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Re your post #57 -- Here's the entire page. Maybe the NYT likes John Kerry:

December 23, 2001

POLITICAL BRIEFING

Michigan to Curb Gifts From Outside PAC's

By B. DRUMMOND AYRES JR.

Emily's List, a national organization that supports candidates who are women and favor abortion rights, played a major role in last year's Senate race in Michigan. It raised more than $1 million for Debbie Stabenow, the Democrat who unseated the Republican incumbent, Spencer Abraham.

In next year's race for governor in Michigan, Emily's List plans to support state Attorney General Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat.

But Ms. Granholm need not expect to get $1 million, or any amount close to that. In fact, all she can expect is a relatively paltry $34,000.

That is the new cap the Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature imposed on such gifts a few days ago, saying that outside political action committees were gaining too much influence in Michigan politics, particularly those committees that raise money for specific candidates and causes. Gov. John Engler, a Republican, has promised to sign the measure, which is being studied by legislators in other states who are concerned about the campaign finance tactics of outside groups.

Ellen Malcolm, the president of Emily's List, calls the new cap "one of the most blatant power plays seen in a long time" and contends that "Republicans have made a tremendous miscalculation." She has suggested that donors who originally planned to funnel money to Ms. Granholm through Emily's List instead send their gifts directly to Ms. Granholm.

Democrats are given a reasonable shot at reclaiming the Michigan governor's chair next year. But first, they must sort themselves out in a primary, which polls indicate could be a bruiser.

In Reversal, Kerry Is Forming a PAC

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts is a big supporter of campaign fund-raising caps like the one just passed in Michigan. Mr. Kerry, a Democrat, has won three terms without accepting a penny from political action committees.

But a few days ago he announced that he was forming his own PAC, the Citizen Soldier Fund — not to raise campaign cash for himself, understand, but to raise cash for fellow Democrats he would like to see elected or re-elected.

Still, a PAC is a PAC, and cynics were quick to point out that Mr. Kerry was seriously considering a run for president in 2004, a difficult undertaking without a PAC in the current campaign finance climate.

As leader of the PAC, they noted, he will be able to crisscross the country raising and distributing money, and in the process will be able to raise his own profile and engender considerable political good will for himself.

Mr. Kerry did not see it that way. He insisted that cold political reality forced him to establish a PAC.

"I've come to acknowledge the unpleasant and unfortunate truth," he said, "that campaign finance and other critical reforms will remain stymied in Congress until Democrats obtain real working majorities in Washington and in state legislatures across the nation. It has become necessary for every leader of this party to employ all legal and appropriate means to assist Democratic candidacies at all political levels."

Early Opinion Polls Look Bad for Gore

Al Gore keeps saying he has not decided whether to run for president again in 2004.

But a lot of Democratic voters have reached a decision on that matter, if a new CNN/USAToday/Gallup Poll has it right.

Asked whether the party's 2004 standard-bearer should again be Mr. Gore or "someone else," 66 percent of poll respondents said "someone else."

And there is more.

Two other new polls — by Bloomberg and Fox News/Opinion Dynamics — indicate that even if Mr. Gore should be renominated, he would lose again, by a ratio of more than two to one, if President Bush should again be the Republican nominee.

Sniping in 2001 With an Eye on 2002

Early this month, when holiday decorations began showing up in the Arizona attorney general's office building in Phoenix, senior office managers looked around at all the Santa Clauses, blinking strings of lights, nativity scenes and menorahs and issued a memo.

It was permissible, they said, to put up "reasonable decorations" in private offices and cubicles. But in public spaces, like lobbies, hallways and conferences rooms, care should be taken not to display decorations with "a religious significance" because some state workers or members of the public might find them "offensive."

That was too much for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a conservative watchdog group based in New York. Last Monday, it sent a letter to Arizona's attorney general, Janet Napolitano, accusing her senior managers of "political correctness gone crazy" and of trying to "cleanse the workplace of all religious expression."

Ms. Napolitano, the leading Democratic candidate in next year's nip- and-tuck governor's race in Arizona, countered that her managers were simply trying to capture "the right balance" in holiday decorating.

Not good enough, declared Matt Salmon, a former congressman who is the leading Republican candidate in the governor's race. On Tuesday, he accused Ms. Napolitano of issuing a "Soviet-style directive" and promised that should he become governor he would "protect Christmas from wacky liberal ideas."