Albany Times Union
Iraq war views fuel Senate races
Jonathan Tasini, who is challenging Clinton in Democratic primary, looks to Connecticut battle
By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau
First published: Sunday, August 6, 2006
NEW YORK -- In the musty basement of a Greenwich Village brownstone is the heart of a campaign that aims to do the seemingly impossible: Convince to vote their marquee candidate, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, out of office.
The two-room headquarters of Clinton's primary opponent, Jonathan Tasini, barely accommodates him, his three paid staffers, a visitor and a teenage intern. His campaign is paying a minimal fee for the tiny space to the Village Independent Democrats, a liberal political club and one of his few party backers.
Adorning the walls are campaign posters of past Democratic losers -- former state Comptroller H. Carl McCall (2002 governor's race), attorney general candidate Charlie King (1998 and 2002, lieutenant governor's race), former New York City Council President Carol Bellamy (1995, New York City mayoral election; 1990, state comptroller's race).
Tasini, a longtime labor activist whose signature issue is opposition to the Iraq war, acknowledges his chances of joining their ranks come Sept. 12 is high.
The former first lady has stratospheric name recognition. Almost nine out of 10 people in a recent poll had no idea who he is.
She has $22 million in her campaign war chest. He has $11,787 and has spent $43,244 of his own money on his campaign.
At their state convention, New York Democrats unanimously voted to place her on the ballot. He couldn't get enough support to speak.
Yet Tasini insists his candidacy is serious and not simply a protest of Clinton's refusal to support an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He notes he successfully petitioned his way on to the primary ballot, collecting far more than the required 15,000 signatures from enrolled Democrats.
"I hold two ideas at the same time, and I don't think they're mutually exclusive," Tasini said. "One is that this is an incredibly uphill battle. The other is that the voters are where I am."
A July 20 Marist poll showed Tasini trailing Clinton 13 percent to 83 percent among Democrats, despite the fact that 70 percent said the Iraq war should be a major issue this fall, and 62 percent said they're more likely to vote for a candidate who is against the war than one who supports it.
The race is a marked contrast to the Democratic primary Tuesday in Connecticut, where U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman appears in danger of losing to an anti-war challenger -- millionaire cable TV executive and J.P. Morgan heir Ned Lamont.
If Lamont wins, Tasini could benefit, said Marist College pollster Lee Miringoff. But he will still lack the money to make a significant dent in Clinton.
"There would be more buzz around the Tasini candidacy," Miringoff said. "But New York is a lot bigger state to do this in, and Hillary Clinton is a lot less inviting a target."
While the outcome in Connecticut is unlikely to affect New York's Democratic Senate race, it could influence the direction the national party will take as it heads into the 2008 presidential race, said U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.
"Everyone who's watching politics is watching this now," said Nadler, who voted against the war. "If (Lamont) beats Lieberman, it will be an earthquake, and it will be very good in terms of pushing the party in what I think is the right direction, which is a quick withdrawal from Iraq."
Chief among the Democratic White House hopefuls is Clinton herself, who voted for the war and has said she supports its overall mission. She has been sharply critical of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and has signed on to an amendment calling for a "phased redeployment" of troops to begin Dec. 31, but she has refused to call for a withdrawal date.
Nadler and others say Clinton's position is well within the mainstream. They say Tasini hasn't caught fire in New York because he not only lacks Lamont's wealth, but because Hillary Clinton is not Joe Lieberman.
Lieberman, in office for nearly 18 years, is being excoriated by Democrats for his support of the war and what they consider his too-frequent defense of the Bush administration. He has angered Democrats on the left with his support of school vouchers and his willingness to compromise on Social Security reform.
Clinton, on the other hand, has taken the President to task over such issues as the FDA's refusal to make the Plan B contraceptive available without a prescription and gaps in the Medicare "Part D" drug plan. Last week, she openly sparred with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee and later called for his resignation over a "failed policy" in Iraq.
A recent Quinnipiac poll found almost two-thirds of Lamont's support comes from anti-Lieberman sentiment. Lieberman had a 37 percent favorable rating among Democrats. Clinton reached 77 percent favorability among New York Democrats in a July 24 Siena poll. Bill Clinton recently traveled to Connecticut to stump for Lieberman, even though the senator had denounced the President on the Senate floor over his affair with a White House intern. Some observers took this as proof the Clintons would prefer not to see the paradigm shift that a win by an anti-war candidate like Lamont might bring.
Tasini's candidacy, however, could actually help Clinton on the national stage, argued Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf.
"Every time Tasini, who is perceived as left wing, attacks her, it makes her appear to be more of a centrist, which only benefits her if she should run for president," Sheinkopf said. "All he does is make her a victim of the left."
Tasini and some of his supporters agree Clinton is no Lieberman. But they're disappointed with what they view as her steady move to the center in preparation for a national run.
"Lamont is a moderate, and Lieberman is barely a Democrat at all; it's more of an extreme situation," said author Barbara Ehrenreich, a Tasini friend and backer. "But there's still a myth that Hillary somehow has an inner liberal that she's keeping under control, and if you give her more power it will come out. There's no evidence of that."
Tasini eschews the usual pragmatic political parsing.
"I'm running for Senate to change the goddamned state and the world," he said.
To him, the Iraq war is "illegal and immoral," Clinton is personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and American soldiers, and her call for Rumsfeld's resignation was "bluster."
Clinton's camp brands Tasini "an extremist." He recently blamed the senator and "a broad segment of our political leadership" for the deaths of 37 children killed in a strike by Israel on the Lebanese town of Qana -- a statement Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson called "outrageous."
Tasini, who is Jewish, lived in Israel for eight years with his Israeli father and still has relatives there. He said he volunteered at a hospital in Israel at the start of the 1973 war and touched a dead soldier.
He has said Israel "committed many acts of brutality and violations of human rights and torture." He is angered by Clinton and others who support Israel for what he thinks is political expediency but "never had the experience of being there and watching people there get killed."
Clinton supporters have also tried to paint Tasini as a political opportunist, noting he was a member of the Working Families Party before switching to Democrat last Oct. 14 -- the deadline to make the change effective for this fall's primary.
The Working Families Party endorsed Clinton, but only after a lengthy debate at its convention during which some members wanted to either back Tasini or remain neutral.
Tasini, who insists he can't remember a time when he wasn't involved in some kind of activism -- be it Greenpeace or union organizing -- is a boyish 49 with a high forehead, thinning, slicked-back brown hair and tortoise-shell glasses.
He wears black cowboy boots -- even with suits -- a habit formed after an ex-girlfriend gave him a pair, and not a nod to his Texas roots, he says. (He was born in Houston, but moved to New York before he turned 1.)
Tasini has taken on seemingly invincible opponents before. He is perhaps best known for being the lead plaintiff in Tasini vs. New York Times Co., a lawsuit brought by freelance writers against a number of publishing companies over who owns the electronic rights to sell their stories to databases.
The writers won in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001. At the time, Tasini was president of the National Writers Union.
"Taking on Hillary Clinton seems pretty mild compared to taking on some of the biggest media corporations in the world," Tasini said. "She's one individual. The challenge does not seem to me to be either insurmountable or daunting."
Elizabeth Benjamin can be reached at 454-5081 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Jonathan Tasini
Age: 49
Home: Washington Heights, New York City
Political affiliation: Democrat (changed from Working Families Party on Oct. 14, 2005, the deadline for a party switch to be effective for this election)
Background: Born in Houston; lived in Poughkeepsie and Yorktown Heights; moved to Israel with father in 1971, then to Los Angeles in 1978 and to New York City in 1985
Education: B.A. in political science, UCLA
Professional: Began his career working for Greenpeace and as a freelance writer. Helped establish the Los Angeles chapter of the National Writers Union in the 1980s. Elected NWU president in 1990. In 1993, he was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against The New York Times Co. and several other companies in a case eventually decided in 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that writers, not publishers, own the rights to sell freelance works to electronic databases. A union activist and well-known blogger on labor issues, he lives in part off earnings generated by ads on his Web site, Working Life.
Prior elected offices held: None
Personal: Single
