For GOP strategist, the crowded field presents a problem
When the 2008 presidential campaign season was warming up last year, it created a quandary for Republican strategist and media consultant Mike Murphy.
John McCain and Mitt Romney were both considering running, and Murphy had been chief campaign adviser to both in the past. So he vowed to sit out the 2008 campaign if both decided to run, which they did. Complicating matters further, Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and another past Murphy client, later jumped into the GOP race.
So Murphy says he decided to make contributions to all three campaigns. Federal Election Commission records show that he donated $2,300, the maximum for an individual, to McCain, the Arizona senator, on Feb. 27, and $1,000 to Thompson's campaign about three weeks later.
The Globe could find no record of a donation to the former Massachusetts governor.
Murphy said yesterday he thought he sent Romney a check for the $2,300 maximum around the time he gave to McCain, but after checking his records realized he hadn't.
"I'm sending Mitt a check today," he said.
BRIAN C. MOONEY
There has been a lot of buzz about whether that's risky language for someone trying to become the first female president. But Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, told the Globe yesterday it was a moment she loved. When female politicians hang out, they often call themselves "the girls," Ferraro said.
"I think it's good and healthy. She's comfortable with herself and with the campaign," Ferraro said.
MARCELLA BOMBARDIERI
In their first video, they attack Obama Girl for flip-flopping, fiscal irresponsibility, and other transgressions. It's the latest bizarre confluence of politics, the Internet, and "Girls Gone Wild."
Romney himself seems to be unfazed. "There's nothing like getting a good spot on YouTube," he said on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" yesterday morning. Then he joked that he needed to stop Ann, his wife of 38 years, from wearing hot pants.
A Fox interviewer told Ann Romney of her husband's quip.
"It's in my dreams, right?" Romney asked. Her reply: "Not in his wildest dreams."
FOON RHEE
"I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table," she said in April 2006.
Clinton, who has tried to cast her rival as too inexperienced for the job of commander in chief, criticized Obama for saying it would be "a profound mistake" to deploy nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons," Clinton said.
Her campaign spokesman, Phil Singer, said the circumstances for her remarks were different than the situation Obama faced.
"She was asked to respond to specific reports that the Bush-Cheney administration was actively considering nuclear strikes on Iran even as it refused to engage diplomatically," he said. "She wasn't talking about a broad hypothetical nor was she speaking as a presidential candidate."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Is it too late? No. Is it very late? Yeah, it's going to be very difficult to crawl out of the organizational deficit he is in," said Chuck Laudner, executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa.
ASSOCIATED PRESS 
