For months, disarray was the hallmark of Vice President Al Gore’s campaign. Last October 6, he moved his campaign to Nashville from Washington and fired most of his top tier of advisers, including his campaign manager, ad man and pollster. One reason for the move was that the campaign was hemorrhaging money on exorbitant salaries and fancy downtown digs in the nation’s capital. The other was to dispel the notion that Gore, raised on Embassy Row in a penthouse apartment in the tony Fairfax Hotel, was running a campaign that was Washington to its core. His Washington insider image also became a target of Democratic opponent Bill Bradley, who despite three terms in the U.S. Senate, had effectively repackaged himself as a man who eschewed the inside-the-Beltway mentality. In a January interview with the New York Times Magazine, Gore noted that his earlier decision was a big mistake: “I look back at the beginning of the year, while the impeachment trial was about to begin and incoming rounds were landing on the White House roof every 30 seconds, and I can’t believe that I decided to put the campaign on K Street. You know, hello?”
But while the vice president’s official headquarters is in Nashville, he has not shed his longtime associates, many of whom work as high-priced lobbyists on K Street. They have enjoyed the advantages of the revolving door. They worked with Gore in the White House or on Capitol Hill and are now selling their access, or at least the appearance of that access, to corporate clients. Three of them — Peter Knight, John M. “Jack” Quinn, and Roy Neel — are all former Gore chiefs of staff and now are wealthy lobbyists. Meanwhile, most of his top campaign consultants, from his pollster to his field director, are members of the Washington political consultant network.
Image problem?
That Gore has tied himself so closely to the Washington Establishment is not surprising, considering that he has been vice president for seven years. But his image as the ultimate insider raises a problem for a candidate who is facing a Democratic opponent running against politics as usual. Not too long ago, Gore found himself in the vortex of the Clinton administration’s fund-raising scandal, with accusations that he shook down Buddhist nuns and had hit up potential donors using White House phones. Though the campaign reportedly has taken care to do a better job vetting contributors and fund-raising venues, Gore’s close connection to the lobbying community might make it difficult for him to shake off the image that he is tied closely to the corporate elite.
With so much baggage to shed, Gore’s choice of Tony Coelho as his campaign’s chairman was an unusual one. Though few could assail the former California congressman’s skills at organization and strategy, there are few politicians in Washington who have been so closely associated with big-money politics as Coelho. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 1980s, he transformed the moribund House election arm into a fund-raising powerhouse, offering lobbyists and their clients a chance to socialize with the House leadership for a yearly “club” fee. In 1989, at the height of his power as majority whip, he resigned over a controversy regarding a $100,000 junk bond investment with Michael Milken. Since joining the campaign, he’s created his own kitchen cabinet of unpaid informal advisers who had previously worked with him. Many of them are former Clinton administration political strategists who now work in the private sector, including Marcia Hale, now with Monsanto Corp. Others, such as lobbyist Michael Berman, are longtime Washington operatives.
Led in donations
Indeed, Gore is a favorite in official Washington. According to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, Gore led the pack in inside-the-Beltway donations, with nearly $1.2 million collected in donations of at least $200 from people who live in District of Columbia ZIP codes. He’s also the top recipient of contributions from lobbyists, according to the organization’s analysis of corporate political action committee and individual contributions.
It should come as no surprise, either, that Gore is a darling among the telecommunications industry, though he comes in second to George W. Bush in donations from the computer industry. Though he might not have created the Internet, he has a deep interest in technology and has forged close ties over the years to the high-tech industry, especially to those dealing with telecommunications, biotech and pharmaceuticals. These ties were strengthened when President Clinton turned over the role of geek-in-chief to Gore, who became the man to see on technology and telecom matters. The relationships he has developed over the years could well determine how he would deal with differences between the industry and consumers over everything from prices to access issues to competition policy.
