Mary Lynn Jones

Three years ago, Katherine Harris gave the Democrats headaches in Florida. Now she’s doing the same for Republicans. The former Florida secretary of state and current Republican congresswoman helped hand the White House to George W. Bush during the Florida recount of 2000. Now she is seriously weighing a bid for the seat being vacated […]

After the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, President Clinton famously wondered aloud whether he was relevant anymore. Given the recent actions of congressional Republicans, House and Senate Democrats could be forgiven for asking the same thing about themselves. Last week, Senate Republicans staged an almost 40-hour-long “reverse filibuster” to highlight the fact that […]

Last Friday, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) received the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service. The prize is given out annually by the Bush Presidential Library Foundation; according to the Houston Chronicle, an ad hoc committee of the former president’s acquaintances had recommended to Bush Senior that Kennedy be nominated for the award. […]

For months now Democratic presidential candidates have been trying to generate interest in their bids for the White House by “officially” announcing their campaigns — despite the fact that they have already been campaigning, in some cases, for more than a year. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) relaunched his bid on Sept. 2 in South Carolina, […]

In mid-2001, Washington’s chattering classes were abuzz with talk about which of George W. Bush’s cabinet secretaries would be the first to resign. Most of the attention focused on one person: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld wasn’t a popular figure around town. Democrats, of course, had never liked him. And the career military people at […]

The arrogance of Republicans on Capitol Hill is finally starting to catch up with them. Last week, House Republicans missed their own deadline to pass a Medicare prescription-drug bill. President Bush suffered a defeat when the Senate voted Thursday to turn half of his $20.3 billion aid package to Iraq into a loan, despite heavy […]

Former Atlanta Mayor and U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young gave a seemingly odd but increasingly common reason last week as to why he’s not running for Georgia’s open Senate seat next year. “I was afraid I’d win,” he said. “Winning would mean I would spend the next seven years of my life in Washington, and Washington […]

When I recently asked Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe how he felt about having nine candidates in the presidential race — this was before Wesley Clark’s announcement last Wednesday brought the field to 10 — he replied, “Love it. The more, the merrier.” McAuliffe added, “For me to have nine candidates traveling around the […]

Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) announced yesterday that he will not seek re-election to the Senate, and it was probably the best decision — for Edwards and, more importantly, for the Democratic Party. Even if Edwards had decided to campaign for a second term, his seat would have been a toss-up. At least now the party […]

Based on the reaction presidential hopeful Howard Dean drew from the approximately 4,000 people at his Saturday speech in Falls Church, Va., there’s a lot of anger here — as elsewhere — about the way the Bush administration is running the country. After Dean counted off the reasons Bush cited for going to war in […]