Muslims For Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich was 33 when Cleveland voters threw him out as mayor. Just two years after he was elected in 1977, he was out of politics - and out of a job.

Kucinich, the Ohio congressman who's now running for president, would not earn a steady paycheck for four years. It would be 11 more years before he would make a political comeback. For a decade and a half, he borrowed money, worked odd jobs, moved to California, sought spiritual enlightenment in New Mexico, and returned to Cleveland to run and lose several times before finally winning another election.

"He couldn't get a job anywhere," said Dr. Javier Lopez, Kucinich's physician and friend. Kucinich met Lopez while working as an orderly after college at Cleveland's St. Alexis Hospital. Lopez and Kucinich would routinely talk on the phone and share meals together.

"Dennis always believed he would return to political office," Lopez said. "He always believed that. After he was mayor, we would go for walks or to a baseball game and people would recognize him and come up to him and say hello. You could see how important that was to him."

He was elected the youngest mayor ever of a major American city on his promise not to sell Cleveland's public utility system. While in office, he kept his word and steadfastly refused to sell, although the business community, led by local banks, was in favor of the sale.

Selling the utility would have shored up the city's financial standing, and the banks put tremendous pressure on city hall.

On Dec. 15, 1978, Kucinich sat down with the bankers and told them for the final time he wasn't selling. They responded by declaring Cleveland in default of $14 million in loans, and the city went into an uproar.

The young mayor was swept out of office after just one term. His brother Gary also lost his bid at re-election to the city council. Suddenly, the Kucinich name was political poison.

Well after midnight on election night, after the returns had been counted, Kucinich was talking with his younger brother outside Kucinich's two-story Colonial house. Kucinich put his arm around Gary's shoulders. "He told me not to worry," Gary Kucinich said. "He told me everything was going to be all right. I remember him looking into my eyes and telling me it was all going to be okay."

It was all going to be okay because Kucinich figured he would be working again soon.

After all, he had an impressive resume: former mayor, former city councilman, and a master's degree from Case Western Reserve University in communication and speech with a 3.8 grade-point average. Soon he would have three job prospects: as an every-other-day political columnist for a newspaper, a radio talk show host, and a spokesman for a local paint company. He was counting on landing one of these jobs, and then move on to something better later.

He was wrong.

Kucinich phoned the owner of the paint company. "When do we start?" he remembers asking, only to be told the offer had been rescinded. The company's largest customer had threatened to bolt if Kucinich was hired.

And so he was not hired, for that job or the radio and newspaper gigs. Major advertisers were banding together and objecting loudly at the prospect of being affiliated, even loosely, with Kucinich. He believed then and he still believes now that corporate Cleveland was blackballing him pretty good.

He was an unlikely former mayor, one unable to find work in his hometown.

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Spiritual yearning
Not long after the election, Kucinich's dining room table was littered with cover letters and envelopes. When he wasn't folding letters and licking stamps, he was scouring the want ads in the library or sending out demo tapes to radio stations. Many of his inquiries went unanswered.

In need of money, Kucinich cashed in his public employee's retirement fund. It wasn't much and didn't last long. He phoned colleges and universities looking to teach, but nothing panned out.

Frustrated, Kucinich decided to move to California, where he stayed with a friend, actress Shirley MacLaine, who would become godmother to his only child, daughter Jacqueline, now 21.

Without a paycheck, Kucinich fell behind in his mortgage payments, nearly lost his house in Cleveland, and ended up borrowing money from friends, including MacLaine, to keep it.

He walked the streets of Los Angeles a lot during this time. Sometimes, he strolled aimlessly, thinking, questioning, wondering about purpose and meaning.

Soon after Kucinich relocated out west, MacLaine introduced him to Chris Griscom, a spiritual adviser and "visionary" in New Mexico.

"Right after Cleveland, Dennis had a lot of enemies," Griscom said. "It took tremendous courage for him to hold steady with himself when the whole world was saying it was his fault."

It was in Galisteo, N.M., a small town of about 200 people under piercing blue skies and fast-moving clouds, that Kucinich began his spiritual rehabilitation.

Working with a visionary was a detour from Kucinich's conservative upbringing. He was raised in a working-class Catholic neighborhood and attended Catholic schools. His father was a Teamster and former Marine.

Griscom sees clients at her Light Institute, where she helps them access their "higher selves." She often shows her clients movies and gauges their emotional responses to situations and characters on the screen.

