Kucinich formally announces campaign for U.S. presidency
Originally published by Knight-Ridder
Posted on Mon, Oct. 13, 2003
Kucinich formally announces campaign for U.S. presidency
By Carl Chancellor
Knight Ridder Newspapers
CLEVELAND - Standing in the city council chamber where he won his greatest political victories and suffered his most humiliating defeats, Dennis John Kucinich came home to Cleveland on Monday to formally announce his campaign for the presidency of the United States.
Kucinich, 57, a four-term Democratic congressman from the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio, told several hundred supporters he was running for president because he wants to put workers' rights, fair trade policy, universal health care, guaranteed quality education and a renewed commitment to peace back on the American agenda.
"Let's lift up America. … It's time for America to resume its glorious journey," said Kucinich, Cleveland's mayor in the 1970s. He said it was time to reject the Bush administration's record of lost jobs, lower wages, eroded civil liberties, inflamed fear and unnecessary war.
Kucinich barely registers in most opinion polls, including those in early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, and he holds no realistic chance of winning his party's presidential nomination. Yet his outspoken liberalism is helping to shape the Democrats' debate and could influence the outcome.
One of the most outspoken critics of the war with Iraq, Kucinich said that as president he would cut the "bloated" Pentagon budget and invest the savings, which he has called the "peace dividend," in education, universal health care, cleaning up the environment and other pressing domestic needs.
Rejecting President Bush's call for $87 billion more, mostly for Iraq, Kucinich said it was "time to support our troops by bringing them home."
That statement brought the crowd to its feet in thunderous applause.
Kucinich supporters began arriving hours before the event. A cross-section of northeast Ohioans made their way up the gray stone steps of Cleveland City Hall, collecting buttons, stickers and placards thrust at them by Kucinich campaign workers.
"He's saying what nobody else is saying," said Pokey Karol, 51, of Cleveland.
Pinning an Elect Kucinich button on his white baseball cap, Karol said he liked Kucinich's message of reining in large multinational corporations.
"America is no longer the United States, but the United Corporate State of America. That has to change," Karol said, affixing his cap atop his green-streaked, shoulder-length hair.
Lakewood resident Janet French, 70, said she came to support Kucinich because "he's real. He tells it like it is. He has a strong liberal message that people want to hear."
But will enough people listen to make him a viable candidate?
"I don't know if his chances are very good. I'm not sure he will have enough money," French said.
Such skepticism doesn't faze Kucinich. Still boyish in appearance with 140 pounds draped on a 5-foot-7 frame thanks to his strict vegan diet, he believes in himself with a wide-eyed, high-energy, roll-up-the-sleeves enthusiasm.
It was that attitude, combined with his talent as a strong grassroots campaigner, that got him elected to Cleveland's city council as a 23-year-old college student. Just a few years later in 1977, at age 31, he was elected the city's mayor, the youngest person ever to lead a major American city.
The ink hadn't dried on the national headlines trumpeting his election as Cleveland's "Boy Mayor" before coverage turned vicious and he became widely known as "Dennis the Menace." He quickly became the butt of cruel jokes as Cleveland fell into default, thanks largely to his unwillingness to sell the city-owned electric power plant to a private company.
That financial disaster led to a recall effort that he was barely able to fight off. Things got so bad for Kucinich that he had to wear a bulletproof vest when he tossed out the ceremonial first pitch for the Indians' opening game in 1978.
The next year, after just one term, he was out.
On Monday, several speakers mentioned those tumultuous days, contending that many of the fights Kucinich waged then, including the battle to save the city-owned power plant, proved to be correct.
"It was said on this floor that Cleveland Public Power was gone and counted out. Today it is a bright light," said Jay Westbrook, a Cleveland councilman. "America, we send you our very best, Dennis J. Kucinich."
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