Longshot Kucinich a hit at local stops
Originally published in the Beacon News
Longshot Kucinich a hit at local stops
By Jim Faber
STAFF WRITER
AURORA — If Dennis Kucinich is an unelectable presidential candidate, the 50 people who waited at a Naperville coffee shop Tuesday for nearly an hour for a chance to meet him don't want to hear it.
And the 100 people who gave Kucinich a standing ovation when he was introduced at his first Illinois fund-raiser at the Plumbers and Pipefitters' Local 501 Hall on Aurora's East Side don't want to hear it either.
And Kucinich certainly doesn't want to hear it. The former mayor of Cleveland and three-term Ohio congressman told supporters at both stops that they were looking at the next president of the United States.
Kucinich, currently a long-shot Democratic candidate most identified with opposing the conflict in Iraq, was brought to the Fox Valley in one of his first campaign trips to Illinois by the Rev. Geri Solomon, an Aurora peace activist and state co-coordinator for Kucinich for President.
Kucinich arrived in Chicago at 5 a.m. after catching a red-eye flight out of San Diego but insisted on meeting supporters at The Fat Bean coffee shop on Route 59 in Naperville Tuesday morning, even though it wasn't originally on his itinerary, Solomon said.
There, Kucinich outlined his vision for America: reduced defense spending and increased education spending, universal health care, breaking free of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, letting the United Nations handle problems in Iraq and Afghanistan and having the federal government invest in community-level infrastructure like Franklin Roosevelt did with the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.
The coffee shop crowd hung on Kucinich's words, and one audience member helped set the congressman up for a witty one-liner by asking why he hadn't tried to impeach President Bush.
"I'll give you two words: Dick Cheney," Kucinich replied.
Responding to a question about how electable he is, Kucinich said Democratic candidates who haven't denounced the war because of the intelligence lapses that led to it didn't really offer much of an alternative to the sitting president whose administration allowed those errors.
Kucinich pointed out he's from a state with 19 electoral votes that has been the key to Republican presidential victories in the past, and he defeated a Republican incumbent state senator in 1994 in his return to politics and a Republican incumbent in 1996 to go to Congress.
At the luncheon at the union hall, Kucinich talked about many of the same points as earlier, including continuing to stress that Democrat candidates who don't oppose the recent war "based on lies and misstatements" aren't real Democrats.
"If our party becomes the party of war, where do we go?" Kucinich said.
In just four months of work, the campaign has raised $2 million and set up organizations in 34 states. The goal isn't to outspend other candidates but to outorganize them and beat them at the ward level with a network of volunteers, Kucinich said.
"We will win with millions of people," he said.
Larry Casagram, a retired Federal Aviation Administration maintenance worker and a member of Solomon's Aurora We the People Peace and Justice Coalition, was decked out in a Kucinich 2004 T-shirt. He agrees with Kucinich on almost every one of his views.
"Kucinich is the man who best represents me, and I'm going to support him with every possible effort," Casagram said.
Casagram also realizes Kucinich isn't a household name, that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is the darling of the moment for the more liberal factions of the Democratic Party and, unless public opinion shifts dramatically between now and the first few primaries, that Kucinich may not last until Illinois' primary on March 16.
"At some point, you have to be practical and support the next best candidate," Casagram said. "If that's Howard Dean, that's great."
Jennifer Jackson, an English professor at North Central College in Naperville, said there are "a lot of angry people" who are waiting to support a progressive, grass-roots campaign like the one for which Kucinich is striving.
"The idea that he's unelectable is what bothers me the most," Jackson said. "In a democracy, everyone is electable."
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