Interviews show Bush tuned in to right-wing radio
Scott Hennen has had quite a summer, with an on-air guest list that's a conservative talk-show host's dream: Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady Laura Bush, two Bush cabinet secretaries, four other key administration officials, and at least five heavy hitters from the re-
election campaign of President Bush. That's quite a lineup for the host of "Hot Talk," which airs on a pair of 5,000-watt AM radio stations in easternmost North Dakota.
Hennen objects mildly when a reporter asks whether his success at landing big-name Republicans has something to do with the fact that much of his audience is across the Red River in northwestern Minnesota, a Bush stronghold within a state that could go either way in this presidential election.
"It's not as much related to them ginning up their base," said Hennen, whose program airs on WDAY in Fargo and KCNN in Grand Forks. "This White House has been committed to talk radio since day one." He said he has always had good luck lining up Bush administration officials, though he admits he's been on a roll lately.
Hennen is not the only talk-show host of a conservative bent or broadcasting in a battleground state who has had good access to high-ranking administration officials. On the White House website, www.whitehouse.gov, nearly all of the administration radio interviews featured since April are with conservative commentators, hosts at stations in battleground states, or both.
A White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius, flatly denied that political considerations are involved in making administration officials available to radio stations, or any other news media.
"We're not concerned with politics," he said. "It's the Bush-Cheney campaign that's focused on politics."
Moreover, the interviews on the website, which has audio links, are merely a sampler of those of good audio quality or on timely subjects of public interest, he said. In addition, interviews on less-than-conservative National Public Radio (the Globe found at least 10 in recent months in the transcript archives of NPR's website, www.npr.org,) cannot be posted.
"NPR doesn't allow us to use their audio," Lisaius said.
"We try to make members of this administration available in any number of media formats so that people around the country know what their government is doing because this administration has a very solid record of accomplishment," said Lisaius. Those media include radio stations "of all stripes in all parts of the country," he said.
But of 61 interviews featured on the White House website since April in which the interviewer and station or network is identified, 54 were conducted either by conservative commentators or by hosts in markets located in battleground states, a Globe analysis shows.
They include 27 interviews with stations in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, and Arkansas -- all among the 20 or so states being contested by both sides with paid advertising.
Another 27 were with conservative hosts; ABC Radio's Sean Hannity had seven interviews on the White House site, and Hennen had five.
Some of the interviewers are not only supportive of Bush but active in the campaign. For instance, Steve Gill of WTN in Nashville, with three interviews on the White House site, spoke at the opening of the Bush-Cheney headquarters in Clarksville, Tenn. Syndicated talk-show host Laura Ingraham served as MC at a Bush campaign rally in St. Paul last week. Another, Premiere Radio Networks talkmaster Glenn Beck, is selling "John Kerry's Waffle House" T-shirts for $14.95 on his website, capitalizing on the Bush campaign's "flip-flopper" assault on the Democrat.
Among other interviews on the White House site are three each by personalities of the Radio America network (self-described as "driven by a commitment to traditional American values, limited government and the free market") and the Salem Radio Network ("the largest network serving religious radio").
If, as the White House contends, the concentration of administration interviews in battleground state stations is mere coincidence, the daily flurry of radio appearances by Bush campaign officials in those same states is not.
"It's part of our effort to do what we call `flood the zone,' " said Bush campaign spokesman Kevin A. Madden. "When you have a campaign designed around `echo politics,' we try to get our message out there every which way possible."
The Kerry campaign runs a similar daily drill, trying to get campaign representatives on as many stations as possible, mostly where swing voters reside.
For the Bush-Cheney campaign, last Thursday was typical. Campaign officials and surrogates appeared on 30 radio programs, 25 of them on local stations in heavily contested states, a list released by the campaign indicates. Most of the other interviews were on nationally syndicated programs.
One of the local interviews was given by Ralph Reed, chairman of the Bush campaign effort in five southern states, to Hennen on WDAY in Fargo. Reed, the Republican super-organizer, has been moving beyond his Southern bailiwick to advise GOP mobilization efforts in other key states, last week in Minnesota, this week in Iowa.
Reed was the latest guest-scheduling coup for Hennen. In addition to all the administration officials interviewed, in recent weeks he has also featured Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman, chairman Marc Racicot, chief spokesman Terry Holt, and adviser Mary Matalin.
Hennen, described in a 1995 Wall Street Journal article as "a more portly version of his nationally syndicated model, Rush Limbaugh," says he has made efforts to have high-level Kerry campaign surrogates appear on his program but has had to settle for Bill Burton, spokesman for the Kerry campaign in several Midwestern states.
"This isn't part of some vast right-wing conspiracy," Hennen said. He doesn't toss softballs at his Republican guests, he insisted. Hennen said he "hammered" US Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick during a discussion in January of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, which could hurt the region's $2-billion-a-year sugar beet industry along the Dakota-Minnesota border.
It certainly hasn't hampered his ability to get big names from the Bush administration or campaign. The guests keep coming, not because they are being offered to him, Hennen said, but because he pursues them with increasing frequency.
"We're bugging them a lot more now because all our listeners want to hear about is this election," he said. 