Oh-eight (R): Drivin’ Miss Judi
Posted: Friday, December 07, 2007 9:09 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Republicans
AP-Ipsos is the latest national poll that has Huckabee in second place. Giuliani leads at 26%, followed by Huckabee at 18% (an 8-point increase from a month ago), McCain at 13%, Romney at 12%, and Thompson at 11%.
GIULIANI: “Drivin’ Miss Judi” is on the
cover of the New York Daily News.
From the article: "Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed - even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News." More: “‘It went on for months before the affair was public,’ said Lee Degenstein, 52, a retired Smith Barney vice president who formerly lived at 200 E. 94th St., Nathan's old building. ‘It was going on longer than anybody thought,’ added Degenstein, who, along with others in the neighborhood, said they often saw Nathan hopping into unmarked NYPD cars in early 2000, before the affair was revealed that May.”
“When pressed by The News Thursday, aides to the Republican presidential hopeful conceded that Nathan got police protection ‘sporadically’ before December 2000 - the previously acknowledged beginning of her taxpayer-funded detail.”
More not-so-great press in the Boston Globe, which writes about criticism Giuliani has received from gay-rights groups over his AIDS policy while NYC mayor.
HUCKABEE: Huckabee
said of Romney’s speech. “I think it's a good thing and healthy for all of us for people to discuss faith in the public square. I have nothing but respect for his coming forth and sharing what he did. I've been very clear about my own personal views. I think all of us who seek the office of president should be candid with the American people."
Two former parole board members, who served during Huckabee’s time as governor and voted on Wayne Dumond’s parole, told First Read that Huckabee initiated and encouraged Dumond’s parole. Huckabee earlier told NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell that he did not pressure the board in anyway. “My mistake was in thinking that everybody who was talking about him -- from the prison system on -- was right... I supported the parole. And I regret that. Because it was horrible what ended up happening. But his commutation was actually something that happened when Bill Clinton was governor, and Jim Guy Tucker signed as lieutenant governor. The parole board that paroled him was all Clinton and Tucker appointees. So when people say I pressured the board, that's nonsense!”
But the board members who spoke to First Read disagreed. “He did come and mention the Dumond case. We would have no reason to mention the Dumond case to him,” said Deborah Sutlar, a Democrat and a Gov. Jim Guy Tucker-appointee, who is not shy about the fact that she campaigned against Huckabee when he ran for governor. She served from 1994 to 2001 and said she is supporting Obama in the presidential race. Sutlar said Dumond’s parole had been denied every other time it came up, but Huckabee came to the board and encouraged the board to parole Dumond and that the board then held an executive session to discuss the case.
Huckabee met with the board “to encourage them to parole Wayne Dumond,” added Erma Pondexter, a Bill Clinton appointee, who was a part-time board member and considers herself “non-partisan.” She said she is undecided in the presidential race but leaning toward either Clinton or Romney. She said she liked some of the things Huckabee did as governor, but is unsure of him for president, though she said she’d consider voting for him.
Pondexter said she wasn’t at the initial meeting with Huckabee, but that at the full meeting “it was shared what the concerns were and the concerns of Governor Huckabee. I was approached by the chair and other board members that Huckabee wanted Dumond paroled, and I went along with the crew.” She added, “I don’t think he’d want that on his shoulders -- to pardon him. I’m quite sure from a political standpoint that would be devastating, therefore he used the parole board to do that.”
The Huckabee campaign didn’t return an email and phone message for comment.
On MSNBC’s Live with Dan Abrams last night, Pondexter and Dr. Charles Chastain, a professor at the University of Arkansas and former parole board member, echoed the sentiments. “There’s no question that the governor brought up the issue of releasing Wayne Dumond,” Chastain said. “The governor said things like, ‘I know this is a difficult job, I know you do a good job, good service, but there is one case I would like to talk to you about,’ whereupon the chairman of the board immediately said, ‘we’ll go into executive session.’”
During the session, Chastain recalls Huckabee said, ‘Well the case that I want to talk to you about is this Wayne Dumond, I just have looked at this case, quite a bit and I think that maybe he’s just a guy from the wrong side of the tracks, who got a raw deal, after all he got a pretty stiff sentence.’ And I responded by saying, ‘Governor, if you rape a cheerleader in a small town like that, you’re going to get a long sentence, if you’re convicted. And furthermore, that sentence had been changed by former Gov. Tucker to 39½ years.’”
Huckabee, though, acknowledged on Meet the Press with Tim Russert that he met with parole members “to get acquainted with them because I hadn’t appointed any of them.”
Russert asked, “You never mentioned Wayne Dumond?”
No, they brought it up to me,” Huckabee responded.
NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-Treworgy was with Huckabee last night in Greensboro. For his part, Huckabee seemed comfortable in the spotlight, if not just a bit unprepared. After botching what he called "an ambush question" from a reporter earlier in the week on the content of the most recent NIE released by the Bush administration, Huckabee addressed its findings and his earlier lack of information. “It came out at ten in the morning," Huckabee said. "I think it was late that afternoon and the reporter said have you read it. You know, George Bush had had it for four years and he hadn't read it yet, so I don't really know that it was a big deal that I had not yet seen it and read it because we had been on the campaign trail nonstop. In fact I was saying to the reporters, you know the reason I haven't seen it is because you guys have been tailing me all day asking me questions."
Per USA Today, has Huckabee manager Chip Saltsman said that “Huckabee draws bigger crowds these days and collected more than $2 million online in November -- double his take from July to September. The campaign recently has taken in an additional $250,000 over the Internet.”
MCCAIN: The Wall Street Journal does the "is McCain on the comeback in NH" story. "Now, Mr. McCain's chief rivals are running into turbulence. Mitt Romney has been overtaken in the polls in Iowa by Mike Huckabee, raising broader concerns about Mr. Romney's viability among the evangelical base. Rudy Giuliani faces new questions about his ethics as mayor. Fred Thompson continues to be dogged by doubts about his energy for the fight. All of that may be prompting Republicans to give Mr. McCain a second look -- particularly in New Hampshire. He recently won the endorsement of the state's largest newspaper. And on a weeklong campaign swing this week, he is drawing capacity crowds at the diners and townhall meetings where much of state's campaigning takes place."
