Washington, D.C.
- RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie issued the following statement today
regarding a Kerry/DNC campaign document that instructs Democrats to
make up charges of voter intimidation even if no signs or evidence of
voter intimidation actually exist.
“This document proves the Kerry Campaign and the DNC are more
interested in scaring minority voters than in working to reach out to
them on Election Day, even if it means completely making things up.
“The Kerry Campaign and the DNC are instructing Democrats
around the country to make charges they know to be false, and to
manipulate the media into printing and repeating the false charges in
newspapers around the country.
“Republicans have worked hard to reach out and bring the
President's message of hope and optimism to all Americans, including
minority voters around the country. John Kerry sees these efforts, is
concerned by them and is now working to scare those voters with lies
and wholesale fabrications.”
Republican National Committee Transcript Robert Traynham: Good afternoon everyone. Let
me first just thank everyone for joining us today. I’d like to turn
over the conference call to Commissioner Michael William from Texas,
who has graciously made himself available to discuss the Democratic
National Committee’s Election Manual, which basically charged voter
intimidation even if none exists. Just to give you some background the
Kerry-Edwards Campaign and the Democratic National Committee are
advising election operatives, basically all of their staff, to declare
voter intimidation even if none exists, which is clearly preposterous
and certainly an outrage. And with that I’d like to turn it over to
Commissioner Williams. Commissioner Williams: Robert thank you and
for all of you that are visiting with us today, I appreciate you being
here and I thank you for your time. You know, for some time now,
Democrat operatives and the DNC have been suggesting that the
Republican Party was gonna engage in some sort of voter intimidation.
Those kind of allegations are not new, however they are very untrue,
and have been untrue, and we’ve been saying so for some time. But
what’s interesting now is to look at what the DNC has done as part of
their Colorado election manual for their staff and for the Democrat
operatives’ staff across the country. As I look at this 66 page guide
and look on, I think it’s page 54, it actually says in plain English,
that if no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a
pre-emptive strike. What that means in clear language is, if there is
no evidence of intimidation, which we don’t expect there will be,
because we’re not going to engage in it, then make it up and talk about
it anyway. That is totally outrageous. As an elected official, myself,
who is obviously on the ballot every year in Texas and every six years,
it’s outrageous number one to even make the claim that someone would
engage in voter intimidation, but it is truly outrageous and callous
and shameful to have operatives, to suggest to operatives, that if you
don’t see intimidation just sort of make it up and talk about it. I
understand why Senator Kerry has to do this, obviously he has not as of
this moment connected in a very strong way with African American voters
and other minority voters and he’s trying to gin up his base. He should
gin up his base with the ability to talk about issues that are
important to that base, but not with trying to scare those voters,
particularly in this kind of calculating, callous fashion. Let me see
if anyone has any questions. Question: I was going to ask a different
question, but I don’t know if you guys are watching the same thing that
everyone else is watching. You just said that Kerry is not addressing
issues that are important to Black issues, well I saw the debate last
night and I believe it was your candidate who did not support
affirmative action and went on a bit about quotas last night. And I
question has this been going on for a while, have you know about this
Colorado election manual for a while and if you have why are you
bringing it out now? Are you trying to deflect the fact that your
candidate did not look very strong in the debate last night? Commissioner: Quite the contrary, I think the
President did quite well. But to answer your question about the manual,
the manual is dated November 2004, we just became aware of it, I just
became aware of it, as a matter of fact, I think other national media
sources have just become aware of the manual just now. So that’s why
we’re talking about this now. Question: I had a question, I was just
wondering how can this get out, because I do know that in terms of what
the President has done, that would be a benefit to the Black community,
we’ve had trouble getting that word out in the mainstream media. We’ve
particularly had problems getting it out among the media that deals
with the Black Community, this could be a real big problem. I think
this has been a problem for years. Commissioner: Well obviously the President
has a strong and defined record, if you go back and look at, as the
President spoke about last night and in the other debates, in terms of
what he’s done with No Child Left Behind, in terms of increased funding
for historically black colleges and universities, increased dollars
going into Pell Grants, and when you think about the tax cuts, each and
every one of those tax cut activities were ways, not only to provide
additional dollars into the pockets of Americans generally, but there
are African American tax payers that were able to receive dollars from
the child tax credit increase, dollars from the reduction in terms of
the marriage penalty, obviously there are going to be African Americans
that benefit from that. But you’re right, we’ve got to continue, even
in these next 19 days, to make that record clear and sell that record
louder to African American audiences. Question: Yes, Mr. Williams I’m wondering if
you or anyone else from the RNC have contacted or attempted to talk
with the DNC, with regard to what you feel is an outrageous act on
their part, with regard to this manual. Commissioner: I have not personally attempted
to speak with them about this manual today, but I will tell you, you
