Sept. 11 Disaster Has Relegated Politicking to the Back Burner

As America prepares for battle overseas, peace has broken out on the political front at home.

From New York to California, candidates and campaign handlers are observing an unwritten truce. Fund-raisers have been canceled. Attack mailers have been shelved. Candidates, sensing little public appetite for confrontation, are abandoning their harshest rhetoric, or scrapping appearances altogether.

No one is certain how long the cease-fire will hold. Eventually politicking will resume--perhaps, some say, with more substance and less of the vitriol that has become so pervasive in recent years. For now, even the most gung-ho political warriors welcome the cessation of hostilities.

“Any kind of partisan activity is totally inappropriate during this period,” said Howard Wolfson, a New Yorker who heads campaign operations for House Democrats. “Inappropriate, unpatriotic and unwelcome.”

Over at Republican National Committee headquarters, James S. Gilmore agreed. “Political activity is the essence of democracy,” said party Chairman Gilmore, who also serves as Virginia’s governor. “But now is not the time.”

Political advocacy groups and other special interests have also muffled their voices, lest they seem too strident. The Sierra Club, for one, has airbrushed its Web site to remove anything that seems critical of President Bush.

“None of our positions have changed. We’re steadfast in protecting clean air and clean water and safeguarding those special places everyone loves,” said Allen Mattison, national spokesman for the environmental group. “We just want to make sure our message is coming out in a way that’s meaningful for the times.”

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have heightened sensitivities in other ways. Opponents of a measure to create a municipal-run utility in San Francisco felt obliged to test their logo--a man’s shrieking head--with a pair of focus groups. Strategists adopted the image only after being assured that it was not too upsetting in today’s environment.

“You can’t do anything without taking this into account,” campaign consultant Darry Sragow said of the nation’s trauma.

Not everyone has fully observed the armistice. Aides to California Gov. Gray Davis and his potential GOP rival Richard Riordan traded charges last week over the governor’s fund-raising practices.

The Republican Governors Assn. waded into the Virginia gubernatorial race, attacking Democrat Mark Warner as “a knee-jerk liberal,” and Ohio Democrats took after Gov. Robert A. Taft on education funding.

But those exchanges were relatively mild--and they went largely unnoticed.

For many, politics is the last thing they care to think about. Few need bother: Most voters won’t go to the polls for several more months.

But in one of fate’s twists, campaigns were well underway in three places at the epicenter of the terror attacks. New York City will vote for a mayor Tuesday, seeking a replacement for the term-limited Rudolph W. Giuliani. New Jersey, which faces the World Trade Center site across the Hudson River, will choose a new governor Nov. 6, as will Virginia, home of the Pentagon.

In New York, the candidates have largely ceased campaigning. In the gubernatorial races, the contests have been utterly transformed.

Issues such as toll roads, gun control and abortion have been supplanted by concerns about public safety and economic recovery. The tone has changed as well.

The two candidates for Virginia governor clashed Friday in a heated debate, held just a dozen miles from the damaged Pentagon. But they have kept the negativity off the airwaves.

Before the terrorist attacks, underdog Republican Mark L. Earley had targeted Democrat Warner with ads stinging him on education, the death penalty and gay marriage. But when Earley returned to the airwaves last week, he broadcast a feel-good spot emphasizing patriotism.

Warner, in his new ad, also steered clear of attacks.

“Right now, it’s important to identify with the sense of loss and sorrow and the sense of unity,” said Jim Margolis, a consultant whose Washington firm is creating ads for both Warner and Jim McGreevey, the Democrat facing Republican Bret Schundler in New Jersey. “That really does change some of the tone one would expect in the middle of a political campaign.”

In California, the terrorist attacks have in effect frozen the governor’s race, benefiting the two front-runners: Davis and Riordan.

The governor is running unopposed in the March Democratic primary. Former Los Angeles Mayor Riordan, who has yet to declare his candidacy, faces two GOP rivals trying desperately to boost their public profiles, Secretary of State Bill Jones and investment banker Bill Simon Jr.

Davis’ Opponents Resume Campaigns

Davis used the advantage of his office to make a series of widely broadcast appearances in the days after the Sept. 11 disaster. His Republican opponents laid low; once they started reemerging last week, aides were almost apologetic.

“President Bush said everyone should get back . . . to our normal lives,” said Sal Russo, a strategist for Simon. The candidate was at breakfast with Giuliani--his old boss in the U.S. attorney’s office in New York--when the terrorists struck.

For his part, Jones resumed his campaign by criticizing Davis’ “abysmal” handling of the electricity crisis. A spokeswoman, Beth Miller, emphasized that Jones’ statements were tied to a hearing before the state Public Utilities Commission. “Was the timing ideal? No,” she said. “But again, business goes on.”

For now, Jones has dropped plans for an anti-Riordan assault he planned to launch before the state Republican convention, which was canceled after the terror attacks.

“Clearly . . . it’s not appropriate at this time,” Miller said. “But as the campaign moves forward, we will be talking about the issues that define Bill Jones and Dick Riordan and Bill Simon and Gray Davis.”

The question no one seems comfortable answering is when it will be appropriate to resume politics as usual--or, least, what was usual up until Sept. 11. “You make those judgments day to day,” Margolis said.

The congressional arms of the two major political parties will likely resume fund-raising and other activities sometime next month.

“We don’t want to be asking people to support campaigns at the same time relief efforts are getting off the ground,” said Steve Schmidt, a GOP spokesman.

Still, he said, competitive elections “are the bedrock foundation of our democracy” and campaigns are expensive. “So it’s appropriate for campaign committees to get back in business . . . and they will, in due time,” Schmidt said.

Whenever that happens, some suggest--perhaps wishfully--that politicking will assume a new tone, one that is both more sober and substantive, befitting a nation facing steep challenges at home and abroad.

“The events have been a shock to the body politic,” said Don Sipple, a GOP strategist. “Frivolity and triviality are gone. [Voters] will be looking for maturity, candor and honesty. They won’t tolerate a lot of the tactics that have littered our political landscape over the last 15 years.”