Campaign Literature

As Election Day nears, the heated race for Howard County's Circuit Court bench is drawing to a close with voters being inundated by a flood of campaign literature.This week, tens of thousands of pieces of campaign literature are being mailed by both sides -- and more will be handed out this weekend -- in the last-minute rush to reach voters.As has been the case throughout the bitter race, this week's campaign literature is replete with half-truths, mudslinging and passionate appeals.The literature is aimed at swaying the many county voters who -- according to a round of Sun interviews two weeks ago -- remain undecided among the four candidates for the two judicial seats.

Howard County's bitter judicial race became even more so yesterday with the sitting judges' campaign labeling as racist its challengers' recent campaign literature."

Both sides in the Howard County Circuit Court race yesterday disavowed blame for the nasty tone of their campaign -- even as a new spat was breaking out between them.At a forum at Howard Community College, sitting Circuit Judges Donna Hill Staton and Diane O. Leasure blamed their opponents for the nasty campaign. Said Hill Staton: "Anything we've done, we've done because we were forced to respond to their type of campaign."In turn, the challengers -- District Judge Lenore R. Gelfman and attorney Jonathan Scott Smith -- faulted the news media for, in Smith's words, trying "to pit one campaign against the other."

When Kweisi Mfume announced in December he was leaving his 7th District congressional seat, the floodgates opened for would-be replacements, and in the end, a record 27 Democrats and five Republicans had filed for Tuesday's primary.The largest group of those candidates was made up of complete unknowns -- that gaggle of dreamers who believe they have the right stuff to represent Maryland on Capitol Hill.Consider this lineup, all Democrats: Vincent R. Cuffari, Ava Mae Herndon, Gregory P. McDonald, Wayne C. McLaughlin, E. Peter Melcavage II, Traci K. Miller, Craig Glenn Ring, Joseph E. Ward and Barney J. Wilson.

After all the charges and counter-charges, the fund raising and fund spending, the polls, posturing and promises, winning the Democratic mayoral primary will boil down to turning out the vote.In the past week, the campaigns of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and City Council President Mary Pat Clarke have slammed their organizations into high gear to spur voters to the polls tomorrow, and then, of course, ensure they "vote right.""It's a full-court press," said Larry S. Gibson, Mr. Schmoke's campaign manager and chief political handler.

After all the charges and counter-charges, the fund raising and fund spending, the polls, posturing and promises, winning the Democratic mayoral primary will boil down to turning out the vote.In the past week, the campaigns of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and City Council President Mary Pat Clarke have slammed their organizations into high gear to spur voters to the polls tomorrow, and then, of course, ensure they "vote right.""It's a full-court press," said Larry S. Gibson, Mr. Schmoke's campaign manager and chief political handler.

For several weeks last month, the news media carried reports of a rowdy, racist event, an annual redneck camp-out in the hills of Tennessee where federal agents got drunk, made obscene jokes about blacks and hung a banner carrying a racial.It was the first time most people had heard of the "Good Ol' Boys Roundup," an annual three-day camp-out for law-enforcement officers and federal agents.But the reports were disturbing enough to prompt hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, an investigation by the Justice Department and expressions of alarm by President Clinton.

What the three Republican candidates for mayor lack in money, lawn signs and supporters, they make up in gumption.In a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 9-to-1, where a Republican hasn't been mayor in nearly three decades, Victor Clark Jr., S. Scott McCown and Arthur W. Cuffie Jr. are almost absurdly upbeat about their candidacies. Each says he has the answer to the city's ills and can run government better than Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and his opponent, City Council President Mary Pat Clarke.

WASHINGTON -- With soaring rhetoric in praise of the political pamphleteer in American history, the Supreme Court cut back yesterday on the government's power to ban anonymous campaign literature.The 7-2 decision settled one aspect of anonymous leafletting, saying the Constitution protects it when it is done by individuals in local elections. But the ruling left in doubt whether other forms of political literature that omit their source will get such protection.If lower courts note the broad language used by the majority, and apply it literally, the ruling could threaten laws in all but one state and several federal laws, which require those who pass out campaign materials or advertise to identify themselves.

The ghost of a 1990 scandal involving Nazi salutes by county sheriff's deputies made a last-minute encore yesterday, this time haunting Richmond Laney, the Republican challenger in the sheriff's race.With some of the county's leading Republicans and a Columbia rabbi supporting him, Sheriff Michael A. Chiuchiolo, a Democrat, charged yesterday that Mr. Laney's campaign was being helped by two former deputies Sheriff Chiuchiolo fired for delivering Nazi greetings and Nazi-style straight-arm salutes on the job.Mr.