Ties to telecom industry
Gore maintains his ties to the industry through his current and former aides and close friends. Jack Quinn, who was the vice president’s chief of staff, has since represented Intel Corp. and a coalition of companies seeking to loosen rules on encryption technology exports. Peter Knight, who heads fund-raising for Gore, represents Bell Atlantic. Roy Neel is president of the United States Telecom Association, which represents the Baby Bells. Thomas Downey, one of his closest friends from their days as young congressmen, represents Microsoft Corp. as well as Ericcson Corp., and has noted in his lobbying reports that he has lobbied the vice president’s office on many matters. Gore’s current domestic policy adviser, David Beier, was a lobbyist for Genentech Inc., whose chief executive officer, Arthur Levinson, is raising money for the campaign. Beier also is heading up interagency efforts on the Internet, and his office is a regular stopping place for all the telecom and tech lobbyists in town. Another adviser, Anthony Podesta, whose lobbying shop represents a Who’s Who of biotech and telecommunications clients, is a brother of White House Chief of Staff John Podesta. Meanwhile, Gore has a kitchen cabinet of high-tech moguls, known as the Gore-Techs, with whom he meets to discuss policy issues. Many in the group, such as Levinson, Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape Communications Corp., and Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, serve another role — as fund-raisers.
The political advisers
Tony Coelho: Chairman of the campaign. Gore brought him in to discipline the operation, and that he’s done, moving the headquarters to Nashville, overhauling the campaign staff and ridding the campaign of competing and layered power centers. Still, Gore took a big risk in hiring Coelho. He had risen to power in Washington mostly because of his extraordinary fund-raising feats, and left under a cloud 10 years ago. Some Democrats worried that Coelho’s presence would make it harder for Gore to dispel the notion that he was the Establishment’s candidate.
After leaving Capitol Hill in 1989, Coelho landed a job on Wall Street at Wertheim Schroder & Co., an investment banking firm where, using his labor union contacts, he brought in billions of dollars in pension-fund investments. In 1994, he used his connections with the administration to land a spot for his boss on one of the late Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown’s trade missions to Hong Kong and China.
Last October, the Center for Public Integrity obtained an audit report by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General that pointed to mammoth cost overruns, gross mismanagement and potential illegal activity under Coelho’s watch as the U.S. commissioner general of the 1998 World Exposition in Lisbon, Portugal. The report cited numerous “questionable payments” made by Coelho or his staff, including an $18,000-a-month luxury apartment and $800 for a chauffeur-driven limousine when he had a fleet of vans at his disposal. He also was involved in private business ventures in Portugal with at least three corporate underwriters of the Expo, despite federal ethics rules that prohibit such potential conflicts. And though he was supposed to raise money from the private sector for the Expo, taxpayers were left holding the bag for millions of dollars. Among the people Coelho hired as independent contractors for the Expo were Fred Hatfield, his chief of staff on Capitol Hill between 1984 and 1989, and later his business partner; and Mark Johnson, the former communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In the Gore campaign, Coelho has turned to Hatfield, among other former protégés, for help in strategy.
Coelho also has sat on the board of directors of the Houston-based Service Corporation International, whose chairman and CEO, Robert Waltrip, is a close political friend and financial supporter of Texas Gov. George Bush. According to a lawsuit filed by Eliza May, former executive director of the Texas funeral commission, Bush deputies and Service Corporation executives, including Waltrip, pressured her to cease an investigation of possibly illegal practices (see Bush report) at the company. According to financial disclosure forms he filed, Coelho received more than $238,000 in director’s fees and other compensation in 1997 and also held more than $1 million in SCI stock. Portugal has been one of SCI’s prime targets.
Donna Brazile: Campaign manager and political director, the first black woman to manage a major presidential campaign. Brazile worked on Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential primary campaign, then for the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Walter Mondale. In 1988, she was deputy national field director for Democrat Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign until she was fired for insinuating that then-Vice President Bush was having an extramarital affair and that he was running a “racist” campaign. Most recently, Brazile worked as chief of staff to District of Columbia Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.
