Titanic Tuesday: campaigns sink or swim

To
state the doubly obvious: The national Republican Party is united around its
2004 presidential candidate, George W. Bush, who may be elected or re-elected,
depending on how you look at it. And the national Democratic Party is divided
nine ways as the primary season opens, with (in alphabetical order) Wesley
Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich,
Joe Lieberman, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton seeking the nomination.

            The number of Democrats will drop
after the January 19 Iowa caucuses and the January 27 New Hampshire primary,
the first in the nation. (Under the radar, the chronically disenfranchised
District of Columbia held a “non-binding” primary on January 13.)
Eight states will hold primaries or caucuses on February 3; some other states
will hold primaries or caucuses later that month.

            Finally on March 2 — Super or
Titanic Tuesday — comes New York State’s turn, along with California, Ohio,
and other states. By that time, some of the nine Dem hopefuls will have been
de-selected. Nothing is final, of course, till the national convention nails
down the nominee months from now.

            The process may not be a model of
“small d” democracy, but there’s noticeable growth at the grassroots
this year.

            You can see this happening in four
local Democratic Party presidential campaigns, united in their zeal for
removing the current occupant of the White House, but divergent on much else.
(Monroe County Democratic Committee chair Molly Clifford confirms that only
four of the nine contenders have local campaign organizations.)

One local
committee is
beating the bushes for Vermonter Howard Dean.

            Dr. Dean, whose eight-year tenure as
Vermont governor made national news when he signed a measure creating civil
unions for same-sex couples, is running as a liberal/centrist. He opposed the
Iraq war (but does not favor a US pullout now), wants incremental reforms toward
universal health coverage within the existing framework, supports organic
agriculture and higher incomes for small farmers, believes the US should take a
leading role against global warming, and wants to boost workers’ right to
unionize.

            Dean has jumped ahead of the pack
around Rochester, as elsewhere. His bandwagon has picked up politicos like
Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson, Brighton Supervisor Sandy Frankel, and SEIU 1199
Upstate leader Bruce Popper. But like its counterparts across the country, the
local Howard Dean campaign organization is making news simply by how it
operates — gathering volunteers and donations through the internet, and
connecting people face-to-face at “meetups” as well as more
traditional events.

            Michelle Giannavola, the local Dean
campaign coordinator, was in charge of a January 7 meetup at the Old Toad pub
on Alexander Street. The meetup was one of several at Rochester-area locations
that night, and among an estimated 7,000 scheduled simultaneously nationwide.

            Giannavola, having worked on an
electoral campaign for Monroe County Legislator Stephanie Aldersley, is no
neophyte. But she doesn’t sound world-weary. “People have been energized
by this,” she says of the Dean effort. Many volunteers, she says, are
re-engaging with politics after having “turned away in disgust and
disappointment.” Why choose Dean? Giannavola cites her own experience.
“He really stood out to me as someone who was interested in change,”
she says. But she adds a caveat: “I never felt he was a peacenik, but
someone who would have waited [before going to war].” Dean, she concludes,
has “a more thoughtful approach” than does Bush.

            Chili resident Jason Shelly and
Batavian Brigette Whitmore also were at the Old Toad on January 7. Both are
recent grads in political science from the SUNY University at Albany. They both
also belonged to a “Students for Dean” group there. “I got into
Dean a little more than a year ago,” says Shelly, who once interned with
US Representative Barney Frank. Shelly says he was attracted by how Dean
“talks about putting [the campaign] in the hands of the supporters.”

            Whitmore, who interned with US
Representative Carolyn Maloney, comes from a middle-class family hit hard by
rising health costs. “I like Dean’s universal health care thing,” she
says. She also was motivated by Dean’s speech at a NARAL Pro-Choice America
(formerly National Abortion Rights Action League) event.

            “Women’s issues have really
taken a back seat so far” in the race overall, says Whitmore.

Well-known
local writer Miriam Grace Monfredo, whose specialties are mystery and
historical novels, is another Rochesterian who’s ventured into political action
this year. She says she got involved in retired General Wesley Clark’s campaign
after a meetup at Jeremiah’s Tavern on Monroe Avenue. Now she’s the local Clark
coordinator.

            “I have never worked on a
campaign or donated to a campaign before,” Monfredo says. But she’s been
voting right along, she says, recalling she pulled the lever for Jimmy Carter,
Bill Clinton, and Al Gore. She says she voted for Ronald Reagan, too, as did
Wesley Clark. “He’s not a politician, which some of us very much
like,” Monfredo says of Clark. She adds that Clark’s troops show the same
kind of enthusiasm for their man that you see among Dean’s following. Nationally-prominent Clark endorsers run from Mary Frances Berry, chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights, to entertainer Madonna.

            Clark, a one-time Republican who as
late as last fall was a registered independent, is running on a
liberal-centrist platform not much different from Dean’s. Clark wants universal
health care for all children and “access for all Americans,” promises to restore
progressivity to the income tax system and exempt many more low- and
middle-income families, raise the minimum wage and empower union organizing,
and revive multilateralism in US foreign policy.

