RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events DEMS in '04

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Originally posted by Ultimate Jaburg53:
Is Hulk Hogan a DEM? He could beat Bush.

Even if the election was so close they had to settle it in a steel cage.

Which they should have done in 2000.

I'd vote for Hogan just to see four years of him doing the state of the union address. Brother.

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Me too Dude......I'm gonna vote for Bush.....but if Hogan runs he'll get my vote or will Mr. America get my vote I um I er.....oh never mind.


I'm voting for PJP in '04.

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Originally posted by Wingnut-EL:

Kerry would probably have the best chance of beating Weasel. Decorated war hero vs spoiled punk who went awol from his nat'l guard duty sounds like a winning tactic to me.

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Originally posted by BigOl'Willie:

I am going out on a limb and say that the GOP will make a strong push for NY and NJ.

I also think they will win Penn. comfortably (which allows them to lose Florida).

Also, check out the changes in Electoral Votes for each state. The shifts give more electoral votes to red states (this isn't a political conspiracy. It is directly from the Census). [/QB]

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Originally posted by Ultimate Jaburg53:
I call Vice President.

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You don't even need to ask J........I already had you on my short list but now it's settled. OK everyone.........


PJP and Jaburg in '04.

If the PJP/Jaburg Ticket wins in '04 I can guarantee you drugs would be legal and clothes would be optional. Boobies would take over America.......Wooooooo.

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Originally posted by PJP:
Boobies would take over America.......Wooooooo.

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Originally posted by BigOl'Willie:

I am going out on a limb and say Whomod is a Dean voter!

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Actually, i would be very much interested if McCain turned Independent and brought Powell in with him as a running mate.

Somehow I think that comment above was intened as a dig though.

Out of all the sorry list of canidates you have there, I'd say Kerrey was the most palatable of the bunch. Dean has his appeal but let's be realistic here.

So yeah, JFK from Massachusetts in '04!

It's actually sort of refreshing to say that, me being a HUGE Kennedy fan and all.

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Originally posted by whomod:

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Somehow I think that comment above was intened as a dig though.

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Just a little....

So, if it is JFK in '04, who is his running mate?

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ST. PAUL, Minn. - Democrats are starting to wrestle with a thorny problem: how to brush aside three fringe candidates for president who have no realistic chance of winning their party's nomination next year.


Several state Democratic Party chairmen think the national party should find a way to limit debates to the top six candidates and exclude the three widely considered to make up the bottom tier: Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York.

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June 08, 2003

Democratic Primary Analyses
People often say our politics are radically different from what they used to be. When I read Andrew Cline, I often think maybe things haven't changed, it's just that the science of analyzing political campaigns has advanced massively in recent decades.

For example, Cline has a political article you political junkies really should read: The Press-Politics of the Presidential Primary Process. He comes to a lot of interesting conclusions. For example, he suggests that it is the press that decides who the winner will be, well in advance of the primaries and almost entirely without regard to the issues or even the strategy put together by the candidates' campaign staff.

Some of you may be rolling your eyes and saying, "well duh!" But Cline's analysis goes deeper than you might think.

Indeed, it'll probably make you think. I, for example, spent most of my time thinking about how most of the negative aspects of what Cline discusses can be laid at the feet of campaign "reform" laws of the 1970s. More on that in a bit.

Cline's analysis suggests that the press usually picks the winner of most Presidential primary campaigns. Not due to a sinister cabal, or intentional manipulation. Rather, they do it quite unintentionally, quite unconsciously, and voters quite unintentionally and quite unconsciously let them. Most amusingly, the candidates themselves are close to helpless in the matter, and campaign strategizing has far less effect than many people think.

An even more interesting point is Cline's assertion that the candidate leading in the national polls going into the Iowa primary is almost certainly going to be the eventual nominee. Irrespective of how he does in Iowa and New Hampshire, which are often reported as the "harbinger" states. He references sources which say this has been the case for both parties in every election since at least 1980.

Cline also notes that it is the most effective fundraiser, not the candidate with the most money, who is most likely to win. This makes perfect sense. The donations limits and other requirements put in place in the 1970s massively shifted the advantage to candidates with the most entrenched Old-Boy networks, by raising the bar for mavericks. It also made the votes of party delegates at conventions virtual foregone conclusions.