Carter Eskew: Paid media adviser. He was tapped by Gore during an overhaul of the campaign staff. Eskew is a longtime political media expert who produced ads for both of Clinton’s presidential campaigns. He left campaign work in 1995 to work mainly for corporate clients as a partner at BSMG Worldwide, a public-relations firm. Eskew helped produce a $40 million advertising campaign for the tobacco industry aimed at helping to kill off anti-tobacco Senate legislation in 1998. As recently as last spring, according to The New York Times, he was helping Phillip Morris test advertisements opposing the Justice Department lawsuit against the tobacco industry. Eskew resigned from the firm in October, several months after he joined the campaign. While at BSMG, Eskew also directed an advertising campaign for a coalition of companies that supported the passage of the North America Free Trade Agreement and for the National Association of Broadcasters to support its campaign against having to buy digital space (spectrum space). Gore supported the spectrum auction. Eskew has created a new firm, Century Media, with consultants Bill Knapp and Robert Shrum.
Peter Fenn: Democratic consultant who specializes in media campaigns. He told the Center that he participates in weekly conference calls with other Gore advisers in Nashville, but said his role is small. His firm has done consulting for numerous congressional and local candidates and for political parties and candidates in Russia, Bosnia, Romania, Nicaragua and Northern Ireland.
Harrison Hickman: The campaign’s pollster. He joined Gore after the candidate fired Mark Penn, who had been polling for Clinton and the Democratic National Party for years. Hickman, one of the top Democratic pollsters in the industry, has worked for many congressional campaigns and a handful of presidential races, including Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska’s 1988 and ’92 bids.
Hickman is a partner in the Hickman-Brown Research firm in Washington, and was recruited into the Gore campaign by media man Carter Eskew and top strategist Robert Shrum. Shrum had worked with Hickman on congressional campaigns and for the tobacco industry on a legislative advocacy campaign in 1998. When Gore brought Hickman and Eskew on board, the vice president said that the two had severed their ties with Big Tobacco and didn’t influence Gore’s policy on that issue. Bradley had tried to make their hiring an issue in questioning the sincerity of Gore’s anti-tobacco stance.
Catherine A. “Kiki” Moore: Paid adviser who works for the Dewey Square Group, public-relations and grassroots consulting firm. She told the Center that her firm had been retained by the Gore campaign to advise on press and media issues. Moore had been the campaign’s communications director until the headquarters moved to Nashville. Before joining Dewey Square, Moore directed communications at the Democratic National Committee.
Robert Shrum: A well-respected political strategist who is part of the message-crafting team. He is one of the few formal advisers who was allowed to remain in Washington. Shrum is known for his hard-hitting attack-ad campaigns. He was reported to have advised Gore to publicly challenge Bill Bradley to curtail all television advertising, in an attempt to neutralize Bradley’s campaign-finance reform message. Long associated with Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Shrum also worked on Sen. John Kerry’s 1996 campaign against former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld for Kerry’s Senate seat. He recently formed Century Media with Gore consultants Carter Eskew and Bill Knapp.
Michael Whouley: Field director in Iowa and New Hampshire responsible for the precinct-by-precinct organization. Whouley is also a partner with the Dewey Square Group, a communications firm. On his lobbying disclosure forms, Whouley noted that he lobbied the vice president’s office for Northwest Airlines Inc. He’s also represented Mastercard International and Visa, lobbying Congress to pass a bankruptcy bill that would, among other things, make it more difficult for individuals to wipe out their credit card debt. Whouley also represented a coalition of companies that were pressing for passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The Coelho Group
Michael Berman: Brought in by Coelho to advise on controlling costs of the campaign. Berman is president of the Duberstein Group, a lobbying firm whose chairman is Kenneth Duberstein, a Republican who is advising Arizona Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign. On his lobbying disclosure reports, Berman noted that he had lobbied the White House for numerous clients, including General Motors Corp., which was seeking relief from costs associated with fuel-efficiency standards, and Time Warner Inc., which was pressing for continuation of a moratorium on Internet taxes while opposing a moratorium on cable rate hikes. For both Time Warner and the National Cable Television Association, Berman was lobbying a bill that would allow satellite companies to provide local stations to viewers. He also helped CSX Corp. persuade Congress to defeat legislation that would have forced dominant railroad companies to open up their rails to shippers at reasonable rates. He also noted that he directly lobbied the vice president’s office on Medicare reform issues for the American Association of Health Plans, which represents managed care companies.
