In the distant RI
Lincoln Chafee-Laffey Senate Repub primary contest, incredibly the National Repub. Senate Campaign Committee is running attack TV ads a year before the primary against right-wing punkster Steven Laffey, who as mayor of bankrupt Cranston, has had well publicized fights with unions and city employees. He also does a radio talk show, which was pulled by RI election board as unfair advantage. The ACLU weighed in on his side, and RI election board backed off.
He is beloved by lame monopoly paper
Providence Journal, which gives every Repub hack front page prominence (like a strange SEAL who ran against Patrick Kennedy several times).
RSCC is terrified Laffey will win primary against diffident and unpredictable Lincoln Chafee, and be crushed in election in massively Democratic RI (70%) by the Dem, likely the former AG, the wonderfully monikered reformer Sheldon Whitehouse. Besides his prophetic name, he has a nice bemused benign face, and almost became Governor in 2002, losing primary in a 3 way split to a brittle woman who lost race for 3rd time against avuncular Repub putz Carcieri.
As I said to him in the disastrous Kerry rout at the Election night Dem party, "I guess you're the only Whitehouse we're going to see for a while." He was also in my Dean committee when they were talking about how we were going to take over state Dem apparatus when Dean marched to preordained success.
He's already opposed in the Dem primary by a third Brown U. alum, the youngish 32 year old liberal Sec. of State Matt Brown, who counts Hollywoods heavyweights in his corner. Whitehouse is strongly for a decent health care system, and his wide political, organizational, and financial support should be decisive in cautious and socially conservative RI. Advantage: Whitehouse 59:41 over Brown, 54:46 over Chafee. People here are so disgusted with Bush that they are likely to punish Chafee for approving every Bush nominee- also Liiiiiiiiing-coln (Mod Squad) got his job pretty much the way GB2 did- because of his father. -Michael Hammerschlag
250,000 tons of looted weapons-
AN OUNCE of PREVENTION (Alternet)
http://hammernews.com/...
Hear my latest interview questions of Charlie Rangel, Normon Solomon, James Lilley
http://tomhammers.tripod.com/...