AP Uncovers Ridge Meetings
with Pollsters During Presidential Campaign
E&P/AP
February 17, 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge
met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span
last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to
presidential battleground states, according to records obtained
by The Associated Press.
Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz
and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his
agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were
revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by the AP under
the Freedom of Information Act.
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security,"
Ridge told reporters during the election season.
His aides resisted releasing the calendars for over a year,
finally providing them to the AP three days after Ridge left
office this month.
Homeland Security officials said the meeting with Luntz at
department headquarters was aimed at improving public
communication of the department's message, particularly on TV.
Ridge declined an interview with the AP about the calendars,
referring questions to former aides.
"We did not discuss homeland security in a presidential
campaign context," said Susan Neely, a former assistant homeland
security secretary who attended the May 17 session with Luntz and
Ridge. "We asked him his impression of how well we were
explaining whatever the issues were of the day. There was no
follow-up meeting."
Neely said the discussion took place after Ridge and Luntz ran
into each other and the homeland security secretary expressed an
interest in hearing Luntz's assessment.
McInturff, who has done the polling for all of Ridge's
campaigns for Congress and Pennsylvania governor, said the two
meet every few months to "shoot the breeze."
Homeland security officials said the May 26 conversation
between Ridge and McInturff was personal and the secretary did
not discuss any homeland security-related issues.
"When you've got Secret Service protection it's a heck of a
lot easier for me to meet the secretary of a major agency at the
agency than it is for him to come to Old Town and have lunch,"
McInturff said. Old Town is a neighborhood in Alexandria, Va.,
home of McInturff's company, Public Opinion Strategies.
"I have zero connection with anyone doing business with
homeland security, zero connection with the Bush campaign,"
McInturff said.
Ridge's meetings with the pollsters occurred just before the
first of 16 trips, from late May to late October, to 10 states
important to the president's re-election campaign. During the
same period, Ridge made 20 appearances in nine uncontested
states.
Four days after the meeting with Luntz, Ridge went to Missouri
for appearances in Kansas City and St. Louis. In the ensuing five
months, he averaged one public appearance a month in his home
state of Pennsylvania, traveled three times to Florida and made
one trip each to West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Arizona, and Washington.
Luntz helped write the 1994 "Contract With America," the
issues centerpiece in the GOP's takeover of the House a decade
ago. Luntz said he recalls nothing about the 45-minute discussion
with Ridge. He said he received no compensation for the
meeting.
Under the Hatch Act, which restricts political activity of
executive branch employees, costs associated with political
activity by Cabinet members may not be paid with federal
funds.
Luntz is one of "dozens, hundreds" of people the department
talks to about how to better communicate the complicated issues
of homeland security, Neely said.
Luntz's comments were "very reinforcing" that the way Ridge
and his aides were communicating the department's message "was
generally working, and to continue that," said Neely.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said
any assertions that politics played a part in homeland security
scheduling "are absolutely inaccurate and do not reflect
reality."
Ridge also participated in a number of events last year with
elected Democratic leaders.
"A vast majority" of the areas Ridge visited during his nearly
two-year tenure were in urban centers and border or coastal
states that tend to lean Democratic, Roehrkasse said.
When Ridge was running the department, he said the war on
terrorism is "about as apolitical or bipartisan as you can get.
There's no Republican or Democratic way to do it. We just have to
do it right, regardless of our party affiliation."
At the time of Ridge's meetings with the pollsters, President
Bush's re-election campaign was reeling from the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal and the news media was speculating that Ridge
might replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, or even Vice
President Dick Cheney.
Neely said Ridge's future in government did not come up in the
meeting with Luntz
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