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The long shot
Gary Bauer talks about why he's running for president.
By Susan Crabtree
[11/08/99]

Together at last
Now that Buchanan is taking his followers over to the Reform Party, the extreme right and extreme left can finally be united in their isolationist vision of the world.
By David Horowitz
[11/08/99]

Killer: Shepard didn't make advances
A just-unsealed confession demolishes the "gay panic" defense. Too bad the media wasn't around to hear it.
By Dave Cullen
[11/06/99]

The survivor
The reason nothing seems to work in getting rid of Slobodan Milosevic is that the entire post-communist Serbian system remains geared toward authoritarian abuse.
By Laura Rozen
[11/05/99]

Bush gets an F in foreign affairs
The Texas governor who would be president can't identify the leaders of Chechnya, Pakistan or India. Has he been taking lessons from Dan Quayle?
By David Corn
[11/05/99]

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Led by former District of Columbia delegate Walter Fauntroy, who had begun to establish a black political network across the South, they successfully mobilized McMillan's local African-American community to defeat him in his 1974 primary, allowing Michigan Democratic Rep. Charles Diggs, the founder and first chairman of the CBC, to take over the chairmanship of McMillan's committee. "That was the beginning of home rule," Dalley recalled, referring to the crusade for self-governance in the primarily black District of Columbia.

By 1995, Fauntroy, rarely seen without a loose-leaf binder that held a district-by-district analysis of Congress, had developed a vast political network nationwide, particularly in the South's powerful black churches. So while Lynch was developing the big picture for Rangel's nascent operation, Fauntroy became the lawmaker's key link to the people who held the power in the field -- community leaders who could not only turn out the vote, but also provide Rangel's operation with valuable intelligence in critical districts.

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, sensing major opportunities for Rangel, lent the charismatic lawmaker his chief fund-raiser, David Jones. The fund-raising element was crucial, because Rangel initially lacked financing for his first order of business -- expanding the operation's reach.

"Anything that sounded 'national,' I was talking to, asking whether they had a chapter or office, and seeing whether my white candidate could have a meeting with the blacks who ran these different groups," Rangel said. He contacted fraternities and sororities, non-profits and labor unions. "More often than not, the blacks didn't know who the hell the white Democratic candidate was, and the Democratic candidate didn't know who the hell the black community was -- because, generally speaking, [the white candidates] go to where [they] think the votes are."

With Rangel's operation showing promise in the field, the DCCC resolved to commit resources to making it work in 1997. Rangel, for his part, brought in longtime aide George Henry to oversee the effort at the party committee. Henry, whom Rangel calls the "physical means" of his operation, was more than a sharp political operator and a clever strategist. As a 10-year aide to Rangel, he instinctively understood the lawmaker's tides and could hold his own as a proxy, if necessary.

Among other things, Henry (along with Jones as fund-raiser) could ask donors to open their wallets for the DCCC -- something Rangel, for all his ties to the black power elite and executives on Wall Street, still cannot bring himself to do. Accordingly, Rangel is now the third-largest fund-raiser among House Democrats, behind only Gephardt and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the chairman of the DCCC.

It is difficult to overstate the revolution in thinking that has made all this possible. Before the Democrats lost control of the House in 1994, a serious bid was made within the black caucus to punish centrists and conservatives who failed to vote the party line. Liberals openly sought, in particular, to strip these members of their chairmanships on committees and subcommittees.

Even after the Democratic majority was lost, many from the party's liberal establishment sought a "purge" of apostate members, on the theory that the party had grown ideologically impure and needed to begin afresh.

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