Politics

By GARY ROTSTEIN
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The political advertisement depicting a mannequin in U.S. military wear being shredded by small-arms fire began showing up in August against U.S. Sen.

By BILL TOLAND
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The 2006 election is over, and the 2008 election is 718 days away. So why is a pro-choice Republican group launching a controversial advertising campaign in Pennsylvania TV markets this week?

A week that was supposed to be the first in six months fully devoid of political ads?

"Our ad, which is, you know, purposely divisive, could have hurt Republicans in certain races," said Jennifer Stockman, national co-chair of the Republican Majority for Choice, itself an outgrowth of the former national Republican Pro-Choice Coalition.

By ANN IMSE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Denver is still counting votes a week after the election because bar code misprints on 70,000 absentee ballots required five days of hand sorting of 23 ballot styles.

By M.S. ENKOJI
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Gray Allen poured his heart into his first political campaign, knocking on doors every day, sending out mailers.

But in the three-way race for a seat on the Placer County, Calif., Water Agency board last week, one of Allen's 6,109 votes came his way as the result of more than just standard stumping.

Inge Walen, 72, had been pinned under the refrigerator in her home for four days, she says, when Allen showed up on her doorstep seeking her support at the polls.

By JIM PROVANCE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
With last week's landmark decision by voters to go smoke-free from the Ohio River to Lake Erie, Ohio became the first Midwestern stop on a long national journey by anti-smoking advocates.

As of Dec.

By MATTHAI CHAKKO KURUVILA
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Pastor Steve Madsen urged the 4,000 people worshipping at his Livermore, Calif., evangelical church on the Sunday before the election to be sure to vote.

By REBECCA WALSH
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Four years ago on election night, Jim Matheson was a basket case. He won his congressional seat by less than 1 percent.

This year was different.

By JAMES O'TOOLE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
With the ballots of one national election barely counted, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack formally kicked off the next one as he became the first candidate to form a 2008 presidential exploratory committee.

The two-term Democratic governor signaled his candidacy legally as he filed the papers to form the committee with the Federal Elections Commission last Thursday.

The public debut of his bid came with the launch of a Web site in which he speaks of his presidential ambitions while acknowledging his underdog status in a Democratic race against several unannounced but better-known candidates.

"I've never started a race that I've been expected to win, and I've never lost," Vilsack says in a video on the new site.

Nearing the end of his second term, Vilsack was elected in 1998 as the first Democrat to lead Iowa in more than three decades.

By KATHERINE GREGG
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
In his first interview since losing the Republican U.S. Senate seat that has been in his family for three decades, Lincoln D. Chafee said a lot of people had been coming up to him "and saying, 'We're sorry you lost, but glad the Congress switched' " from GOP to Democratic Party control.

By LAURA FRANK
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Denver became the largest city in the nation to attempt to use central voting centers instead of traditional precinct polling places on Election Day.