Muslims For Kucinich

PITTSBURGH - Rep. Dennis Kucinich may be a vegetarian, but he is throwing his crowds plenty of red meat in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"This administration with its go-it-alone approach has heightened tensions in the world and created a situation where America is less safe, not more safe," Kucinich said last week while campaigning in Pennsylvania. "Corporate control of government is going up; the hand of corporations is reaching into our electoral process, able to assure the election of candidates who have nothing in common with the American people."

Kucinich's hard-edged populism is appealing to liberal voters and labor union members, many of whom seem receptive to angry messages.

Kucinich, 56, has yet to crack the top tier in the crowded field seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, and he may never. Another "angry candidate," former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, disrupted his game plan by corralling a segment of anti-war Democrats, denying Kucinich what he viewed as his natural constituency.

But the Ohio congressman reminds doubters of his resilience. He rebounded from political disaster in the late 1970s, when he was drubbed out of office as Cleveland's mayor after letting his city go "bankrupt."

His life story is about beating the odds, he says. He became a successful politician after a hand-to-mouth childhood in which his family was forced at times to sleep in cars.

"But they were American-made cars," he joked last week in front of a labor union audience.

Part of Kucinich's appeal is his wacky humor. At a charity fund-raising event in Washington once, he recited the Gettysburg Address in his Donald Duck voice.

In keeping with Cleveland's cultural heritage, his congressional Web site once linked to polka music that included the songs "In Heaven There is No Beer" and "If You Can't Polka, Don't Marry My Daughter."

But Kucinich takes his politics seriously, and with his oratory skill, he is rousing crowds. He has raised more than $2 million, mainly in small donations, assuring that he will have the wherewithal from federal matching money to compete into early next year.

Singer-songwriters Willie Nelson and Ani DiFranco are among the stars signed on to his campaign. When he agreed last month to do concerts for Kucinich, Nelson said that big corporations have plenty of clout in Washington and that Kucinich "fights for the unrepresented."

But Kucinich isn't winning friends among party centrists like Ed Kilgore, policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council. Kilgore argues that Democrats must stress national security issues to compete, quite the opposite of Kucinich's approach. And he cautions against harsh criticism of President George W. Bush because, he says, many Americans like their president.

"One way to look at Dennis Kucinich's campaign is that he pushes the whole field to the left," Kilgore said. "The other way is that he provides the other candidates an opportunity to distinguish themselves."

For "fundamental change"

Kucinich shows no signs of moderating his approach despite such ready dismissals by some in his party.

He advocates a nationalized health insurance system that provides universal care, including dental, at no charge and also pays for prescriptions.

He vows that his first act as president would be to withdraw the United States from both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, both of which he blames for job losses and diminished worker protections.

He wants to establish a Department of Peace and proposes slashing the Pentagon budget by 15 percent and using the money for education.

Campaigning in Pittsburgh last week in front of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, he said:

"The new distribution of wealth is not only causing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, but the middle class is beginning to disappear under a wave of bankruptcies, credit cards maxed out, job losses, industry closings."

"Americans are confronted with a reality that many candidates for president are not even in touch with. So they blather on with bumper-sticker nostrums and forget the underlying economic challenges facing America."

"There's a game being played in this election early on, which is to try to be a little bit different than Bush, but not to change the system too much. . . . My candidacy is about fundamental change in the system."

In Kucinich's audience, Brian Zwergel, 48, a contractor, told why he had attired himself in a "Kucinich for President" T-shirt and brought two of his children and a nephew to a downtown hotel for the speech.

"Even if he doesn't win, he's making the party more liberal, where it should be," he said.

As he spoke, his friend Craig Stevens whispered in his ear. "I told him to say progressive, because to some people, liberal is still a dirty word," Stevens said.

Of modest means

Accumulating wealth never has ranked high among Kucinich's life goals. In a financial disclosure with the Federal Election Commission in May, he valued his assets at $2,000 to $30,000 - leaving him easily the least affluent aspirant among those who had filed forms.

His modest means are in keeping with the background of someone who grew up in an urban household so squeezed financially that his family had moved 21 times by the time he turned 17.

He was the oldest of seven children, and his late father, Frank, a short-haul trucker, couldn't put together a down payment on a home. So they moved from apartment to apartment, not always willingly.

Many Cleveland landlords didn't welcome large families, so the Kuciniches would fib. When the landlord knocked at the door, Dennis and two of his siblings would scramble down the back stairs and hide behind parked cars until he was gone, Kucinich recalled during an interview.

