Florida's presidential primary next week is either the single most important political event since Machiavelli penned The Prince or as irrelevant as Duncan Hunter. Take your pick.
Thanks to the Florida Legislature's moving the date up to Jan. 29, our primary is now positioned right in the thick of anointing a winner in both parties. At the same time, because of the national parties' rules about when Florida can vote, the balloting has mixed meanings. The Democratic candidates pledged not to campaign in Florida after the party stripped the state of its convention delegates as a punishment. The Republicans are here, despite losing half of their delegates as a rap on the knuckles.
Welcome to the rollercoaster ride that is the 2008 presidential campaign.
As we get set to vote next Tuesday, we've already seen the longest season of expert obfuscating in the history of U.S. politics. Issues like health care, the war in Iraq and immigration have taken up lots of valuable newsprint and bandwidth — including previous installments of Wayne Garcia's "The Next President."
But lately we've been distracted by more arcane matters. Questions like: Which candidate's alter ego is a dummy? Who hearts Pavarotti? Who connected with John Mayer about YouTube? Whose MySpace page was hacked? Which one has the Secret Service code name "Evergreen?" And will any more candidates drop out before the vote even starts (á la Messrs. Hunter & Thompson)?
Trivial concerns, perhaps. But as Hillary Clinton's near-tears demonstrated in New Hampshire (more on that incident below), little things can make a huge difference in close elections. So that's what we're offering: three little things about each candidate that you might not have known — and may or may not be glad to find out.
THE DEMS
BARACK OBAMA
• He's got a good poker face. Back in his days as an Illinois senator, Obama was a founding member of a weekly card game. His adversaries included both Democrats and Republicans — he was bridging the aisle even then, apparently. Word has it that Obama was a disciplined player: He knew the odds, rarely bluffed and was a conservative bettor. The GOPers around the table must have loved that.
• He's a baller. Once she knew the relationship was getting serious, Obama's then-girlfriend, now-wife Michelle put her beau to the ultimate test: a game of one-on-one with her brother Craig, a former hoops star at Princeton and now the head coach at Brown. Despite being a smoker (Michelle said he could only run for president if he quit, which he has), Obama held his own. The game has always meant something to the candidate — his father, who wasn't around much, gave him a ball as a kid. So basketball has paid off in his personal life, and now it's paying off politically: Obama has received donations from a host of pro players, including the Knicks' Stephon Marbury.
• His Secret Service codename is "Renegade." Sure, he went by "Barry" in high school, but Obama was still finding himself back then. These days he knows what he wants. When its protection detail began, the Secret Servive gave Obama a choice between several names beginning with the letter R. "Renegade" — which has to be about the most badass codename ever — was the obvious choice. And, just to put the vying "change agents" in context, Hillary's is "Evergreen." —Max Linsky
JOHN EDWARDS
• He could use an interview coach. According to a Time magazine article by former John Kerry campaign advisor Robert Shrum, Edwards slipped up in his initial interview to be the Democratic nominee's running mate in 2004. He prefaced an emotional story about hugging his dead son's body in a funeral home — it was the moment he said he decided to dedicate his life to service, according to Shrum — with the caution that it was the first time he'd shared the tale. It was moving, sure, but probably less so than it could have been: Edwards had told Kerry the story before, with the same introduction.
• He occasionally gets confused. Edwards has made no secret of his problems with Wal-Mart, repeatedly faulting the retail behemoth for its low wages. Sometimes, though, he misfires. On tour in Manchester, N.H., two years ago to promote his new book, Edwards appeared at a local Barnes & Noble, snubbing a popular Wal-Mart nearby. What he might not have known, however, was that hourly wages at the Wal-Mart were $7.50. Work at B&N and you'd make $7.
• He knows how to talk to young 'uns. How does Edwards reach out to the kiddies? He started by scheduling a summit with guitarist and ladykiller John Mayer. "You've got to get me in the first 20 seconds," Mayer told the candidate. "I watch movies on YouTube, and if they're 25 seconds long, they're five seconds too long." Mayer neglected to mention anything about haircuts or what one should pay for them. —Joel Rozen
DENNIS KUCINICH
• He's not a party animal. Kucinich — an antiwar populist Democrat — was instrumental in getting a Republican elected as mayor of Cleveland. In 1971, when his arch-nemesis Carl Stokes chose not to seek a third term as mayor of Cleveland, Kucinich abandoned his party to back Republican Ralph Perk. "Stumping against a 'conspiracy' of 'political bosses,' Kucinich was a major force in rallying the ethnic support Perk needed for election," Current Biography reported in 1979. (After Perk crossed Kucinich by systematically selling off city assets like its stadium and transit system, Kucinich ran against him in 1977 and won.)
