Muslims For Kucinich

RINDGE — More than 200 people are shoe-horned into a small room at Franklin Pierce College, and the air is starting to turn stale.

Ohio Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich doesn’t seem to notice — and neither does anyone else.

He’s knee-deep in a story about his first shot at elected office, and his audience could hardly pay closer attention.

The story is one he’ll repeat over and over as he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for president — a story of resilience and beating the odds and sticking up for what you believe in.
It’s about 30 years of political experience, a childhood spent sometimes homeless and always uncertain, and a vision of a brave new direction for the world — all rolled into one.

In the story, Kucinich is a 20-year-old student at the University of Cleveland, and a green but ambitious candidate for a seat on Cleveland’s City Council.
Relying on his boyish grin and his knowledge of Cleveland’s rougher neighborhoods (he spent two years of his childhood living in a car with his parents and six brothers and sisters), Kucinich launched that first campaign the old-fashioned way, going door-to-door to introduce himself.

A woman came to the door at the first house he visited, but before he could begin his campaign pitch, she turned around and went back inside. Moments later, she reappeared and dropped some change into his hands.

“I thought I already paid for the paper,” the woman told him.
Kucinich loves that story, partly because it never fails to draw a laugh, but most of all because it allows him to spell out with stinging clarity where he’s come from and why he is running for the White House.
He has seen the view from the bottom, and he takes it “as my calling to stand up and speak out on behalf of those who have built this country by the sweat of their brow, through the work of their hands, and with the power of their hearts,” Kucinich told the crowd in Rindge.

Lighting up Cleveland

In 1977, after seven years as a city councilor, Kucinich was elected mayor of Cleveland. At age 31, he was the youngest person ever elected mayor of a major American city.

His family had lived all over Cleveland — his parents never owned a home, and his father, a truck driver from Croatia, didn’t make enough to keep the family far from poverty. Those years spent at the margins are the wellspring of Kucinich’s populist politics.

In 1978, the man known as the “boy mayor” gained national notoriety for battling with the city’s creditors, who were demanding that Cleveland’s publicly owned electric utility be sold to a private company.

In Congress, Kucinich is well-known as a foe of privatization — a reputation honed in that fight over the electric company. He was villainized then for bringing the city to default on its loans, but also praised for defying a monopoly in the making.

Vindication didn’t come for Kucinich until 1998, when the Cleveland City Council issued a proclamation honoring the congressman for saving city taxpayers more than $200 million.

The tough stand is a Kucinich trademark. Whether it’s opposing the war in Iraq, or NAFTA, or the World Trade Organization, or whether it’s his plan for a cabinet-level Department of Peace, Kucinich never backs down simply because the odds are against him.

“Be sure of this,” he told 80 supporters at a house party in Cornish several weeks ago: “I absolutely cannot be discouraged. When I was made, they left out that gene.”

Kucinich is also the only one of the nine major Democratic presidential candidates who is seeking re-election to the office he now occupies.

“One way or another, come January 2005, I will be taking an oath of office,” Kucinich declared to Associated Press last month.

Chances are, he’s right. Since he was elected to Congress in 1994, Kucinich has been untouchable in his home district.
While his poll numbers in New Hampshire are stuck at 1 percent, he won more than 70 percent of the votes in his re-election to the House in 2000.
His attendance record in Congress is nearly perfect. He flies back and forth from campaigning in New Hampshire, Iowa or California so he’s in Washington for every significant vote.

He promises he won’t make a third-party run, though he has been endorsed by the N.H. Green Party. He prefers to reunite the Democratic Party around the values of hope and opportunity that he sees at its core.

“My goal is to make the Democrats a viable second party again,” Kucinich said.

Finding their candidate

For many Kucinich supporters, finding a candidate they could believe in was something of an epiphany.

Sally Wellborn of Cornish helped organize a late-November house party for Kucinich that brought out nearly a hundred Granite Staters on a rainy Friday night.

“I was just searching for someone out there I could agree with,” Wellborn said. “He said we have the power to affect what happens next, and I believe that. This primary is the chance to vote our hearts, our wishes, our beliefs.”

For supporters such as Wellborn, Kucinich’s message is a break in the current political fog. The other eight Democrats could probably do the job, but Kucinich is the only candidate who lights a fire beneath those looking for a real change.

“I was just so disheartened with the way things are going in Washington, and Dennis is the only one who has come along and offered a real, true alternative,” Wellborn said.

