Dave "Doctor" Gonzo is hunkered down in a secluded hotel suite in the most appropriate city from which to cover election night -- Las Vegas. He has at his disposal six televisions, three phones, a rented cell phone, a fax, his lovely wife and political analyst Krysztyna, a case of Ommegang Ale flown in from Cooperstown, a case of Saranac Black and Tan, a case of Moritz Winter Brew, three cases of Poland Spring water, seven pounds of coffee from the Porto Rico Trading Company in New York, an espresso maker, three grocery bags of fresh fruit, seven grocery bags full of junk food, and the Powerbook of Love running MacOS8.5. His election dispatches will be issued daily until the Wednesday after election day.

"The Doc" is a former disgruntled senior executive of a large media company that went south when it was bought out by another large media company. He is now a high-priced consultant in the beer and communications industries. His political rants appear exclusively in American Politics Journal.

October 30, 1998 -- LAS VEGAS -- The Doc, usually loathe to business travel, is for once a happy camper.

Very happy.

In fact, he loves this suite. Huge fridge. Huge bar. Huge desk. Massive bed that actually does not keep him tossing at night. A walk-in closet the size of his Manhattan apartment. Incredible view of The Strip at night.

And six TVs. You heard him right. Six. With a "home theatre" audio system that sounds fantastic (he's blasting Gil Kaplan's unrivalled recording of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony with the London Symphony, recently reissued on Conifer Classics, as he types this). You can't cover America's favorite sport -- a bare-knuckles national election catfight -- without TVs these days. The hotel even gets six hours a day of BBC World, the fuhgedaboudit-nothing-compares best news channel in the world!

Getting these primo media-junkie digs took a little help from one of my oldest friends -- Stiggs, a pit boss in Lost Wages, made a couple of phone calls and secured a reservation for The Doc, who called in yet another favor.

But for now, who cares. This is luxury. Beats the hell out of covering an election from Washington -- wall-to-wall blue-blazered stiffs at the Watergate, Sheraton, the Hay Adams, and all the "media" suites were booked well over a year ago anyway.

Besides, why not Vegas? It's been nothing but crapshoots on negative ads from both parties this election cycle -- especially from the Republicans, who, sensing that the voters are none too happy with everything they did during the last few years, are making one last attempt to play the Lewinsky card in their latest TV blitz.

Dumb move, The Doc says. He predicts that RNC chairman Bill Richardson will be hung out to dry if the GOP picks up less than 5 seats in the Senate -- a goal that looked to be a slam-dunk six weeks ago. The pundits are predicting from one to six seats, depending on who you ask, but Stiggs's Betting Line has the gain at a "plus three for the GOP" as of 6 AM local time.

Of course, the Democrats responded with a couple spots of their own that spin the issue right back down the GOP's throats -- even Clinton-hating Cro-Magnon "editorialist" John Fund of the Wall Street Journal had to admit as much last night on Geraldo. The "secret tapes" spot may be the one that kicks the GOP where it hurts -- not for what it says, but what it implies about the peripheral activity surrounding the Paula Jones case and the Starr investigation.

But enough about that -- here's some news from the world of last-minute electioneering.

DATELINE: BALTIMORE -- Well, well! the Washington Post is reporting in today's edition that Hilton Hotels, who own a horse track in Maryland and would love to see slot machines legalized in that state, hand delivered a whopping $250,000 to the Republican National Committee at almost the same time that they started buying up ad time to commence a bruising set of spots targeting incumbent Governor Parris N. Glendening, attacking him for helping finance construction of two football stadiums with public money. Glendenning, it turns out, is an opponent of slot manchines.

It doesn't take an economist to figure out what Hilton is trying to buy with their $250,000 -- yes, it's a large chunk of change, but who needs the back of an envelope to figure the massive return on investment with regard to one-armed bandits?

But it gets better, politics fans -- the donations, brokered by Joseph DeFrancis (co-owner of Maryland's Pimlico and Laurel racetracks who has also given at least $250,000 to the RNC) arrived at the RNC days after the close of the last election contribution reporting period.