Marcia Hale: Marcia Hale was one of Coelho’s political field directors at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who now offers the campaign political advice. At the beginning of the Clinton administration, Hale became the president’s director of intergovernmental affairs, serving as a liaison between the White House and state and local governments. She developed close relationships with Democratic mayors and governors, and it was Hale who first called Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell to head up the Democratic National Committee, which he now chairs.
Hale left the White House in 1998 to work for Monsanto Co. as director of international governmental affairs. Monsanto, a leading manufacturer of genetically modified seeds, has been advocating that the U.S. take a tough stand against Japanese and European trading partners that want to reduce imports of genetically engineered food and impose tough labeling standards. According to The Washington Post, soon after Monsanto hired Hale as international regulatory director, Monsanto brought Irish journalists to the U.S. and arranged a peek at the Oval Office for them.
Fred Hatfield: Member of Coelho’s kitchen cabinet and chief of staff to Coelho when he was a California congressman. He is current chief of staff to Sen. John Breaux (D-La.). He told the Center that his role is informal, as a “friend and sounding board” for Coelho. They chat by phone, sometimes as much as twice a day, about “Southern issues and Louisiana,” — topics such as oil and gas, tourism and agriculture. After Coelho left the House, Hatfield went to work with Coelho at an educational software company based in Washington and helped Coelho organize the U.S. exhibitions at the 1998 World Exposition. Coelho’s management was criticized by federal investigators (see “Tony Coelho”).
Tom Nides: Part of Coelho’s kitchen cabinet. He’s a senior vice president of human resources for Fannie Mae Corp., which provides liquidity in the mortgage market by buying and reselling mortgages for lenders. In an interview with the Center, Nides downplayed his role in the campaign, saying that he speaks with Coelho by phone. The two have remained close since Nides worked for Coelho at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the late 1980s. After Coelho left Congress, Nides became administrative assistant to former House Speaker Tom Foley of Washington, and then chief of staff to U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor in 1993. In the mid-1990s, he was a vice president of Fannie Mae, and then moved to New York to head up investment company Morgan Stanley’s lobbying and public relations activities. In November, 1997, he returned to Fannie Mae.
The policy advisers
As vice president, Gore doesn’t have the same kind of policy apparatus that many other candidates do. There are no teams of outside advisers on various issues that come up with policy prescriptions. While his campaign has made some refinements, most of his policy ideas are similar to proposals that the Clinton administration already has introduced. Administration officials are prohibited by federal ethics rules from using their offices to assist Gore. But as vice president, he has been able to call, over the years, on the vast resources of the government, and has been able to draw on virtually every Cabinet secretary for policy know-how. Several of the department secretaries have campaigned for Gore on their own time, says Elaine Kamarck, who coordinates domestic policy for the campaign. According to an Energy Department aide, Secretary Bill Richardson attended some political debates at Gore’s invitation and had been to Iowa. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala went to New Hampshire, and the campaign paid for her ticket. Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman is also actively advising on political strategy.
