Clinton campaign admits planting question at forum

Hillary Clinton stopped at a biodiesel plant in Newton, Iowa, last week to see alternative fuels in the making and to drive home the week’s campaign theme of her energy plan. After a tour, the candidate took questions from the crowd.

She called on a young woman. “As a young person,” said the well-spoken Muriel Gallo- Chasanoff, “I’m worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?”

“Well, you should be worried,” Clinton replied. “You know, I find as I travel around Iowa that it’s usually young people that ask me about global warming.”

There’s a good reason for that, too. The question was a plant, rigged in advance, like a late-night infomercial. Just before the public forum a Clinton staffer had chosen the young woman, a student at Grinnell College, and asked her to ask that specific question.

Trouble is, the young woman told others, and her account showed up on the Grinnell website, including mention that the staffer signaled Clinton whom to call on.

As other campaigns spread the news far and wide (“That’s what George Bush does,” intoned John Edwards at the Iowa Farmers Union), a Clinton campaign spokesman sheepishly admitted the plant. “On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Sen. Clinton’s energy plan at a forum. However, Sen. Clinton did not know which questioners she was calling on during the event. This is not standard policy and will not be repeated.”

Although other campaigns are righteously denying it, virtually every professional presidential campaign plants questions. It’s a routine part of preparation for the advance people staging every event.

Not every question is planted, as you can tell from the weird ones that sometimes pop up. Most that are are done in advance with known local supporters who can be trusted and, frankly, are flattered by their moment in the limelight addressing the possible next president in front of friends. A twist on this strategy is for a candidate’s team to smuggle one of its supporters into an opponent’s event to ask an embarrassing question while the cameras roll.

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OK, grab your remotes. Put your fingers on the fast-forward button. It’s about to start. The flood of presidential political ads on TV is beginning for real. And chances are it won’t let up much for the next year.

Until recently, millionaire Mitt aside, there haven’t been many presidential TV ads outside of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Rudy Giuliani hasn’t bought one second of TV time, and he’s the national GOP front-runner. But, of course, he had all that exposure around 9/11 to build his image.

On the other hand, Mitt Romney had a lot of name recognition to assemble. So he has, spending more than $8.6 million on more than 11,000 ads in those three states. And guess what? He now leads in the first two voting states and is coming on strong in South Carolina, where Massachusetts attitudes can seem very far away.

Do the ads work? One August poll of South Carolina Republicans by American Research Group found Romney at 9%. A month later, after the former governor spent $350,000 on TV ads, Romney registered 17%. Barack Obama has spent $2.3 million on TV, Hillary Clinton $1 million less. Bill Richardson has invested about $2 million. With little money to spend until recently, libertarian Ron Paul has counted on his Internet guerrilla troops, often overzealous fans and boosters, and YouTube to get out his message of less government and no war. But with his recent record-breaking fundraising, he’s looking to start a TV campaign in New Hampshire at least.

TNS Media Intelligence did a study showing that more than $530 million had been spent on political and issue advertising this year, with expenditures during the remaining weeks of 2007 expected to increase to $700 million as candidates start addressing other states, including the 20 voting Feb. 5.

They got the right state

Presidential campaigns and their candidates -- George W. Bush aside -- are notorious for running late. You plan 60 minutes for one stop and there’s always 16 more people who want their photo taken with the candidate. And who wants to say no to a voter these days? Bill Bradley, Bill Clinton and others could easily be two hours late for a scheduled event.

Barack Obama was an hour late the other night for a gathering in an Iowa community college gym. Hundreds of potential supporters patiently cooled their heels in an increasingly warm place. But Obama had an excuse this time. When he got off the plane for the event, the usual Secret Service motorcade was nowhere in sight.

That’s because the candidate was 130 miles from where he was supposed to be. The private jet flying him in from Chicago had landed in Des Moines. The actual destination was Cedar Rapids. Des Moines. Cedar Rapids. What’s the difference? It’s all corn anyway.

The Obama camp didn’t acknowledge the error until it became known, fearing it would make an unwelcome metaphor for a campaign some think is off-track. “We just seemed to overshoot the runway by about 150 miles,” Obama joked as he entered a dairy bar with The Times’ Janet Hook in Wapello.

Ron Paul, Guy Fawkes and some Miami guy

Our friends over at Politico.com have the skinny on how Ron Paul managed to raise lottery-level cash in just one day this week. In a sense, it was outsourced. Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel traces it to one Trevor Lyman, a 37-year-old Internet music promoter and political novice from Miami Beach. Lyman’s innovative “e-bundling” process will likely find its way into other campaigns as Internet fundraising evolves. Why? Because everyone likes success, and raising more than $4 million in one day is nothing to sneeze at.

Lyman’s process merges basic Web fundraising with traditional bundling (gathering lots of donors’ checks and delivering them at the same time) and smart marketing -- media coverage follows poll leaders and money-raisers. Paul has been notably light in poll support, but a longshot candidate raising Hillary Clinton-scale dollars generated a ton of mainstream media coverage (she raised nearly $6.2 million on June 30, the one-day record).

It didn’t hurt that the fundraising day was timed to Guy Fawkes Day, celebrating a failed attempt to blow up the British Parliament -- a symbolic tie-in for Paul’s libertarian minimal-government views. Lyman is planning another round in December to mark the Boston Tea Party and Bill of Rights Day.

Huckabee feels left out

Mike Huckabee has spent the last few days watching Pat Robertson endorse Rudy Giuliani and Paul Weyrich endorse Mitt Romney while getting no love himself from the nation’s social conservative leadership. And Huckabee’s a bass-playing minister. So the other day Huckabee got one of his own: Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Foundation and a big player in Christian radio, not to mention an ace boycott organizer when he finds TV programs, movies and art offensive.

So what does all this mean? Clearly the social conservatives within the Republican Party have not been able to find a presidential horse they all want to ride together. Some don’t want to ride at all.

A sweaty encounter

Ah, the glamour of travel and campaigning for the presidency.

Bill Richardson was going for his regular morning workout the other day. He headed for the small exercise room at the Holiday Inn in Mason City, Iowa, where he’d spent the night after a long day of campaigning across eastern Iowa. Candidates grab these moments to themselves as often as their packed schedules allow.

As Richardson climbed onto the elliptical machine, he realized a familiar figure was occupying the StairMaster to his left: John Edwards, also in town for a campaign event. Their talk quickly turned to a third candidate, Barack Obama, who was not in the room.

Richardson told this story to crowds the rest of the day: “John says, ‘Bill, I’ve seen three Obama ads already. Boy, this guy’s got money.’ ”

Richardson used the encounter as a segue into a new favorite point about positive campaigning. “We’re all reasonably

good friends,” he said.

Times staff writer Scott Martelle contributed to this report.

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Excerpted from The Times’ political blog, Top of the Ticket, at www.latimes.com/ topoftheticket.