Nominee

Not in the running for Father of the Year: 25-year-old Willie Pickett Jr., an adventurous driver from Evansville, was charged with drunken driving, criminal recklessness and neglect of a dependent after police noticed him changing seats with a passenger in the front seat of his car while it was going 60 miles an hour. Mr. Pickett is the father of a child, who happened to be sitting in the back seat at the time. The passenger, Daryl Wilson, 20, was charged with criminal recklessness. The toddler's mother, 24-year-old Krista Hirsch, who was also in the back seat, was charged with neglect.

In a show of Democratic solidarity, four congressional leaders announced their support yesterday for their party's nominees for mayor, City Council president and comptroller -- a political trio they dubbed "Team Baltimore.""Baltimore is the home of many great teams," said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, standing with mayoral nominee Martin O'Malley, council president nominee Sheila Dixon and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt. "We have the Orioles. We have the Ravens. And here we have Team Baltimore."Business park planMikulski joined Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes and U.S. Reps.

Former Democratic mayoral contender Carl Stokes said yesterday that he would serve as Baltimore's housing commissioner if Republican mayoral nominee David F. Tufaro wins Tuesday's general election.The former East Baltimore city councilman who finished second in last month's Democratic primary, however, was quick to note that he doesn't expect to go to City Hall with Tufaro.Tufaro, a Roland Park developer making his first bid for public office, faces a challenge in trying to beat Democratic nominee Martin O'Malley next week.

WASHINGTON -- At a time when voters continue to express dissatisfaction with the two major political parties and suggest they'd like an alternative, the turmoil in the most conspicuous option -- the Reform Party -- is imperiling the movement to put a serious face on the third party concept.As a result of Mr. Perot's organizational efforts and 19-percent vote total in the 1992 election, and the formal establishment of the party and his vote of 8.5 percent as its standard-bearer in 1996, the Reform Party is positioned, technically, on the brink of respectability.

DEMOCRATS in the House saw disaster looming for their 1984 presidential nominee. But even more than the grim vision of their party's standard-bearer being buried in a second-term Reagan landslide was their fear of losing their own seats.They reasoned that a disastrously weak candidate at the head of the ticket would cost them their modest 1982 gains, which seemed to mark their recovery from Jimmy Carter's defeat.To avert this catastrophe, they decided to become kingmakers and influence the choice of nominees.

Vote for the mayoral candidate who will make the most rain.The winner of Iowa's straw poll won a Bush-el of hay, corny as that sounds.Republicans won't learn George the Second's defects until they are stuck with him as their nominee.Gary Bauer is running as Ronald Reagan, but he won't fool many people. Ron was taller.

VOTERS' overwhelming demand for change requires that preparations for the new administration begin today.Democratic nominee Martin O'Malley promised bold steps to fight crime and turn the city around. Voters responded. Now, he must begin to spell out specific action plans.Republican nominee David Tufaro focused on the physical revitalization of the city. Now, he too must show voters how he proposes to accomplish that.The next mayor will bring in fresh faces, new ideas and his own style. A new City Council president and several untested council members will join him. This ferment is good.

A FUNERAL oration for Barry Goldwater:Friends, Arizonans, countrymen, listen up and listen good. He was a flop as a senator and a flop as a presidential candidate, the defining essentials of his career. He was one of the least successful senators ever to serve so long. If you seek his monument, don't bother to look in the U.S. Code or U.S. Senate histories.Part of the reason for that is that he was in the minority for 22 of his 30 Senate years. The Senate is a body in which chairmen of committees and subcommittees produce most of the results and get most of the credit.

The Fells Point Festival was in full swing, smiles all around, politicians thrusting their right hands out, trying to shake loose a few votes.It was 1994, and Ellen R. Sauerbrey, the Republican nominee for governor, was all smiles as well. When a young woman approached her, Sauerbrey presented her hand. The woman ignored it."I could never vote for you," she told Sauerbrey. "I know you're a pro-lifer. And what really gets me sick is you could never understand what you're doing -- you don't even have kids."

IT TOOK Senate Republicans far too long to find a Democratic surgeon general they could support -- three years. Now, despite a threatened filibuster and continuing opposition from staunch social conservatives in the GOP, the government's top public health office is no longer vacant.Dr. David Satcher never deserved the brickbats hurled at him by Republicans intent on blocking any nominee who fails conservative litmus tests. (Nor did Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr., who withdrew as a nominee when he ran into a similar ideological barrier.

