Party Officials

In a high-profile case pointing to ties between local Communist Party officials and organized crime, a Chinese court sentenced more than a dozen key officials in the country's fifth-largest city, official media reported today. Authorities sentenced Mu Suixin, the former mayor of Shenyang, to death with a two-year reprieve, a sentence that is usually commuted to life in prison. Shenyang's vice mayor, Ma Xiangdong, was sentenced to death in the same case, state-run China Central Television reported.

A year ago, the Maryland Republican Party teetered on the edge of irrelevance: Out of the governor's mansion, down to a single seat in the congressional delegation, tangled in a dispute between the chairman and GOP state lawmakers, and on the brink of bankruptcy. But with a new leader in place, money in the bank, a big name at the top of the this year's election ticket and a national mood opposing incumbents, the party appears to have turned a corner. "We've come a long way, baby," said Chairwoman Audrey Scott, elected last fall to serve the final year of predecessor James Pelura's four-year term.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is expected to raise more than $1 million for Maryland Republicans at a reception in Baltimore on Wednesday, party officials said yesterday. Bush, who is adding campaign events to his schedule as Republicans brace for tough contests in November, is expected to draw about 350 people to the Baltimore event, said John Kane, the state party chairman. White House and party officials declined to release information about the location of the reception. "We're glad to have the president come," Kane said.

The Maryland Republican Party remains in upheaval after party leaders voted to express "no confidence" in James Pelura, the beleaguered chairman who has ignored calls for his resignation. Republicans are mulling the ramifications of the vote that took place at a meeting of the party's executive committee over the weekend, including whether a separate vote to call a special convention to oust Pelura is needed. Two-thirds of the committee, made up of 30 statewide and county officers, sided against the chairman.

SAN DIEGO -- When Republican Party chief Haley Barbour issued invitations to prospective convention speakers last month, he notified them that their remarks would have to be reviewed, edited and tightly controlled by convention planners "in order to ensure each presentation enhances the objectives of the convention."Translation: We're not going to have another 1992 on our hands.Republicans have been so intent on avoiding a repeat of their gathering four years ago -- in which Patrick J. Buchanan delivered a fiery speech that many thought set a tone of intolerance -- that they have insisted on having a hand, a heavy hand in some cases, on the words emerging from the podium.

When they graduated from Georgetown University in 1968, Thomas L. Siebert and Bill Clinton went separate ways. Clinton eventually becoming governor of Arkansas and Siebert became an attorney in Annapolis.They were reunited last night at a fund-raiser at Siebert's house -- one of several such events former classmates have hosted for Clinton, a leading Democratic presidential candidate."It's a generation thing," said Siebert. "This is effectively the first baby boom candidate to mount what we think will be a credible challenge to the existing structure."

Several ranking Democrats, with the tacit approval of Gov. William Donald Schaefer, have launched an effort to remove Maryland Democratic Party Chairman Nathan Landow.Criticism of Landow reached a crescendo last week after a bruising fight over congressional redistricting, when several party officials gave him a four-page letter that blasted what they said was a domineering and cavalier leadership style."We have tried from the earliest days of your tenure to help you," the letter reads. "We have pleaded with you at times to allow us to help you. But to no avail."

BETHESDA -- Stung by a recent defection and facing a Democratic fund-raising juggernaut, Maryland Republican Party officials turned their attention yesterday to next year's presidential election for possible rejuvenation.At a gathering of about 200 at the party's fall convention, leaders said a Republican victory in 2000 would create momentum for GOP candidates in state elections two years later."The hope is if we elect a Republican president next year, that will help our fund raising and allow us to get a strong message out in 2002," said Sen. Martin G. Madden, the GOP leader in the state Senate.

As an accomplished political fund-raiser, Nathan Landow suavely courts presidential candidates, charms senators and sweeps congressmen off their feet. But when, as state Democratic Party chairman, he tried to court the state's local elected officials and party functionaries, Mr. Landow often seemed to bumble, stumble and fall flat on his face.So some Democrats quietly exulted yesterday when Mr. Landow announced he was resigning. "The long ordeal is over," said one, a onetime ally turned bitter foe. "He was the most destructive and negative and divisive state party chairman in the last two decades."

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's ruling party was faced yesterday with an open revolt challenging the authority of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and senior party officials in the key central state of Guanajuato.Officials of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) were pleading late yesterday with about 2,000 party militants to vacate the state legislature.About 15,000 militants stormed the legislature late Friday and early yesterday morning, preventing the 26-member body from naming an interim governor.

