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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (1311)	3/3/2003 1:45:14 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Boxer Attacks on Bush Help Re-election Bid Monday, March 03, 2003 URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,80060,00.html WASHINGTON — Sen. Barbara Boxer would rather have a president with whom she agrees on environmental issues. Instead, the California Democrat has a campaign issue she believes is ready-made for home-state politics. Once a week, Boxer stands before reporters and cameras and blasts away at Republican moves on clean air, water and cleanups of toxic sites. Sometimes she awards a "toxic trophy" to a governmental agency for bad work on the environment. On one occasion, her staff unfurled a 32-foot scroll that Boxer said listed 235 anti-environmental actions taken by the Bush administration. Officially, Boxer is the Senate Democrats' leader on environmental issues, charged with designing a legislative strategy to stop some of President Bush's proposals and advance Democratic alternatives. But as Boxer acknowledged in a recent interview, the news conferences and props have a role to play in her bid for a third Senate term next year. The environment "is going to be a huge issue in my race," she said. "It's going to be even bigger now because the environment is under such assault." Helped by an array of environmental interest groups, Boxer can point to numerous California and national issues on which she differs with the White House and that polls consistently show are important to her state's voters. The list includes administration proposals to harvest more trees in California forests, its refusal to buy out leases to drill off the central California coast and its opposition to the state's requirement that automakers produce low-emission cars or improve fuel efficiency. She also wrote legislation to have industry pay for cleaning up Superfund toxic waste sites by reimposing a fee that expired in 1995 and a bill to give wilderness protection to 2 million acres of California land. Not even Boxer's opponents suggest the senator is experiencing an election-related conversion. "It's a sincerely held conviction of environmental extremism," said Michael Hardiman, a private-property-rights advocate who formerly worked for Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. Dan Allen, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Boxer will be vulnerable in the 2004 election "because she persists in partisan political attacks rather than in getting things done." Prospective Republican challengers who are trying out possible campaign themes are unlikely to dwell on the environment, choosing instead to highlight defense issues and her vote against giving Bush authority to use military force against Iraq. "She's way too liberal," said Rep. Doug Ose, R-Calif., who is considering a Senate campaign. "The fact of the matter is that Barbara spent her entire career voting against appropriate levels of defense, against appropriate levels of intelligence-gathering apparatus. "And as a consequence, pairing up with any number of colleagues, we find ourselves in a position where we have inadequate early warning or early detection of threats in the nature of Sept. 11." Boxer, 62, is routinely called one of the Senate's most liberal members, a label she does not reject or embrace. However described, her views have been sufficiently popular to win two Senate elections, five races for the House of Representatives and two terms as a Marin County supervisor. She doubled her margin of victory in her 1998 re-election and expects that 2004 will be a good year for Democrats in California, where Republicans last year lost every statewide race. Bush ran more than 1.2 million votes behind Al Gore in 2000. Boxer is among Democrats who blame the party's poor national showing last year on the failure to draw sharp contrasts with Republicans. She said her environmental stands are in the mainstream of California politics. "I don't think fighting for clean air is extremist," she said. "If you neglect your environment, you're going to lose one of the biggest engines of growth, tourism." Boxer also will try to deflect criticism over Iraq by noting she voted for a Democratic alternative to the Iraq resolution that would have required endorsement by the United Nations before taking action. She also backed use of military force in the Balkans and after the Sept. 11 attacks.

To: calgal who wrote (1311)	3/3/2003 1:57:25 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

March 2, 2003 Clinton adviser decries candidates By Donald Lambro THE WASHINGTON TIMES URL:http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030302-10526762.htm Former White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta, in a sharp critique of the Democratic presidential candidates, says the Rev. Al Sharpton preaches hate and that the others are making the party look weak. Top Stories • Agents look for information • Iraq destroys some missiles • Terrorists aim at Pearl Harbor • Report of plans by U.S. to spy on U.N. states questioned • Abortion sides upset at plans for funds • Court ruling ends threat to religious schools' funds • Bomb squad school If Democrats have any hope of winning the White House next year, "They have got to get their act together," Mr. Panetta said. Mr. Panetta, former President Bill Clinton's top adviser, made it clear in an interview last week that he dislikes the fiery civil rights activist Mr. Sharpton's brand of racial politics and is worried about the impact of his candidacy on the Democratic Party. "I think most people put the Sharptons of the world in a certain category. He has a chance to say his piece, but I don't think that's where the party is going to wind up," Mr. Panetta said. "It's a free country and everybody can enter the race, but this is a race that cannot be about hate. This race has to be about hope," he said. Mr. Sharpton's campaign staff did not return a phone call yesterday seeking comment. Mr. Panetta's surprisingly strong criticism of Mr. Sharpton so early in the presidential election cycle follows a string of blistering broadsides from Democratic-leaning journals such as the New Republic and the American Prospect against the New York City preacher and now presidential contender. Mr. Sharpton's record of racial attacks on Democratic opponents in previous campaigns, and his potential to attract a large share of the black vote in the primaries, has been called by his critics "a potential nightmare" for the party. Until now, however, no top Democrat or presidential rival has dared to criticize Mr. Sharpton on the record. Mr. Panetta's sharp rebuke breaks the party's silence. But Mr. Panetta's criticism went beyond Mr. Sharpton to the positions being taken by the other Democratic candidates on national security, the prospect of war in Iraq and the political direction of the party in general. Mr. Panetta said the party's presidential hopefuls have not staked out tough enough positions on Iraq and Saddam Hussein's weapons buildup. "On the war, there are ways the Democrats can show that they are tough militarily in dealing with our enemies, but that we can be a lot more effective in using policy and diplomacy as a world leader," he said. "Clearly President Bush has provided an opening here for the Democrats. But all of them are kind of tiptoeing around the issues, and that makes the Democratic Party look weak in dealing with them," he said. "Those are the challenges we face. If the Democrats make a fundamental decision that they want to win the Congress back and the presidency back, then they have got to get their act together on these issues," he said. The other concern Mr. Panetta has with his party is its political shift to the left as it approaches the 2004 election. He believes it needs to move toward the political center, as Mr. Clinton did in the 1992 election to attract independents and swing voters. "They have to define not only the issues that they stand for, but they've got to define the party that sits at the political center and stands for working families and Main Street," he said. "What Clinton did is he was able to position the party at the center, and that is where you win elections," Mr. Panetta said. But with the exception of Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida, both of whom are running as conservative Democrats, the rest of the presidential pack is positioned on the liberal end of the party's political spectrum: Mr. Sharpton, Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio. Last week a voter survey conducted by pollster John Zogby showed that Mr. Kerry is the favorite in the New Hampshire primary, with Mr. Dean running second and Mr. Gephardt in third place. Everyone else is in the single digits. "There are going to be a lot of candidates in this race, and it's going to have to shake down, but that's not all bad," Mr. Panetta said. "The person who emerges from this group may be that much stronger as a result."