– November 8, 1995 – CBS World News Roundup – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
November 8, 1995 – ending months of speculation over whether he would seek the White House or not, Gen. Colin Powell laid all speculation to rest by responding to repeated questions about a run for the Presidency. Slated to give a noon news conference later on this day, many speculated Powell’s decision not to run was based on increasing fears from his family that he would be the target of an assassination attempt, particularly after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzahk Rabin just days earlier – and that the rigors of tireless and often vicious campaigning would prove to be too much of a meat-grinder for his family to endure.
In other political news – the mid-term election results were in. Republicans failed to capture the Kentucky Governor’s race in a narrow contest. They were successful in capturing the Mississippi Governor’s race, allowing incumbent Governor Kirk Fordice to defeat Democratic challenger Dick Molpus and stay a second term, however Fordice’s coattails weren’t strong enough to swing the State Senate in the GOP direction. in Virginia, where the GOP hasn’t controlled a chamber of the State Legislature since Reconstruction, Democrats remained dominant in the General Assembly, but the Senate was now evenly divided. In New Jersey where all 80 State Assembly seats were contested, Republicans held on to their big majority. In California, San Francisco’s non-partisan Mayoral Race was facing a December run-off election. The leading vote-getter, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown who got 34% was facing a head-to-head contest with incumbent Mayor Frank Jordan.
The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin led to at least one more arrest and some ruined careers. Police confirmed the arrest of one more suspect, but they weren’t saying who he or she was or what their involvement in the assassination might have been. The confessed gunman was already in custody, as was his brother who was suspected of helping him. Earlier, acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres accepted the resignation of a senior official of the Shin Bet Security service and decided to set up a full-scale public commission of Inquiry. The list of blunders that led the assassin through was growing. The scope of the breakdown was almost as hard for people in Israel to understand as the fact that the assassin was Jewish. And it was a reminder the extremists remained dangerous with freshly sprayed graffiti on Tel-Aviv walls saying “Peres, you’re next”.
And that’s a small slice of what went on, this November 8 in 1995, as reported on The CBS World News Roundup.