Washington - Despite having come under repeated fire for his initial performance as national Republican chairman, Michael Steele is in no immediate danger of losing his job, according to party officials. The former Maryland lieutenant governor has gotten tangled in a series of controversies, largely over remarks he made in news interviews, over everything from Rush Limbaugh's influence to his own views on abortion. But even his sharpest critics and opponents of his candidacy for chairman say the Republican National Committee isn't likely to remove him before the end of his term, which runs through the 2010 elections.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin's telephone began ringing months ago. On the line: representatives of the Democratic presidential contenders soliciting advice on Maryland politics, asking about lessons learned from his 2006 Senate race or just checking in again to gauge his latest thoughts on the campaign. But the callers are after more than his wisdom. As a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention, Cardin will not be bound by the results of next month's Maryland primary election when he casts his vote in Denver this summer, but may back whichever candidate he chooses.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is expected to raise more than $1 million for Maryland Republicans at a reception in Baltimore on Wednesday, party officials said yesterday. Bush, who is adding campaign events to his schedule as Republicans brace for tough contests in November, is expected to draw about 350 people to the Baltimore event, said John Kane, the state party chairman. White House and party officials declined to release information about the location of the reception. "We're glad to have the president come," Kane said.

NEW ORLEANS -- It is, by many accounts, a springtime for Democrats. President Bush's approval rating has gone down. Gas prices have gone up. And the burning desire for change in Washington, according to recent polls, remains one of the biggest worries for Republicans who control the government. Yet for all the positive political signs for Democrats and for all the opportunities that could propel an out-of-power party back into the majority, Democratic leaders from across the country say it is premature to begin imagining a sweeping victory in the fall elections.

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Democrats like to fashion themselves as latter-day Robert F. Kennedys eradicating poverty and disease, stomping out inequality, getting really "passionate" about single mothers, death row inmates and Arctic wildlife preserves. But the reality is that the party - or, at least, most of the Democrats running for the White House - has shed much of its Kennedyesque idealism. Instead, it's anchored itself to a cartoonish notion of the mid-20th century nanny state sure to alienate millions of young voters.

BAQUBA, Iraq - As children walked to the school next door, a suicide bomber detonated a car laden with explosives outside a police station here yesterday, killing at least two people and injuring dozens in the latest attack on symbols of authority in this country. The assault came on a day when U.S. forces announced the capture of former Baath party leader Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, detained near the city of Ramadi - like Baquba, located in the so-called Sunni triangle region, a stronghold of opposition to the U.S.-led occupation.

WASHINGTON -- Patrick J. Buchanan has agreed to endorse President Bush in a prime-time speech Monday, but count on the fiery commentator to be his old maverick self.Mr. Buchanan won't show his speech to Republican Party officials beforehand. He sent his sister to Houston to denounce the GOP's draft platform as "weak" and spent the week drafting a speech he hopes will electrify the nation -- and position him as the crown prince of American conservatism.Party officials say they don't mind any of this -- their concern is helping Mr. Bush in the short term -- and they think Mr. Buchanan will help.

As Marilynn J. Phillips sees it, the party of inclusion is excluding her -- and other wheelchair users -- from its county campaign headquarters in Westminster.For the second election year in a row, the county's Democratic Central Committee has leased a Main Street site that is inaccessible to wheelchair users, the Hampstead disabilities-rights activist claimed in complaints filed this week with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Maryland Human Relations Commission."I believe I have been discriminated against," Ms. Phillips said in the complaints.

In a signed statement delivered to Maryland lawmakers yesterday, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party asserts that state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller did not ask for money during a January 2001 meeting in Miller's office. The statement is part of a packet of documents, obtained by The Sun, that Miller gave yesterday to the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics to defend himself against allegations that he used his Annapolis office to solicit funds for a national Democratic group he heads.

U.S. AUTHORITIES recently appointed former Baath Party leaders to help rebuild Iraq. Shortly afterward, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that senior Baath Party members would not be allowed to retain positions of authority in the new Iraqi administration. The assumption is that, in time, people will step forward, identify appointees who were Baath Party members and those appointees will be removed. There are risks in such assumptions. At the end of World War II, in a similar effort to rebuild a defeated enemy country, U.S. officials released Nazi Party members from prison.