• He's almost as funny as Joe Lieberman. Kucinich once recited the Gettysburg Address in a Donald Duck voice — on national television. It was November 1999 and part of C-Span's "Funniest Celebrity in Washington" broadcast. Lieberman took top honors.
• He speaks out of one side of his mouth. Kucinich is an experienced ventriloquist, using his wooden sidekick "W.C." (modeled after the bulbous-nosed comedian W.C. Fields) as Cleveland mayor to entertain visiting schoolchildren and as a congressman to skewer the very body in which he served. A sample of the Bergenesque hilarity that ensued, compliments of a 1998 Insight on the News article: "'Okay, W.C., how long have you been with the congressman?' he asks. 'No comment!' the dummy exclaims in a high-pitched voice. Kucinich's lips don't move … until he laughs. 'I'm not sayin' nothin'!' the dummy insists. 'Nothin' at all!'" —Wayne Garcia
HILLARY CLINTON
• No tears fell. What we saw was not crying, but welling. "Mrs. Clinton's eyes welled up with tears, but she did not cry, at the New Hampshire event on Monday," reported The New York Times about the senator's now-infamous almost-crying jag. Freelance photographer Marianne Pernold Young didn't expect her innocuous questions to win Clinton a primary. And, unlike many New Hampshire women, Pernold Young wasn't taken with Clinton's response. After the welling, the candidate's lapse into rhetoric — "Some of us know what we will do on Day One," she said, "and some of us haven't really thought that through enough" — helped convince Pernold Young to cast a ballot for Obama.
• Obama isn't the first black U.S. Senator to have received a tongue-lashing from Hillary. As a senior at Wellesley in May of 1969, Clinton gave the student commencement speech, during which she scolded the man who'd just finished speaking: Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, the first African-American elected to the Senate since Reconstruction. Brooke, a moderate Republican, had warned students about the dangers of "coercive protest," a loaded subject during a period of antiwar demonstrations and student strikes. Clinton (a former president of the campus Young Republicans) threw Brooke's words back at him, declaring that "Every protest, every dissent is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age."
• New Yorkers like her, they really like her. She was greeted in some quarters as a carpetbagger when she first ran for the Senate; Rudy Giuliani (her opponent until he dropped out in 2000) threatened to fly the Arkansas flag over City Hall to remind New Yorkers of Clinton's outsider status. But these days, according to a Dec. 2007 Quinnipiac University poll of NY voters, she's not only far more popular than Rudy (53-34 percent favorability rating), she would wallop him in a presidential face-off 53-32. Given that she won re-election in 2006 by 65 percent, including wins in predominantly Republican districts (albeit against a very weak opponent), it seems like the voters who've seen her up close and personal for eight years think she's doing a decent job. —David Warner
THE REPS
RUDY GIUILIANI
• He loves opera. While attending Bishop Laughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn, Giuliani founded the school's opera club. And when tenor Luciano Pavarotti died in September of last year, he issued the following statement: "I consider myself privileged to have been able to call so gifted a man as Luciano Pavarotti a personal friend. … He not only mastered the art of opera, he took it out of the opera house and brought it to the people of the world."
• His mayoral memory is a little cloudy. You know him as "America's Mayor" for his appearance at the site of the World Trade Center on 9/11, reinventing New York as a more "family-friendly" city and cleaning up Times Square. But you may not know that the anti-Republican Republican (he's pro-gay, pro-choice and switched party affiliation from Independent to Republican a month after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980) has a habit of fibbing about his mayoral accomplishments, or at least padding them. According to facts dug up by The Washington Post, New York's crime rate (which he takes credit for reducing) had been falling for four years before Giuliani took office in 1994. And while he claims that he increased the police force by 12,000 during his tenure, the folks at factcheck.org say the actual number was 3,600.
• He was a prosecutin' mo-fo. Before he was mayor, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1983 and quickly began making headlines by going after the mob and prosecuting inside traders Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. In the Mafia Commission Trial, Giuliani indicted 11 organized crime figures, including the heads of New York's "Five Families." Eight defendants were found guilty, and the bosses all received 100-year sentences. —Anthony Salveggi
MITT ROMNEY
• Mormons are the same as other Christians … Except that they believe polygamy will be practiced in heaven, and prior to 1978 did not allow blacks to hold the priesthood. And then there's that whole "magical undergarments" thing. Romney doesn't discuss the specifics of his religion — but he ain't running from it, either. "I believe in my Mormon faith and endeavor to live by it," Romney said in a recent campaign speech in Texas, according to The New York Times.
