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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jjkirk who wrote (22050)	12/5/2000 12:46:39 PM
From: jjkirk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Interesting take on Seminole: Seminole Judge's Kin Worked in Bush White House Democrats who now look to the Seminole absentee ballot case as Vice President Al Gore's last chance and hope presiding Judge Nikki Clark's presumed anti-Bush sentiments will tip the case their way may be in for a disappointment. Yes, Judge Clark is an African-American whose decision could determine an election where 90 percent of African-Americans voted for Gore. And it's true Clark is a loyal Democrat who was appointed by Bush-family nemesis Gov. Lawton Chiles -- and that just two weeks ago Gov. Jeb Bush passed Clark over for an appointment to the First District Court of Appeals. And it's also true that Clark's legal resume suggests she's no conservative, having served as a public defender in, of all places, West Palm Beach in the late 1970's. But all that notwithstanding, it turns out that Judge Clark -- or at least her family -- owes a debt of gratitude to former President Bush. It was he who appointed her sister director of White House media relations in 1988. According to a much overlooked report buried deep inside Saturday's Newsday, Kristin Taylor Clark was the first African-American to hold that position and even wrote a book about it in 1993, after she was ousted by the Clinton-Gore administration. In "The First to Speak: A Woman of Color Inside the White House," Kristin Clark describes herself as a loyal Republican and praises President Bush as gracious and helpful to her. (On the other hand, she says she wished there had been "more people of color and women" in the Bush White House.) Judge Clark's sister was unavailable for comment. But the judge's former husband, who works for North Florida Legal Services, told Newsday their family was "proud of Kristin" for her achievements in the Republican Party. As for Jeb Bush passing Clark over for a promotion just last month -- that may be a mixed bag as well. Gov. Chiles passed the judge over for the same job a few years back. An aide to Judge Clark told the New York Daily News last week that when Jeb Bush picked somebody else, "She never thought she was passed over, and there was no controversy when it happened.... There were nine candidates; politics had nothing to do with it, and all the candidates were qualified." Personal loyalties aside, legal experts doubt that Clark will decide to overturn a presidential election because Republicans were allowed to correct a Seminole County computer error that omitted voter ID numbers on only GOP absentee ballot applications. Democrat applications suffered no such glitch. There's no way to tell now which ballots came from corrected applications. If Clark were to rule for Gore, it would mean tossing out the county's entire 15,000 absentee ballot count, disqualifying over 10,000 ballots about which there's absolutely no complaint. newsmax.com