Inside Politics

Zell & Swifties

The American Conservative Union announced yesterday that it has tapped Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat, to present the “Courage Under Fire” award to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s Feb. 18 banquet.

Mr. Miller and the group of Vietnam veterans were behind what were perhaps the campaign’s two fiercest and most memorable attacks on Sen. John Kerry’s unsuccessful presidential bid.

Mr. Miller, who is retiring next month, scorched Mr. Kerry in a Republican National Convention keynote address in which he suggested the four-term Massachusetts Democrat had voted to cut so many weapons systems that it appeared he wanted to send the military to war with only spitballs.

Recount in court

Republicans in Washington state yesterday prepared a lawsuit to try to prevent King County from including 573 newly discovered ballots in a hand recount that could erase their gubernatorial candidate’s razor-thin margin of victory.

The Republican Party expected to file a motion today in Pierce County Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against King County officials, the Associated Press reports. A judge was tentatively scheduled to hear the motion the same day.

Election officials in King County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Seattle, want to count the ballots, which they say are valid votes that election workers mistakenly rejected.

Republicans want those ballots to stay rejected. At the very least, they want King County to investigate further to ensure proper custody before adding them to the mix.

“If King County moves forward, we will never know the truth about those ballots,” state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance said. “We want to get some answers about these very suspicious ballots.”

Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Democrat Christine Gregoire by 261 votes in the first count and by 42 after a machine recount. Yesterday, with all but three of the state’s 39 counties reporting, Mr. Rossi had gained 32 votes in the hand recount for a margin of 74.

Lott vs. Rumsfeld

Sen. Trent Lott doesn’t believe Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should resign immediately, but he does think Mr. Rumsfeld should be replaced sometime in the next year, the Sun Herald newspaper in Biloxi, Miss., reports.

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