1/26/01 1:10 p.m.
Who Is Paul Offner?
Ashcroft’s attacker, and a partisan Democrat.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

he man who accused attorney general nominee John Ashcroft of quizzing him about his sexual orientation during an interview is not merely a "job applicant" or "a health care expert," as the Washington Post described him yesterday. Paul Offner is a partisan Democrat. He ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1982 and 1984, when he was a state senator. He received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from labor unions, trial lawyers, and groups promoting abortion rights and gun control. (Coincidentally, a victory by Offner, who is not gay, would have unseated then-Rep. Steve Gunderson, a Republican who is.)

Offner has an economics Ph.D. from Princeton, and he even wrote his own federal budget as part of his challenge to Gunderson in 1982. "It's obvious that he's running more against [President] Reagan than me," Gunderson told the Washington Post at the time. Offner's own political giving in recent years suggests that his partisanship has not subsided; he has donated to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as well as the Senate campaigns of Harvey Gantt (who ran against North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms) and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (a liberal former congresswoman from Pennsylvania).

Offner claims that during a 1985 job interview with Ashcroft, the man who was then governor of Missouri asked him, "Mr. Offner, do you have the same sexual preference as most men?" Offner didn't get the job. Some of his friends say they recall him recounting the incident right after it allegedly happened. Speaking on behalf of Ashcroft, Mindy Tucker said the nominee doesn't remember the meeting and can't imagine asking such a question.

What we have here is a he said/he said scenario. That means it's critically important to consider the source of the claim that's being denied by one of the two men who attended the meeting in question — before blaring his charges in a headline.

Under Pressure
South Dakota has two Democratic senators, but it also has a Republican-controlled house of representatives. On Wednesday, the latter body voted 49-20 in favor of a resolution asking the senators, Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson, to vote to confirm John Ashcroft as attorney general. The resolution was the idea of conservative activist Grover Norquist, who plans to use the tactic again.

Good Guys Finish Last
Baltimore Ravens 13, New York Giants 7.

On the Tube
If you watch just one thing on television this weekend, watch the Superbowl. If you watch two things, be sure also to check out "John Stossel Goes to Washington" on ABC tomorrow night, at 10 pm EST. According to a press release, it concludes with a quote from Tibor Machan: "Government was intended to have a few, clearly-defined functions such as running the courts and the military, and it would do it much better if it didn't do all this other stuff that it has gotten its nose into."