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Group seeks bipartisan ’OB ticket
BY STEPHEN LARGEN
STAFF WRITER
The influence of third-party can
didates such as Ralph Nader and
Ross Perot largely has been limited
to siphoning off enough votes from
one major-party candidate to help
the other win. Anew ticket for the
2008 presidential election aims to
change all that.
The group UnityOS will hold an
online primary following the major
parties’ primaries in summer 2008
to draft a bipartisan presidential
ticket.
National and World News
Stock market drops
by 400-plus points
NEW YORK (AP) Stocks had their worst day
of trading since the Sept. 11,2001, terrorist attacks
Tuesday, hurtling the Dow Jones industrials down
more than 400 points on a worldwide tide of concern
that the U.S. and Chinese economies are stumbling
and that share prices have become overinflated.
The steepness of the market’s drop, as well as its
global breadth, signaled a possible correction after a
long period of stable and steadily rising stock markets
that had not been shaken by such a volatile day of trad
ing in several years.
A 9 percent slide in Chinese stocks, which came a
day after investors sent Shanghai’s benchmark index to
a record high close, set the tone for U.S. trading. The
Dow fell 4.3 percent before recovering some ground
in the last hour of trading.
Slum raided
for suspects
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S.-
led strike forces seized suspected
Shiite death squad bosses Tuesday
in raids that tested the fragile
bonds between the government
and a powerful militia faction
allowing the Baghdad security
crackdown to move ahead.
The sweeps through the Sadr
City slum were part of highly
sensitive forays into areas loyal
to radical cleric Muqtada al-
Sadr, who has ridiculed the two
week-old campaign for failing
to halt bombings by suspected
Sunni insurgents against Shiite
civilians.
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The objective is to elect a ticket
with representatives from differ
ent parties, either a combination
of candidates from the two major
parties or an independent candi
date allied with a major party.
If the independent candidate
were to win, he would name a
member of the remaining party to
a high-level cabinet position.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., has
become the first potential candidate
to express significant interest in
working with UnityOS. In an inter
view with USA Today, he said the
Bomb detonates
near vice president
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) ln what the
Taliban claimed was an assassination attempt, a sui
cide bomber attacked the main gate of a U.S. military
base Tuesday within earshot of Vice President Dick
Cheney.
The explosion killed 23 people, including two
Americans, and it delivered a propaganda blow that
undercut the U.S. military and the weak Afghan gov
ernment it supports.
The bomber struck at about 10 a.m., and U.S.
military officials declared a red alert at the sprawl
ing Bagram Air Base while Cheney was rushed to a
bomb shelter. Cheney, who had been stranded at the
base overnight by a snowstorm, met with President
Hamid Karzai in the capital before heading back to
the United States via the Gulf state of Oman.
Gore called
hypocrite
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -
A1 Gore, a leading voice in the
fight against global warming,
is being called a hypocrite by a
conservative group that claims
his Nashville mansion uses too
much electricity.
But a spokeswoman for Gore
said the former vice president
invests in enough renewable
energy to make up for the home’s
power consumption.
Gore’s documentary film “An
Inconvenient Truth” won an
Oscar on Sunday for chronicling
his campaign against global
warming.
idea was an intriguing enterprise.
Steven Greene, professor of politi
cal science at N.C. State University,
said he is not impressed by the idea
of a unity ticket. “It’s a well-inten
tioned, hopeless gimmick.”
Unityoß is the brainchild of a
group of political veterans who were
once part of the very party establish
ments they now are trying to defeat,
along with political novices like UNC
student Zach Clayton looking to take
the country in anew direction.
Clayton, a senior economics major
from Raleigh, is one of a small group
Sharpton’s
angle refitted
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - The
biracial daughter of the late Sen.
Strom Thurmond defended the
former segregationist and said
the Rev. A1 Sharpton “overreact
ed” when Sharpton learned he is
a descendent of a slave owned by
the senator’s relatives.
“In spite of the fact he was a
segregationist, he did many won
derful things for black people,” said
Essie Mae Washington-Williams,
81, who was in South Carolina for
a speech. “I kind of feel that there
was a little overreaction.”
“I underreacted if anything,”
Sharpton said in an AP interview.
News
of students who are closely involved
with the campaign.
“I really saw the promise of the
Internet to restore some depth to
what passes for political debate
these days,” he said.
To vote, potential participants
must register as a delegate on
Unityoß.com. Voters do not have
to switch their party affiliation.
Shane Kinkennon, a retired bio
tech entrepreneur and spokesman
for Unityoß, said the focus on elim
inating both the influence of special
interests and dishonesty in politics
drew him to the campaign.
