Minnesota: Kucinich's showing may be tribute to Wellstone
Originally published in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press
Posted on Thu, Mar. 04, 2004
MINNESOTA: Kucinich's showing may be tribute to Wellstone
BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press
It may go down as just a footnote in Minnesota's political history, but dark-horse candidate Dennis Kucinich's strong showing in the presidential balloting at Tuesday night's Democratic-Farmer-Labor precinct caucuses surprised a lot of politicians and pundits.
Kucinich finished third, behind John Kerry and John Edwards, with 17 percent of the vote. That was by far the Ohio congressman's best performance in any of the 10 Super Tuesday contests, and it marked his second-highest share of the vote — after the 24 percent he got in the Hawaii caucuses — in the 30 state races so far.
Count political scientist Larry Jacobs, director of the 2004 election project at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, among the surprised. Before the caucuses, the highest prediction he heard for Kucinich in the state was 12 percent of the vote. Many thought he would end up in the single digits.
What happened? Kucinich was the candidate most like the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, "a renegade candidate with little money and a populist campaign," Jacobs said. Kucinich most likely got much of the Wellstone vote.
"Attending a precinct caucus this year was the best way (for liberals) to honor the memory of Paul Wellstone," said Sarah Janecek, Republican co-editor of the newsletter Politics in Minnesota.
That sentiment contributed to a turnout at the caucuses that DFL Party Chairman Mike Erlandson said was five times what it has been for several years. With 90 percent of the precincts reporting, caucus attendance reached 51,518.
Kucinich probably did better in Minnesota than anywhere else on Tuesday because it was the only caucus state. The other nine states had primaries.
"Caucuses advantage intensely motivated participants," said Carleton College political science professor Steven Schier. "Kucinich has a small but strongly intense following on the left of the Democratic Party. Because they're intensely motivated, they're going to show up in bigger percentages at caucuses than they would if it were a primary or general election."
Kucinich probably benefited from the withdrawal of Howard Dean, another "renegade candidate," from the race.
"The handful of Kucinich people were making headway with the hurt and disappointed true believers among the Deaniacs in the state," said D.J. Leary, another Politics in Minnesota co-editor. He has worked on Democratic campaigns since the 1960s. "Their message was that Kerry was more of the same, a tool of corporate interests, a supporter of the war, no friend of campaign spending limits; and that Kucinich was the only intellectually honest candidate left for them to support.
"They never once used anything even approaching the electability argument because that would have been political," Leary added.
Kucinich's performance showed the liberal wing of the Democratic Party remains relatively strong in Minnesota. He appealed to liberals by calling for getting out of Iraq immediately, scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement and other free-trade agreements and guaranteeing universal health care for all.
"Of all the candidates in the field, he is the only one that is sticking to the true ideals of the Democratic Party with no waffling," said Doug Crandall, a Kucinich campaign volunteer from Brooklyn Park.
Kucinich helped his cause by campaigning in Minnesota frequently. "He was here three times, and each time we felt a real swell of support," said campaign worker Al Uhl of St. Paul.
Kucinich's strong performance could mean trouble for Kerry, who virtually locked up the Democratic nomination Tuesday. Many Democrats expected the party's liberal wing to "fold into the Kerry tent," but that didn't happen, Jacobs said.
To win what is expected to be a tight race with President Bush in Minnesota, he said, Kerry must make sure those liberal Democrats get out to vote in November — and that they don't vote for Ralph Nader. That means Kerry probably will have to make a special effort to shore up his political base here.
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