know, some time ago, prior to the Conventions, RNC Chairman Ed
Gillespie asked Terry McAuliffe to form a bi-partisan group to identify
precincts around the country that both parties might be interested in
looking in to make sure that there would not be any kind of violation
of election laws. That offer was rebuffed by Terry McAuliffe, and I
think what that indicates is, what they would much rather do is to have
this issue to talk about, even though it’s not true, but to have this
issue to talk about as opposed to try and solve a problem, but I myself
have not had any conversation with the folks at the DNC, if other
Republican elected officials, or folks at the RNC, within the last 48
hours, I am not aware of that, they may have. Question: Hi there, you just said that John
Kerry has to resort to these tactics because he doesn’t have an African
American agenda and I wanted to ask you about that and another question
as well. One, do you have any evidence tying John Kerry personally to
this, to what you’re alleging as this Colorado manual, which I haven’t
found yet, but I will, and I’m going to let you answer that and if I
may ask another question. Commissioner: Well the question is if this is
a DNC manual, and obviously what Senator Kerry has done by innuendo,
when asked a question some time ago, as to whether there might be some
kind of voter intimidation, by innuendo he suggested that there could
be or would be, but there’s a fairly strong relationship, obviously,
between the DNC and Senator Kerry, this is a DNC manual, however. Robert: I would also add, excuse me Commissioner
Williams, on the front page of the manual Kerry Edwards is promptly
displayed. Question: Right, but still what you’re saying
is that you don’t really have any evidence, it’s just on the manual,
you’re saying this is DNC and not the Kerry campaign, is that what
you’re saying? Commissioner: Well at the top of the manual,
it has the Kerry Edwards banner on it, now it says it’s authored by the
DNC, but the Kerry Edwards banner is at the top of the manual. Question: I wanted to follow up on another
question that someone asked earlier, I’d like you to just pinpoint, not
even generally, when you became aware of this and what specifically you
plan to do about it….. Robert: Commissioner Williams, the question
was, I believe, when specifically were you aware of this and what do
you plan to do about it. Commissioner: I first became aware of it, I
happened to have been reading Drudge when I first became aware of it,
and there was a later conversation with the RNC, what I plan on doing
about it is making people aware of it and that’s thankfully, you guys
are with us now so we can have that conversation. Question: Yeah, question about whether you
have any evidence or the Bush Cheney campaign has any evidence that
there have been attempts by Democratic workers in different states
including Colorado, to launch a so called pre-emptive cries of voter
intimidation. Have you seen anything that indicates that this is
something they’re intending to do? I guess three weeks out, this would
be the time to do it. Commissioner: Well this instruction manual,
obviously it’s an instruction manual that’s dated November 2004, but
it’s an instruction manual about what activity they’re supposed to
engage in. While I have not seen those yet, we do know that there are
people that have made allegations about either voter intimidation or
striking people from roles that have not been true yet. Perhaps that
was a consequence of sort of taking instructions from this manual. But
I think what’s important for us not to lose sight of, is that this is
an instruction manual indicating what they want democratic operatives
to do, henceforth, going forward, from the date that they receive this
manual, which is November 2004. Question: Hi Commissioner, is this in fact your own
pre-emptive strike to stop the democratic pre-emptive strike? Commissioner: This is my way of setting the
record straight and making sure all of us understand what is planning
to go on, and to call attention to what I think is a challenge attempt,
to basically a callous attempt to provide falsehoods about what the RNC
and what the President are doing. If you wish to characterize it as a
pre-emptive strike against a pre-emptive strike, that would be fine
with me. Question: I’m going to come back to this
issue again for the second time, I’ve done some research this year on a
Professor who’s done work on elections going all the way back to 1960,
almost to the present, and it’s his belief that the so called presence
of some of the black republicans in the GOP is not so much to get a
message out to the black community, where you don’t have much
credibility quite frankly, but you’re trying to show moderate whites
that you’re not the party of white racists. Respond to that. Commissioner: Let’s do this, I’m elected here
in Texas state-wide, in my last election received three and a half
million votes, of those three and a half million votes, I probably
generate more votes among African Americans than most African American
members of the House of Representatives. They probably have to run 10
times in order to generate the same number of votes that I vote in the
election cycle. So to try to delegitimize us is not going to be
possible, particularly for those of us who run and win in statewide
elections. We do indeed serve the African American community, I think
if you look at the four of us black republican statewide elected
officials, we all have fairly strong records in the African American
community, and the African American community respects that. Question: Yea, I want to come back to a
question too, I really want to know when it was exactly that you saw
the Matt Drudge report and I want to know how you went about responding
to it, did you call this press conference? Commissioner: I saw it this morning, which
would have been about 9 something my time, and then shortly after that
I had a telephone call with the folks at the RNC. Robert: Thank you very much Commissioner, we very
much appreciate your time for doing this. Commissioner: I want to thank each of you for being
with us, thank you, appreciate it. Robert, thank you.
Transcript of October 14, 2004 Conference Call With Texas Railroad
Commissioner Michael Williams