Sorry, I Made It All Up

This time Ed Rollins swore he was telling the truth. His earlier contention that the Republican Party had doled out $500,000 to suppress the black vote in New Jersey's gubernatorial election had been a political boast, he said last week, concocted as a "head game" with his rival political strategist, James Carville. That was Rollins' explanation last week for earlier remarks that had touched off a furor following Republican Christine Todd Whitman's narrow victory over incumbent Democrat James Florio.

Interrogated for seven hours on Friday by lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, Rollins said he was stunned by the reaction to his earlier remarks. "Obviously, if I thought it was going to be a national story, I would not have taken a gun and put it to my head and blown my career apart," he said. His shame over the scandal has been so overwhelming, in fact, that he has thought about killing himself: "It's to a point where I've -- you know, I thought of putting a gun to my head."

Over breakfast with reporters on Nov. 9, Rollins had asserted that black ministers and Democratic workers were paid to keep black turnout low. Democrats, who have filed a lawsuit asking to invalidate the election, acknowledged that the Rollins deposition failed to provide a smoking gun but vowed to keep fighting. Said Democratic state committee chairman Raymond Lesniak: "I am not going to drop our investigation based on his bizarre explanation." Federal and state criminal probes are under way as well.