Inside Politics

Try, try again

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said yesterday he would continue calling special legislative sessions until Senate Democrats who fled the state to block a congressional redistricting bill show up to vote, a newspaper reported.

“If there is work to be done. I expect the Legislature to be here conducting it,” Mr. Perry said in the Austin American-Statesman’s online edition yesterday. “There is work to be done.”

When asked if that means continuing special sessions, Mr. Perry said: “You can surmise that.”

The statement came as 11 Senate Democrats continued their exile of more than two weeks in Albuquerque, N.M. Their absence has brought the Senate to a standstill by denying it a quorum to take up the Republican redistricting plan.

Democrats in the House successfully blocked the redistricting plan during the regular session by fleeing to Oklahoma for four days in May. Mr. Perry brought the issue back before the Legislature by calling two special sessions. Mr. Perry told the American-Statesman he believes a new redistricting map will be approved this year.

On Tuesday, the state Republican Party requested a federal investigation into the Democrats’ use of a bank’s private jet to leave the state. The mostly Democrat-less Senate also approved a resolution to fine each missing lawmaker $1,000 a day, with the fine doubling for each missed session, but not to exceed $5,000 a day.

A Vermont centrist

“People say the darndest things on ’Larry King Live,’” Joseph Sternberg writes in the Wall Street Journal.

“Remember Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos telling Larry, ’The president has kept the promises he meant to keep’? Well, last week it was Howard Dean’s turn. Seems the liberal firebrand and presidential wannabe isn’t a liberal after all: He’s really a misunderstood moderate. ’Larry,’ he said between commercial breaks, ’I am in the center. There’s nothing that’s not centrist about me.’

“Somebody better get Barbra Streisand some smelling salts. Apparently, we had Dr. Dean all wrong. We thought he was gaining momentum on the Democratic campaign trail by rallying the party’s liberal base. Now he says he’s a moderate? What explains the yawning gap between America’s view of the man and the man’s view of himself?” asked Mr. Sternberg, a resident of Vermont who is an intern for the Journal editorial page.

“In a word, Vermont. The state Dr. Dean governed for more than 11 years is a quirky little patch, with politics to match. Vermont, after all, has given us the House’s only self-described socialist, a Republican senator who eventually admitted he was about as comfortable in today’s GOP as Ted Kennedy would be, and, of course, Ben & Jerry, the creators of the world’s first PC ice cream. The state also boasts a small but potent Progressive Party (whose candidate for lieutenant governor took 25 percent of the vote in 2002).

“No wonder Vermont produces a far-left candidate who says he’s really a centrist. Back in the Green Mountains, he is one.”

Carolina candidate

South Carolina Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum said yesterday she will run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings’ seat.

The 52-year-old Mrs. Tenenbaum was the leading vote-getter in the 2002 election, when she won re-election. She is a former schoolteacher and lawyer who lives in Lexington County.

Mr. Hollings said earlier this month he would not seek re-election to the seat he first won in 1966.

Sam Tenenbaum says a poll done for his wife shows her beating four Republicans in the race, the Associated Press reports. They are 4th District Rep. Jim DeMint, former Attorney General Charlie Condon, Charleston developer Thomas Ravenel and Myrtle Beach Mayor Mark McBride.

Democratic Columbia Mayor Bob Coble also is considering a run, and Camden native Marcus Belk has announced he’s running as a Democrat.

No second term

Montana Gov. Judy Martz announced yesterday she will not seek a second term, saying she has achieved what she promised to do when elected in 2000.

At a news conference in her Capitol office in Helena, the Republican ticked off a list of achievements dealing with economic development, health care and tax changes and then concluded, “I have accomplished what I set out to do. I have enacted my vision.”

The surprise announcement is expected to entice Lt. Gov. Karl Ohs into the Republican primary race already crowded with three other candidates, the Associated Press reports.

Mr. Ohs, who attended the news conference and was unaware of Mrs. Martz’s decision until then, said he will disclose his plans soon. He said last week he would run if Mrs. Martz does not.

Mrs. Martz, 60, is a former businesswoman and Olympic speed skater who entered politics in 1996 when she swept into office as Gov. Marc Racicot’s running mate. She succeeded Mr. Racicot in 2000 after he was barred from seeking a third term.

Poindexter’s letter

John M. Poindexter resigned his Pentagon research job, but maintained that his efforts to predict terrorist attacks by scanning public and private databases and developing a futures market on Mideast developments had been misrepresented and misunderstood.

“I regret that we have not been able to … reassure the public that we do not intend to spy on them,” the retired admiral said in a letter dated Tuesday. “I think I have done all that I can do under the circumstances.”

He advised his boss, Anthony Tether, that he would leave the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on Aug. 29, almost 20 months after Mr. Tether lured him from private industry back to government service to pursue his ideas for improving antiterrorism efforts.

“In the highly charged political environment of Washington, positions on highly complex issues are taken and debated using glib phrases, ’sound bites,’ and symbols,” Adm. Poindexter wrote.

FEC seeks rehearing

The Federal Election Commission has asked an appeals court to reconsider a ruling barring the release of documents from an investigation into political coordination between the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO.

The commission requested a rehearing by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In June, a three-judge panel from the court upheld a lower court ruling and said allowing the FEC to release the records would infringe on the free-speech rights of the union and the party. It said the commission could alter its disclosure policy to avoid the infringement.

The appeals court is expected to rule on the FEC’s request by early next month, the Associated Press reports. If the court denies it, the commission could ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling prohibiting the document release.

At issue is the disclosure of thousands of pages from the commission’s probe of 1996 election activity by the Democratic National Committee and the labor federation.

The party and the AFL-CIO want to keep the documents secret, and went to court in 2001 to challenge the FEC’s policy of releasing documents from closed cases.

Facts of life

“Poor Carol Moseley Braun. The novelty presidential candidate is almost 56 years old — her birthday is this Saturday — yet in all that time, it seems no one has ever taken her aside to explain the facts of life,” James Taranto writes in his Best of the Web Today column at www.OpinionJournal.com.

Mr. Taranto went on to quote from an Associated Press dispatch from Stillwater, Okla.: “Asked about gay marriages, Moseley Braun recalled an aunt in an interracial marriage decades ago and brought applause when she said, ’I don’t see any difference between interracial marriages and same-sex marriages.’”

• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.