Elaine Kamarck: Coordinator of the campaign’s policy apparatus. Kamarck worked with Gore in the White House as his senior policy adviser, running his National Performance Review, better known as the “reinventing government” initiative. In that role, she forged relationships with policy makers throughout the administration. Gore met Kamarck when she was working as a senior policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. There, she and William Galston, another adviser to Gore, helped formulate the New Democrat philosophy that Bill Clinton embraced in his 1992 election. After leaving the White House in 1997, she became executive director of Visions of Government for the Twenty-First Century, a new program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Kamarck told the Center that most of Gore’s policy advisers have not submitted formal briefing proposals to the campaign. Gore consults with current and former officials from the Clinton administration. Advisers who provide substantive policy advice filter their proposals through Kamarck. The campaign, she said, has not designated certain advisers to head up particular policy areas.
Graham Allison: Adviser on defense issues. He was deputy secretary of defense for planning and policy during the first year of the Clinton administration and coordinated Defense Department strategy toward Russia, Ukraine and other republics of the former Soviet Union. A nuclear weapons expert, he has written numerous books, some warning of the risk of accidental nuclear conflicts. After a year in the Clinton administration, Allison returned to Harvard University to teach government and continued to consult with then-Defense Secretary William Perry. He is on the board of directors of Belco Oil and Gas and Taubman Centers Inc., a company that acquires and develops regional shopping centers.
Alan Blinder: Adviser on economic issues. He was a member of Clinton’s first White House Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1994, and served as a vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1994 to 1996. Blinder teaches at Princeton University.
Richard Boxer: Adviser on health-care policy. He heads an e-mail group of about 10 health-care experts who gather and feed information to the campaign. Boxer is professor of health policy and family and community medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and professor of urological surgery at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. A survivor of melanoma and lymphoma, Boxer was one of a half-dozen practicing physicians asked to evaluate Hillary Clinton’s health care reform proposal.
Boxer told the Center that Gore asked him to “sweep with a broad net for fresh new ideas about health care policy.” His network put together a proposal that was reflected in a Gore speech in September at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. Gore’s plan calls for first covering 11 million uninsured children and then covering their uninsured parents. Boxer said that other group ideas were reflected in Gore’s speech last May in Philadelphia, in which he called for doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health and more focus on cancer research. Boxer has traveled with Gore to Iowa and New Hampshire.
Bob Chase: Chase, president of the National Education Association, advises the campaign on education issues. As head of the 2.5 million-member teachers union, Chase speaks to the campaign and to Gore directly on a number of education issues, including ways to recruit and retain teachers, teachers’ pay, mentoring and school accountability.
Christopher Edley Jr.: Adviser on community development and race issues. A professor at Harvard University, Edley was special counsel to President Clinton and the point man for the White House’s 1995 review of affirmative action. He was responsible for Clinton’s eventual embrace of the mend-it-don’t-end-it policy prescription. In his 1996 book, Not All Black and White: Affirmative Action and American Values, Edley advocated affirmative action while suggesting ways it could be reformed. Edley has helped Gore connect with the African-American community on a more personal way by suggesting that he deliver his 1998 Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King preached. Gore spoke at Ebenezer again in January 2000. Edley was national issues director for Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign.
Sandra Feldman: President of the American Federation of Teachers, she advises the campaign on education issues. Feldman has strongly endorsed Gore’s opposition to the use of federally funded vouchers for private schools, though she’s given tepid support to his proposal that teachers pass an evaluation test every five years to keep their certification. Endorsing the position of the teachers unions, Gore has said that such a proposal should not be a federal requirement but a guidepost for local governments.
John Hope Franklin: Adviser on race issues. Franklin was chairman of the advisory board of the President’s Initiative on Race, which in 1998 suggested ways to eliminate racial disparities in the U.S. Franklin is a professor emeritus of history at Duke University.
Leon Fuerth: Chief foreign policy adviser in the White House. While most foreign policy advisers of vice presidents have been relegated to the back rooms, Fuerth has played a central role in White House policy circles. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. delegate to the United Nations, wrote in his memoir that Fuerth is “one of those powerful but rarely seen people who play major roles behind the scene in Washington.” He is a member of the so-called Principals Committee, which is involved in major foreign policy decisions and is composed of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Defense Secretary William Cohen. Fuerth has worked for Gore since 1979, when Gore was in the House of Representatives.
