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Gephardt Must Pay Salary Back to Missouri Taxpayers Law requires absentee members of Congress to return paycheck According to the U.S. Code, Presidential candidate and former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt is required to pay back 90 percent of his $157,000 salary to Missouri taxpayers. Absentee Member Gephardt has missed more than 90 percent of votes in the U.S. House, and the law requires the Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Administrative Officer of the House to dock a member's pay for each absent day. ACU filed a suit earlier today demanding that the law be enforced. American Conservative...

Kerry Says Bush Has Forgotten Real 9/11 Heroes By Patricia Wilson MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Democratic White House front-runner John Kerry (news - web sites) on Tuesday accused President Bush (news - web sites) of showing up "when the bagpipes are wailing" and then forgetting America's real heroes -- firefighters, police and other emergency personnel. With voters going to the polls in Wisconsin's pivotal primary, the senator from Massachusetts ignored his Democratic rivals and looked ahead to a potential matchup with Bush in November, slamming the president's "creed of greed" and "extreme radical administration." Kerry, and U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt of...

I know the 'conventional wisdom" is starting to focus on Edwards as a Kerry Veep, but my bet would be that he'll pick Gephardt... Would plus up his labor support everywhere, and increase his chances of Missouri/Illinois/Michigan. Any comments?

Kerry urged to team with Edwards By David R. Guarino Thursday, February 5, 2004 CHARLESTON, S.C. - John F. Kerry's most important Southern ally has a suggestion to turn around Kerry's so-far losing ways below the Mason-Dixon - sign up John Edwards. U.S. Rep. James Clyburn told the Herald he'll urge Kerry to tap Edwards as his vice presidential running mate, saying Kerry's South Carolina defeat shows he needs a Southerner's help to beat President Bush here this fall. ``I'll encourage him,'' the prominent South Carolina Democrat said. ``(Kerry) can strengthen himself by getting Edwards on the ticket.'' Clyburn's comments...

Kerry Backs Tough Assault Weapons Ban 11/24/2003 Press Release Coalition to Stop Gun Violence 1023 15th Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20005 www.gunfree.org Contact: Blaine Rummel Phone: 202-408-0061 x118 Senator delivers on promise to stand up to the NRA Washington, DC - Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has co-sponsored S. 1431, a bill that will renew and strengthen the federal assault weapons ban. The action reinforces recent comments he made promising that his would not be the "candidacy of the NRA. We stand up against that." "Senator Kerry clearly means what he says about standing up for gun safety and saving lives,"...

<p>WASHINGTON — With Dick Gephardt's endorsement of John Kerry (search) on Friday, the Massachusetts senator is hoping to win some of the labor support that backed Gephardt before he dropped out of the race for president, but some experts wonder if union backing has the same oomph as it once did.</p>

<p>DETROIT — Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean canceled several events set for today here, effectively ending his Michigan campaign, and headed to Wisconsin, saying he must win there on Feb. 17 in order to stay in the race.</p> <p>"Our true test will be the Wisconsin primary," Mr. Dean wrote yesterday in an e-mail appealing for $100 donations. "A win there will carry us to the big states of March 2 — and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this race."</p>

Michigan rally will see Gephardt endorse ex-rival Kerry By RON FOURNIER and LEIGH STROPE The Associated Press 2/5/2004, 11:49 p.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) — John Kerry secured the endorsement of former presidential rival Dick Gephardt on Thursday, a blockbuster embrace that paid immediate dividends for the Democratic front-runner's bid to rally organized labor behind his candidacy. Kerry spokesman David Wade said the Missouri lawmaker will give Kerry his backing on Friday in Warren and Flint, Mich. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and its U.S. senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, have endorsed Kerry. The state holds its Democratic caucuses Saturday....