Perversely, this is what led to the latest "reforms," which put even sharper limits on political donations. This can only further strengthen the old-boy networks. The candidates with the biggest rolodexes, the best connections with "independent" political organizations, and the largest pre-existing networks of loyalists will be the ones most able to compete financially. The ability to fund a credible campaign will be limited to those with the most extensive networks of cronies who can raise cash. They'll also be the candidates who start earliest. The cure is truly worse than the disease.

I should note that my views on the campaign finance "reform" laws are not Cline's, although I'll bet he'd have a hard time refuting them: I've never seen anyone even attempt to do so rationally.

Anyway: Cline's also got some more up-to-date analysis on his blog. It looks like Lieberman, Kerry, and Gephardt are in awfully good shape to win the nomination. Although Bush is highly likely to get my vote next November, of the three front-running Democrats, I could see myself voting for two of them. The other I wouldn't vote for simply because I dislike him, not because I think he's a lunatic. Which, to end on a more positive note, suggests to me that all the handwringing about "left-wing extremism" within the Democratic party probably doesn't mean much. No more than the carping about "right wing extremism" in the Republican party in the last couple of election cycles did, anyway.

http://www.deanesmay.com/archives/001502.html

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Originally posted by BigOl'Willie:

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Originally posted by whomod:

Actually, i would be very much interested if McCain turned Independent and brought Powell in with him as a running mate.

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That actually surprises me. I have heard from a few other liberal pals that they like McCain despite the fact that he has strongly conservative views on some positions. I guess there is something said for being principled.

And if I could waive a magic wand, I'd make Colin Powell president.

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Originally posted by whomod:

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Originally posted by BigOl'Willie:

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Originally posted by whomod:

Actually, i would be very much interested if McCain turned Independent and brought Powell in with him as a running mate.

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That actually surprises me. I have heard from a few other liberal pals that they like McCain despite the fact that he has strongly conservative views on some positions. I guess there is something said for being principled.

And if I could waive a magic wand, I'd make Colin Powell president.

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You're exactly right. I like McCain because of his principles. He does and says what he beleives in and what is right, regardless of party ideology. We need more of that from both sides I think.

Powell, despite the whole WMD embarassment/fiasco, still seems like an honest man. He's certainly a bad liar and genuienly seems uncomfortable doing so.

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??????Powell and Bush have nothing to be embarassed about...all they were doing was protecting me and you. The WMD search is hardly a fiasco/embarassment........When they do find them will you apologize for doubting Dubya?

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Efforts to Honor Chavez Hit Barriers in Congress
A decade after the labor leader's death, key bills to designate a national holiday and preserve significant sites languish

..But the fledgling effort to secure historic sites remains fraught with problems. Supporters concede it may take a few years to convince certain lawmakers — notably members of the California GOP delegation — that Chavez is worthy of National Park Service honors.

Legislation by Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte) failed to find momentum last year, leading backers to turn to McCain this year in hopes of garnering bipartisan support. McCain successfully shepherded the legislation through the Senate, but it has stalled in the House subcommittee that oversees national parks. A companion measure by Solis also remains in the House.

Similar legislation by Rep. Joe Baca (D-San Bernardino) asking President Bush to create a federal holiday honoring Chavez has stalled. Republican House members had previously passed a rule that prohibits lawmakers from proposing more federal holidays, arguing that there are already too many.

"I realize this may take a little time, but I am committed to getting it done," McCain said. "What has happened over time is that [Chavez] has begun to be appreciated for the causes he championed and the people he stood up for. King was also controversial. The woman who led the women's suffrage movement was also controversial. When people challenge the conventional wisdom of their time, they're usually controversial."

Some supporters asserted this month that the McCain bill may not pass this year because Republican Rep. George Radanovich, the Fresno-area farmer who heads the House subcommittee, had privately vowed that it would not receive a hearing.

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Wow! Not the kinds of words I usually associate with Republicans. that's why i dig on McCain so much. He's a guy of conviction and not a "party" guy.

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Originally posted by whomod:
[QB] Hey Willie, last night I donated $25.00 to Dean!

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BASTARD!

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He's certainbly shaking up the Democratic party establishment and i wanted to be a small part of that.

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I'm still of the opinion that it will probably come down to Bush VS. Kerrey. Still, Dean is at least making the Dems work to define themselves apart from the "safe" wishy washy 'vote one way and talk another way' route they've been taking thus far.

