London Guardian Seeks to Rally Voters Against Bush
A liberal British newspaper's campaign to influence the White House race, by having its readers write to undecided voters in a key county in the must-win state of Ohio, has prompted senior Republican lawmakers to question whether the Capitol Hill press accreditation should be withdrawn from the publication's two Washington correspondents.
The write-in campaign started this week by the London-based, 400,000-circulation Guardian, is focused on Ohio's Clark County and is seen as a bid to deliver the state to Democrat John Kerry. Readers are being encouraged by the paper to sign up by e-mail to receive the names and mailing addresses of Clark County voters and are advised to be courteous in their missives.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert is unimpressed, however, by what the Guardian calls its "public service." His spokesman, John Feehery, said the Guardian's campaign is partisan and therefore "unethical" and "inappropriate" for a newspaper. "We tend to let the Standing Committee of Correspondents decide on accreditation status in the press galleries, but the Guardian's action raises serious questions, and we would hope the committee will look at all of this very closely. It is a clear problem and the position of their journalists is untenable," Mr. Feehery told the Sun.
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The Senate and House press galleries are run by a standing committee of five journalists, who are elected for terms of two years by accredited members of the galleries. Membership in the press galleries is limited to "bona fide correspondents of repute in their profession," but the standing committee also takes into consideration the nature of the publications they work for.snip
So far more than 7,000 Guardian readers have signed up by e-mail to receive the names and addresses of Clark County voters who are registered as independents. How many of those are Rantburgers, I wonder? The paper decided to target independents because that "somewhat increases the chances of their being persuadable."
In the last presidential race, Vice President Gore won Clark County by 324 votes over Mr. Bush. Recent polls suggest that the county is once again a toss-up.
The managing editor of the local Springfield News Sun, Jack Bianchi, said he doubts the letter-writing initiative will have much effect one way or another. "We are a difficult county to predict and are pretty independent minded," Mr. Bianchi said. "Four years ago, there were 11 county posts to be filled, and in the election the Democrats won seven and four went to the Republicans. But in the congressional races, we went Republican."
Asked if he thought the Guardianâs letter-writing initiative is appropriate for a newspaper to undertake, Mr. Bianchi was sanguine. "They have their standards and we have ours," he said. "This is America - everyone should be entitled to do what they want to do and how they want to do it."
The director of the Board of Elections in Clark County, Linda Rosicka, seemed less than amused by the Guardianâs campaign, possibly because it has added to her workload calls from the press around the world. "Everyone is contacting me," she complained. She said a Guardian journalist recently wrote out the $25 fee to secure a copy of the county voter file, which includes 85,000 names.
Like Mr. Bianchi, she expressed skepticism that the letter campaign would have an effect. "The American Revolution was fought for a reason," Ms. Rosicka remarked.
Bush-Cheney campaign officials arenât going to take any chances, however. A campaign spokesman, Dave Beckwith, dismissed Mr. Katzâs suggestion that the initiative is nonpartisan. "Their intentions are thinly disguised," he said.
"We are going to find a way to ensure that every Clark County voter who receives a letter will know exactly what kind of newspaper is generating these letters," Mr. Beckwith said. "We think that they should know that the Guardian is a newspaper that runs anti-American editorials." 
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