Caption Richard Gephardt

<p>NEW YORK — Rep. Dick Gephardt, the former House minority leader whose presidential campaign collapsed in Iowa's caucuses, will endorse Democratic front-runner John Kerry, a Democratic official said.</p> <p>The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Missouri lawmaker will give Kerry his backing in Warren, Mich., a blue-collar suburb of Detroit, on Friday. The endorsement is a huge boost for Kerry who has been aggressively pursuing the backing of labor unions who had thrown their support to Gephardt.</p>

February 04, 2004, 8:34 a.m.From S.C. to VP?John Edwards and THE LIST. By Michael Graham John Edwards's primary-contest record is 1-8. His margin over Massachusetts liberal John Kerry in S.C. — Edwards's home state — was about the same as his margin over Howard Dean in Iowa. Hardly impressive. And according to the latest polls, Edwards is trailing in every upcoming primary and caucus from Washington to Virginia. He's not even competing in Michigan this Saturday.So why is Edwards's position significantly different from that of Joe Lieberman, Howard Dean, or Wesley Clark — three other people who won't be the...

Northern strategy for Kerry-Gephardt Posted: February 2, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc. With the demise of Howard Dean and the emergence of John Kerry, the White House has seen its big chance for a blowout on the scale of the Nixon and Reagan landslides slip away. President Bush remains the winter-book favorite to win in 2004. Perhaps going away. After all, Kerry is a Massachusetts liberal who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, backs civil unions for homosexuals, voted to defend the infanticide known as partial-birth abortion and wants to raise the federal income taxes...

During the Iowa caucuses, union members' money flowed to Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt, while they cast their votes for John Kerry and John Edwards.Why the paradox? Government unions and service unions like the Service Employees International Union backed Dean. Industrial unions like the Teamsters backed Gephardt. Neither candidate was favored by the rank and file, but that mattered little to the union elite. All that mattered was that union members' dues money there for the taking, so the top brass spent it any way they saw fit.Most news media focused on the split between the different factions of...

The Crucible The long American presidential campaign is a crucible for the candidates — stressful, physically exhausting and demanding. That's one reason the outcome is not so predictable, despite an excess of polling and running commentaries. Howard Dean's candidacy might well have crashed in Iowa, not because of his third-place showing, but because of his reaction to it. His speech to his supporters was about as damaging a performance as I've ever seen. He gave the impression of a boy, hurt and disappointed to the point of tears, trying to hide the hurt with bluster, bravado and bombast. Unless he...

NASHUA, N.H. – The Iowa caucuses left Dick Gephardt without a political future and five Texas congressmen looking for a new horse to back. Reps. Chris Bell and Gene Green of Houston, Chet Edwards of Waco, Silvestre Reyes of El Paso and Max Sandlin of Marshall had all endorsed the former House Democratic leader, who dropped out of the presidential contest after Iowa. So far, none of the five has decided whether to endorse anyone else, according to aides. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat who has stumped for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire,...

WASHINGTON - Dick Gephardt, who abandoned his bid for the presidency, has freed his Democratic convention delegates to back another candidate but isn't ready to signal his choice.

<p>Twenty-five field operatives from Representative Richard A. Gephardt's organization in Iowa have signed on with the campaign of Wesley K. Clark, but only after being turned away by Senator John Edwards's campaign for budget reasons.</p> <p>Gephardt's campaign staff has begun to scatter following his defeat in Iowa Monday and abrupt withdrawal from the race the next day. His South Carolina director, Ike Williams, has signed on with the Edwards team in that state, which votes Feb. 3, a week after the New Hampshire primary.</p>

Organized labor is taking a hard look at its political influence and voter turnout operations after the two union-backed candidates that were to dominate the Iowa caucuses sank instead. Unions were to be the powerhouse in Iowa, with white-collars for Howard Dean (news - web sites) and blue-collars for Dick Gephardt (news - web sites). But in a stunning upset, they emerged battered in third- and fourth-place behind Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards. Leaders of industrial unions that formed a coalition supporting Gephardt, called Americans for Economic Justice, were to confer Wednesday to assess what happened in Iowa and...

The endless receding nightmare of the Iowa caucuses has finally produced something interesting: The Democrats have one hellacious catfight on their hands. After all the hoopla about Howard Dean's new mass movement of "Deaniacs," it appears that blanketing Iowa with self-righteous 20-year-olds in orange wool caps may not have been the ideal campaign strategy. Dean's distant third-place finish makes you want to ask him the question Jack Nicholson put to his down-and-out gay neighbor in "As Good As It Gets": "What happened to your queer party-friends?" At the behest of the Democratic Party establishment, the media dutifully destroyed Howard Dean,...