• … And then there's his connection to Scientology. In an interview aired by Fox News in April, Romney was asked the perennial campaign question: "What's your favorite novel?" The presidential hopeful should have been prepared for the inquiry, ready to rattle off a title or two that would impress potential voters. Instead, the Mormon candidate gave a response linking him to that other major American religion often dismissed as a cult: Battlefield Earth, by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. No word on whether the politician also digs the film version starring John Travolta. If he does, that would bring the movie's total fan base to four.
• No chance of universal health care. Like any self-respecting Republican, Romney offers double-speak about fixing our country's health-care crisis. "Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all, government-run system, we must recognize the importance of the role of the states in leading reform and the need for innovation in dealing with rising health-care costs and the problem of the uninsured," reads the entry on Romney's official website. "By expanding and deregulating the private health insurance market, we can decrease costs and ensure that more Americans have access to affordable, portable, quality, private health insurance." Ironic, given that as Mass guv, he pushed a nearly universal health-care plan that forced almost all businesses to provide insurance for their workers and had the state government subsidize coverage for the rest. Ordering businesses to spend money? Subsidizing the poor? That sounds awfully un-Republican. —Wade Tatangelo
JOHN McCAIN
• He doesn't know his Netiquette. Back in March of '07, McCain's campaign staff created a MySpace page for the senator using a template designed by Newsvine Founder/CEO Mike Davidson. That part was kosher: Davidson gave the code away to users willing to credit him and host their own image files. McCain's staff did neither, meaning that Davidson had to pay for the bandwidth used from page views on McCain's site. Davidson's response was to hack into the page and use McCain's own stance on gay marriage against him. For a brief period, the graphic that normally held the candidate's contact info was replaced with the following statement: "Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage … particularly marriage between two passionate females." The issue was resolved in less than 24 hours.
• He has a weak handshake. But don't judge him too harshly — McCain spent more than five years as a prisoner of war after his plane went down in North Vietnam. The torture he endured left him with a range of ongoing health issues, including stiffness in his arms and legs. Though there's no proof that these injuries are the reason for his limp grip, we'd like to think his POW experience compensates for the bad impression caused by his handshake. Plus, he opposes interrogation techniques widely deemed acceptable by other leading Republicans, a sure sign that the man has at least a little integrity.
• He has a bad temper. Reports have McCain losing his cool about anything from the "gay sweaters" his aides forced him to wear (they wanted him to seem younger and more approachable) to Sen. John Cornyn saying that McCain was out of line during a May 2007 Senate meeting on immigration legislation ("Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone in the room," McCain yelled). —Leilani Polk
MIKE HUCKABEE
• He likes gifts. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee was investigated 14 times by the state ethics committee and cited for offenses ranging from accepting a canoe to receiving $23,500 from a nonprofit company he set up using funds he refused to disclose. Huck didn't back down, though: He sued the ethics committee twice. Then somebody (Huckabee's press spokeswoman said it was friends of Mrs. Huckabee's) got creative, using an exemption for "wedding gifts" to set up registries at Target and Dillard's in the Huckabees' names, ostensibly for a housewarming party just before the governor left office. Mr. and Mrs. Huckabee were married in 1974. They did not return the gifts.
• He's the new Dukakis. Huckabee's personal Willie Horton is convicted rapist Wayne DuMond, put in prison by Bill Clinton during his time in the Arkansas governor's mansion. Since DuMond's victim was Clinton's distant cousin, Republicans decried the conviction, claiming that Bubba influenced the police and courts. Huckabee originally decided to commute the sentence, then backed down after vocal protests from the victim. Instead, he took the back road, lobbying the state parole board for DuMond's release. It worked — sort of. DuMond was freed, moved to Missouri in 2000 and was then arrested for killing and raping another woman.
• He yuks it up. After winning in Iowa, Huckabee claimed, "The only reason I'm the frontrunner now is because of the Colbert bump." There's a bit of truthiness to that. Well known for speaking extemporaneously, Huckabee can be charming and entertaining off the cuff. Confronted with a crying baby girl on the campaign trail, he quipped that she must be a Romney supporter; dismissing his lack of foreign policy experience, he told Don Imus "I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night." Perhaps his best zing came at the expense of the president: When asked about a National Intelligence Estimate report released earlier in the day, Huckabee said, "President Bush didn't read it for four years; I don't know why I should read it in four hours." —Brian Ries
FRED THOMPSON
• He's history. South Carolina was widely seen as the make-or-break state for his campaign, the most likely to embrace his folksy charm and conservative bona fides. He came in third — and on Jan. 22, he bowed out.
• He once lobbied for an abortion-rights group. Thompson, who ran as an anti-abortion Republican, accepted a job from the National Family Planning Reproductive Health Association in 1991. His task was to urge President George H.W. Bush to ease a rule that barred federal payments to clinics that offered abortion counseling. At first, Thompson denied that he'd taken the assignment; subsequently, he said that he didn't remember it but did not dispute the evidence. Thompson would have been the first federally registered lobbyist to hold the office. From 1975 to 1992, he collected more than $1 million in lobbying fees. Among his clients were Westinghouse and General Electric (which owns NBC, which airs Law & Order). Additionally, many of Thompson's campaign staffers had longstanding business ties to tobacco giant Philip Morris.
• He's two degrees from Kevin Bacon. Thompson was in White Sands with John Lafayette, who was in Loverboy with Bacon. Not bad. Although as an actor Thompson is best known as District Attorney Arthur Branch in the Law & Order franchise and as an admiral in The Hunt for Red October, he's had dozens of roles in movies and TV, usually as a politician, a high-ranking military man or some other kind of shadowy power figure. Thompson has been in Cape Fear, Days of Thunder, Class Action and Fat Man and Little Boy, but he's also shown up in Curly Sue and the masterpiece known as Aces: Iron Eagle III. His first role was in the 1987 Kevin Costner/Sean Young vehicle No Way Out. He played CIA Director Marshall. —Eric Snider
RON PAUL
• He wants to stop taxing the waitstaff's tips. Paul put his 20-percent gratuity where his mouth is when he introduced House Resolution 3664, the Tax Free Tips Act of 2007. Had it passed, 3664 would have exempted tips from federal income and payroll taxes. But before you go thinking Paul is some kind of savior to the service class, you should know that he's also against raising the minimum wage. Apparently, it's just taxes he hates, not government-sanctioned indentured servitude.
• He never should have published those newsletters. Since 1996, whenever Paul runs for office his opponents dig up newsletters from the late '80s/early '90s that bear his name and occasionally espouse racist views. A 1992 Paul newsletter referred to the predominantly black L.A. rioters as "barbarians" and claimed the chaos only ended when it was time for "blacks to pick up their welfare checks." The newsletters weren't all that kind to gays either — a 1990 article stated society was "far better off when social pressure forced [homosexuals] to hide their activities." Paul has long since disavowed the newsletters, maintaining a ghostwriter penned the stories and that he never saw them before publication. The argument has worked thus far: Paul has repeatedly won re-election to his U.S. House seat.
• His wife asked him out. Paul met Carol in the early 1950s, when the pair attended Dormont High School outside Pittsburgh. Paul was quite a catch in those days: Student council president; on the football, baseball and wrestling teams; state champion in the 220-yard dash, second in the 440. Carol asked Ron to a Sadie Hawkins-style Sweet 16 party, beginning a relationship that continued long-distance while Paul attended Gettysburg College and Carol went out of state. Paul finally popped the question before his senior year; they've been married since 1957. —Joe Bardi
DUNCAN HUNTER
• He's done. After the New Hampshire primary, even Hunter's own campaign staff wasn't sure the 13-term congressman was still in the presidential race. He hung in there, but South Carolina did him in; Hunter withdrew before the votes were tallied.
• His fence is a mess. Hunter frequently touted his funding of a 14-mile fence along the border between San Diego and Tijuana, making broad claims about the effectiveness of the barrier and how quickly one could be built stretching from California to Texas. But what this nativist failed to mention was that the San Diego fence is not even finished (five miles remain unfinished) and will cost taxpayers $127 million by the time it is completed. And though the fence has significantly hindered drug smuggling and border crossing, a Congressional Research Service report found the barrier only moved those criminal activities into Arizona. Interesting side note: Hunter's younger brother, John, created Water Station Inc., a nonprofit that leaves water in remote border areas for illegal immigrants crossing the desert. According to the Associated Press, Duncan donated to the nonprofit and pulled strings in the Bureau of Land Management to get permits for his younger brother's water station sites.
• He was once Ann Coulter's favorite candidate. The skeletal, mean-spirited author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism told ABC that Hunter "is magnificent … he is good on every single issue." If that wasn't enough to make you run from his campaign, Hunter was also endorsed by Joseph Farah, founder and CEO of World Net Daily, a conservative pseudo-news website that frequently publishes articles on conspiracy theories, including a supposed government plot that shot down United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11. —Alex Pickett
Sources: Associated Press; Crain's Chicago Business; Current Biography; fas.org; gohunter08.com; FoxNews.com; Good Morning America; Insights in the News; mittromney.com; New Hampshire Union Leader; The New Yorker; New York Magazine; New York Post; The New York Times; Quad City Times; radaronline.com; Reno Gazette Journal; ronpaul2008.com; slate.com; Sports Illustrated; Time; USA Today; Washington Post; The Washington Times; The Weekly Standard; worldnetdaily.com; yahoo.com.
This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2008.