The Post-Star from Glens Falls, New York • 51

Cit IMu jXl Also Inside George WIIIF2 Rita MacyF2 CurmudgeonF3 Dave Barry Let's talk about our friend the bovine, F3 Copy Editor: Joe Portetto Sunday, December 5, 1993 Tamara Dietrich Tho Hero and Now Combating with Mortal 3s Kombat II Back in the late '80s the Mesolithic period in video games I visited some friends one weekend and we played Super Mario Brothers, We spent the entire weekend, with brief bathroom and refrigerator breaks, glued to the TV screen, feverishly punching the remote button, getting Mario and Luigi higher and higher, through one level after another, leaping and running and zapping. We were obsessed. Possessed. We couldn't stop. We didn't want to.

We snapped and snarled if one of us made it to a newer, higher level When one of us lost a game, the others had to pry the remote from our fingers. We were like greedy heroin addicts, and Mario was our methadone. Back at the office that Monday, my thumb was sore from all the button punching. I was contrite. I'd just had my first run-in with Hi.

Associated Press Republican strategist Ed Rollins smiles before the second gubernatorial debate between Christie Whitman and Gov. Jim Florio. After Whitman won the election, Rollins boasted that bribes were paid to black ministers to "go home, sit and watch television," in an effort to suppress voter turnout American Whether you blame Rollins or not, practice is common Yorkers calf it "coffee money." In Richmond, Va4 its recipients are known as "flusheri." In Chicago, they'w called "runners." In other locales, "haulers. -nf "You're talking about funds that are used to mobilize By John Aloyslua Farrtll, Brian McGrory and Adrian Walker Boston Globe CHICAGO On Election Day in this city of ever-so-resourceful Party "runners" armed with $1, $5 and $10 bills are sent into housing projects and minority neighborhoods on a treasure hunt for votes. "In the poor neighborhoods, buying votes continues to be a factor," says Don Rose, a Chicago political consultant.

"I can't say whether 10,000 voters get them, or 60,000 voters. It is tough to track." Tough to track, this practice of "street money," and rarely mentioned at least until Republican strategist Edward J. Rollins staged his act of political self-immolation recently with comments" about paying black ministers to suppress turnout in New Jersey, a twist en the somewhat seamy practice of providing political operatives with Election Day cash to turn out voters, Now, the firestorm Rollins has triggered is throwing new light into some of the old corners of American politics, revealing a few unsavory practices that have survived the years of post-Watergate political reform and the increasing dominance of television advertising in modern electioneering. Ironically, it was the self-anointed "superconsultants" like Rollins whose high-tech campaigns crippled the classic U.S. political machines and supposedly relegated such street tactics to the status of lore and myth.

However, a Boston Globe examination has found ample evidence that the payment of "street money," as well as other suspect Election Day activities, are far from unique to New Jersey and are still alive in the media age. Federal law bans vote-buying, but it allows for the payment of poll workers and others under the general rubric of getting-out-the-vote. It is where those two radices begin to converge that the use of street money ecomes murky, raising questions about whether candidates and their parties are duly diligent in tracing the ultimate destination of their funds and whether the precinct worker who is paid to persuade voters to go to the polls resorts to paying people to vote for his or her candidate. Street money is used mostly by Democrats, and it is based largely on local custom, according to political operatives and consultants. It plays an important role in big Northern cities, such as New York, Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore; in industrial Midwestern states, such as Indiana, Ohio and Michigan; in-Los Angeles; on Indian reservations; and in Southern states, such as Florida, Texas, Virginia, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri and Louisiana.

On Nov. 3, 1992 a typical national Election Day with thousands of contests from president down to alderman Democratic state and national political organizations spent $5 million on street money in about 15 targeted states, said a field director from the last two Democratic presidential campaigns, who asked not to be identified. In hotly contested New Jersey that day, the Democratic operative said, hundreds of thousands of dollars were handed out by Democrats in an effort to increase turnout so much so that organizers had to spend days going around to banks to find the necessaiy amount of $10 and $20 bills. "It's hard sometimes to get that much cash," he said. Rollins applied a special twist to the controversial practice: He bragged, and then denied, that the money in New Jersey this year was paid by Republicans to black clergymen to "go home, sit and watch television" to suppress voter turnout in traditional Democratic neighborhoods.

Federal court records show that "voter suppression" tactics arc a customary Republican practice in the Street-to-street combat between the two parties on Election Day, in part to cancel the effects of Democratic get-out-the-vofe tactics like "street money." In addition to the lawsuits filed over the Rollins flap, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating complaints about vote suppression filed by Democrats in this year's New York mayoral race, which was won by Republican Rudolph Giuliani. And Democratic lawyers have won restraining orders, injunctions, damages and consent decrees in the past decade against such Republican practices in New Jersey, California, Louisiana and North Carolina. In Chicago, they call it "precinct money." In Baltimore, it's called "walking-around money." In some places in New Jersey, it's shortened to "WAM." Some New voters on Election Day, You hirer people, and they get paid. It's cash, checks money orders, even that pay for their participation in Election Day operations," said Democratic consultant Tad Devine.

