LOYAL OPPOSITION: Shadowing the Republicrats

By David Corn, AlterNet. Posted June 23, 2000.

When the major political parties hold their presidential conventions, they, in essence, place a sign on their backs that says, "Kick me." The media complains the conventions are highly scripted, no-news, gabfest-coronations -- except for the moment the veep selection is unveiled or leaked. (Such gripes are, of course, accurate. But if the conventions offered long, in-depth, primetime debates over policy issues -- say, the US relationship with the World Trade Organization -- it's doubtful the broadcast networks would be eager to shove aside their game shows and desert-island soap operas for such fare.) And while the media moans, various advocacy groups often stage press conferences or protests to criticize the party or its nominee, hoping to attract a few of the gazillion journalists present who desperately need to fill inches or airtime.

This election year, a collection of public interest groups are trying to rise above the usual low-level and less-than-organized sniping by mounting what they bill as the Shadow Conventions at the Republican gathering in Philadelphia and the Democratic get-together in Los Angeles. For four hours each day, while the deep-pocket funders, delegates, and pols are recovering from the previous night of speechifying and parties, the Shadowers will discuss issues MIA at the main events: campaign finance reform; poverty and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America; and the failure and awful consequences of the war on drugs.

Big-name talent has been recruited. Senator John McCain is scheduled to speak at the opening Shadow session on the night of Sunday, July 30, as his fellow Republicans assemble in Philadelphia. Presumably, he will earnestly lash both parties for being polluted by special-interest money. (Then two nights later, he will stride to the podium inside the GOP convention, praise George W. Bush, who has broken records in campaign fundraising, and urge the Republican Party, with its soft-money-filled coffers, on to victory.) Senator Russell Feingold, a Democrat who has teamed up with McCain to press for reform legislation, is slated to show at the opening night of the LA alternative convention two weeks later. Jesse Jackson, Senator Paul Wellstone, Warren Beatty (who flirted with a progressive run for the presidency last year), Green party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, and Representatives John Lewis, Jesse Jackson Jr., Dennis Kucinich, and Jerrold Nadler (all Democrats) have committed to appearing. So have a few prominent GOPers beyond McCain. New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and Representative Tom Campbell, who is running for Senate in California, are on the bill. Both are Republicans who have assailed the draconian war on drugs and proposed that get-tough drug enforcement be throttled back, while drug treatment is revved up. (The conveners plan to try to corral conservative columnist William Buckley and former secretary of State George Shultz, who each have criticized the war on drugs.)

At the center of the Shadow Conventions is Arianna Huffington. Some might recall her standing by her California Republican husband Michael (now her ex), as he spent a record $5.4 million in 1992 to buy a seat in Congress and then spent $30 million -- another record at the time -- losing a Senate bid in 1994 to Dianne Feinstein. Or she might be remembered for being a Newt cheerleader in the early days of the so-called Republican revolution, when she also served as a conservative pundit. But as she saw more of Gingrich -- who claimed he was interested in her ideas about combatting poverty -- she was repulsed. "I was completely fooled," she now concedes. She became a Gingrich foe and a passionate declaimer of a thoroughly corrupted political system that is, in her words, "under the thumb of a small corporate elite" that uses "its financial clout to control both parties' political agendas." She came to realize a fundamental truth: Why does this political system not place ending poverty at the top of its to-do list? Because the poor have no money to contribute to the politicians.

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