Democratic National Committee

Feb. 10 1989: Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first black to head a major U.S. political party.

- Gov. Martin O'Malley took the stage Saturday at a high school in this early presidential primary state, telling an auditorium of South Carolina Democrats that his principles worked in Maryland - and they'd work elsewhere. "We're investing more to improve public education, to hold down college tuition, to spur innovation and job creation," O'Malley said to a crowd of 150 party faithful. But he also said Maryland has "cut state spending big time," casting himself as a pragmatist who makes tough choices.

- Gov. Martin O'Malley took the stage Saturday at a high school in this early presidential primary state, telling an auditorium of South Carolina Democrats that his principles worked in Maryland - and they'd work elsewhere. "We're investing more to improve public education, to hold down college tuition, to spur innovation and job creation," O'Malley said to a crowd of 150 party faithful. But he also said Maryland has "cut state spending big time," casting himself as a pragmatist who makes tough choices.

Gov. Martin O'Malley will serve as co-chair of the Democratic convention's rules committee this year, a high-profile position that comes amid rampant speculation in party circles about his potential as a presidential candidate in 2016. The assignment, which the Democratic National Committee announced Thursday, will put O'Malley at the head of a committee that oversees not only logistical issues for the party's convention in Charlotte but that would also decide any internal delegation disputes that arise.

The Democratic Party intends to add Nevada and South Carolina to the opening chapter of the 2008 presidential campaign, with a key panel deciding yesterday to introduce the voice of Western and Southern voters to the Iowa-New Hampshire duet. At a meeting yesterday in Washington, the rules and bylaws committee of the Democratic National Committee voted to place Nevada between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, the two contests that traditionally have launched the race. The group voted to add a South Carolina primary soon after New Hampshire's.

Henry E. Petersen, 70, a career Justice Department employee who headed the Watergate investigation before the appointment a special prosecutor, died Wednesday at his home in Sunderland, Md. He had emphysema. Mr. Petersen, head of the department's Criminal Division, was in charge of the probe of the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. He headed the probe from its beginning in June 1972 until Archibald Cox became special prosecutor in May 1973.

I mentioned to Vickie when I asked her to marry me that we should go to New York and rent a Dixieland band and charter a boat.. . . I didn't tell her there would be 350 people from Massachusetts on board."

WASHINGTON -- At least $200,000 in contributions to President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign came from donors that federal investigators now suspect were fictitious, including checks from several phony corporations and a $3,000 draft funneled through the account of a dead woman.The most compelling evidence of this illegal practice comes from two strikingly similar checks that arrived at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee last August, on the day after Clinton's 50th birthday fund-raiser was held at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.

WASHINGTON -- Documents released by the Democratic National Committee portray the top levels of the Democratic Party encouraging John Huang to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from Asian-Americans and urging him to do more.In recent weeks, top party officials have tried to distance themselves from Huang, saying little about the specifics of his fund-raising efforts. But a July 4 letter reveals that Donald Fowler, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, challenged Huang to "do better."

LONDON, Ky. -- Bob Dole rounded out a week of attacks on President Clinton's ethics yesterday, using his weekly radio address to deplore reports of questionable foreign contributions the Democratic National Committee. He asserted that Clinton was evading questions on the issue."The ethical vacuum at the heart of this administration has been filled by foreign political money," Dole said in a prepared text of his radio address. "They have compromised the respect of Americans for their most basic institutions."

This summer, the Republican and Democratic parties will hold their presidential nominating conventions in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C. In so doing, they will continue a political ritual that began 180 years ago in Baltimore. From their inception in the campaign of 1832 and continuing through the Civil War, Baltimore was the city of choice for conventions, hosting a dozen, compared to only two each for its closest competitors. The last 19th-century convention to be held in Baltimore was in 1872.

