's trying to soften her image by appearing as a New Democrat who has lunch with Republicans. But in private her advice is pure Carville-Begala-Blumenthal: Resist Mr. Bush at every turn.
Sen. Clinton is earning her influence the old-fashioned way: She's buying it. She's shown her colleagues she can raise campaign cash faster than anyone in town. The senator's first big soiree at her $2.85 million Georgetown home was a fund-raiser for strapped freshman Sen. Maria Cantwell. Ms. Clinton's political action committee, HILLPAC, raised $660,000 in just six months, astounding for a freshman. She's already doling this out to Democratic candidates.
Her colleagues also know she's close to Democratic Party chief and money machine Terry McAuliffe. And she can always call upon her husband-in-exile, the former president, to draw the really big bucks. Any Democrat who wants to share the wealth had better think twice about challenging her wisdom.
That apparently includes Mr. Daschle, who this week declared against Ms. Gall before she had a hearing. He didn't even do that to Attorney General John Ashcroft. "I don't believe she is qualified,'' said Mr. Daschle, who clearly didn't know that Ms. Gall has served on the CPSC for 10 years. Think about it: Usually freshmen senators do the leader's bidding, but in this case the leader is doing Ms. Clinton's.
The former first lady's motives for opposing Ms. Gall are both personal and political. The personal include her long friendship with current CPSC Chairman Ann Brown, who has tussled with Ms. Gall over the years. Ms. Gall is publicly supported by the other commissioner, Democrat Thomas Moore. But Ms. Gall made the mistake, at her hearing, of saying that Ms. Brown was supporting her "in private."
Ms. Brown then stuck the knife in with a public statement that, "We have a good personal relationship, but I do not support her because I disagree with her philosophy, which I think would put children and families in danger." Let's hope Mr. Brown sleeps with one eye open.
After her own bad Senate start, Ms. Clinton's political motive is to revive her reputation as a champion of children. Ms. Gall is an easy foil for this, because she has cast votes over the years against tougher regulation of bunk beds, baby bath seats, and crayons. She had good reason for each of her votes -- in particular that regulation can't protect against parental neglect -- but those points don't pack the same emotional wallop as the image of dead children and evil business.
Ms. Clinton has buttonholed every Democrat in sight to oppose Ms. Gall. She recruited her pal, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, for an attack press conference, and Ms. Clinton's staff reserved a Senate room for Ms. DeLauro and the Naderites to assemble. She also spoke against Ms. Gall at two Senate Democratic Caucus lunches.
And this week she got what she wanted: An all-star Democratic lineup slicing and dicing Ms. Gall into a thousand negative sound bites. Two presidential hopefuls, Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards, even showed up; maybe Hillary will remember in 2004.
But her main proxy was her California consigliere, Barbara Boxer, who by the end of the hearing was pounding the table, pointing her finger, waving her hands, and yelling lines like, "I was frankly stunned ... I shudder to think the chilling effect that you being confirmed as chairman would have ... You don't want to educate a grandmother who might want to take a grandchild to bed! ... But 57 children DIED!"
The shy Ms. Gall, sticking to the bureaucratic script, offered a lousy defense. And Sen. Clinton didn't even have to show up. She sent press aide Jim Kennedy instead to spin and survey the damage. Her excuse is that she isn't a member of the Commerce Committee. But she also knows she remains a political lightning rod and so better to let others rant and rave in public.
Word around the Senate is that Democrats are close to having the votes to beat Ms. Gall next week. The precedent would mean little good for Mr. Bush. Hillary isn't the sort to settle for one victory. And next time she might even pick on somebody her own size. |
