Shapiro, Walter - One Car Caravan - On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In
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After a wipeout in the 2002 elections, New Hampshire Democrats do not hold the governorship, either house in the state legislature or any seats in the congressional delegation. But this across-the-board minority status should not be equated with apathy. Judging from how often I see the same people at party events, I wonder how any of them manage to hold day jobs. Marathon runners spend less time training than New Hampshire Democrats devote to attending meetings and party functions. Take Beth Campbell, the first vice president of the Service Employees (SEIU) Local 1984, the largest union in the state. No candidate need ever face an empty room in New Hampshire because, at minimum, Campbell will be there. During the lull between Dean's speech and Dick Gephardt's arrival, I wander over to chat with this large, enthusiastic woman who bird-dogs presidential candidates like an autograph hound staking out the Oscars. "This is my drug," she announces with a laugh. "I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do illegal substances. But this is what gets me up in the morning." Campbell, whom I met during the 2000 primary, is still searching for a candidate who will make her "liberal heart go pitter-patter" as Bill Bradley did last time. But she feels hamstrung by her union position, which requires her to hold off formally embracing a candidate until the national SEIU meets in September. As she puts it, "They asked us not to endorse, but I can flirt."
If Campbell is a seeker, Lou D'Allesandro is the sought. A former local college president (Daniel Webster) and basketball coach in his mid-sixties, D'Allesandro is one of just six Democrats in the state senate. Every time I come to New Hampshire with a presidential contender, a closed meeting with D'Allesandro is an inevitable part of the schedule. Back in August 2002, I cooled my heels outside D'Allesandro's home in Manchester for nearly an hour as John Kerry dropped by for a chat. In October, it was Joe Lieberman's turn to have dinner with D'Allesandro. Now D'Allesandro confides that he and his wife will be treating Gephardt to the family manicotti recipe this evening and—oh, yes—he's slated to have dinner with Elizabeth Edwards next week on her first solo visit to the state. "I'd love to see her run for president," he murmurs, conjuring up memories of the response that Hillary Clinton first inspired during the heady days of the 1992 campaign. As for Dean, D'Allesandro says dismissively, "He's got interesting ideas, but he's just not a player."
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If D'Allesandro were in, say, the Ohio legislature and Campbell a Colorado union official, the closest they would come to a presidential candidate would probably be the receiving line at an airport rally. New Hampshire and Iowa are so embedded in our modern political mythology that it is easy to forget the inherent injustice of a presidential selection system in which all voters are equal, but some voters are more equal than others. The special status of these two states with the ethnic diversity of a reunion of Mayflower descendants (Iowa's minority population is 6 percent and New Hampshire's 4 percent) should be especially galling for the Democrats, a party so committed to affirmative action that its convention bylaws stress near-proportional representation for Native Americans and Asians/Pacific Islanders. The New Hampshire primary is hallowed by the weight of tradition dating back to 1916, but the Iowa caucuses were popularized by Jimmy Carter in 1976, who used this hitherto obscure delegate contest to jump-start his outsider's march to the White House.
As a political reporter, I am prepared to offer a spirited defense of New Hampshire's outsize role in presidential politics. Nowhere else in the nation do voters display such fidelity to old-fashioned civic obligations. Once a pillar of rock-ribbed Republicanism, in recent years politically mercurial New Hampshire gave its four electoral votes to Bill Clinton twice. The 2000 Florida recount would have been moot had Gore not lost the state by just 7,000 votes to George W. Bush. (Connoisseurs of election maps may recall that New Hampshire was the only state north of the Potomac and east of Ohio to go Republican.) This state properly understands that without its presidential primary it would have all the global significance of, say, Delaware. Turnout for the 2000 Democratic and Republican primaries was an impressive 388,000, roughly two-thirds the number of voters who cast ballots in the November election. "If they ever do away with this primary," says D'Allesandro, stressing the virtues of personal campaigning, "we will have lost one of the few places in the nation where you can still do retail politics. It will be all image creation and television—and we'll never see a candidate again."