"It's kind of the gray zone." In the increasingly frequent cases when political professionals cancel out each other's advertising efforts with dueling TV ad barrages, field work can make the crucial difference between winning and losing. Existing it does under a patchwork of federal and state regulations, street money is the nexus where organized, legal, get-out-the-vote efforts intersect with the criminal act of vote-buying. Sources for street money include the political parties, the candidates themselves and non-partisan groups. Federal elections are rigidly regulated, but U.S. law nevertheless allows unlimited donations to the national political parties.

Laws governing donations to state and local parties vary from state to state. Besides funds raised by individual candidates, much of the hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called "soft money" given to political parties is used for voter-registration and get-out-the-vote efforts where street money comes into play. "The checks and balances are not as tough as they are in federal Devine acknowledged. "In a presidential campaign, you have to document every expense. In street money, the accountability ends with a money order to some guy in the amount of whatever." Charles Lewis, who heads the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, said there is a pressing need to hold the national parties and presidential campaigns to stricter accountability on how their "soft money" is spent "It's one of those murky things that happens much more than anyone admits," said Lewis.

"We still don't know where soft money gees to. Where are the receipts? Who retained who?" In addition to the parties" use of "soft money," nonpartisan groups like the Southwest Voter Education Project and the A. Philip Randolph Institute raise money from foundations, labor unions and other libera.1 Sao Raliinsi Paga F3 obsessive behavior my own, I mean and I didn't like it one bit I realized then that video games were the siren song of the young, electronic temptresses luring good children away from books, interactive play (outside, with each other, in the fresh air), hobbies, friends, homework, household chores. If they could do it to me, I thought, who never craved anything more dangerous than Dove bars, what could they do to people with a predilection for obsessive behavior? But that, as I say, was the Stone Age. Today, forget cartoon plumbers saving some princess who probably doesn't even exist from evil mushroom people.

Now the industry has produced games whose allure, apparently, is in high-quality graphics drawn from real action, lots of movement, intense color, grunts and gasps, and gladiatorial-type, combat wherein one character rips body parts oft" another, with lots of gratuitous blood splashing around. One reptile character even eats heads, too. It makes Super Mario Brothers seem like, well, child's play. At local arcades now is Mortal Kombat II, a game so graphic it has parents groups and politicians pushing for warning labels. On two separate visits to a local arcade last week, Mortal Kombat IL installed the week before, was doing brisk business.

While most other games stood unattended, Kombat al ways had a crowd, once as large as nine husky young guys, in rapt attendance. Is Mortal Kombat II warping young minds with every twist of the joy stick? Get real, said Jeremy Barber, 19, of Queensbury, and Leon Briggs, 21, of Saratoga Springs. "It's all entertainment," said Briggs. "Thinp mat you couldn't do in real life. If they can do it in the movies, why can't they do it in video games?" "It's not like I go out and kill people," said Barber.

The worst thing about the game, he said, tapping his pants pocket, is "it's taken a lot of my money." Of course the game is too intense for young children, they said, but for older children and adults, it should be a matter of freedom of choice. Give people credit for being intelligent enough to tell a fantasy game from reality, they said. Briggs and Barber both seemed like articulate, grounded individuals. I believe them when they say they never drop more than a buck or two at each visit to an arcade, that what draws them is the great graphics, not the violence, and that they don't go out and kill people. Personally, I get squeamish at the sight of a reptile man snapping off a man's head with his tongue, then gulping it down.

I get queasy at the idea of burning a guy to a crisp, then watching his skeleton crumble. Video games are different than films in that one is spectator, the other interactive. When the guy gets fried in a video game, when the blood splatters, it's your hands at the controls. Now, I have a temper and some very violent tendencies to go with it, especially when someone cuts me off in traffic. At such times, I envision myself doing filings that would make even reptile man blanche.

But when the words "Finish Him!" are writ large across the Kombat video screen, I could no more punch that button than I could turn a turtle on its back and smash him with a rock the way. some children did in my driveway once, or wet my pants in public on command. There's some internal mechanism, some fail-safe switch, that would fire off sparks in my brain. And I couldn't do it I couldn't Because there are people who can punch that button with no remorse or regret doesn't mean they're bad people. But I think it does mean they're becoming desensitized, mat they're losing touch with a very small, very precious part of themselves, the part mat connects them to their own fail-safe switch.

And I think they should be more careful. Tamara Dietrich is Sunday Editor at Tie Post-Star. Call. racly Mils eite'ctiveness fC'J r. i -7 Li c.

"1 Last week's Public Forum asked readers how significant they thought the recent passage of the Brady handgun control bill will be in the fight against violent crime. Of the 34 callers who responded, only five said they believed the new bill will make any significant impact as a crime T' .3 bill's passage added, "It won't solve everything, but we need to start somewhere. People are angry about crime. Also, some" of the wind needed to be taken out of the NRA's (National Rifle Association's) sails." The majority of callers, however, felt strongly that the Brady bill would do little or nothing -to deter violent crime, many of them pointing out that a criminal's access to obtaining a gun would not necessarily be blocked. "The bill won't do a thing in terms of o- of deterrent "If it saves even one life, then it was worth the time and effort spent to pass the bill," said one caller.

Another caller who was optimistic about the bill added, "It's a good beginnrng in the fight against crime: Look at Japan's low crime rate and their propdrtionally low guns per capita. The U.S. outranks them in gun-related deaths by tens of thousands." And another caller in support of the To it always be able to get guns. All this will do is disarm the general public, which leaves the criminals free to prey on them," said one caller. Sea Eradyi Paga F3 ..4 T'-'i 1.