            As a career soldier, Clark has
strong views on things military; as the former top commander of NATO forces in
the Kosovo war, he may bear ultimate responsibility for “collateral
damage” in the bombings of Serbia. Now sometimes called an “anti-war
warrior,” he vows to redefine the US “mission” in Iraq and
internationalize the reconstruction.

            Monfredo locates Clark within the
tradition of US generals turned presidents, like Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D.
Eisenhower. These “are precisely the men who are last to resort to
war,” she says. And Clark, she says, has emphatically vowed he’d go to war
“only, only, only, three only’s,
as a last resort.” She likes Clark’s position on gun control, too: leaving
hunting weapons alone while getting tougher on other categories. (Clark’s
platform calls renewing the assault-weapons ban, enforcing existing gun laws,
and “closing the gun show loophole” that allows sales without
background checks.)

            The national campaign, says
Monfredo, is planning to bring Clark to Rochester three or four times before
primary day. There’s now a “core group” of 50 to 60 local people
taking part, she says. “It took slowly in Western New York,” she
says. “It was very grassroots to begin with.”

Among the
candidates with a local presence, the real dark horse is US Representative Dennis
Kucinich.

            The Ohio Democrat has been in
politics almost his entire adult life: He was elected mayor of Cleveland at age
31, stirred things up as a working-class-oriented populist (most notably in his
refusal to sell Cleveland’s municipally-owned electric utility), lost a bid for
re-election, and years later staged a comeback and won a seat on Congress.

            Kucinich’s platform is solidly
social-democratic, and he’s explicitly running as a peace candidate. He
supports single-payer universal health insurance and opposes the privatization
of Social Security; proposes a 15 percent cut in military spending and a
withdrawal of US forces from Iraq (he voted against the Iraq war and the subsequent
USA PATRIOT Act); promises to nix NAFTA and withdraw from the World Trade
Organization; supports gay marriage, not just civil unions; supports raising
the minimum wage to around $8.50 (the same level in real dollars as in 1968).

            Shortsville resident Brian Cummings
is heading the regional campaign. Cummings essentially believes the truth will
win out. “Of the people who’ve heard of Kucinich,” he says,
“nobody doesn’t like him; they just raise the electability issue.” He
notes that musicians Willie Nelson and the Buffalo-based Ani DiFranco have
endorsed Kucinich. (Said DiFranco recently: “He’s not a self-aggrandizing
strategist or corporate whore, he’s the real thing.”)

            Kucinich’s foreign policy agenda
“plays well” with voters, says Cummings. He points to something
Kucinich already has done to help the Rochester-Finger Lakes area: that is,
sponsoring the Veterans’ Millennium Health Care Act, which helped keep institutions
like the Canandaigua VA hospital open.

            The campaign has attracted a diverse
group of volunteers. For example, Tayyab Siddiqui, a 30-year-old computer
programmer originally from Pakistan, says his own “strong political
views” drew him to Kucinich. “I have zero background” in
politics, Siddiqui says.

            “The bad economy is having an
effect on me, my not being able to find work,” says Siddiqui, who came
here to join family after working in Minnesota for two years. He puts much hope
in Kucinich’s plan for extending the New Deal with public works projects:
rebuilding the nation’s schools and infrastructure. The plan is designed to
provide two million jobs.

            County Legislator Bill Benet is
involved in the Kucinich campaign, as well. He sums up his feelings in an
official endorsement: “I’ve been in politics 31 years, and I’ve liked some
candidates enough to campaign for them. Paul Simon in 1992 comes to mind. But
Dennis is the best progressive candidate in all the time I’ve been at
this.”

US Senator
John Kerry has a local organization working on his New York primary run, too. The
designated local spokesperson, State Assemblymember David Gantt, did not
respond to calls for comment before press time. Local Kerry endorsers include
Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Rochester City Councilmember Wade Norwood, and
County Legislator Mitch Rowe.

            Kerry’s platform includes these
planks: building a “broader coalition” for “winning the
peace” in Iraq (he voted for the war resolution, however); “expanding health care coverage to 96 percent of
Americans, including nearly all children”; a “Manhattan Project”
to make the US independent of Middle East oil; promoting smart growth; rolling
back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy; and boosting employment through a new
“manufacturing job credit.”

            Carol Moseley Braun has been
stumping nationally, but she did not file petitions in New York State and thus
will not be on the March 2 primary ballot. According to the state Board of
Elections, the “tentative” list of Dem candidates is comprised of the
nine candidates named above, minus Moseley Braun, who didn’t submit petitions.
Political eccentric Lyndon LaRouche got on the ballot, as well.

            For
detailed biographical and platform information, visit www.monroedemocrats.com;
click on “Candidates.” For election info, contact the Monroe County
Board of Elections, 428-4550; also via www.monroecounty.gov.

This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2004.