Dr. Drew Gaffney: Adviser on health-care issues. Gaffney is the personal physician of Gore’s mother, Pauline Gore, and he treated Gore’s late father. Gaffney, a cardiologist, is professor of medicine and senior vice chairman of the department of medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Gaffney told the Center that he is part of a group of about 10 practicing physicians, academics and other health-care experts who frequently trade e-mails and submit papers to Elaine Kamarck, the campaign’s head of domestic policy. Among the issues they discuss: lowering the cost of prescription drugs, especially for the elderly and children, and insuring children and their low-income parents. Both Gore and President Clinton have issued proposals on both topics. Gaffney said he speaks directly to the vice president and to Tipper Gore and said they are “absolutely involved and well-informed, for example, about Medicare rules, in ways people wouldn’t expect.” Gaffney’s particular interest is “evidence-based” medicine, which means determining the treatments that lead to the best outcomes, and ensuring that all doctors get the information.
William Galston: Unpaid adviser on education, child care, family policy, and Gore’s “livability” agenda, which is aimed at the concerns of two-earner, time-squeezed parents. He worked closely with Gore as his senior adviser during Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign. Galston is director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. During the first two years of the Clinton administration, he was deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, and earlier played a key role in the development of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, where he worked closely with Elaine Kamarck, the campaign’s domestic policy coordinator.
Galston told the Center that he is in daily touch with Kamarck, and submits papers, attends meetings, and is involved with conference calls. He said he has talked to Gore over the years about the importance of fathers reconnecting to their families. Galston has helped Gore organize his yearly conferences on the family, which revolve around a specific theme. He said that he also has talked with Gore for a long time about using faith-based organizations to deliver services. On education, he said, “I’m publicly identified with creating a National Teachers Corps to get a new generation into teaching,” especially into poor, urban schools. He supports a pay differential to recruit and retain teachers in these schools — a plan that Gore has adopted as part of his campaign.
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Advises Gore on education and race issues. Gates is one of the foremost experts on racial issues in the United States. Gates and a few other black intellectuals, including William Julius Wilson, have created what they hope will be the Internet’s premiere black education portal. Gates took over the History of American Civilization department at Harvard, transforming it into the most highly praised such program in the nation. Gates has said that his role in the campaign is to help write speeches and develop policies. He has stopped writing for The New Yorker, where he was a staff writer. Gates is the author and editor of several books and anthologies regarding black critical thought, multi-culturalism, social theory, and post-modern philosophy. In 1997, Time magazine included Gates as one of the “25 Most Influential Americans.” In mid-December 1999, the Gore campaign launched a national effort to energize and mobilize more than 2,000 African-American leaders with a message emphasizing his positions on health care and education.
Richard Holbrooke: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In mid-January 2000, he turned over a Security Council session to Gore to lead a discussion on the AIDS crisis in Africa. Gore announced that the administration would ask Congress for more money to fight AIDS worldwide, hoping to blunt criticism that the vice president earlier had supported the pharmaceutical companies’ attempts to block the manufacturer of generic AIDS drugs in South Africa. Holbrooke worked on Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign. He was largely responsible for negotiating the 1995 Bosnia-Herzegovina peace agreement.
Christopher Jennings: An adviser on health care. Jennings works in the White House, where he is deputy assistant to the president for health policy. He is responsible for health-care policy development, evaluating legislative proposals and coordinating health-care policy of all the agencies. He played a major role in working with Congress on a Patients’ Bill of Rights, which would have provided consumer protections to patients in managed-care plans. He also worked on the staffs of three senators and in 1989 was deputy staff director of the Senate Aging Committee.
