Reports from the campaign trail, October 27
From Melinda Arons:
Kucinich focuses on New Hampshire and Dean ads
Oct. 27 — Congressman Kucinich focused on two things this weekend: making New Hampshire a priority, and getting Howard Dean to stop airing an ad there claiming he was the only one to oppose the war. Kucinich had events all day and late into the evening in New Hampshire Friday and cancelled his appearance at the peace rally in Washington on Saturday to appear in person at the New Hampshire AFL-CIO meeting in North Country.
The Kucinich of last week would surely have gone to Washington for the rally, where he would have enjoyed high billing and addressed thousands, but the new Kucinich is reflecting some within the campaign's feeling that making one's case before a couple hundred Granite Staters is more important than preaching to the anti-war choir. The union membership-card-waving Kucinich got several standing ovations for his pledges to bring the troops home from Iraq and to cancel NAFTA and the WTO.
At the AFL-CIO event, Kucinich tried in vain to accomplish his main goal this week: getting the Dean ad off the air. Like a political reporter waiting to ambush Dean for an exclusive interview the governor never agreed to, Kucinich lingered in the lobby of the Mountain View Grand Resort in Whitefield, New Hampshire Saturday morning, waiting to talk to Dean about the ad he's running in which Dean accuses his opponents of not doing anything to stand up to Bush during the march to war last year. In Kucinich's eyes such a comment is just about the worst thing one could ever say about him, and adds insult to the injury of Dean having already stolen a great deal of Kucinich's anti-war thunder. Dean greeted Kucinich with a cordial "Hi, Dennis" and they huddled for about 10 minutes, with a few muffled "I understand's" and "I appreciate that's" audible on Dean's part, but no resolution.
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