Washington Wrap

Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Beth Lester, Clothilde Ewing and Katie Dyer of the CBS News Political Unit have the latest from the nation's capital.

Thursday's Headlines

* Kerry's 11-Day National Security Marathon

* Kerry/McCain Dream Ticket Popular with Voters

* Bush Travels to Tennessee as Democrats Push Tobacco Buyout

* Courting The Hispanic Vote

* Telegram: Like Father, Like Son

* How to Reach Young Voters

* RNC: And In This Corner...Ed Gillespie and Don King?

An 11-Day Tour: On Thursday, John Kerry will kick off a multi-day tour focusing on national security with a speech in Seattle. Kerry aides say the speech will be "less about policy" and more about providing "a framework for the next 11 days," reports CBS News' Steve Chaggaris. The tour will end on June 6, with a D-Day anniversary speech in Toledo, Ohio, while President Bush is in Normandy commemorating the event.

Kerry's Seattle speech will be the first of three speeches on national security. After Seattle, which will focus on keeping weapons out of terrorists' hands, the campaign says he will discuss the "nexus between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction" in West Palm Beach, Fla., on June 1; and "strengthening our military to deal with the new threats," in Independence, Mo., on June 3. Kerry will use these speeches to explain the principles that would guide his foreign policy.

As Kerry foreign policy adviser (and former Clinton administration official) Richard Holbrooke told reporters in a Thursday A.M. conference call, "the current policy has failed in many important respects." Explained former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger, the goal is to lay out an "overall architecture of policy for the world."

Among the visuals on the tour will be a town hall meeting at the National Railroad Museum in Wisconsin where the backdrop will be the train cars in which then-Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower traveled across Europe when he was promoting alliances with those countries during World War II. Kerry will also attend the dedication of the WWII memorial in Washington, D.C., on Saturday with a member of Easy Company and will meet with first responders in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday.

The national security focus comes as Kerry is facing a "a stark new challenge in the campaign skirmishing over Iraq: As President Bush has moved toward his position, the Democratic Party is moving away from it," reports the Los Angeles Times.

Explains the Times: "as Kerry begins an 11-day focus on national security with a speech in Seattle today, his shrinking differences with Bush over Iraq could revive the problem that plagued him during the Democratic primaries: conflict with his party base over the war."

And the anti-war sentiment is sure to get more complicated as the liberal advocacy group Win Without War begins a campaign Thursday to urge the U.S. to set a date to end our military presence in Iraq.

Kerry/McCain Ticket A Winner: John Kerry holds an eight-point lead over President Bush among registered voters in the latest CBS News poll, 49 percent to 41 percent, but one of the names currently bandied about as a running mate for him - Republican Sen. John McCain - gives Kerry an even larger edge when added to the ticket.

Despite insisting he will not switch parties and that he will not join Kerry on the ticket, a hypothetical Kerry/McCain pairing holds a 14-point advantage over President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, 53 percent to 39 percent.

Adding one of John Kerry's former nomination rivals to the Democratic ticket, North Carolina Senator John Edwards, also helps Kerry, though to a lesser extent. A Kerry/Edwards ticket would give the Democrats a ten-point margin over the incumbent Republicans, 50 percent to 40 percent -- a slight gain for Kerry over his eight-point one-on-one lead over Bush. The Kerry/ Edwards slate holds Democrats and draws a few more conservatives and Independents while dropping a bit with liberals. The Edwards addition also closes the gap with veterans.

Bush Heads South: President Bush won Tennessee in 2000 over native Al Gore by 3.8 percent, some political analysts think the president could face a similarly tight race there in November against Democrat John Kerry. That possibility might explain why Bush makes his ninth visit as president to the Volunteer State on Thursday to talk about health care at Vanderbilt University's Children's Hospital and collect checks for the RNC's Victory 2004 fund.

The trip is Bush's fourth this year, the AP reports, coming on the heels of visits in April by Vice President Dick Cheney and First Lady Laura Bush. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice spoke at Vanderbilt's graduation on May 13.

Bush's trip to a Southern tobacco-growing state raises the specter of a growing political issue for the president: tobacco subsidies. Campaigning earlier this month in Ohio, Bush said the tobacco-quota system does not need to be altered or expanded. Democrats and Republicans alike in states where tobacco farmers have struggled in recent years think the subsidy program should be expanded. Bush's comments on the quota system has gotten Democrats thinking the president could be vulnerable in some Southern states, the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal reports.

The Journal gives some background on the tobacco quota issue: "Since the 1930s, the government has limited the amount of tobacco that can be grown through quota, a license of sorts to grow leaf. But quota owners have seen the amount they are allowed to grow cut by half since 1997. And in part because of the cost that active growers pay to rent quota, U.S. tobacco costs roughly twice as much as tobacco from Brazil and other countries on the world market. Backers of a buyout say it would let those who want to leave the business do so by helping them make the transition to other crops, and it would make U.S. tobacco more competitive in international markets."

