Senator Kerry’s Bandmates Vote Democrat
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ELECTRAL COLLEGE
The Electoral College will determine the election tomorrow, but the “Electral College” has already voted. Former members of the Electras – the band Senator Kerry played in while a high-school student at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H. – voted overwhelmingly 10-3 for Senator Kerry in their own straw poll.
Present at a recent Creative Coalition event in Midtown were two other members of the band, which has a guitar and surf instrumental sound. The Knickerbocker caught up with architect Jon Prouty of Lagunitas Companies and constitutional scholar Larry Rand, who teaches at Kent School.
“If there’s any problem with the Supreme Court, instead of David Boies, we could send Larry Rand of the Electras. Not only can he explain to the Supreme Court why they were wrong in the case of Bush v. Gore, but he can also play them a couple of tunes. That’s where I thought Al Gore lost the election,” said satirist and marketing strategist Martin Lewis, who has spearheaded the Electras’ presence in the campaign in recent months. “Being in a band is a collaborative exercise,” he continued.
The group was bumped from CNN last week, but is slated to appear on the network at 5 p.m. today. The band’s Web site explained the delay: “Bumped by Osama, Electras bounce back.”
Is being a band member good practice for the Oval Office? “It’s not so much that it’s good practice. It’s an insight into John Kerry’s character that in his formative years, he wanted to be part of a team, creating something and giving pleasure to others,” Mr. Lewis said.
Mr. Lewis said the “Electral” win was all the more striking because many St. Paul’s students in those years were from bedrock Republican families.
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BARK THE VOTE
“It’s a ‘treat’ to vote,” says Elly McGuire, campaign manager for Schmitty, a small Yorkshire Terrier, who is featured in a “Bark the Vote” campaign to encourage voting in the presidential election. Asked for whom Schmitty is voting, Ms. McGuire replied, “She’s still undecided. She’s just a party animal.
Ms. McGuire is a media sales executive who believes that perhaps the best was to reach the nearly 64 million dog owners and encourage them to vote may just be through their pets. Move over Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and Benji, here comes Schmitty.
Schmitty has received letters from The elder President Bush and Teresa Heinz Kerry, and has appeared on the nightly news. He has a line of New Yorkie greeting cards, which army reservists abroad have sent home to their employers.
Speaking about the upcoming election, Ms. McGuire said, “Dogs have no problem choosing a leader of the pack, she can’t figure out why it’s so complicated for humans.”
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CITY JOURNAL KUDOS
Journalists, writers, policy scholars, and others attended a reception last week to honor Myron Magnet and City Journal. The party marked the 10th anniversary of the first issue that Mr. Magnet edited.
In his remarks, Mr. Magnet offered a backward glance to emphasize the city’s accomplishments over the past 10 years: “On that Halloween a decade ago, Rudy Giuliani had been in office for nine months. We didn’t quite know it yet, but we were in fact just starting to emerge from the era of Bonfire of the Vanities. Those were the many years in which New York was said to be ungovernable – chiefly because no one tried to govern it. Those were the years when murders were up over 2,000 a year, when cars had ‘NO RADIO’ signs pathetically pleading with thieves not to break in, when you walked down every darkening street listening for muggers over your shoulder. The years when no one would build or open a legitimate business in Times Square because of the squalor, when corporations were moving their headquarters and their jobs out of town because the executives were sick of the so-called homeless, the graffiti, the potholes, the stink.
“What a difference! As Kay Hymowitz puts it, we’ve come from the New York of ‘Taxi Driver’ to the New York of ‘Sex and the City’ – from danger and filth to glamour and pizzazz, even in Brooklyn. And in the process we’ve blown up some of the most cherished orthodoxies of domestic social policy, such as ‘the system, not the criminal, is to blame for crime’ or that giving lifetime welfare is a favor to anyone or that there’s nothing wrong with the proliferation of single-parent families or that there are ‘victimless’ crimes.”
He closed by saying, “I’m very proud that City Journal has played a part in that stupendous transformation. And I am eternally grateful to the far-seeing trustees and the amazingly gifted writers and editors who made us part of the solution.”
Among those seen were Ross Sandler; an editorial board member at the New York Post, Ryan Sager; James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com, and numerous others.
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HOPING FOR A CANCER CURE
A glittering crowd attended the 16th Annual Preview Party for the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show at the Park Avenue Armory on 67th Street. The event, benefiting Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, drew 1,200 guests, viewing an estimated half-billion dollars worth of fine art and antiques from three continents.
The three co-chairs of the event, Jamee Gregory, Leslie Jones, and Lavinia Snyder, wore Graff diamonds and Bill Blass dresses. Ms. Jones told the Knickerbocker, “I have spent nine years helping in the pediatric ward, caring for children…If I just can help people and parents who come to the hospital, I am greatly rewarded,” she said. The evening raised approximately $965,000.
Mingling in the crowd were Joan Rivers, Princess Michael of Kent, the Duchess of Marlborough, Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, Nan Kempner, Jessie and Rand Araskog, Julia and David Koch, Jamie Niven, Mario Buatta, Roberto and Joanne de Guardiola, Bill Blass designer Michael Vollbracht, Tommy Corcoran, Barbara de Portago, Hannah Pakula, Whitney Lutz, Debbie Bancroft, Karen LeFrak, Deborah Hughes, Helen and Tim Schifter, and Christine Hearst and Stephen Schwarzman.