For months, Democratic leaders from every state in the country had planned to assemble in St. Paul to inspect, discuss and promote the party’s nine presidential candidates.
They assumed the political oxygen in this Midwest capital would be all their own.
But one hour before their meeting convened Thursday that notion evaporated at the precise moment Air Force One landed, followed by President Bush’s motorcade rolling into town.
Of all the places the president could have chosen to deliver his third economic speech of the week, the White House picked Minnesota. For Democrats, many of whom saw the blue-and-white airplane sitting at the airport as they flew in, the decision was intensely maddening, but one they are begrudgingly becoming accustomed to as they try to compete with Bush for precious political attention.
“The trip to Minnesota had nothing to do with Minnesota as a battleground state of 2004 and everything to do with the fact that the Democrats were meeting here,” huffed Mike Erlandson, the state chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party here. “The White House is the single biggest bully pulpit. How can we be heard over it?”
With the arrival of the first official day of summer Saturday, most of the nine Democrats entered their third season of campaigning for the presidential nomination. The field of nine–four U.S. senators, two congressmen, one former governor, a former senator and ambassador, and a civil rights activist–have slogged through winter snow, spring thunderstorms and now summertime heat in a collection of key states.
Despite their labors, a poll released last month revealed that two-thirds of Americans couldn’t name a single Democratic presidential candidate without prompting.
The predicament, of course, isn’t a Democratic one alone.
Four years ago this month, after George Bush launched his presidential campaign, most of the other nine Republican contenders in the race grumbled that the governor from Texas was attracting a disproportionate amount of the spotlight. He was. And most of those candidates who struggled to gain attention didn’t survive the summer.
This year, there is no such giant among the out-of-power candidates trying to regain control of the White House. And until now, the nine Democrats only had themselves to compete against in the presidential campaign of 2004.
But last week, when the president’s re-election drive collected nearly $4 million in one evening’s work, a long-expected fundraising problem for the Democratic Party became reality. That dinner in Washington, at which Republican lobbyists and loyalists paid $2,000 to munch on nachos and hot dogs, marked Bush’s entrance into the race.
And it raised a question that Democrats had long feared: How will they ever be heard when the enterprise of Bush-Cheney Inc. is up and running?
On the day that the Bush team held its first fundraiser, the first of a monthlong drive to bring in $20 million, the Democrats received a bitter taste of what the coming months may hold.
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina delivered what aides described as one of his most important policy addresses of the year as he announced his plan to cut taxes for the middle class. Only two television cameras were there to record the speech at Georgetown University.
Across town in Washington, another candidate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, gave a speech declaring that if he were elected president, he would fight poverty. There were more cameras, but far fewer questions about a notion that almost no one would disagree with.
Dead men for a day
Other candidates didn’t even try to compete on the day that Bush’s campaign debuted.
Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri dispatched himself to Silicon Valley for a string of California fundraisers and to announce his energy plan. Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, spent the day in Iowa. And Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts kept off the campaign trail for the day as did Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois and civil rights activist Al Sharpton.
The newest candidate in the presidential race, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, wasn’t daunted during a speech in Washington as he criticized the Bush administration on a host of topics. As a man who has never lost an election since entering politics in 1966, he had a word of encouragement for his party.
“I believe that this president can receive a bus ticket on Jan. 20, 2005, back to Crawford, Texas,” he said, “if we Democrats overcome this sense of the inevitable and conduct a campaign that will excite and enlighten the American people.”
As good as the line might have sounded to the friendly crowd of Democrats, there was one small problem. The central Texas town of Crawford, population 705, hasn’t had bus service in years.
So as Democrats make their way through the remaining seven months until the nominating season begins on Jan. 19 in Iowa, the candidates and their dedicated followers are turning to creative measures to gain attention.
A quirk here, a style there
Kucinich, for example, frequently sings the opening lines of his stump speech. Kerry rides a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. And on Monday, a special flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream will be unveiled for Dean, under the title of “Maple Powered Howard.”
Some rank-and-file Democrats, left so unimpressed by the slate of nine candidates, are seeking another solution: Drafting Al Gore to enter the race.
Even though the former vice president announced in December that he would forgo a rematch with Bush, a group of loyalists has turned to the Internet to stir support to elect him anyway. A rally this month in Nashville drew 100 people. Gore, a former senator from Tennessee, is living in Nashville, but he was not one of them and has not encouraged the group.
Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe conceded that “it’s a tough time” for his nine candidates to break through. The hardest part, he hopes, will be the summer months.
“Democrats and others are clamoring for a Democratic message, but it’s hard to have a message when you have so many candidates,” McAuliffe said. “We will have a nominee by mid-March, which gives us eight months to go one-on-one with George Bush. Plenty of time.”
As the top officials of the Democratic National Committee spent their weekend in St. Paul, several veteran party activists longingly pointed to the same meeting 12 years ago in Chicago, when a relatively unknown governor of Arkansas sparked the crowd.
It was then, in the summer of 1991, that Bill Clinton began to emerge as a presidential candidate worth keeping an eye on.