In late October, Kucinich was invited to speak to a nonviolence advocacy group in Keene called Mothers United. There, he seemed to have the same effect, lifting up the crowd in a way that has become uncommon in the vitriol of presidential politics.

Kucinich is a committed vegan; he eats no meat, eggs or other animal products. New Age language sometimes creeps into his speeches and he uses the phrase “our shared energy” almost every time he speaks. Sometimes, he sounds like a preacher, using biblical references and the cadences of the pulpit.
“He is such a presence because he speaks with his heart,” said Robin Rooney of Keene.

Mothers United, an informal organization, came together in opposition to the war in Iraq, Though the group is not endorsing a candidate, Rooney said Kucinich is the only one who consistently speaks to the group’s goals of ending armed conflict, protecting the environment and working toward a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources.

Defining moments

Kucinich’s campaign has had several defining moments, from the serious to the not so serious.

First there’s the speech that became known as “A Prayer for America.”

In April, as the buds of campaign season were beginning to bloom and American troops were rolling into Iraq, Kucinich gave a speech to a group called Americans for Democratic Action.

He had started the congressional movement to oppose authorization for a war in Iraq. It began with eight votes but eventually won the support of two-thirds of House Democrats.
His speech railed against lockstep endorsement of Bush’s measures in Iraq and of the war on terror. He reclaimed the mantle of patriot for those who disagree with the president.

“We must ask, why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice? ... How can we justify canceling the First Amendment?” Kucinich said.

The speech was posted on the Internet and circulated with growing fervor. It became a best-selling book, with an introduction by a progressive go-to guy, Studs Terkel. At nearly every N.H. campaign appearance, supporters bring copies of the book to be signed.

And then there’s the dating thing.

Kucinich, 57, has been married and divorced twice, and has a daughter. The question of what he would do about a first lady came up at a debate last month in Manchester.

“As a bachelor, I get a chance to fantasize about my first lady ... and I certainly want a dynamic, outspoken woman who was fearless in her desire for peace in the world and for universal, single-payer health care and a full-employment economy,” Kucinich said. “And if you are out there, call me.”

Then he mused that maybe the Fox network wanted to hold a nationwide contest for potential suitors.

The network didn’t bite, but a New Hampshire politics Web site did. Eighty women signed up for an online dating game called “Who wants to be First Lady?” and nearly 20,000 people voted online to choose a date for Kucinich.

The winner was Gina Marie Santore, 34, of Maple Shade, N.J., who took 51 percent of the vote. She’s an aide to a Garden County sheriff in southern New Jersey and a lifelong Democrat.

Santore traveled to New Hampshire to meet Kucinich for a breakfast date Thursday.

But don’t expect wedding bells. Santore lives in New Jersey with her boyfriend.

Kucinich played along gamely; the stunt gave him the strongest national attention his campaign has received so far.

Then there’s the ABC News thing.

On Tuesday, at a debate in Durham sponsored by ABC News, Kucinich took “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel to task for a line of questioning that focused on poll numbers and endorsements.

Koppel also suggested that Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton might be running vanity campaigns for president. Kucinich took issue with that, and forced the debate back to national and domestic issues.

On Thursday, ABC announced it had pulled three “off-air producers” from following the Kucinich, Sharpton and Moseley Braun campaigns.

Kucinich replied, “Obviously, ABC is retaliating for my challenge to Ted Koppel. ... They have proven my point, which is the media, and now specifically ABC, is now trying to set the agenda for this election.”

Preaching to the choir

Though Kucinich hasn’t won support from any prominent Democrats in New Hampshire, legions of voters have flocked to his campaign.

In Cornish in November, Kucinich was grilled by a college-age woman on the specifics of his plan to reduce the trade deficit.

Kucinich was prepared, calling up statistics with ease and spelling out his intentions.

“We have a $130 billion trade deficit with China alone,” Kucinich said. “I don’t begrudge jobs for people in other countries, but these global corporations are coming up with a whole new set of rules, and the countries don’t have a say anymore.”

The fix? Withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, both of which Kucinich described as contributing to a reduction in American sovereignty.

That, of course, was just what the young woman wanted to hear.

Benjamin Eichert, a filmmaker who is the campaign’s New Hampshire youth coordinator, said the ready-made support of the progressive left is the perfect vehicle for Kucinich.

“My role is not to preach to the choir — most of our supporters already know what we’re about,” Eichert said. “My job is to teach the choir to sing. That energy is what’s going to bring people in.”

Kucinich put a different spin on the metaphor.

“The choir is turning out to be bigger than we possibly could have imagined,” said the candidate.