Washington Journal

Rep. Shaw mends from lung surgery

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., one of the Florida congressional delegation's most senior members, underwent surgery Friday in Tampa to remove a small cancerous growth from his left lung.

After a couple of days recovery at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Shaw was expected to return to his Fort Lauderdale home for more recuperation, said Eric Eikenberg, his chief of staff.

Eikenberg said he does not know whether Shaw ever smoked but that he does not now. He also said he did not know the name of the cancer that was detected during a routine physical. Some types of lung cancer are more malignant than others. Eikenberg said Shaw, who chairs the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, is expected to recover.

"They caught it early," Eikenberg said. "Everything turned out great."

Reno speaks at D.C. anti-death penalty play

Janet Reno was back in Washington last week, where she spoke briefly at an anti-death penalty fundraising event just blocks from her old haunt at the Department of Justice.

Reno attended a production of The Exonerated at Washington's Warner Theatre, starring Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy. Proceeds from ticket sales support the Constitution Project, a nonprofit group that works to bring consensus on the death penalty.

After the play, five men who had been wrongly put on death row and exonerated talked about their ordeals. Reno introduced them by reiterating her qualms about the way death sentences are given.

The play, she said, shows why lawyers "must renew our efforts to find the truth" about guilt and innocence. "If we do not do this, the law will lack the confidence of the nation, and we will be a poorer, lesser people for it," Reno said.

Who knows? Reno might need to keep her hand in policy issues.

The former attorney general, who failed last year in a bid for the Florida Democratic gubernatorial nomination, has not ruled out running for Sen. Bob Graham's Senate seat if the Florida Democrat gives it up to campaign for president.

Presidential campaign headquarters in Florida?

Speaking of Graham, if he runs for president, his campaign headquarters will probably be in Florida.

Some presidential candidates put them in Washington, but others choose their home states, where there's a large pool of volunteers. Sen. John Edwards has his in Raleigh, N.C., while Sen. Joseph Lieberman's is in Washington. In 2000, Al Gore made headlines by uprooting his campaign from Washington and moving it to Nashville to emphasize his independence from the Clinton administration and Washington consultants.

Buddy Shorstein, a former top aide to Graham who is helping him organize the campaign, says he and Graham have been talking about possible sites.

"Our thinking is that it should be Florida," Shorstein said. "That's our base."

Shorstein says no decision has been made, but the city needs to have a major airport so Graham could travel easily to primary states.

-- Staff writers Mary Jacoby and Bill Adair contributed to this report.

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