In the spirit of full disclosure, The Doc is NOT staying at a Hilton hotel. Nor will he for a very long time.

STIGGS'S BETTING LINE: Glendenning by three percentage points.*

DATELINE: SCARAMENTO -- Panic now appears to be sweeping GOP ranks in the California capitol as it looks more and more like Lt. Governor Gray Davis will soundly defeat the state's Attorney General Dan Lundgren.

This would prove a devastating defeat for the GOP, who had been hoping to have in place a Governor who could influence post-census House seat redistricting that would be favorable for conservative interests.

And the frenzy has worsened with publicly released and internal polls showing that Sen. Barbara Boxer has pulled ahead of Matt Fong.

Said a friend of The Doc's in Sacramento last night, "California Republicans publicly say that they expect to be vindicated by a huge GOP turnout, but the truth is they're sweating bullets. Especially Fong's people -- he took a big hit over giving money to the TVC [Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian conservative group]. And Lundgren's poll numbers have been evaporatingng for eight weeks straight. You can count on some heavyweight GOP consultants wearing hair shirts Wednesday morning."

STIGGS'S BETTING LINE: Davis by six percentage points.

DATELINE: THE BELTWAY -- "Et tu, DeLay?" Are rebellious Republicans sharpening their knives already? A number of news outlets are reporting that there may be a post-election coup attempt by GOP conservatives to oust the party leadership in congress. Top targets are said to be Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, John Kasich and John Boehner.

The reason most touted by news outlets is conservative dissatisfaction with handling of the budget negotiations with the Whits House, with Congress seen as having "caved' to Clinton. But other reasons include the sizable chunks of "pork" doled out to key republican leaders in the House in the form of programs that benefit the leaders' districts, and anger coming from more moderate Republicans furious with the House leadership's -- and particularly Gingrich's -- support of the last-minute GOP negative campaign ads being run in ten states playing up the Lewinsky flap, a gamble which might work in some districts but which angered GOP candidates in other close races who were unable to secure more Republican money.

Bottom line -- if you're a Republican in the Beltway, get out your stilletto and carborundum and bone up on Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" -- and beware the Ides of November!

STIGGS'S BETTING LINE: Even odds that Gingrich retains the speakership as of 11:59 PM January 4th.

DATELINE: ALBANY -- In the wake of the murder of obstetrician Dr. Bernard Slepian just outside of Buffalo last week -- a killing tied to a violent terrorist faction of the anti-choice movement -- come revelations concerning decisions made by New York State Attorney General Dennis Vacco, when he was Buffalo US Attorney back in 1992.

At that time, Buffalo had been targeted by Operation Rescue as part of their "Spring for Life" campaign -- and Vacco refused to prosecute Operation Rescue for blocking the entrance of Dr. Slepian's clinic -- despite a federal court order! Even more disturbing, despite evidence that violent action against obstetricians and gynecologists who performed abortions was being planned by at least one group, Vacco eliminated the Office of Reproductive Rights in one of his first acts as state Attorney General.

Vacco is running against Eliot Spitzer, in a campaign nearly as ugly and negative as the D'Amato-Schumer mudfight. And the fallout from the Vacco revelations may also "irradiate" D'Amato, who has managed to keep his stealth embrace of the Right-to-Life movement quiet (a recent New York Times poll shows that 69 percent of New Yorkers have no clue that D'Amato is antichoice).

D'Amato remains popular among New York "upstaters," but there are concerns within the D'Amato campaign that his anti-choice views, if publicized, could hurt him in New York's conservative-leaning but privacy- and libertarian-loving rural areas.

STIGGS'S BETTING LINE: Schumer squeaks it out by one percentage point. The Doc says three, for what it's worth.

DATELINE: THE BELTWAY -- Talk about dimished expectations! Remember all that talk about a Republican supermajority in the Senate a few months back? From today's The New York Times:

Mike Russell, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said it was predicting a pickup of one to three seats. To win five, Russell said, "we'd have to recover every fumble and intercept every pass, and that's just not the way the game goes."