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July 7, 2003


Ronald Brownstein:
Washington Outlook
With Click of a Mouse, Liberals Find Answer to Limbaugh
Could the Internet do for the left what talk radio has done for the right?

Until recently, the question might have seemed absurd. For about 15 years, a nationwide constellation of right-leaning talk-radio hosts has provided conservatives a powerful means of mobilizing their grass-roots supporters to enlist in causes and campaigns. The left has never been able to establish a competing galaxy of liberal gabbers — or to find an alternative mechanism that can persuade and activate as many voters as talk radio.

That alternative may have arrived last week. History may record former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's unprecedented success at raising money online for his Democratic presidential campaign as the moment when the Internet emerged as a political tool comparable in strength to talk radio.

Over the last three months, Dean raised $3.6 million on the Internet from nearly 45,000 donors; last Monday alone, in a kind of electronic telethon, Dean collected a breathtaking $820,000 as supporters rushed to pad his total on the final day of the second-quarter fund-raising reporting period.

"This was a historic week, where you had for the first time an unbelievably profound use of the Internet to mobilize regular people to participate in politics again," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, an alliance of centrist Democrats. "It has changed American politics forever."

Dean's success doesn't mean the left will dominate the Internet. But unlike talk radio, the Internet isn't dominated by the right — it offers both sides a chance to mobilize support. And right now, the left may be ahead of the right in seizing this tool's potential.

It's difficult to compare the audience of talk radio and the Internet. The largest talk-radio shows, like Rush Limbaugh's, almost certainly still reach more people every day than any Internet site dedicated to political persuasion. And the Internet still isn't available as widely as radio, which is present in nearly every American home.

But the Internet has also become a genuine mass medium. A recent study by Arbitron, the commercial rating service, found that three-fourths of Americans have access to it, nearly two-thirds in their homes.

Surprisingly, it appears about the same number of Americans regularly obtain information from the Internet and talk radio. The best data on this come from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, an independent polling organization. Its latest surveys show that 17% of Americans listen regularly to talk radio, while 15% go online every day for news.

That large talk-radio audience has proved an enormous political asset to conservatives. Through talk radio, conservative groups incited brush fires of opposition to many of President Clinton's ideas (such as health-care reform). When Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 election, the huge freshman class proclaimed Limbaugh their "majority maker."

Talk radio is a medium built on heat, so it's been tougher to use it to mobilize support for President Bush's agenda. But it remains at the center of conservative political strategies. Keith Appell, a veteran publicist for conservative causes, says his firm stays in close contact with as many as 400 talk-show hosts around the country. "For conservatives, talk radio is still the most reliable and quickest way to mobilize support," he says.

The left has never been able to use talk radio as effectively; liberal hosts, such as Mario M. Cuomo, have flopped. Liberals mostly think that's because their arguments are too nuanced for the black-and-white talk culture. Conservatives, more persuasively, generally believe they monopolize talk radio because their partisans feel disenfranchised from the mainstream media and have seized on the talk shows as their alternative.

Whatever the cause, there's no question the talk audience leans sharply right; Pew found that almost half of regular talk-radio listeners consider themselves conservatives, compared to just 18% who call themselves liberals.

But those who regularly seek news on the Internet divide more evenly between moderates (39%), conservatives (35%) and liberals (23%). That balance reflects a broader realignment in political attitudes: Voters with more education have been trending Democratic (largely around social issues) for years, and a much higher percentage of regular Internet users than talk-radio fans have college degrees.

Those contrasting audiences help explain why Democrats have made more inroads on the Internet than on talk radio. Dean's success was a milestone. But he's building on the work of MoveOn.org, the online liberal advocacy group that was founded to fight Clinton's impeachment and has swelled to 1.5 million members by opposing the war in Iraq and other Bush policies.

With just six staffers, MoveOn has demonstrated that through the Internet it can mobilize at least as much grass-roots activism as the talkers on the right. Earlier this year, MoveOn generated 200,000 e-mails opposing the Federal Communications Commission decision allowing media giants to own more properties — and, within hours, raised $250,000 to pay for ads criticizing the ruling.