He acknowledged that a UnityOS
ticket’s chances of reaching the
White House aren’t good.
“It depends on what mood I’m
in,” he said. “If I’m being hopeful, I
would say yes. If I’m being realistic,
I’d say no.”
Greene said the organization’s goal
to fund itself solely through small
money donations of voting delegates
is particularly problematic.
Kinkennon acknowledged that
weakness. “It’s a big sort of Achilles
heel,” he said.
Howard Dean, chairman of the
Democratic National Committee,
had significant success building his
campaign coffers through small
money Internet donations in 2004.
Thad Beyle, UNC professor of
political science, said it is not real
istic for Unityoß to win but it could
affect the campaign. “It could be that
it affects one party’s candidate more
than the other.”
Kinkennon and Greene were
both skeptical that UnityOS would
be able to get a major-party candi
date to accept its nomination.
“If you do this, you lose support
in your own party” Greene said.
But in a time of widespread voter
dissatisfaction with incumbent poli
ticians, Greene found some value in
the goals pushed by UnityOS. “It’s
naive, but in kind of a good way.”
Clayton said he was not surprised
by the statements made by the politi
cal scientists. “Frankly, when we
started this, we were skeptical.”
He pointed out that UnityOS has
had close to 50,000 people join the
campaign, and it has received sig
nificant media attention in several
major newspapers and magazines.
“There are tough obstacles, but
they are not insurmountable.”
Contact the State & National
Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007
Poll: Hillary, Rudy
leading in South
BY KATHRYN ARDIZZONE
STAFF WRITER
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-
N.Y., and former New' York City
Mayor Rudy Giuliani have an early
edge in the 2008 presidential elec
tion, according to a poll of five
Southeastern states conducted by
the Elon University Institute for
Politics and Public Affairs.
The survey, which polled 719
residents in Florida, Georgia,
North Carolina, South Carolina and
Virginia, asked respondents to iden
tify the candidate in their political
party that they likely would endorse
in the 2008 presidential election.
Hunter Bacot, the director of
the poll and professor of political
science at Elon, said that Clinton’s
lead within the Democratic hope
fuls in the poll has garnered much
attention from political analysts
who said they are surprised that
she fared so well in states that are
conservative strongholds.
He also said he was surprised to
see U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,
virtually tied with Giuliani.
“What struck me is that it’s a dead
heat with Giuliani and McCain,”
Bacot said. “These five states are
Republican states, so it looks like
there’s going to be a battle brewing
in the Republican Party.”
But the John William Pope
Civitas Institute, a conservative
research and public policy organi
zation, conducted a N.C. survey on
presidential candidates this month
that yielded different results.
The Civitas Institute’s Decision
Results of Elon University poll
Of the respondents
who would support the
Democratic Party in 2008:
► 30 percent said they would
support U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton,
D-N.Y., at this time.
► 14 percent said they would
UK Sen. Barack Obama, D-111., at
this time.
► 8 percent said they wouid
support former U.S. Sen. John
Edwards, D-N.C., at this time.
► 24 percent said it was too
early to tell.
► 22 percent said they don't
know.
.aeanisud i>
Maker Poll, published earlier this
month, puts John Edwards, former
N.C. senator, ahead of Clinton and
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-111., by
two percentage points less than
the margin of error.
The results for Republican can
didates in the Civitas poll also differ
from the Elon poll: The Civitas poll
showed Giuliani leading McCain by
more than 10 percentage points.
Dennis Parker, director of
communications for the Civitas
Institute, said that the difference
in the methodologies that Elon
used to obtain its data explain why
results stray so greatly.
The Civitas poll uses voter lists
from past and upcoming elections to
obtain a random sample of registered
voters, whereas the Elon poll ran
domly selects people out of a phone
book, Parker said. Thus, whether or
not a respondent is qualified or likely
to vote is not a factor that the Elon
poll considers.
“It’s like going out on the street
and polling the first person you
find," he said. “The poll is called the
Decision Makers poll because the
people that participate are actual
voters.”
Like the Elon survey, Parker said,
the Civitas poll asked respondents
for whom they would vote if the
2008 election were to take place
today. However, Elon’s poll is con
ducted by students while a profes
sional company runs Civitas’.
Con tact the State & National
Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
Of the respondents
who would support the
Republican Party in 2008:
► 21 percent said they would
support former New York City
Mayor Rudy Giuliani at this time.
► 16 percent said they would
support U.S. Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz., at this time.
► 3 percent said they would
support former Mass. Gov. Mitt
Romney a this time.
► 31 percent said it was too
early to tell.
► 25 percent said they don't
know.
SOURCE: Elon University poll
13