Schools still failing African-Americans I share the pride other Marylanders feel in our school system's success in helping high school students pass Advanced Placement exams ("Md. seniors rank No. 1 in passing of AP exams," Feb. 5). I also share the concern of The Baltimore Sun's editors that this could be used to fuel arguments to reduce funding for education ("Another gold star," editorial, Feb. 5). The editors also correctly point out that the lack of success by African-Americans on AP exams is a signal of how far Maryland still has to go. Last week's report of success is proof that Maryland schools can get the job done.

One more time Will Ferrell will make his Broadway debut in January, Variety reports. He'll appear in the new solo comedy You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush, directed by Adam McKay, the writer-director of such Ferrell flicks as Step Brothers, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. The plot of the show remains sketchy, but the title and timing suggest a Bush caricature and plenty of topical humor. Production begins previews on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, ahead of a Feb. 1 opening at the Cort Theater.

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Republicans got back to the business of politics last night, shuffling their president out of prime time and beginning the condensed mission of contrasting John McCain with his Democratic opponent. Seeking to wrest control of their convention from Hurricane Gustav, the GOP focused on "country first," a theme that ran from the opening prayer to the closing speech and was written on screens across the Xcel Energy Center. The program focused on reintroducing voters to the presumptive Republican nominee, his family, his military and public service, and his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Anyone who has followed the career of Steve Jobs knows that product rollouts can be richly rewarding. Barack Obama and John McCain would like nothing better than to copy Apple's success when they bring their own new products to market soon: their running mates. Vice presidential nominees don't win elections, despite all the hype surrounding their selection. Still, the choice of a ticket mate is often the biggest news story between the primaries and the November vote, invariably described as the first "presidential" decision by the man who hopes to lead the country.

WASHINGTON -- Low on funds and slipping further behind Barack Obama in the presidential contest, Hillary Clinton tried to inject new enthusiasm into her campaign yesterday just hours after escaping defeat in the Indiana primary. Clinton held a hastily arranged town hall meeting in West Virginia, where she vowed to go on. An absence of public events on her schedule had prompted news media speculation that she might be preparing to quit the race. Obama, meanwhile, took a day off with his family in Chicago, while leading supporters publicly called on undeclared superdelegates to endorse him and bring the nomination fight to a close.

Sen. Hillary Clinton is mapping out her campaign stops in West Virginia and Kentucky, when she should be planning her exit strategy from this tough-fought campaign. Victories in West Virginia and Kentucky won't win her the Democratic presidential nomination. More superdelegates are seeing the handwriting on the wall. And if Mrs. Clinton resorts to brass-knuckled campaigning in the next month, she'll have a harder time mending rifts among Democrats when she could prove invaluable in helping the nominee win in November.

If this is a marathon, surely we're approaching the last uphill. Long past any endorphin high, we're now into the oxygen-depleted, brain-benumbed, shin-splinting part of the race. But the finish line remains out of sight - in fact, it appears to be moving farther away rather than closer with every painful step. Welcome to the Democratic presidential primary, the race that apparently is never going to end but will just keep going, and going and going - who knows, past the general election in November, past inauguration day in January.

WASHINGTON -- With Sen. John McCain securing his party's nomination this week, many Republicans in Maryland and across the country are coming to grips with a candidate who was not their first choice. "I have a pretty long list of concerns, but Republicans tend to be loyalists," said Michael D. Zimmer, a Carroll County commissioner who originally backed Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. "I don't think there will be quite the same level of intensity at the grass roots for McCain as for, say, a Mitt Romney."

Talking heads and other journalists have been using the phrase "smoke-filled room" a lot recently, now that it is possible the Democratic National Convention may be decided not by primary or caucus voters but by the so-called superdelegates. The phrase "smoke-filled room" appears to date from the Republicans' selection of their presidential nominee in Chicago in 1920. There were four candidates, none of them outstanding. After nine roll calls, no one had been nominated. Then the party bosses got together in a room full of cigar smoke in the Blackstone Hotel and agreed on Ohio Sen. Warren G. Harding as the nominee.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush offered no explicit endorsement yesterday of John McCain, the likely GOP presidential nominee, but he began to prepare the battlefield for the eventual nominee, calling on conservatives to put the primary campaign's feuds behind them. Speaking just after dawn to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference for the first - and final - time as president, Bush received a hero's welcome as he ticked off what he called the key differences between Democrats and Republicans.