Wes Boyd, the software magnate who founded MoveOn, says the Internet has already proved itself more effective than talk radio at generating contributions and letters. "When we send out an e-mail and say, 'Why don't you do this?' people are in an active mode," he says. "They can click a link and do something. When somebody is watching TV or listening to the radio, they are in a passive, entertainment mode."

Some conservative strategists privately agree. Which is why the success of MoveOn and Dean is likely to accelerate the right's efforts to utilize the Internet as well.

It's unlikely liberals will establish the sort of lasting advantage online that conservatives enjoy in talk radio. But by taking such an aggressive technological leap onto the Internet, liberals, for the first time, may have a megaphone that can compete with the right's talk-radio message machine. It may turn out the liberal answer to Rush wasn't an alternative talker, but the mouse, the keypad and the browser.

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Ronald Brownstein's column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times' Web site at http://www.latimes.com/brownstein .

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Originally posted by DuplicateMan:
AFAIK, the Dems don't HAVE a message beyond "Bush sux"! Before the 02 midterms I saw an interview with a Dem (I forget who) about Bush's tax cuts, and the Dem just hemmed and hawwed, and didn't say anything. He said the tax cuts were bad, but apparently he wouldn't do anything about them except kvetch. And the economy is supposed to be where the Dems are the strongest!

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Originally Posted by Al Gore
The same thing has been happening in economic policy, where we've also got another huge and threatening mess on our hands. I'm convinced that one reason we've had so many nasty surprises in our economy is that the country somehow got lots of false impressions about what we could expect from the big tax cuts that were enacted, including:

(1) The tax cuts would unleash a lot of new investment that would create lots of new jobs.

(2) We wouldn't have to worry about a return to big budget deficits -- because all the new growth in the economy caused by the tax cuts would lead to a lot of new revenue.

(3) Most of the benefits would go to average middle-income families, not to the wealthy, as some partisans claimed.

Unfortunately, here too, every single one of these impressions turned out to be wrong. Instead of creating jobs, for example, we are losing millions of jobs -- net losses for three years in a row. That hasn't happened since the Great Depression. As I've noted before, I was the first one laid off.

And it turns out that most of the benefits actually are going to the highest income Americans, who unfortunately are the least likely group to spend money in ways that create jobs during times when the economy is weak and unemployment is rising.

And of course the budget deficits are already the biggest ever -- with the worst still due to hit us. As a percentage of our economy, we've had bigger ones -- but these are by far the most dangerous we've ever had for two reasons: first, they're not temporary; they're structural and long-term; second, they are going to get even bigger just at the time when the big baby-boomer retirement surge starts.

Moreover, the global capital markets have begun to recognize the unprecedented size of this emerging fiscal catastrophe. In truth, the current Executive Branch of the U.S. Government is radically different from any since the McKinley Administration 100 years ago.

The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy." In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff added, "What we have here is a form of looting."

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The Zogby America telephone poll of 1,037 likely voters chosen at random was conducted September 22 - 24, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.2%. Error margins are higher in sub-groups.

Overall opinion of Bush also climbed from early September Zogby numbers. Nearly six in ten (58%) have a favorable opinion and 41% an unfavorable opinion now, compared to 54% favorable and 45% unfavorable in September 3 - 5 polling.

The president would outpoll any of the current leading Democratic contenders if the election were held today. He would earn 45% of the vote against retired General Wesley Clark's 35%; would beat former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Dean, 47% - 37%; would poll 47% against Massachusetts Senator John Kerry's 37%; and would win over Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, 49% - 37%.

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With Clark on Fire, Calls of Liar, Liar
By Joshua Micah Marshall, Joshua Micah Marshall covers politics and foreign affairs. He publishes talkingpointsmemo.com

WASHINGTON — Is retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO supreme allied commander, an erratic liar? He is if you believe the spin coming out of the conservative hit machines that cranked into action as soon as Clark announced his intention to run for president as a Democrat.

Success in politics sometimes comes down to which side can tell the most compelling story — and, even more important, which side can tell it first.

That simple truth has triggered a manic, win-at-all-costs drive to "define" Clark in the worst terms possible so that he won't be able to knock the president out of the White House next November. In his newsletter last week, Washington's highly respected political handicapper Charlie Cook correctly noted that "for the White House, it is particularly important that Clark's credibility be impeached as soon as possible." The White House and its media allies clearly agree.

