TRAIL MIX

Occasional morsels from Campaign 2000

The real Green Party

A team of candidates for Congress, deeply rooted in the environment, is trying to strike a blow against incumbency. But these challengers have to overcome unique disadvantages, such as an inability to speak and a need for watering.

Mobilized by satirical film director Michael Moore, political skeptics across the country have enlisted ficus plants to seek write-in votes for 24 congressional races in 13 states.

Just like mainstream candidates, the ficus trees have a Web site--https://www.ficus2000.com--and are making campaign stops. One in Pennsylvania traveled the district on a “listening tour.” In Georgia, the ficus candidate attended the grand opening of a greenhouse. A Texas ficus candidate sports a cowboy hat, while one in South Carolina posed outside Bob Jones University.

A ficus hopeful in New Jersey was denied a spot on the ballot when the state Board of Elections refused to accept its petition, which carried the slogan “Because a Potted Plant Can Do No Harm.”

Incumbents targeted by the ficus have responded in the spirit of the campaign. Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) said his challenger “has remained suspiciously silent” to his challenges to a debate. “Sure, Ficus may appear formidable now, in the spring,” Hutchinson added, “but I suspect that by [the general election] he will be a much weaker candidate, much less colorful.”

Friendly rivalry

They’re on the same side in politics, but Govs. George W. Bush of Texas and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey are facing off over the outcome of the Stanley Cup finals.

Hockey’s championship series pits the Dallas Stars against the New Jersey Devils.

In a telephone call last week, the two Republicans placed a bet: If the Devils win, Bush treats Whitman and her family to a Texas barbecue. If the Stars win, Whitman serves up a New Jersey seafood dinner.

Whitman said she expects the Devils to win the Stanley Cup and Bush to win the presidency, and thus hopes to collect on her bet at the White House mess sometime early next year.

Know Nothing Party

The anecdote that New Mexico’s Republican governor, Gary Johnson, told about his friend George W. Bush in Albuquerque on Wednesday was intended to portray the Texas governor as a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy who is secure enough to admit when he doesn’t know something.

But Johnson’s story made both men sound a little like two cutups snickering in the back of the class.

Johnson’s anecdote:

“I’ll tell you a story. . . . At one of the governors’ conferences George turns to me and says, ‘What are they talking about?’

“I said, ‘I have no idea,’ and he says, ‘You don’t know much, do you?’ I say, ‘Not one thing.’ He said, ‘Neither do I.’ And we kind of high-fived.”

Peace of the pie

We hope that Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman gets a dry-cleaning allowance. In his tenure, Glickman has had protesters throw soybeans and soda at him, as well as rotting bison entrails.

Last week, at a Washington conference on hunger and nutrition, Glickman narrowly escaped being hit in the face by a tofu cream pie hurled, errantly, by an animal rights activist.

As security guards carried the woman off, Glickman shed his pie-stained jacket and quipped, “That was not a very balanced meal she threw at me.”

Gore CD burning

In a move sure to anger musicians who want to halt online giveaways of their recordings, Al Gore’s “flip-flops and phony claims”--previously available only on CD--have been put on a Web site run by the mischievous elves at the Republican National Committee.

The Republicans claim that they ran out of the first 2,000 copies of “The Best of Al Gore: Hits of the ‘80s, ‘90s and Today!” and thus put the sound bites--including Gore’s boast that he invented the Internet--online for the masses to download or “burn” onto CDs.

“Al Gore is ready to get ‘burned’ with his own words--and his own invention,” said Jim Nicholson, RNC chairman and overlord of the GOP pranksters.

By the numbers

$165--Cost of the “snacks and junk” basket to be offered by the exclusive caterer of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. It contains a dozen Tastykakes, a dozen soft pretzels, a bag each of Oreos, chocolate chip cookies and potato chips, six Hershey’s chocolate bars and six bags of peanut M&Ms.;

$53.33--What those snacks would cost if bought from a downtown Philadelphia grocery and a street-corner pretzel vendor.

Quote file

“Made in New York.”

--The words on T-shirts promoting Senate candidate and lifelong New Yorker Rick Lazio

“Assembled in Mexico.”

--The words on the shirts’ collar tags

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Compiled by Massie Ritsch from Times staff and wire reports