 
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Friday, April 14, 2000
By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Politics Editor
Republican presidential rivals George W. Bush and John McCain will rendezvous in Pittsburgh next month for their first meeting since McCain suspended his candidacy and conceded the nomination to the Texas governor.
Bush and McCain will meet here on May 9. The exact site and details of the fence-mending session have yet to be worked out.
"Of course I want his support, but I don't know if it will happen as a result of the meeting," Bush told reporters in Austin when asked if he was looking for an endorsement.
"John wants to visit. I want to visit."
In Washington, McCain said, "I'm sure we'll have a fruitful discussion."
Asked whether he hoped to address the Republican convention, which opens July 31 in Philadelphia, McCain said, "That's up to Gov. Bush."
Through the early months of the presidential campaign, meetings between the pair were frequent and cordial. But their ties frayed quickly after McCain upset Bush in the New Hampshire primary.
The two former military pilots engaged in an increasingly acrimonious duel in the weeks leading to the South Carolina primary. Bush ended up trouncing McCain in the Palmetto State after a rough campaign that shredded the veil of civility in the GOP competition.
McCain aired an ad that compared Bush's veracity to President Clinton's. Bush stood on a stage and listened as a supporter accused McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, of turning his back on veterans.
McCain bashed Bush's tactics in an angry concession speech and went on to defeat the Texan days later in the Michigan primary. The bitter mood showed no signs of abating right up until March 7, when Bush's string of Super Tuesday victories made it clear that his march to the nomination could not be stopped.
McCain made the traditional concession call to Bush that night and aides said that the two had talked by phone at least once since then. McCain has said that he would support the Republican ticket, but has also suggested that his enthusiasm for Bush would be a function of the degree to which Bush embraced the reform agenda, particularly campaign finance reform, that McCain advanced through the primaries.
In recent weeks, Bush has made a series of policy initiatives designed to appeal to the political center where McCain won supporters. Bush's new proposals have included plans for health care, education, and the environment. The governor offered the environmental measure in a recent visit to Aliquippa, where he appeared with Gov. Ridge, who is a friend of both men.
Neither campaign, nor Ridge's office, had any information on whether Ridge might be involved in the May 9 meeting. Newsweek magazine reported last week that McCain had declined an earlier invitation to have lunch with Bush and Ridge. A spokesman for the McCain campaign declined to comment on that report yesterday.
"The governor has said that he has not been part of any conversations between them and he does not expect to be," said Ridge's press secretary, Tim Reeves "And if he were, he would not talk publicly about that."
Leslie Groomis, who is an official of the Bush campaign in Pennsylvania and was Ridge's campaign manager in his 1998 re-election, said a Bush visit to Pittsburgh had already been tentatively set for May 8 but that its details -- likely to include some combination of fund-raising and public appearances -- had yet to be worked out.
Todd Harris, a McCain aide, said the Bush-McCain meeting had been agreed to yesterday morning and Pittsburgh had been chosen simply because Bush was already scheduled to be in the city and it is a convenient spot for the senator to visit.
"Sen. McCain has said all along that he will go into this meeting with no conditions and no demands," Harris said.
Many Republicans view a Bush-McCain combination as their strongest potential ticket for November. McCain has said he is not interested in the second spot, and the rough tenor of the primary makes that assertion believable. Still, presidential nominees have bridged bigger political gulfs in choosing running mates in the past, so that possibility cannot be counted out.
One figure who can be expected to watch the vice presidential issue closely is Ridge, who is widely talked about as a potential Bush running mate. During their joint appearance in Aliquippa April 3, both men joked about it, but neither offered any substantive comment on it.
Among the other issues that could come up in the session are disputes over the allocation of convention delegates in some states carried by McCain. In Vermont, for example, McCain came in first in the balloting, but GOP officials who supported Bush are trying to capture delegate spots from McCain loyalists.