Following the campaign, August 29
From Karin Caifa:
WHAT’S THE MAINE IDEA?
“There’s a word to describe presidential candidates who campaign hard in Maine,” writes Al Diamon this week on the editorial page of the Rockland, Maine, Courier-Gazette (8/28/03)
“Losers.”
“Voters here chose Dewey over Truman in ’48, Nixon over Kennedy in ’60, Humphrey over Nixon in ’68, Ford over Carter in ’76 and Gore over the other Bush in ’00,” Diamon continues. “Any candidate who shows up here will be the result of either a scheduling glitch (Whadaya mean, Fryeburg isn’t in New Hampshire!) or an inability to attract a crowd anywhere else. Maine’s influence in determining the next occupant of the White House will be somewhere between minimal and undetectable.”
The Kucinich campaign must have missed the column. And who can fault them? They’ve been busy blazing across the northern-est parts of the Northeast. After events in Martha’s Vineyard and New Hampshire Wednesday and Thursday, they rolled into Portland, the Pine State’s largest city, on Friday afternoon. A rally with a few hundred supporters at Post Office Park downtown was followed by a fundraising dinner.
The Democrats have a winning streak going in Maine presidential elections. Al Gore bested President Bush there in ’00 and Bill Clinton won in 1992 and 1996. The state has an evenly-split Congressional delegation, sending two Republicans (albeit moderates) to the Senate and two Dems to the House.
ALL ABOARD: RAILING FOR AMTRAK
Keeping Amtrak on track: can it financially be done? The debate gets rekindled as both chambers of Congress, returning to action next week, consider the fiscal 2004 Transportation-Treasury spending bill. On Wednesday the House considers the bill on the floor; the Senate Approps panel is set to mark up their version the same day.
House Democrats, including Kucinich, are expected to make a push to boost funding for America’s passenger rail line from $900 million to about $1.4 billion. President Bush, however, is pushing for the federal government to pull out of the rail business.
At a rail station in Dover, N.H., Friday afternoon, Kucinich, according to the AP, called for a rebuilding of America’s passenger rail system and transportation infrastructure, restoring it to the way it was during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal era. He also encouraged public transportation as a means of reducing pollution.
The congressman then rode the rails to his afternoon rally in Portland, Me.
BUILDING SOMETHING IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
Kucinich is building on momentum he picked up in Portsmouth, N.H., Thursday. At a rally in Market Square and a speech at the South Church, Kucinich continued to tout his plan for single-payer universal health care and trumpeted a proposal to shift $60 billion from the military’s budget to fund a universal pre-kindergarten program.
Among the things Kucinich would chop are Pentagon programs for missile defense, “bunker busting” nuclear weapons and other advanced weapons systems. This comes as the Senate gets set to consider S 1424, the energy spending bill that also includes funding for the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons programs. The White House is seeking $15 million to fund continued research on those “bunker buster” bombs and $6 million for research on other concepts.
A Kucinich administration would ban all nuclear weapons and instead focus on diplomatic solutions. “We’re arming ourselves to the teeth — what are we afraid of? The security of the United States now depends on international cooperation,” he told the 100 supporters at South Church.
Several national campaign staffers, including campaign manager Gary Jelinek and campaign coordinator Suzanne Van Bebber, were in the Granite State this week to boost the bid’s presence there.
Communications director Jeff Cohen said Friday, “There’s no doubt that we’ve invested more resources and staff. They’ve just been sent up there with at least a half a dozen new people, maybe 8. And they’re opening up at least a second office in New Hampshire maybe a third.”
All this expansion requires money, though. Cohen reports that there’s been some shifting of fundraising personnel and they are hoping to get things “back on track” for the final month of the third quarter. Stay tuned for more on this campaign’s money game…
STILL NO. 2: TRACKING THE MEETUP “PRIMARY”
As of Friday night, Kucitizens number 10,714 on the popular organizing website MeetUp.com, a very distant second behind Howard Dean’s e-supporters (94,000) and just edging out Gen. Wesley Clark, who has just over 10,300 fans without a formal bid.
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