Another time, the landlord discovered several children hiding in a closet. He ordered Frank and Virginia Kucinich to take their family and get out.

His escape was baseball, and Kucinich recalls that as a boy of just 6, he would venture by himself to Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Back then, children got in free to Indians games with their parents, and young Dennis figured out that he could see plenty of games by walking speedily through the gate next to someone tall.

"By 6 years old, I was ready to go make my way in the world. It was a pretty funny childhood in a lot of ways," he remarked.

To this day, he carries in his wallet a '60s Topps baseball card of Indians slugger Rocky Colavito. On his office wall in Washington is a poster of Larry Doby, another Indians icon who, in 1947, became the first African-American ballplayer in the American League.

Kucinich was a pint-sized catcher in sandlot ball, and he never grew very tall; he is 5 feet 7 inches and weighed in at about 130 pounds for the primary campaign. He played football, too, and at an orientation session for new House members, he passed out a football card - of himself as a 4-foot-9, 97-pound third-string quarterback.

His sports career was cut short, perhaps mercifully, when doctors discovered scarring on a heart valve before his senior year - a problem that also would keep him out of the military during the Vietnam War.

No longer does Kucinich sport a floppy, pageboy haircut that gave him a waif-like look; these days he combs his black hair straight back.

But at age 21, when he knocked on 7,000 doors running for Cleveland City Council, many people thought he was the paperboy coming to collect. Two years later, he won that council seat by 16 votes. But Kucinich's youthful politicking was far from over.

Mayor at 30

Oh, he's that Dennis Kucinich. In 1976, at age 30, Kucinich became the youngest big-city mayor in America. But seldom do mayors, young or old, endure so much turmoil that they become known nationally.

The uncompromising Kucinich seemed to skirmish with everyone, including the police chief, whom he fired. He became so unpopular in Cleveland that he was advised to wear a bulletproof vest when he returned to the Indians' stadium on opening day in 1978, this time to throw out the first pitch.

In the episode that earned him ridicule on late-night comedy shows, Kucinich let the city default on bank loans rather than sell the municipal power company to a private utility. He lost re-election amid widespread scorn.

"Everybody hammered him, and they kept beating on him for 14 or 15 years, until they found out he was right," said Greg Somerville, who was a linesman for the city-owned power company that Kucinich refused to sell.

Somerville, who occasionally volunteers for Kucinich, was referring to the city's declaration in the early 1990s that Kucinich's decision not to sell the utility had saved city residents millions of dollars. The utility was so grateful that its managers later named a building for Kucinich, who adopted the light bulb for a campaign logo when he ran successfully for Congress in 1996.

Congressional crusader

"I met a woman and fell in love" is how the divorced Kucinich begins when asked how he became a vegetarian, a rarity in the carnivorous world of presidential politics. His friend persuaded him to change his eating habits, and he became a vegan - one who uses no animal products whatsoever, including milk and eggs.

He eats organically grown food almost exclusively. He is so committed that he soaks newly hulled oats overnight so they'll be tender for breakfast oatmeal.

Kucinich's attentiveness to food extends to food policy. In Congress, he is the leading proponent of toughening federal regulation of genetically modified food and labeling the packaging of products with engineered ingredients.

He attributes his little success so far on the issue to a public relations and lobbying effort by Monsanto Co. and others in the biotechnology industry allied with farm organizations and pharmaceutical companies.

"It's an unholy alliance, and they have tremendous influence on the House of Representatives. We have a system here that is controlled by major monopolies," he said.

Kucinich has been the leader of the progressive caucus, but his record suggests an independent streak. He was among a minority of Democrats voting to allow the Judiciary Committee to look into impeaching President Bill Clinton.

Kucinich has supported a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration. And his voting record in Congress is anti-abortion in many respects, but Kucinich asserted that he has "evolved" on the issue of abortion restrictions.

"The idea of working to make abortion itself illegal or inaccessible really undermines a woman's equality in society. I haven't always been there, but I've seen how this issue has been so divisive in this country," he said.

Meanwhile, Kucinich's detractors continue to paint him as an impossible long shot and a political gadfly, albeit one with a message.

Kucinich replies that he has stuck around this long, has workers in 37 states, money in the bank and more on the way in the federal match.

"I realize I am considered a long shot. But that's OK; I'm comfortable in that role. I've been a long shot all my life. For me, that's life. Is there any other way to do it? We'll just have to see how I do in the early states; that will tell how much potential this campaign has," he said.

Kucinich sometimes consults the words of Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, which he carries in his wallet along with the baseball card: "Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible."