Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* After a week or two of acrimony, Al Sharpton seems to have buried the hatchet<\/a> with Barack Obama. The two made nice a five-minute phone call yesterday, which reportedly went well. “We had a good conversation. He said he’s got a lot of respect for me and what I’ve done. We agreed to keep in touch,” Sharpton said. Sharpton will host all of the candidates at a National Action Network Conference next month.<\/p>\n * South Carolina Gov. Mark Stanford (R) continues to be the subject of presidential speculation, but Stanford denies any interest<\/a>. “If you’re running for president, you have to be doing real (campaign) stuff today — not in six months, not in a year, today,” Sanford told The State, South Carolina’s major newspaper. “So what is so ridiculous about this is I’m not doing those things that you’ve got to do. And so that’s why it’s indeed a bizarre and silly story.”<\/p>\n * Bob Perry, the principal funder of the Swiftboat liars from the 2004 campaign, has signed on<\/a> to raise money for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s GOP presidential campaign. When news of Perry’s decision to sign on with Romney made it to John Kerry’s Senate office, his spokesman, David Wade, said it was “appalling but not surprising that a Texas tycoon famous for funding lies would now bankroll a presidential campaign built on flip-flopping and fiction.”<\/p>\n * According to Bob Novak, Actor-politician Fred Thompson, who is reportedly weighing a presidential campaign, is “viewed by the Christian right as more acceptable<\/a> than any of the three Republican candidates leading in the polls: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney.”<\/p>\n * Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign is so desperate to convince GOP primary voters of the former mayor’s conservative bona fides that it’s circulating a seven-year-old quote<\/a> from The Amsterdam News, a NYC paper geared towards an African-American audience. The quote reads: “[Giuliani’s] Only Hope For An Overwhelming Victory In Upstate New York Would Be To Remain As He Is: A Hard-Nosed, Evil, Racist Republican Conservative.” (Yes, apparently, Giuliani thinks the description will help him curry favor with the far-right.)<\/p>\n