In a small building more than 200 years old, Griscom and Kucinich sat down in a quiet room with adobe walls with no pictures so there would be no distractions.

"I went out to reflect on what this all meant, in terms of life, trying to put everything, to put things back together again," Kucinich said. "I asked those questions about meaning, what's my purpose?"

Kucinich's purpose is to be a leader, according to Griscom, who still speaks with Kucinich.

"In all his visions, he always saw the American eagle, he always saw the American flag," Griscom said. "He's always had a destiny, and he's always known it."

Griscom helped Kucinich understand his calling. "My work is to amplify that quality he has," Griscom said. "Dennis is a leader and a statesman. That is so engrained in him he can only bring it about."

Kucinich came to realize stronger than ever that his purpose was in politics, representing those with no clout and little luck.

"When I was growing up in Cleveland, my early experience conditioned me to hang in there and not to quit," Kucinich said. During that time, his family had moved frequently, sometimes living in cars between apartments. "It's one thing to experience that as a child, but when you have to as an adult, it has a way to remind you how difficult things can be. You understand what people go through."

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Job seeker
While rejuvenating spiritually in the Southwest, Kucinich never stopped looking for work and was willing to relocate pretty much anywhere. At the time, he was freelancing as a media consultant and advising public utilities.

In 1982, he found himself in competition for the general manager position at the newly created Emerald Utility District in Springfield, Ore. More than 200 people applied, and Kucinich was selected as one of two finalists. His knowledge of public utilities gleaned from his days in Cleveland had made him somewhat of an authority.

The hiring committee picked the other guy.

Gary Kucinich said his brother tried to hide how miserable he sometimes felt and how desperate his financial situation was during this time. His personal problems were compounded by the breakup of his second marriage.

"He never let on to anyone," Gary Kucinich said. "We were brothers and, sure, we always confided in each other. At the time, believe me, things were very, very tough for Dennis financially. He just never let on to anyone."

In 1982, Kucinich moved back to Cleveland and ran for secretary of state on a budget of $1,000 and lost. On his 1982 tax return, he declared an income of $38.

He went on a lecture tour, which brought in some money. He also wrote an autobiography, but the publisher rejected it. He rewrote the book, and the publisher rejected it again.

The next year, Kucinich interviewed for a reporter's position at Channel 13 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Before he heard whether he got the TV job, a group of Cleveland residents contacted him and encouraged him to consider finishing out the term of their city councilman, who had just died. Kucinich agreed and won the appointment. For the first time in four years, he was earning a steady paycheck.

The term ended in 1985, and Kucinich decided to run for governor. But he dropped out of the race before the election. The rare times Kucinich's name came up among Cleveland's political establishment, he was laughed off as a has-been.

"Nobody took him seriously," said Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones. "He was like the actress who used to play the leading roles but was now floundering trying to land one great role once again in her career."

Kucinich scrambled together some more consulting clients. These were nothing more than once-in-a-while meetings, at best part-time jobs for stretches. He was telling associates he was running a communications company.

He kept working, staving off foreclosure, and running for office and losing. In 1988, he lost a bid for a congressional seat.

By 1989, corporate advertisers were no longer threatening to pull ads, and Channel 8 in Cleveland hired Kucinich for spot political work. He landed a part-time radio slot, too. He also was working stints at a computer software company to make ends meet.

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Comeback trail
In 1993, while he was walking on a beach in Malibu, Calif., a Cleveland newspaper reporter phoned and told him the city's municipal power company had announced a $146 million expansion. Even the mayor at the time was saying Kucinich had saved city residents a small fortune by not selling.

When Kucinich heard the news, he knew it was his shot at a political comeback.

Nearly 15 years after being thrown out as mayor, he ran and won a state Senate seat. Two years later he ran for Congress with the slogan "Light up Congress with Kucinich." He won that, too. And now, after four terms in Congress, he is running for president.

These days, he's no longer that pink-faced young man in the mayor's office. At 57, wrinkles crease his face, framing soft brown eyes that focus hard on whomever's he's talking to.

The day after Christmas, he was the only candidate campaigning in New Hampshire. He thought back to his 15 years in the political wilderness and said, "That was a painful time. It was very painful, are you kidding? . . I was reminded, every day, there's a lot of people out there having a tough time making ends meet."

Kucinich bought his Cleveland house for $22,000 in 1971. Nearly 25 years after borrowing money to keep it out of foreclosure, Kucinich said he has "just about" paid all that money back.

He never surrendered his house, just as he never surrendered his yearning for higher political office. He still has both today.