ELECTION 2004

• Chabot has a nice chat with justice • Health care looms as president's task • Fingerhut knows underdogs • Women for Kerry draws 2,500 • Kerry: Bush has hidden plan • Disagreements mark race • Voting opens today in Fla. • Newspaper: More votes uncounted in black areas • 2004 Presidential endorsements • Election 2004 section

Last week Chabot tried another approach: lunch.

He and four other Republicans traipsed over to the Supreme Court and, over club sandwiches, chatted with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in her chambers - an unusual meeting of two branches of the federal government.

"It was a reaching out," Chabot said, stressing that they didn't talk about any pending cases, just about "philosophy."

"Our branch is concerned judges are legislating from the bench," said Chabot, who chairs the House Constitution Subcommittee.

The Westwood Republican is the author of a law banning so-called partial birth abortions, which three federal judges have now struck down. Like an earlier version, this one could go to the Supreme Court.

"She's obviously a swing vote on partial birth abortion, but we didn't touch that issue," he said. "It does give you an opportunity to know a person better. It will make me a more effective legislator."

So did the lunch change any minds? "We're in the early stages," Chabot said.

Steven Lubet, an expert on legal ethics at Northwestern University School of Law, said such a meeting was OK, "so long as the discussion remains at a high level of generality."

And New York University School of Law professor Stephen Gillers said there's nothing wrong with legislators and judges who may rule on their laws getting together to just talk.

"I'm sure Justice O'Connor was very careful," he said.

Another day, another $1 million donation: The latest filing this month from the New York City Host Committee - the organization that paid for the Republican National Convention - shows Reds owner Carl Lindner donated $1 million. The longtime supporter of GOP causes has separately given $1.6 million to independent groups supporting President Bush this year.

But who's counting?

Reference point: Cincinnati was mentioned twice during the three presidential debates - both times in reference to Bush's October 2002 speech here laying out the dangers posed by Iraq.

"He went to Cincinnati and he gave a speech in which he said, 'We will plan carefully. We will proceed cautiously. We will not make war inevitable. We will go with our allies.' He didn't do any of those things," Sen. John Kerry said in the first debate Sept. 30 in Coral Gables, Fla.

"He said in Cincinnati we would plan carefully, we would take every precaution. Well, we didn't," Kerry said in the final debate Wednesday from Tempe, Ariz.

In the one debate actually held in Ohio, the vice presidential debate in Cleveland, no one mentioned Cincinnati.

They said it: "If I were an Ohio swing voter, I would just let this thing ride. I would say, "You know what might sway me a little bit? Pizza with crazy bread. Throw in a little bit of the crazy bread and see if that does anything." --The Daily Show host Jon Stewart in the October issue of GQ magazine.

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E-mail cweiser@gannett.com