New Hampshire may be a living monument to participatory democracy, but what in God's name is the justification for making the Iowa caucuses the campaign equivalent of the book of Genesis? Okay, I will confess a New Yorker's testiness over dealing with restaurant closing hours in early-to-bed Des Moines—Iowa is a state where any meal ordered after 8:00 p.m. is called breakfast. But there is also a wind-whistling-through-the-corn-fields emptiness to Iowa. Governor Tom Vilsack frequently cites this stunning statistic: More than two-thirds of Iowa's ninety-nine counties boasted more residents in the 1900 census than they do today. Not only does gray-haired Iowa have one of the slowest rates of population growth of any state in the union, but it also ranks second (to North Dakota, not Florida) in having the highest percentage of its population over eighty-five. Beyond these unrepresentative Grant Wood demographics, Iowa demands that presidential candidates lavish disproportionate attention on the abstruse details of agricultural policy and cravenly pledge allegiance to such parochial concerns as federal energy subsidies for corn-based ethanol.
The most damning indictment of the caucuses is that they do not inspire in most Iowans anything like the enthusiasm lavished on such heartland curiosities as a life-size sculpture of the Last Supper rendered in creamery butter at the State Fair. (This is not an eastern effete snob's comic conceit—I saw this milk-fat tableau with my own awestruck eyes in 1999.) The purported rationale for starting the presidential cycle in Iowa is that the caucuses are supposed to measure the intensity of commitment to a candidate. Unlike voters who make a five-minute trip to a polling booth or cast absentee ballots in a primary, caucus-goers must personally show up on a wintry Monday evening, listen to their neighbors debate party resolutions on everything from hog lots to whaling boycotts, declare their candidate allegiances in public and sit through enough parliamentary procedure to satisfy a high-school civics teacher organizing a model United Nations.
That's the theory, anyway. In reality, the caucuses are the kind of seventy-six-trombone hustle that would arouse the envy of Iowa brass-band huckster Professor Harold Hill. Iowa Democrats have never put on a shuck to equal the August 1999 Republican straw poll—an overhyped dress rehearsal for the caucuses that prompted candidates to squander so much money on buses, barbecue and big-name entertainers like Crystal Gayle that the effort prematurely drove Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole from the race. Although the 2000 face-off between Gore and Bradley was Iowa's first spirited Democratic delegate contest in twelve years, the caucuses came across as an event mostly designed to fill the hotels and bars with reporters on expense accounts. On caucus night, January 24, every satellite uplink truck in North America seemed to be parked in Des Moines to broadcast the epic drama. The only thing missing was interested Democrats. Only 61,000 of Iowa's 500,000 registered Democrats cared enough to come.
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For all my grumpiness about the unjustified political prominence of the Hawkeye State, I still felt compelled to fly to Des Moines in early October 2002 for the Democrats' annual Jefferson-Jackson Day fund-raising dinner featuring the presidential troika of Dean, John Edwards and John Kerry. For let's face it, if political convention decreed that the 2004 campaign began with a three-legged race in Enid, Oklahoma, I'd probably make the trip and then spend my time worrying that I was somehow missing the Big Story.
In politics, the unalterable reality is that Iowans are treated with the kind of deference that Manolo Blahnik might receive at a foot-fetishists convention. A conversation on this October weekend with Des Moines developer Harry Bookey—the leading early Kerry supporter in the state—underscore
d the point. As Bookey explained it, he had been intrigued with Kerry ever since he read the senator's 1997 book on narco-corruption, The New War. So with free time on his schedule during a July 2001 trip to Washington, Bookey cold-called Kerry's office and asked to speak to the chief of staff. The receptionist replied skeptically, "Who are you?" Bookey confidently responded, "Tell him that I'm a Prominent Iowa Democrat." Seconds later, Kerry's chief of staff, David McKean, was on the line inquiring, "Do you want to have lunch?" The next step in this dance of recruitment was McKean arranging for Bookey and his Washington-based daughter to have dinner with Kerry the next month at a restaurant near Dupont Circle. "At first Kerry was standoffish," Bookey recalled, "but then he loosened up and we had a great time."
Dressed in jeans and a brown tweed jacket, Bookey was regaling me with this story early on a Saturday morning as we sipped our coffees at a crowded Starbucks on the ground floor of a converted 1910 Masonic hall in downtown Des Moines. This was not just any Starbucks; it was the only purveyor of overpriced mocha Frappuccinos in the entire state. This newly opened outpost of mass-market caffeinated conformity was a proud symbol of the way that progress (eventually) reaches Iowa—and Bookey was the man who made it happen. With meticulous detail, he described the harrowing ten months of negotiations with the corporate bean counters at Starbucks headquarters. Interspersed with Bookey's real-estate saga were tales of his starry-eyed adventures in Iowa presidential politics. He began with the 1984 Gary Hart campaign: "Carole King stayed in our house. And she's someone who has sold more records than anyone." Bookey's losing streak continued with Paul Simon in 1988 and then Bradley. Explaining his commitment to Kerry, Bookey said, "Having been with Simon and Bradley, I didn't want to go with someone who couldn't be a winning candidate."
Where Bookey is an enthusiastic amateur, Des Moines attorney Rob Tully, Edwards's major Iowa booster, is a political pro. A former state party chairman and unsuccessful 1998 congressional candidate, Tully got to know Edwards through their shared involvement with ATLA (Association of Trial Lawyers of America). We were sitting on Tully's screened porch cradling our single-malt Scotches and—to complete the manly cliché—puffing cigars as he described his blunt conversation with Edwards at the 2001 ATLA convention in Montreal.
In the midst of a dinner with Edwards and a group of erstwhile supporters, Tully took the senator aside to say, "John, these are all good people. They love you. But if you're serious, you've got to start organizing now and start in Iowa." To emphasize his point, Tully told Edwards that he was going to utter two words to conjure up what can happen to a candidate who depends on personal popularity and charm rather than doing the small things that matter in Iowa. "Those words were," Tully said, savoring the drama, "John Glenn." (Despite spending more money than any other candidate in Iowa, the former astronaut finished an embarrassing fifth in the 1984 caucuses.) The next day Edwards told Tully, "Rob, I'm ready to do what you suggest and start now."
The trick for Edwards, Tully explained as he poured us another Scotch, is to remember that Iowa is a caucus and not a primary. "These are party regulars," he says. "This is a test of party strength. This is backroom politics that is conducted in the open." In deference to the sensibilities of the party faithful, Tully stressed to Edwards that when he campaigned in Iowa for the 2002 Democratic ticket he had to avoid the traditional politician's trap of always shouting, "Me, me, me!" Following this advice, Edwards in Iowa always emphasized the similarity of his life story and his values to those of Senator Tom Harkin and Governor Vilsack, both of whom were running for re-election. Tully believes that Harkin, an unsuccessful 1992 Democratic challenger to Bill Clinton, is the key to Iowa because he has the best political organization in the state. "John really needs to have a close relationship with Harkin," Tully said. "He needs to tap into Harkin." That was why Tully had adroitly arranged for Edwards to introduce Harkin at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, even though it meant speaking near the end of the program.
The Beatles were probably right when they proclaimed, 'Money can't buy me love," but Edwards didn't mind purchasing a little affection. His political action committee (PAC)—the maladroitly named "New American Optimists"—had loaned more than one hundred computers to the state party and had given every Iowa legislative candidate personalized campaign leaflets (which coincidentally featured Edwards's picture on one side) designed to fit over doorknobs for house-to-house canvassing. This lavish, if self-interested, generosity was made possible because Edwards's PAC, unlike those of his rivals, accepted unregulated soft money contributions, mostly in the form of $5,000 checks from trial lawyers. (The new campaign reform law banning soft money did not take effect until 2003.) As then-PAC director Steve Jarding told me back in September, amid signs that he was falling out of favor with Edwards, "It is mind-boggling to me that the other campaigns got caught up in the McCain-Feingold mania and refused to use soft money. Why would you ever leave money on the table?"
Sheila McGuire Riggs, the state Democratic Party chair, had no problem with this income-transfer program from the trial lawyers to obscure Iowa legislative candidates. During a chat before Saturday night's party dinner, she lauded Edwards in a tone that a turn-of-the-last-century Iowa librarian might have used to praise the beneficence of Andrew Carnegie. "When I hear the national press talk about Gore and Gephardt," she said, "I'm just stunned that they aren't aware of all that Edwards is doing here. I'll talk back to the TV and say that they're missing things. It's subtle, but Edwards is doing all the right things. He has figured out a way to make his presence felt here without being here all the time." (Riggs, after stepping down as party chair, became Bob Graham's Iowa coordinator.)
Beyond such mercenary gestures, Iowa's political clout is expressed in ideological ways as well. A prime illustration was the way that Dean precipitously abandoned his lifelong belief in unfettered free trade. As Dean recounted to me in September 2002, his epiphany occurred, conveniently enough, in the middle of a breakfast meeting with Iowa UAW leader David Neil. "He started talking about the hollowing out of our industrial capacity," Dean recalled. "You hear all this rhetoric from people who are [representing] professional interest groups." But the conversation with Neil was somehow different for Dean. "I understood what this human being was telling me and it was different from [AFL-CIO president] John Sweeney telling me in Washington or [AFSCME president] Gerry McEntee because it wasn't about [labor] business, it was about people. And all of a sudden, it clicked."
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Looking out at the record crowd of roughly 1,500 sitting at round tables in the Polk County Convention Complex, I realized that this was one of the largest assemblages of Iowa Democrats who would hear the candidates in person before the 2004 caucuses. It was rare at this early phase for three White House hopefuls to share the same stage, even though the evening theoretically belonged to Harkin and Vilsack. Dean, for one, was keenly aware of the protocol that governs such joint appearances. Previewing the Jefferson-Jackson festivities, he said, "I'll probably leave out my lines about Democrats sounding like Republicans, since there's no need to directly antagonize these guys [Kerry and Edwards]."
While the Republicans, especially in the Bush II era, are the party of clockwork precision, the chaotic Democrats remain what they have always been—the Iowa dinner began forty-five minutes late. Listening to the speeches, I noticed how the presidential contenders shaped their personas to fit Iowa. Kerry, who had already announced that he would reluctantly vote for the president's Iraq resolution, still managed to coo dovishly: "You go to war not as a first resort, but as a last resort."
Dean, for his part, did the obligatory ethanol pander: "If we used 10-percent ethanol in every tank of gasoline, we'd reduce our oil bill substantially." But what roused the crowd, along with Dean's standard attack on invading Iraq, was his passionate embrace of pro-union trade policies. "Fair trade is more important than free trade," he thundered with the true-believer certainty of a recent convert. "Y
ou can see that in Clinton and Davenport and Dubuque. Our industrial capacity is being hollowed out because we are sending jobs to China..." His next words were drowned out by a roar of applause as union stalwarts rose to their feet to hail this kindred spirit from Vermont. But later in the evening, Dean endured the inadvertent indignities that are the lot of little-known presidential pretenders. Harkin not once but twice, transformed the Vermont governor into a Watergate whistle-blower with lines like, "John Dean, I thank you for your great leadership on health care."
It was well past Iowa bedtime and empty tables dotted the hall when Edwards was finally allowed to take his coveted slot and declare his fealty to Harkin. Sensing the restlessness in the room, Edwards delivered a high-energy, arm-waving performance reminiscent of exercise videos as he declared, "I have seen Tom on the floor of the United States Senate with a backbone of steel—when it's just him and nobody else—no matter who he's fighting against. It can be the big drug companies, it can be the most powerful corporate interests in America." Afterward, a middle-aged woman standing near me offered this tartly worded verdict: "He must have been a cheerleader in college."