Razzle Dazzle
Running's Not About Hiding

By RICHARD STEIER

From the start of his campaign against Hillary Clinton, Jonathan Tasini has seemed to epitomize the notion of the protest candidacy. He doesn't have a prayer of unseating her; the best his candidacy based largely on the war in Iraq is likely to accomplish is to garner enough votes to raise questions about her status as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.

But by the afternoon of the Connecticut U.S. Senate primary Aug. 8, it seemed as if Mr. Tasini, an otherwise serious man, had begun sipping his own Kool-Aid. The impending victory of Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary against Joe Lieberman, the three-term Senator who had run for Vice President on Al Gore's ticket six years ago, had Mr. Tasini talking as if he could actually win New York's primary Sept. 12, rather than merely cause Ms. Clinton some anxiety.

'I'm With the Voters on Issues'

"This is a huge hill to climb," he said, sitting in a Borders in the Time-Warner building in Columbus Circle. "My opponent has 99-percent name recognition and $25 million in the bank. But I'm where the voters are. Nine out of 10 voters don't know who I am and I'm already at 13 percent" in the polls.

The Chief-Leader/Eric Weiss

MONEY MATTERS: Jonathan Tasini has had his chance for a televised debate with Hillary Clinton in their contest for the Democratic Senate nomination stymied by his failure to raise enough money to meet the standard set by New York 1. He said he believes much of the public is disturbed by a campaign process 'where only multi-millionaires can afford to run,' and added of his opponent, 'I think refusing to debate shows weakness, not strength.'

The less-sunny way to look at it is that this leaves him 70 points behind Ms. Clinton, and she has a ton of money to spend on campaign ads to bolster her support while Mr. Tasini hasn't gotten close to the $500,000 mark which New York 1 has set as the criteria for a candidate to earn the right to a televised debate. Whatever parallels exist between Mr. Lamont's run against Senator Lieberman based largely on the incumbent's support for the Iraq war and Mr. Tasini's against Ms. Clinton on the same issue, the Connecticut challenger had the distinct advantage of a personal fortune to utilize in the primary.

"To put it mildly, I don't have $4 million on hand to spend," Mr. Tasini remarked.

He said he hoped to get a political bounce from Mr. Lamont's victory, since "it shows insurgent candidates can beat well-known, well-financed, well-established incumbents."

In Mr. Lamont's case, however, he had money going for him and the support of a politically powerful union, Local 1199 of the Service Employees' International Union, which climbed on his bandwagon after polls showed him rallying from a 48-point deficit early in the campaign to a double-digit lead a week before the primary. Even the unions, Local 1199 included, that were disillusioned by Senator Clinton's October 2002 vote authorizing President Bush to go to war with Iraq don't appear anxious to antagonize her by backing a quixotic opponent.

It adds up to a triple whammy for Mr. Tasini: no money stymies his hope for a televised debate in which he could broaden his appeal to Democratic voters, and without a sudden rise in the polls, neither campaign cash nor union support is going to arrive in abundance anytime in the next four weeks.

Veteran political consultant Maureen Connelly questioned how much public interest there is in a debate, saying that neither Mr. Tasini nor the two Republicans seeking their party's nomination, John Spencer and Kathleen McFarland, had stirred the body politic.

'Close to a Sure Bet'

"Her election is a foregone conclusion," she said of Ms. Clinton. "Nothing is certain in politics, but this is as close to a sure bet as I've ever seen."

Mr. Tasini is hoping to tap into the anger that more than a few Democrats feel towards Ms. Clinton for voting in favor of the war resolution, however, to at least make the primary close enough to send a message.

"Half the Democratic caucus voted against the war resolution," Mr. Tasini said, although it was actually just 42 percent - 21 of the 50 Democratic Senators at the time - who opposed giving Mr. Bush the authority to invade Iraq. "There were many Senators who had the same information that she had and voted no."

Senator Clinton has since accused the President of misleading her, contending that the false information coming from the White House four years ago about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction jibed with what she had been led to believe during her husband's second term as President.

Prior to the war authorization vote, she declared that it was clear that "if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."

There were other leading Democrats at the time, however, who warned that Mr. Bush was rushing the United States into a war with Iraq - and at the same time, away from its concerted effort to track down Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorism network in Afghanistan - without giving United Nations weapons inspectors a chance to determine whether Saddam indeed possessed weapons of mass destruction.

'Presidential Hubris'

In a landmark speech on the day of the Senate vote, West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd stated, "We are rushing into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly considering the consequences, or without making any attempt to explore what steps we might take to avert a conflict."

He called the resolution giving the President carte blanche to launch a unilateral, pre-emptive attack on Iraq "a product of presidential hubris [that] reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the executive branch." Contradicting the claims of the Bush White House at the time that Saddam was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks, Senator Byrd stated flatly that invading Iraq should not be regarded "as just another offshoot of the war on terror." The only reasons Mr. Bush was rushing through the war authorizations, Mr. Byrd continued, were to expand his own powers and help shape the agenda for the mid-term Congressional elections the following month.

Snookered By Ambition?

Five months later, just before the mid-March 2003 invasion, Senator Byrd decried the growing sentiment that it would be as painless as the brief Persian Gulf War 12 years earlier, saying, "I fear that many have succumbed to an intellectual and moral laziness that views the coming war through the lens of our victory in 1991." With remarkable foresight, he predicted virtually every significant problem that has since arisen as a result of the invasion.

