Kucinich struggles for recognition
Originally published in the Arizona Republic
Kucinich struggles for recognition
Liberal Dem has 'broadest reach'
Jon Kamman and Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 23, 2003 12:00 AM
As president, Dennis Kucinich would work to end private competition in the nation's health care system. He would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq within 90 days. He would give amnesty to immigrants who are in this country unlawfully.
The four-term congressman from Ohio elaborated on those and other unconventional views during a visit Monday to the Valley.
And when he carried his message of free pre-kindergarten day care to a Chicanos Por La Causa center for low-income workers' children, he faced a warm enough reception but also had one of the defining characteristics of his campaign.
"To be honest, I had never heard of the man until yesterday," said Carol Consentino, director of the Early Head Start program on South Central Avenue.
Kucinich, whose reputation as an outspoken scrapper dates from his 1977 election as Cleveland's youngest mayor at age 31, is considered the most liberal of nine candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
Unfazed by creating hardly a blip in most polls, he told the editorial board of The Arizona Republic that he has the "broadest reach" of all candidates, will win Ohio and expects to be the next president.
"I'm the candidate who people are going to start looking at because they're finding that the candidates who are out there are not sufficient," he said.
Best known for his early and adamant opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Kucinich, said, "If it was wrong to go in, it's wrong for us to stay in.
"It's widely accepted around the world that the United States went into Iraq to grab the oil."
Asked if he shared that view, he said, "Absolutely."
The United States must strengthen the United Nations and make the rebuilding of Iraq an international effort, he said.
To do so will require that the United States "give up any intentions of controlling the oil assets . . . give up the contract process that is so sullied by war profiteering . . . and renounce ambitions to privatize the Iraqi economy," he said.
On the domestic front, Kucinich also would make health care available to all through a Medicare-like program that would, in effect, eliminate insurance companies and remove all profit motives from the health care industry. The program would pay for itself with the savings from eliminating such costs as marketing and executive salaries paid in the competitive sector, he said.
"I know for some people that's something that seems un-American," the candidate said, but 8,000 members of Physicians for National Health Care have endorsed it and "people see this as an idea whose time has come."
"I don't think education should be left to just market-based principles, either," he said, advocating free college tuition, as well as free day care for children from ages 3 to 5. Cutting military spending by 15 percent would free up $60 billion to pay for the program, he said.
Kucinich shook hands with several women and wished them Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas in Spanish, during brief stops at a clinic for pregnant women and the Head Start program.
Kucinich, who also filed his official candidacy papers at the state Capitol, said he visited the center because of his strong support for social services, which he said "are needed all over the country, particularly in communities of color."
At The Republic, Kucinich said he favors a guest-worker program that would allow immigrants to work legally in this country, but gave few details of how he thinks it should work.
He said involving the Department of Labor in enforcing fair labor standards for undocumented workers would help eliminate the incentive for corporations to hire them cheaply. He did not explain how Labor could take an active role in monitoring employers while immigration authorities do not enforce laws prohibiting hiring them.
He said he was not familiar with a bill sponsored by Republican Arizona Reps. Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake and Sen. John McCain that would establish a guest-worker program.
"I think there ought to be amnesty . . . for people who have been here, who have not been documented and want to establish their presence here and not have to go back," he said. "And if people want to apply for citizenship, they should be able to do that as well without having to go back."
Kucinich had harsh words for the World Trade Organization, saying it "has stripped us of sovereignty," and for NAFTA, the 10-year-old free-trade agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Contending that NAFTA "ended up a platform for moving more jobs" out of this country, Kucinich said, "Ross Perot was 100 percent right" in denouncing NAFTA during his third-party candidacy for president in 1992. "It's given corporations a chance to drive down wages in this country as well as other countries," he said.
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