For days last week, Democrats gleefully hammered away at the Republican National Committee's payment of $1,946 for "meals" at a West Hollywood strip club, which led to the firing of a committee staffer and continues to focus unwanted attention on National Chairman Michael Steele's management of the RNC. One jab, in the form of an MSNBC YouTube clip being circulated by the Democratic National Committee, highlights criticism of Steele by Tony Perkins,...

For the second time in less than six years, David S. Cordish played host to the nation's vice president at a high-dollar fund-raising event Wednesday night, when Joe Biden headlined a Democratic reception at the developer's Lutherville home. It's not unusual at the loftiest levels of political fundraising for a major contributor to introduce the vice president at an event he is hosting. What is rare about Cordish's case, though, is that the last vice president he welcomed was Dick Cheney.

A surge of Republican campaign cash in August, the month that conservatives stormed Democrats' town hall meetings on health care, is generating upbeat media coverage for the party and its national chairman, Michael S. Steele. The latest fundraising numbers follow recent predictions that Republicans could score significant gains in the 2010 elections. New polling also shows the potential for Republican victories in governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey this fall. When Maryland's former lieutenant governor became RNC chairman, one of the questions was whether his committee would maintain its fundraising edge.

Washington - -A photograph of Maryland Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. being hanged in effigy is prominently featured in a new national Democratic Party Web video that claims that public outbursts over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul plan are being manufactured by opponents. The anti-Kratovil episode, during a small protest outside his Salisbury district office last week, gained notice at the time on the Internet and in the local news media. But the Democratic Party ad, and related comments by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, figure to generate wider, and unwanted, attention on the freshman lawmaker, already one of the most vulnerable House Democrats in the country.

An admittedly nervous public speaker, Susan Turnbull addressed about 800 Democratic faithful at a swank annual gala last week. The new party chairwoman proceeded to confuse the two Mikes who lead the chambers of the Maryland General Assembly and flub the title of Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, calling him attorney general. "Whoa," Turnbull exclaimed, waving both arms as if she were teetering on an edge. "Doug has probably already gotten a message on his BlackBerry," she said, referring to Douglas F. Gansler, who actually holds the state's top legal post.

WASHINGTON -- The Democratic National Committee said last night that it had suspended the fund-raising activities of a senior party official with long-standing ties to a prominent Indonesian family and asked the Federal Election Commission to begin an expedited investigation to determine whether he had solicited any improper donations.The decision to relieve John Huang, a vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee's finance arm, of his fund-raising duties amounted to an acknowledgment that reports that he had organized a fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple and had solicited an illegal contribution of $250,000 from a South Korean conglomerate were making him a political liability.

G. Gordon Liddy, Watergate's macho cowboy who refused to testify during the scandal nearly 30 years ago to protect his superiors, took the stand yesterday in a style befitting his new public role - tell-all talk-radio host. Defending himself in a $5.1 million defamation case, the 70-year-old Watergate conspirator went on the charm offensive. He regaled jurors and a courtroom full of curious onlookers with his firsthand account of history and a steady stream of one-liners. Liddy at times became so animated as he testified about the events from 28 years ago that his attorney and U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz sometimes cut him off because he had strayed off course.

Chicago - As he hosted a gala celebration for some of his earliest and most loyal financial supporters last night, President-elect Barack Obama's aides released new information showing the magnitude of their feat: They raised nearly $1 billion for his campaign and other election-related efforts. The stunning total also includes already recorded and estimated fundraising for his campaign, national convention, transition and coming inauguration. That sets a new and dramatically higher bar for future presidential candidates, radically changing the financial definition of a serious bid for the White House.

I hope the Democratic National Committee doesn't blow the election for Sen. Barack Obama. On paper, this seems to be a can't-lose year for the Democrats. If peace and prosperity are election winners, what are war and economic anxiety? Party registration trends favor the Democrats, too. And in Mr. Obama, they have a candidate whose person, biography and rhetoric all point to the possibility of breaking away from the poisonous partisanship of recent decades. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama is backed by a committee that seems to be stuck in the old "wedge issue" politics that elected Republicans in seven of the last 10 presidential contests.