If Mr. Byrd, the senior member of the Senate, could see the pitfalls with such clarity, how could Ms. Clinton have been snookered by an administration that had already given her ample reason to trust neither its statements nor its motivations? The most logical explanation is that she was looking ahead to the 2008 election even then, and was concerned that if she opposed the war it would become just another argument that Republicans could launch against her: that she had blinked when America's security was at stake. It's not exactly a profile in courage, but we haven't seen many of those among potential presidential candidates for some time now.

Mr. Tasini demurs when asked what he believes prompted Senator Clinton's vote on the war, saying, "I don't think it's useful to infer why she took the position she did."

'Right to Hunt Osama'

The mere fact that she took that position, he said, is reason enough to deny her a second term. "You have to vote what you believe in," he said. "There is no amount of money and no power you could give me to vote for a war that kills thousands of people."

What about the invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11?

"I believe that we should have gone after Osama bin Laden," he replied. "We should have hunted him down and killed him if we couldn't capture him. I think 95 percent of the American people would have supported that, and most of the Muslim world. But Hillary Clinton voted for the war that has made the United States less safe."

Ms. Clinton's recent call for the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for mishandling the Iraq war misses the point, Mr. Tasini continued: it's a war that never should have been entered into.

He has other problems with Ms. Clinton's record and her positions. He argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement that was passed early in Bill Clinton's presidency has been a driving force behind the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs - 170,000 in New York State alone - in recent years, with one consequence being a slower economic recovery statewide than nationally. "I think the voters in Buffalo and Rochester should have the opportunity to hear our views," he said.

'Not About 2008'

He insisted he did not undertake the race from a determination to weaken Ms. Clinton's chances of getting the Democratic nomination for President. "I'm not about 2008," Mr. Tasini said. "She does not deserve re-election because of her positions and her record. Can you tell me what significant issue she's taken leadership on for the past five years?"

Mr. Tasini understands how the power of incumbency is magnified in Senator Clinton's case by the perception of her as a political superstar. He contends, however, that her celebrity has blinded much of the local Democratic leadership to the ways in which the positions she has taken put her at odds with rank-and-file party members, the kind who denied Mr. Lieberman their nomination for a fourth term.

"The Democratic establishment at the state party convention was less than happy that I was trying to push a debate about the Iraq war," Mr. Tasini said. "On the other hand, a lot of people - Democratic officials, union officials - are thrilled that I'm running. They don't support her positions, they know me as a longtime union activist [during his tenure as president of the National Writers Union Mr. Tasini won freelance contributors to the New York Times expanded control over their work and how it could be used], and they see me bringing up issues like the war, abuse of corporate power and single-payer health insurance."

Nobody Knows His Name

That won't translate into many labor endorsements, he acknowledged, but added, "I think I'll do very well among union members."

That belief, of course, is rooted in voters learning who he is. The good news, Mr. Tasini said, is that he's at 13 percent in the polls when 9 out of 10 state residents don't know of him. That's also the bad news, given the short time before the primary and the likelihood that there will be no debate. (A question on that issue e-mailed to Clinton campaign press secretary Jennifer Hanley drew no response.)

Mr. Tasini remains optimistic on that front, saying of his opponent, "I would hope that she feels strong enough in her views and supports the democratic process to agree to debates. I think refusing to debate shows weakness, not strength."

Senator Clinton has little to gain politically by agreeing to such a debate, however. It could be argued that it would prepare her for dealing with the issue when she starts her 2008 campaign; then again, she might believe the longer she can hold the war at bay, the greater the chance that her nomination takes on a sense of inevitability, leaving her with a Republican opponent who is unlikely to run to her left on Iraq.

She's No Lieberman

Ms. Connelly said it was difficult to draw conclusions about Mr. Lieberman's defeat having ramifications for Senator Clinton, for several reasons. "She has not been as outspoken in her support of the war or the President as Joe Lieberman," she noted. And a 10,000-vote margin in a primary where turnout was low, partly because it was held at a time when many people were on vacation, was not the best indicator of a national tide.

But it was clear even before last Tuesday's result, Ms. Connelly said, that bad feelings about the situation in Iraq are shaping the political dynamic. "The President's rating is in the tank, and the reason is the war in Iraq."

In Senator Clinton's case, however, she continued, "I don't think people will judge her on the war in Iraq. I think the big issue for her is, does she polarize?"

As infuriating as she can sometimes be to her supporters, Ms. Clinton long ago showed that it is a mistake to underestimate her. She won a surprisingly easy election to the Senate because her Republican opponent, Rick Lazio, counted so much on resentment of her that he let her outwork him, and she ran just about even with him in upstate areas that traditionally go Republican.

'Has to Mobilize Voters'

But Ms. Connelly said that given the strong feelings the war summons among some New York Democrats, Ms. Clinton's prime worry in what seems like a much easier contest this time is that her own supporters will become complacent and decide the polls show they don't have to come out for her on Sept. 12.

"She has to mobilize people to vote for her," she said of Senator Clinton. "If he got 40 percent of the vote, it would be a landslide for her, but everybody would see it as cause for concern."

Mr. Tasini doesn't have such worries. He said he's enjoyed the campaign, despite his struggles to raise money and gain name recognition, because it has given him a forum for raising ideas he believes are vital to the political process, and done it without worrying about how his positions will play with the voters.

"It's not good for politics to constantly be measuring" what's popular and tailoring your opinions accordingly, Mr. Tasini said. "Luckily, I don't have much money for polling."