Before Clark's entry into the race a little more than a week ago, there were nine other candidates in the Democratic field. But none had garnered even a fraction of the invective Clark is now receiving — not even former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a front-running candidate whose politics put him decidedly at odds with President Bush.

Why are conservatives so hot and bothered? The answer — and the threat Clark poses — couldn't be clearer. For the last two years the White House has been able to maintain high rates of public approval even in the face of a rocky economy at home and a breakdown in the country's key alliances abroad.

A key factor in Bush's popularity was the public's trust that he was the right man to keep the country strong abroad and safe from future terrorist attacks at home. That perception allowed Republicans to defy historical precedent and a soft economy to win the 2002 midterm elections handily.

Since July, however, a mix of economic woes and rising doubts about the operation in Iraq has battered the president's standing in the polls — he now stands at about 50%, the break-even point in public approval ratings. The one big advantage President Bush still has working for him is the simple fact that a great many Americans trust Republicans more than Democrats to keep the country safe in dangerous times.

But make the Democratic standard-bearer a retired four-star general who helped keep the fractious NATO alliance together while conducting a successful war in the Balkans and that could all change rapidly. That means Clark has to be destroyed now, before he gets a chance to make his own first impression. And thus the fusillade streaming out of talk radio, Drudge, Fox News and various other media outlets with a conservative bent.

One of the main attacks began last week in the mainstream press when Howard Fineman, Newsweek's chief political correspondent, led an article on Clark with the claim that the retired general had decided to become a Democrat only after being rebuffed in his efforts to enter the Bush administration. According to Colorado's Republican governor, Bill Owens, and one of his cronies, Marc Holtzman, Clark told them during a chance encounter at a January conference in Davos, Switzerland, that he had wanted to become a Republican but had decided against it when White House strategist Karl Rove snubbed him.

"I would have been a Republican," Owens and Holtzman say Clark told them, "if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls." When asked, Clark told Fineman that the remark was meant in jest. But Holtzman assured Fineman that Clark was in deadly earnest: "Clark wasn't joking. We were really shocked." Who knows what Clark said in this exchange? But it doesn't take a leap of imagination to see that two high-profile Republicans — both of whom have close ties to the president and his chief political advisor, Rove — might have some reason to frame the exchange in the most unflattering light possible.

But it didn't end there.

Almost immediately, the conservative Weekly Standard picked up the ball and got an unprecedented bit of assistance from the White House. At the Standard's request, the White House completed a quick audit of Rove's phone logs for the last two years and found that Clark had never placed any calls to Rove's White House office.

Now, for those keeping score, the fact that Clark apparently never tried to contact Rove could be seen as strengthening his point to Fineman that the whole thing was a joking remark that Owens and Holtzman are warping out of context for political gain. But no matter. The Standard dutifully added the canard to what they call Clark's growing list of "whoppers" and statements that "bear little resemblance to reality." And, true to form, the next day the ever-present and always "fair and balanced" Fox News — which, like the Standard, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. — was blaring the news that "White House phone logs suggest Wesley Clark is telling tales once again." Before long, a secondhand account of a brief conversation from an interested party had been bundled up into evidence that Clark was a congenital liar.

In the coming weeks we'll see more and more of this. And along the way we'll learn the answers to two questions, both of which may have a profound effect on the outcome of next year's election.

The first is: Who will define Clark first? Clark's opponents and his own nascent campaign are moving as fast as they can to answer that question in their favor. But will Clark be able to staff his campaign in time to offer any sustained rebuttal to the attacks? This is a candidate, after all, who reportedly didn't decide to enter the race till 48 hours before his announcement. And Clark has already made some of the kinds of mistakes common to first-time campaigners, storming out onto political minefields without knowing where the lethal charges are buried. So he may end up doing some of his opponents' job for them.

The other question is this: Will the mainstream media — networks, major metropolitan dailies and news magazines — be carried along for the ride? In 1999 and 2000 a steady drumbeat of conservative attacks on then-Vice President Al Gore, accusing him of being a serial fibber, wended their way into the mainstream media and became a mainstay of coverage during the campaign. The Bush campaign mounted a similar attack on Sen. John McCain's emotional stability during the primaries. Both had a real effect. With Newsweek's report on Clark, it appears that the general could have an uphill battle.

