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
* The New York Times reported<\/a> today on a recent meeting between Sen. Hillary Clinton and three allies from New Hampshire. According to participants, Clinton wanted to know if Gore was running again (he’s apparently inclined not to) and whether Kerry still has a base of support (not according to her sources). The NYT article also reported that Clinton views Barack Obama and John Edwards as her two strongest potential rivals for the nomination.<\/p>\n * Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R), trying to drum up some interest in his presidential bid, announced a new promise to visit Iowa literally every week<\/a> this year. “I’m going to be here every week, at least one day every week,” Thompson told The Associated Press. “I’m close enough to be able to do that and I’m going to develop a field organization and a grass-roots campaign like you haven’t seen before.” Thompson said he’s betting heavily on his showing in a straw poll of Iowa Republicans in August.<\/p>\n * Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) hired Ben Ginsberg as his presidential campaign’s attorney yesterday, which as National Journal noted<\/a>, is interesting for a few reasons: “Ginsberg (a) is a very close friend of Pres. Bush’s; (b) a former national counsel to Bush in ’00; (c) was the RNC’s chief counsel at various points over the past few years; (d) argued before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore; (e) perhaps the most prominent Republican election lawyer in the country; and (f) served for a time as counsel to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”<\/p>\n * Despite some talk before November that a few Blue Dog Democrats from the South may not vote for Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker, Pelosi is now expected to be supported by her entire caucus<\/a> when she is formally voted Speaker of the House today. “I haven’t heard of anything to indicate that it would be anything other than a unanimous Democratic vote,” a spokesman for Pelosi said.<\/p>\n * The mystery behind the leak of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential playbook continues. Yesterday, Giuliani aides turned their attention on Florida Republicans, and a spokesperson for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), confirmed that a bag belonging to someone in Giuliani’s entourage was misplaced on a Crist plane, but that “nothing fishy<\/a>” happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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: * The New York Times reported today on a recent meeting between Sen. Hillary Clinton and three allies from New Hampshire. According to participants, Clinton wanted to know if Gore was running again […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}