After Bush's comment about not changing the current quota system, Kerry quickly said he'd back a so-called buyout. As the Journal reports, "Kerry campaign officials won't publicly say that they plan to take advantage of the tobacco issue for political gain, they are hoping to use it as a chance to make inroads in such tobacco states as North Carolina - a state that has not supported a Democrat for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976."

A recent Mason-Dixon poll in North Carolina showed Bush leading Kerry – although not commandingly – 48 percent to 41 percent.

But even as Democrats try to push the issue, how much impact the tobacco issue could have is questionable. The Journal reports, "Some observers say, that the number of people affected by tobacco in North Carolina is dwindling."

"Tobacco farmers and families and the community itself are not as powerful as it used to be, there are fewer people involved. This would have been a much bigger issue 20 years ago," said Ferrel Guillory, the director of the program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

But, as we learned in 20000, in a 50-50 nation every vote counts.

The Hispanic Vote: The growing number of Hispanic voters, with one group estimating Hispanics accounting for 1 million new voters in the presidential election, gives the group added clout in key battleground states, according to Latino groups.

The Boston Globe reports: "The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, a nonpartisan group representing about 6,000 Hispanic officials, expects a record 7 million Hispanics to vote in November, or 6.1 percent of the total electorate, according to its voter projections, released Tuesday.

"'We believe this election year will be historic for Latinos…Not only will we have an unprecedented number of Latinos participating in the elections, Latinos, we believe, will be the deciding factor in many of the states that are the key focus of the two candidates, particularly in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Florida,'" said Arturo Vargas, executive director for the NALEO Educational Fund, said during a press conference.

Both President Bush and John Kerry are pursuing this fast-growing group. According a study released by the New Democrat Network, NDN, found that the Hispanic electorate is one of the most volatile in American politics. In a study conducted in the four battleground states with significant Hispanic populations, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, approximately two of every five Hispanic voters are undecided or indicate they could change their presidential vote before the election.

Papa Kerry's Telegram: Newly released files from the Nixon presidential archives include a telegram sent to President Nixon from none other than Sen. John Kerry's father, Richard Kerry.

The telegram reads, in its entirety, "Please unveil your secret peace plan before the campaign begins in the meantime stop bombing." It is signed Richard Kerry, Indian Hill Rd, Groton, Mass. Sen. Kerry's family home was indeed on Indian Hill Road and those details are listed as Kerry's "official home" in all of his military records.

Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told CBS News that "Kerry was unaware of the telegram, but shared his father's sentiment about his opposition to the Nixon White House."

The date of the telegram is unclear. It is stamped "Sent State Department APR 14 1972 By Memo," but that is likely the date on which the memo was passed along the bureaucratic chain, not the date on which the original telegram was received by the White House itself. The Kerry campaign has been unable to put an exact date on the telegram either.

Try Me on My Cell: With the huge push to get out the vote among young people this election, organizations like Rock the Vote and the New Voters Project have tried just about everything to get the importance of voting through to young people. Now, they have gone one step further: cell phone numbers. The New Voters Project has collected a database of about 20,000 cell phone numbers and claims that number will rise significantly as the summer goes on, The New York Times reports. The group will use the phone numbers to conduct voter outreach projects and provide election information to the 18-24 year-old voting bracket.

It is estimated that 70 percent of the 24 million college aged people in the U.S. have cell phones and 12 percent of young people rely solely on their cell phones for telephone communication. Privacy issues arise from the idea of passing around such a coveted phone list, as there is no cell phone directory for commercial businesses. Some worry that the list will end up in the wrong hands. The New Voters Project has said it will rent out the list but only to groups that are calling about the election. The group wants to provide a way for candidates and political organizations to reach out and touch young voters.

Now the question is, will young people be receptive to this concept or will the callers be sent straight to voicemail?

RNC Takes a Jab at Democratic Base: Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie kicks off a four-city tour with boxing promoter Don King on Thursday in Detroit designed to "take President Bush's message of opportunity and economic empowerment to African American business leaders," the RNC announced.

Gillespie and King, who some might cast as a political odd couple, also will travel to Philadelphia, New York and Miami to campaign for Bush.

Joining King and Gillespie in Detroit are Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, New Technology Management Inc. CEO Lurita Doan and Miss America 2003 Erika Harold.

Quote of the Day: "On the likeability, regular-guy quotient, probably Bush comes out a little bit better." -- Mickey Carroll of the Quinnipiac Poll saying that voters would rather flip burgers and drink beer at a backyard barbecue with President Bush than Sen. John Kerry by a 50 percent to 39 percent margin. (AP)