Following the campaign, October 28
From Karin Caifa:
HITTING HARD IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
Kucinich left Detroit early Monday and headed back to New Hampshire, where he campaigned over the weekend and will remain through Tuesday morning. The campaign continues its crusade against Dean’s ad regarding opponents’ stances on Iraq. “It’s not just an ad we dislike. It’s an ad that’s misleading,” said campaign press secretary David Swanson. “The reason for the concerns over the ads is because they’re harmful to the campaign. It’s not something that we’re going to allow to go unchallenged.” Continued Swanson: “There are problems with the ad that is running in Iowa, but not as great as the ones in New Hampshire. It also very strongly implies that Dean opposed the spending of the $87 billion in Iraq. The same falsehoods were brought up in the debate last night and Dean never corrected it. These ads are misrepresenting Congressman Kucinich’s position but also misrepresenting Dean’s.” The campaign now says they are considering running television advertisements of their own to counter the Dean ads, a bold move for a bid with relatively small campaign coffers. The Kucinich campaign has been charging hard in the Granite State of late. Kucinich spent three days in the state last week, including an appearance before 70 union representatives of the state’s AFL-CIO. The Concord Monitor reported Sunday that Kucinich was the undeniable favorite of the five candidates who appeared: “At least on stage, it was Kucinich who seemed to set the crowd’s heart aflutter. He left the platform to pace the aisle, bouncing to the tips of his toes when he talked about how he’d lined up 176 Democrats to oppose the war in Iraq. He had audience members cheering when he held up his union membership card. They leapt to their feet when he blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement for the loss of American jobs overseas and said he would make canceling it his first act in office.” But, the paper also noted, “Although Kucinich received the most whoops and hollers from the audience, he hasn’t won all of their votes. Firefighters stood up for Kerry while other conference attendees proudly wore their Gephardt stickers.” The campaign offers that the new attention to New Hampshire is not coming at the expense of Iowa, where Kucinich has arguably his best state organization. The flurry of activity there has to do with the fact that it’s such an early primary, Swanson said. But with other campaigns pulling out of certain primaries, and other perceived upper-tier candidates foundering there, the Kucinich camp sees an opening for a liberal, anti-war, progressive candidate to take some votes on Jan. 27. Funny, the last Zogby poll had that role being played by Dean.
MORE DEBATE FALLOUT
Overall, Kucinich’s debate performance Sunday night could be dubbed a success. He got more talk time than Gephardt or Braun and just a minute less than Dean, and a whole three minutes more than he did at the last forum in Phoenix. He was able to talk about his Department of Peace proposal and his Iraq exit strategy, as well as address the urban issues vital to the hometown crowd. But it was that attempt to connect with Detroit’s population that landed him scathing criticism from the local press. Misstating the number of Detroit’s homicide victims — exaggerating it tenfold [ed. as a look at the stats indicates, he confused the yearly and monthly stats rather than "exaggerating"] — really rubbed the audience the wrong way, and Kucinich found himself the poster boy for “what’s wrong with the Democratic field” Monday morning. “The debate, which was supposed to focus on urban issues, gave one candidate, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the chance to wrongly disparage its host city by announcing a monthly homicide rate that was off by 265 people,” wrote Rochelle Riley in an article that appeared on the front page of Monday morning’s Detroit Free Press. “It showed once again just how hard it is for urban centers such as Detroit to get national leaders to focus on what’s real. Swanson called the incident “unfortunate” and said that the congressman simply misspoke.“The point he was making, that there’s too much violence and too much gun violence in our cities, was right on,” he added. “And I’m sure that no one in that room thought that even 35 deaths from gun violence was a small number.” Swanson also noted that while all nine candidates were invited, Kucinich was the only one who accepted an invitation to visit with Save Our Sons and Daughters, a community group devoted to reducing gun violence.
SOME PRAISE
On Monday, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence cited Kucinich and Kerry for their stances on gun violence during the debate. “Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Dennis Kucinich demonstrated very strongly last night at the Democratic debates that candidates need to show they won’t stand for the extremist gun lobby’s assault on America’s basic gun safety protections,” said a statement from Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign. “The gun lobby’s push to end the ban on assault weapons and to secure sweeping legal immunity for the gun industry are shameful and should be stopped.” The Brady Campaign, named for former President Reagan’s press secretary, shot during an assassination attempt, is a grass-roots lobbying effort aimed at curbing gun violence. The comments come in the immediate wake of a story in Sunday’s Washington Post, which said that the field of nine is tiptoeing around the issue.
FUND-RAISING UPDATE
The Kucinich campaign continues to chug toward their goal of raising $400,000 for the month of October. Totals as of Monday night were $300,369. The campaign hopes that sales of Kucinich’s brand new book, “A Prayer for America,” will help boost that total. The book is a collection of essays and speeches penned by Kucinich throughout his career in public service, from being mayor of Cleveland in 1977 through his tenure in the U.S. House. It includes the February 2002 “Prayer for America” speech advising against military action in Iraq that sparked a “draft Kucinich” movement that eventually led to his presidential bid. Folks can buy the book directly from the campaign for $15. The campaign says they rang up about $5,500 worth of sales in about five hours after sending an e-mail to supporters.
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