Kucinich lights Fresno spark
Originally published in the Fresno Bee
Kucinich lights Fresno spark
Democrats rally around candidates at annual convention.
By John Ellis
The Fresno Bee
(Published Sunday, August 3, 2003, 4:42 AM)
Just outside the room where Rep. Jim McDermott proclaimed he is "not afraid to say I'm a liberal" stood two women promoting a proposed ballot measure that would scale back California's "Three Strikes and You're Out" sentencing law.
The "Wall of Lies" was nearby, featuring a long list of statements from Republicans such as President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
Buttons featured slogans such as "Oh please God, not another Republican" and "More Humanity, Less Corporate Greed. It does a society good."
This all drew a crowd Rep. Dennis Kucinich could love. And they loved him back.
Delegates to the California Democratic Council's 50th annual convention still were digesting breakfast Saturday morning when Kucinich jolted them awake with a fist-pounding, lectern-rocking speech. Approximately 150 people at the Piccadilly Inn-Airport responded with hoots, chants and two standing ovations.
The speech was vintage Kucinich. The Ohio congressman, former Cleveland mayor and now candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, hit his campaign's high points in a 10-minute rant against business as usual in the United States.
He promoted universal health care, preserving Social Security as it is now and keeping the retirement age for full government benefits at 65.
He heaped scorn on what he called the failed war in Iraq and the questionable reasons the Bush administration has put forward for waging it. If elected president, he said he would cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement.
None of it was new, and many who attended Kucinich's May visit at California State University, Fresno, recognized the themes.
Still, the crowd roared its approval for Kucinich, such as when he promoted his plan for universal health care with the government as the single payer.
"It's time we stood up for the people of this country and delivered health care for all," he said.
Bernice Bonillas, a delegate from Bakersfield, liked what she heard. Retired and struggling with health care expenses, she said "it's time for something that is not so expensive."
Bonillas described herself as a progressive -- something many present Saturday said as well. Buttons almost universally promoted Kucinich or Vermont Gov. Howard Dean for president.
Fresno delegate Larry Taylor added that Kucinich has some good ideas. But he's a Dean supporter. He believes that Dean can better connect with disgruntled Republicans and independents who will be needed for Democrats to recapture the White House.
Other Democratic contenders -- those such as Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards -- who have staked out a more centrist position for the Democratic Party likely would not have been well received.
In fact, only Kucinich and Dean had tables at the event.
As many said: The California Democratic Council has always tilted liberal. It was founded 50 years ago, and its first convention was held at the Californian Hotel in downtown Fresno.
Local activist and political gadfly Ray Ensher, then a student at Fresno State, was at the convention as a charter CDC member. He was dressed in his trademark Uncle Sam outfit.
Jim Clarke, the organization's current president, said the CDC was formed to draw together Democratic clubs from across the state to promote party candidates. At the time, California had "cross-filing" in its primaries, which meant Republicans could sign up for Democratic primaries and vice-versa.
There needed to be a group to promote and endorse Democrats in such races.
Its success was immediate, and by its mid-1960s heyday, it included 500 clubs and 40,000 members. Thousands attended the annual conventions, which often returned to Fresno.
Today, the effort is still there to "get back to grass roots, retail-style politics," Clarke said. But the CDC is in a rebuilding mode, currently reaching just 3,300 members. But that is up from 800 just a few years ago.
While Democrats hold the governor's office and majorities in the state Senate, Assembly and the congressional delegation, he said battles must be waged at the county supervisor, local school board and city council levels, where Republicans have greater control.
This weekend, however, the focus was on national politics.
Approximately 100 dedicated attendees stayed up until midnight Friday to greet Kucinich, who had flown in from Omaha via Salt Lake City.
Following Kucinich's fiery speech, McDermott, a Seattle Democrat, gave a lower key, but no less impassioned, call to arms for liberals.
"If next year, the bumper strip on your car says 'vote for us, we're pretty much like the Republicans,' [you should know] that is not a winning strategy," McDermott said.
He said all Americans should serve a year of public service as youngsters, either in an inner-city school, the forest, a prison or, if they choose, the military. Children, he said, need to know they have an obligation to the nation.
McDermott bemoaned that the United States no longer seems focused on the common good, and instead has become a nation of "me first."
More than once, he said: "The question is: 'Where is the common good?' "
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