Trail Mix

Occasional morsels from Campaign 2000

Banner idea

The mission if you’re designing a logo for the nonpartisan hosts of August’s Democratic convention in Los Angeles is to create an icon that suggests politics without being political. Graphic artist Michael Chan says he welcomed that challenge.

“It actually gives you a little more freedom to get away from the stars and the stripes and that sort of thing,” said Chan, who considered palm trees and downtown skylines before mixing traditional red, white and blue letters, a font called Trixie, and summery green-and-yellow free-form placards to create the convention logo.

Chan, whose previous work includes inserts into water and electrical bills, will see his logo on 2,500 street pole banners across Los Angeles.

Stalking Dan Savage

A columnist who bragged of trying to pass the flu to former presidential candidate Gary Bauer by licking pens and doorknobs at Bauer’s Iowa headquarters will return to Des Moines to face felony charges.

Dan Savage, who in January wrote the article “Stalking Gary Bauer” for Salon.com, has been charged with fraud for allegedly giving his hotel address to vote in Iowa’s residents-only caucuses. Savage, who lives in Seattle and is gay, wrote of his attempts to infiltrate Bauer’s campaign in protest of his conservative stances. His week in Des Moines culminated, he wrote, in his voting for Alan Keyes at a Republican caucus.

Penn. pals

Al Gore’s camp is taking seriously all the speculation that George W. Bush will tap Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge as his running mate.

To wit, Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile has drafted a memo outlining Ridge’s electoral pluses and minuses. Former Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell, who is now general chairman of the Democratic National Committee, thinks he knows the best Democratic weapon against Ridge.

Flying with the vice president above Pennsylvania last week, the exuberant and notoriously self-promoting Rendell smiled brashly and thrust his finger into his chest. “If [Bush] picks Ridge, then Gore’s gotta pick me!”

Digital democracy

Backed by 16 leading Internet news sites and some well-known political names, a nonpartisan, nonprofit foundation is challenging Gore and Bush to a daily online debate for the 35 days before the election.

The Markle Foundation--with assistance from former White House spokesman Mike McCurry--is hoping https://www.WebWhiteBlue.org will make the Internet a player this season. The site would give voters easy access to 16 major Internet news sources and a chance to ask questions of the candidates during what Markle hopes will be a “rolling cyber-debate.”

A modest proposal

Gore’s press secretary, Chris Lehane, managed to escape the campaign trail long enough to whisk his girlfriend to the Amalfi Coast in Italy and propose marriage this month.

Since Lehane has been back at work, however, he received some gentle ribbing from his boss. The vice president had heard reports that when Lehane got down on one knee to pop the question, he presented his girlfriend with a photo of an engagement ring, rather than the ring itself.

Lehane, who says he has “a penchant for losing things,” explained that he was afraid the ring wouldn’t make the transatlantic trip. In “sheer panic,” he said, he took a Polaroid of the ring on a red tablecloth and brought that instead.

Quote file

“I only believe in polls that have me ahead.”

--Al Gore, who has made a mantra of pooh-poohing the polls.

Compiled by Massie Ritsch from Times staff and wire reports