Dr. Dean Ornish: One of about 10 outside health-care experts who advise the campaign on health-care policy. He’s a well-known cardiologist at the University of California at San Francisco and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito. Ornish, author of four best-selling books and the subject of a Bill Moyers special on the Public Broadcasting Service, advocates the idea that diet, exercise and lifestyle changes can do as good a job in reversing severe heart disease as dangerous, expensive heart surgery. He places his patients on a strict vegetarian, low-fat diet. Ornish’s patients also stretch, meditate and go to group therapy to reduce stress. A five-year study published in 1998 showed his patients had lower cholesterol levels, and that many were able to avoid surgery. Ornish spent five years trying to persuade the federal government to make his regimen an option for Medicare patients. The administration recently agreed to fund a demonstration project for up to 1,800 Medicare recipients. Hillary Clinton has invited him to the White House, and in October 1999 he conducted a bipartisan retreat with congressional leaders.
William Perry: Foreign policy adviser. Perry became Clinton’s defense secretary in 1994, after Secretary Les Aspin died. Perry had worked in the Carter administration as the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, and went on to teach at Stanford University as an arms control and defense restructuring expert.
Robert Rubin: A former Clinton Treasury secretary, Rubin advises the campaign on economic issues. Rubin was probably the most popular Treasury secretary in the postwar era, nurturing along a buoyant economy as well as promoting the ideals of an interdependent global marketplace. Several months after leaving the administration in July, he accepted a job at Citigroup, the world’s largest financial services company, as chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors and co-chief executive along with two others.
Rubin was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs & Co. before joining the Clinton administration as chief of the White House’s National Economic Council, a new post that coordinated administration economic policy. Just before leaving Treasury, Rubin helped craft and negotiate congressional passage of legislation that benefited Citigroup. The legislation removed the decades-old firewalls between banking, securities and insurance companies. Without its passage, Citigroup would have had to sell some of its businesses, including its Travelers Group insurance unit.
According to The New York Times, Rubin said he had “conversations” about the legislation after he left the Treasury Department and during a five-week period of negotiating for the job at Citigroup, but that he never lobbied for the bill. In November 1999, though, a group of consumer and community groups called for a government ethics investigation of Rubin’s decision to accept employment at Citigroup, arguing that the move raised an “undeniable appearance of impropriety.” The Inspector General’s office at the Treasury has referred the matter to the Justice Department.
Robert J. Shapiro: Adviser on economics. He is undersecretary for economic affairs at the Commerce Department, where he oversees the major statistical agencies, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Before joining the administration, Shapiro was vice president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, the policy arm of the Democratic Leadership Council. Shapiro was principal economic adviser to Clinton in his 1992 presidential campaign.
Joseph E. Stiglitz: Adviser on economics. Stiglitz recently left his post as chief economist of the World Bank. For months, he had been at odds with both the International Monetary Fund and the Clinton administration for what he considered their poor handling of Russia’s privatization programs. He complained that the two entities should have played a bigger role in seeing that Russia set up legal and other frameworks to control excesses. Stiglitz planned to spend some time at the Brookings Institution before heading back to Stanford University. Before joining the World Bank in 1997, he was chairman of Clinton’s White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Laura Tyson: Adviser on economics. She joined the White House at the start of the administration to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. She became chief of the White House National Economic Council, which coordinates the administration’s economic policy, after Robert Rubin left that post to become Treasury secretary. She is now dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.
Naomi Wolf: Advising the campaign on wooing the women’s vote. Her presence in the campaign created a mini-firestorm when news organizations reported that she had been advising Gore on how to portray himself as an aggressive “alpha male,” a strategy that included the wearing of earth-tone clothes. Her $15,000 monthly salary was immediately cut to $5,000, which is being paid by the consulting firm run of Shrum and Eskew. Wolf emerged as one of the leading advocates for feminism with her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. She advised Clinton in his 1996 campaign on attracting women’s support.