Election briefs

By Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 25, 2000

Bush visits Fla. to raise money, tout tax cut plan

Texas Gov. George W. Bush rounded up $1.5-million for Florida's Republican Party at a closed-door reception Thursday night in a private Coral Gables enclave.

"I intend to contest this state," Bush said Thursday evening as he arrived at Miami International Airport. "We have a good chance of winning."

Looking around and not seeing his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, the presidential candidate joked, "I'm a little disappointed the chairman of my campaign is late."

Bush seized the opportunity to promote his proposal for an across-the-board reduction in federal income taxes.

He was greeted by Larry Melow, 36, a father of four and a state employee earning $62,000 a year. Under Bush's plan for a tax cut, Melow said, his tax bill could be reduced from $3,500 to $2,100 a year.

"He's going to get some of the surplus back, should I become president," Bush said.

State polls show Gore's numbers rising

WASHINGTON -- Al Gore has regained the lead in New Jersey and California, taken an edge in Minnesota and pulled even with George W. Bush in Michigan in state polls taken after the Democratic National Convention.

Gore's progress reflects the bounce in national polls the Democratic presidential nominee received after the convention.

NEW JERSEY: Gore led 49 percent to 37 percent in the Quinnipiac Poll after Bush had pulled close in the state.

CALIFORNIA: Gore was up 50 percent to 37 percent in a Field Poll, similar to his 46-35 lead in June. A separate California poll taken between the party conventions suggested a close race.

"It looks like the conventions pretty much canceled each other out," said Mark DeCamillo, director of the Field Poll. "For most of the year, there hasn't been a lot of shifting. Gore was ahead by 11 points before the primaries, ahead by 11 points in June -- now he's ahead by 13 points."

MICHIGAN: Gore was even with Bush in an Epic-MRA poll taken for the Detroit Free Press with 44 percent to 42 percent for Bush, 3 percent for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and 1 percent for Reform Party hopeful Pat Buchanan. Bush was ahead 45-37 in that same poll in early August.

MINNESOTA: Gore had a 48-40 edge after he and Bush were tied last month.

Who's Reform nominee? States' answers vary

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Iowa election officials drew Pat Buchanan's name in a glass-bowl lottery Thursday after a raucous hallway exchange between Reform Party factions fighting for a spot on the state's November ballot.

In Montana, meanwhile, rival John Hagelin was the winner in a film-can drawing.

In California, Buchanan's name was pulled off the ballot.

Two weeks after the party's national convention was supposed to choose a nominee, the battle continues between Buchanan, the former Republican, and Hagelin, the Natural Law candidate embraced by supporters of Reform Party founder Ross Perot as a way of blocking Buchanan.

Each candidate says he's the party's legitimate nominee. And state election officials, facing deadlines for printing ballots, are caught in the middle, sometimes even resorting to lotteries. Florida has until Sept. 1 to decide.

"Right now we consider that party overnominated," dryly observed Larry Perosino, a spokesman for Connecticut's secretary of state.

In California, Buchanan had been briefly listed, but was pulled from the ballot Thursday at the request of party leaders, said Alfie Charles, a spokesman for the secretary of state there. Party leaders "continue to meet to resolve the problem," he said.

VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Ezola Foster, Pat Buchanan's Reform Party running mate, cited a mental condition to collect workers' compensation for nearly a year, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

Foster, 62, applied for workers' compensation in 1996 after refusing to return to Bell High School, where she was a typing teacher.

Foster said in an interview this week that she had "two choices to survive," the newspaper reported Thursday. "Since it wasn't physical, they make it mental, don't they? If I don't have a broken leg or they don't see blood, or I'm not dead, they said I have to be crazy. And I would have been to go back there."

She said her outspoken opposition to illegal immigration had made her a target at the mostly Hispanic school and prompted her to seek workers' compensation.

Lieberman to keep seat, run for re-election

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., has decided to keep his Senate seat as he campaigns for vice president and will leave his name on the ballot for re-election in the fall, a spokesman said Thursday.

If Lieberman had resigned, his Senate seat would have been temporarily filled by an appointment from the state's Republican governor. Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's Senate communications director, said Democratic leaders also urged the senator to hold on to his seat to avoid a scramble in their ranks to replace him on the ballot.

Lieberman, the running mate of Democrat Al Gore, is in the midst of a campaign for re-election to a third term in the Senate. His Republican opponent is Phil Giordano, the mayor of Waterbury, who lagged behind the Democratic incumbent by 56 percentage points in the latest poll.

Cheney: Bush may undo some monument choices

CENTRAL POINT, Ore. -- Republican vice presidential hopeful Dick Cheney raised the possibility Thursday that some of the national monuments created by President Clinton could be reviewed and possibly rescinded if he and George W. Bush are elected in November.

"Of course it's not my decision to make. It's the president-elect who has to make the decision," Cheney said, commenting on what is a hot topic in the West. "But I certainly expect we would review a lot of these decisions to see whether or not any action was appropriate."

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