Vice president’s short visit will have full schedule

From the time Vice President Dick Cheney’s plane touches down at Fairchild Air Force Base Monday afternoon until he leaves about five hours later, he’ll get a chance to thank some troops, shake some hands and pose for some photos with well-heeled donors.

He also will pass an unknown number of demonstrators on downtown Spokane streets who are expected to protest everything from the war in Iraq to changes in immigration laws to government corruption.

He’ll be training a spotlight on the Senate campaign of fellow Republican Mike McGavick, the prime beneficiary of whatever energy – good or bad – the visit generates.

McGavick, a former chief executive officer for Safeco and former chief of staff to Sen. Slade Gorton, acknowledged last week that Cheney is a controversial figure but sees the visit as a plus for his campaign against Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell.

“In the end, this is the vice president of the United States, and any chance you get to get the nation’s leaders in the state, you take,” McGavick said.

Democrats seemed almost gleeful over news of Cheney’s trip, pointing out that the vice president’s approval rating, measured in late February at 18 percent of those surveyed by CBS News, was far lower than President Bush’s. It was also lower than pop singer Michael Jackson’s, said state party spokesman Viet Shelton.

The Bush administration is in disarray, and a former top aide to Cheney is under indictment for leaking classified information, state Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz said. The McGavick campaign is “floundering” too, he contended, with the loss of its campaign manager, Ian Goodhew, earlier this month.

“The campaign has lost their message, and now they’ve lost their manager,” Pelz said at the time.

McGavick said he’d be happy if Pelz truly believes that, because it would be a sign the Democrats were underestimating the campaign, which he insisted was on track and has not changed direction.

“Ian has had a lot of challenging assignments, and this wasn’t fitting in with his personal life,” McGavick said. “It had nothing to do with the campaign.”

McGavick said he’s trying to get support from a broad coalition of voters in the race against Cantwell. Cheney represents “a slice of that spectrum”; Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the leading GOP candidates for president in 2008, who campaigned for McGavick last month in Seattle, represents another, he said.

One thing in particular McGavick wants to discuss is the White House’s ongoing attempt to change the payment structure for the Bonneville Power Administration, which could raise electricity rates to public power customers across the region. To the dismay of Northwest Republicans in Congress, the Bush administration for several years has tried different ways to get more money from BPA. Each previous plan was snuffed out by a bipartisan regional voting block, but this year, for the first time, it may have devised a change that bypasses Congress.

“I know (Cheney) has been briefed on this topic because I’ve told them I want to talk about it,” McGavick said.

Time for substantive discussion will be limited, he acknowledged, but what time he has, he plans “to use productively.”

Cheney can expect a supportive crowd at Fairchild, where a base spokeswoman said they are expecting about 1,000 veterans of the Iraq war and their families, as well as some members of the National Guard and Reserves, and military retirees from the community. They’ll be in a hangar, not far from where Cheney’s plane will land.

“He’s going to thank the troops for their service in the global war on terror,” said Maj. Carol Gering. The event will include the Air National Guard Band, a rock band with local airmen and a comedian – as big a production as Fairchild could put together since getting a call last week from the office of the vice president saying “we’re stopping by,” she said.

McGavick won’t be at the Fairchild rally. That wouldn’t be appropriate, he said, for a candidate who’s not an officeholder to accompany Cheney while he addresses the troops.

Cheney can also expect a friendly reception at the Davenport, where donors will pay $500 for the main event and $2,100 for a special roundtable discussion and a chance to have a picture taken with the vice president.

Coverage of the speeches is open to the news media, so the images coming out of both are likely to be carefully crafted to put both Cheney and McGavick in the most favorable light.

But those images will have to compete with protesters outside the Davenport.

“We’re going to be there in force, showing him we’re unhappy with the performance of the Bush administration,” Shelton, the state Democratic spokesman, said.

The Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane will have a demonstration at First and Post, and the Democratic Combined Campaign will be on a diagonal at Lincoln and Sprague. Demonstrators at Thursday’s rally against new immigration proposals were also urged to return Monday to join the Cheney protests.

McGavick sees that last group of protesters as a plus if he can highlight his stance on immigration, which he sums up as secure borders and a flexible guest-worker program, plus a path to citizenship for those who follow the law. Like most of the protesters at Thursday’s demonstration, he opposes a House proposal that would make immigration violations a felony. The Senate, he said, is still “bogged down” in the issue, another example of its “inability to put partisanship aside.”