Our Man in Caracas
As the results of yesterday's election in Venezuela came in over the wires yesterday, one of the things that caught our eye was a dispatch of the Miami Herald from Caracas about the pollster for the opponent to the anti-American strongman Hugo Chavez. It was the firm of Penn, Schoen & Berland that was doing work for Mr. Chavez's opponent, Manuel Rosales. "We are throwing the full weight of the firm behind this with my personal participation," pollster Mark Penn told the Herald. The report said security for Mr. Penn's partner, Douglas Schoen, might cost as much as $10,000.
The significance of this to New Yorkers is that the firm of Penn and Schoen also worked for the political campaigns of Senator Clinton and Mayor Bloomberg. The Bloomberg re-election campaign paid Penn, Schoen & Berland at least $4.2 million, according to our calculations from government campaign finance records, and Senator Clinton's re-election campaign paid the firm at least $615,000. Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign, now in formation, will probably rack up bigger bills with these pollsters. That's assuming that Mayor Bloomberg doesn't outbid Mrs. Clinton for the pollsters' services. Mr. Bloomberg's independent presidential bid seems, we're happy to say, very much alive, to judge by the mayor's appearance at Florida today with Governor Bush and the New York magazine article out today.
The point to take away is that while Mr. Chavez targets President Bush and Secretary of State Rice, even mercenary non-neocon political consultant types such as Messrs. Penn and Schoen can realize that an oil-rich Venezuelan strongman allied with the dictators in Iran and Cuba is bad news for America. It doesn't matter if the American president is a Republican such as Mr. Bush, a Democrat such as Mrs. Clinton, or an independent such as Mr. Bloomberg. Some interests are not partisan but simply American, and unseating Mr. Chavez and replacing him with a leader friendlier to American interests falls in that category. So Americans of all political stripes can wish Messrs. Penn and Schoen luck in this particular election.
