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Hillary and I also worked the delegates hard, as...
11:16 PM, Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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Hillary and I also worked the delegates hard, as did her brothers, Hugh and Tony, who lived in Miami, and Hughs wife, Maria, a Cuban-American lawyer
Two days after the Florida win, an Arkansas fund-raiser netted $800,000 for the campaign, far more than had ever before been raised at a single event thereOn December 19, the Nashville Banner became the first newspaper to endorse meOn December 20, Governor Cuomo said he wouldnt runThen Senator Sam Nunn and Governor Zell Miller of Georgia gave the campaign a huge boost when they endorsed meGeorgias primary came just before Super Tuesday, along with Marylands and Colorados
Meanwhile, President Bushs troubles mounted, as Pat Buchanan announced his intention to enter the GOP primaries with a George Wallacelike attack on the President from the rightConservative Republicans were upset with the President for signing a $492 billion deficit-reduction package passed by the Democratic Congress because, in addition to spending cuts, it contained a five-cent gas-tax increaseBush had brought the Republican convention to its feet in 1988 with his famous line Read my lipsno new taxesHe did the responsible thing in signing the deficit-reduction rolex replica supplies package, but in doing so he broke his most visible campaign commitment and violated the anti-tax theology of his partys right-wing base
The conservatives didnt direct all their fire at the President; I got my fair share, too, from a group called ARIAS, which stood for Alliance for the Rebirth of an Independent American SpiritARIAS was led in part by Cliff Jackson, an Arkansan whom Id known and liked at Oxford, but who was now a conservative Republican with a deep personal animosity toward meWhen ARIAS ran TV, radio, and newspaper ads attacking my record, we responded quickly and aggressivelyThe attacks might have done the campaign more good than harm, because answering them highlighted my accomplishments as governor, and because the source of the attacks made them suspect among New Hampshire DemocratsTwo days before Christmas, a New Hampshire poll placed me second to Paul Tsongas and closing fastThe year ended on a good note
On January 8, Governor Wilder withdrew from the race, reducing the competition for African-American voters, especially in the SouthAt about the same time, Frank Greer produced a great television ad, highlighting New Hampshires economic problems and my plan chanel denim handbag to remedy them, and we moved ahead of Tsongas in public pollsBy the second week of January, our campaign had raised $3 million in less than three months, half of it from ArkansasIt seems a paltry sum today, but it was good enough to lead the field in early 1992
The campaign seemed to be on track until January 23, when the Little Rock media received advance notice of a story in the February 4 issue of the tabloid newspaper Star, in which Gennifer Flowers said she had carried on a twelve-year affair with meHer name had been on the list of five women Larry Nichols alleged I had affairs with during the 1990 governors raceAt the time, she had strongly denied itAt first we didnt know how seriously the press would take her about-face, so we stuck with the scheduleI took a long drive to Claremont, in southwestern New Hampshire, to tour a brush factoryThe people who ran it wanted to sell their products to Wal-Mart, and I wanted to help themAt some point, Dee Dee Myers went into the plants small office and called headquartersFlowers was claiming that she had tapes of ten phone conversations with me that supposedly proved the truth of her allegations
A year earlier, Flowerss lawyer had classic louis vuitton bags written a letter to a Little Rock radio station threatening a libel suit because one of its talk-show hosts had repeated some of the allegations in a Larry Nichols press release, saying the station had wrongfully and untruthfully accused her of having an affairWe didnt know what was on whatever tapes Flowers might have, but I remembered the conversations clearly, and I didnt think there could be anything damaging on themFlowers, whom Id known since 1977 and had recently helped get a state job, had called me to complain that the media were harassing her even at the place she was singing at night, and that she felt her job was threatenedI commiserated with her, but I hadnt thought it was a big dealAfter Dee Dee went to work trying to discover more about what the Star was planning to publish, I called Hillary and told her what was going onFortunately, she was staying at the Georgia Governors Mansion on a campaign trip, and Zell and Shirley Miller were wonderful to her
The Flowers story hit with explosive force, and it proved irresistible to the media, though some of the stories cast doubt on her accusationsThe press reported that Flowers had been paid for the story, and that she had prada bags handbags vigorously denied an affair a year earlierThe media, to their credit, exposed Flowerss false claims about her education and work historyThese reports, however, were dwarfed by the allegationsI was dropping in the New Hampshire polls, and Hillary and I decided we should accept an invitation from the CBS program 60 Minutes to answer questions about the charges and the state of our marriageIt was not an easy callWe wanted to defend against the scandal coverage and to get back to the real issues without demeaning ourselves and adding fuel to the fire of personal-destruction politics, which I had deplored even before it burned meI had already said I hadnt lived a perfect lifeIf that was the standard, someone else would have to be elected President
We taped the program at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston on Sunday morning, January 26, for showing later that night, after the Super BowlWe talked to the interviewer, Steve Kroft, for over an hourHe began by asking if Flowerss story was trueWhen I said it wasnt, he asked if I had had any affairsPerhaps I should have used Rosalynn Carters brilliant response to a similar question in 1976: If I had, I wouldnt tell youSince I wasnt as blameless as shop for chanel bags M
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