To the White House, it doesn't really matter whether people believe that an Al Gore or a Wes Clark is a liar. If a question is asked often enough, the truth becomes a secondary matter. That's what the White House is hoping will happen with Clark. That's how the game is played. And the race is on.


http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op-marshall28sep28,1,2144709.story?coll=la-headlines-suncomment

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Voting machine controversy

Columbus - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election. ........

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Now Your Vote Is The Property Of A Private Corporation

in the November 2002 election, when some Florida voters pressed the touch-screen "button" for Bush's Democratic opponent, votes were instead recorded for Bush. "Misaligned" touch-screen voting machines were blamed for the computer-driven vote-theft, and when a losing candidate in Palm Beach sued to inspect the software of Florida's computerized voting machines, a local judge denied the petition, citing the privacy rights of the corporation that wrote the programs.

This was followed by January 2003 revelations that Republican Senator Chuck Hagel was the former head (and a current stockholder) of the private voting machine company that tabulated the vote in Nebraska - where he ran for office and won - and that he had neglected to tell Senate ethics investigators about it.

the first week of March, 2003.

Dan Spillane, a former software engineer for a voting machine company that includes a former CIA Director and Dick Cheney's former assistant on its board of directors, has sued his employer for firing him when he pointed out holes in their system that he claims could lead to vote-rigging. Although there is a certification process for ensuring the honesty of votes tabulated by computerized, touch-screen voting machines, according to Spillane the system works "very much like Arthur Andersen in the Enron case." (Anderson Consulting has since renamed itself, added Microsoft's CEO to its board, and gone into the business of helping corporations get contracts to perform previously-government-run services.)

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October 9, 2003


THE NATION
FBI Put Bug in Philadelphia Mayor's Office

By Josh Getlin, Times Staff Writer


NEW YORK — A sophisticated listening device discovered this week in Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street's office was planted by FBI agents, federal law enforcement officials confirmed Wednesday. But they refused to comment on whether the mayor is the target of an investigation, and said the bug had nothing to do with the city's hotly contested mayoral race.

The confirmation by three federal officials threw the city's election into turmoil. Campaign officials for Street, a Democrat, suggested the U.S. Justice Department may have planted the listening device for partisan political purposes. The Nov. 4 election pits the mayor against Republican businessman Sam Katz in a replay of their tight 1999 contest.

"I haven't done anything wrong and I don't know that anybody in my Cabinet or in my staff around me has done anything wrong," Street said during an afternoon meeting with reporters. "Obviously this is a matter of great concern to me."

The bug, which contained multiple microphones, was discovered Tuesday during a routine security sweep of Street's offices. The device, planted in the ceiling, did not have a recording device but was capable of broadcasting to buildings or parked vans in the immediate vicinity, police officials said.

U.S. Atty. Patrick Meehan, who represents the eastern district of Pennsylvania, on Wednesday declined to provide any details about the bug or whether any investigation of Street is underway. But he repeated earlier denials that the listening device was planted to influence the mayoral election in Philadelphia, a city of 1.5 million people.

"The U.S. attorney's office in the eastern district has a long and proud history of doing its work without regard to partisan politics," Meehan said in a statement. "That was the practice of my predecessors and it is my practice as well."

Frank Keel, Street's campaign spokesman, was skeptical. "The timing of the discovery of these listening devices seems incredibly strange, seeing that we are four weeks out of the election and we have a Democratic mayor ahead in the polls and we are on the eve of the first debate," he told reporters.

Maureen Garrity, a Katz spokeswoman, said the Republican candidate's campaign had nothing to do with the listening device.

Street defeated Katz by fewer than 10,000 votes four years ago, and the current election has been marked by bitter charges that each side has injected race into the campaign. Street is black and Katz is white. The two, who have accused each other of dishonesty and irresponsible campaigning, will debate three times before the vote.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and other state politicians on Wednesday called on the FBI to provide more details about the listening device.

"The mayor says he has been told through sources that he's not the target of an investigation," Rendell told reporters. "If that's true, then [FBI officials] owe an explanation to the people of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania."

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'Bugged' Mayor Insists He's Not an FBI Target

Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street tried to get his reelection campaign back on track after FBI bugging devices were found in his office, insisting that he had done nothing wrong and that prosecutors had assured him he was not the target of an inquiry.

He and others called on the FBI to find out who was targeted — something the bureau refused to respond to for the third straight day.

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