Clark to decide candidacy before Iowa visit
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By THOMAS BEAUMONT
Des Moines Register Staff Writer
08/27/2003
dmregister.com
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Gen. Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander who has kept the political world guessing about his presidential aspirations, said Tuesday he will announce before he visits Iowa next month whether he will seek the 2004 Democratic nomination.
"I'm going to have something to say soon," Clark told The Des Moines Register by telephone from his office in Little Rock, Ark.
"I expect to have my decision made by September 19th."
Clark, who has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate since last year, is scheduled to speak Sept. 19 at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
A Clark campaign would siphon support from the top three candidates in Iowa, especially from Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, an independent national pollster and Democratic activists said Tuesday.
Clark, a retired four-star Army general who has criticized President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, said he hoped Iowa Democrats would welcome his late entry in the race, should he decide to run.
"If I were to make the decision to go ahead, then they have to make their decisions, and I hope the people in Iowa would consider what I have to say," he said.
Iowa's precinct caucuses Jan. 19 begin the presidential nominating process.
The latest Des Moines Register Iowa Poll showed former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean with a narrow lead over Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri. Kerry was third.
In addition to commanding NATO forces during the conflict in Kosovo in 1999, Clark has been a Rhodes scholar and decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. He appeared regularly this year on CNN as a military expert during the war in Iraq.
Independent pollster John Zogby said Tuesday that Clark's resume would make him a formidable candidate.
"Clearly, no Democrat's taking off, and the strength of his biography suggest this could be a compelling candidate," Zogby said of Clark.
Zogby published a poll last week showing Clark would place fifth among the Democrats running for president.
Zogby said Clark could attract supporters now drawn to Kerry, who is a decorated Vietnam War naval officer and the only combat veteran in the field of nine Democratic presidential candidates.
"Whatever piece of the pie Kerry could count on strictly on the war record, I think Clark could suck the oxygen out of that," Zogby said.
Kerry, who campaigned in Des Moines and Adel on Tuesday, said a Clark campaign could take support from several candidates.
"I think he takes away from lots of different people and different things to whatever degree he earns votes," Kerry said after an event in Des Moines with Iowa veterans.
"His positions are similar to some other people in the field, too, on certain different things, and he'll undoubtedly have an impact."
Zogby said Clark, who objected to the way the war in Iraq was conducted, could hurt Dean, who opposed the war but has no military background.
Clark had argued that more ground troops were needed early in the war, and said Bush misjudged the situation.
"The simple truth is that we went into Iraq on the basis of some intuition, some fear, and some exaggerated rhetoric and some very, very scanty evidence," Clark said on CNN.
Clark, 58, who has never sought elected office, also could be appealing as a fresh face and hurt 27-year U.S. House veteran Dick Gephardt, who ran for president in 1988.
Clark has not yet declared himself a member of the Democratic Party, and party officials in Iowa have heard nothing from him this year.
He could enter the race around Labor Day and still be a viable candidate in the January caucuses, but time is running out, said Polk County Democratic Party Chairman Tom Henderson.
"I think it's getting late," Henderson said. "I think things really start to firm up in November and December. "If he doesn't have grass roots on the ground soon after Labor Day, it will be hard for him to play catch-up."
Henderson and state Sen. Keith Kreiman of Bloomfield, both of whom are undecided, said they would like to see Clark enter the race.
They agree he could hurt Kerry's candidacy, but only with a narrow swath of caucus activists.
"Clark's resume is impeccable," Kreiman said, "but Kerry has more domestic policy experience and is a more complete package."
A group has launched an Internet movement to draft Clark into the race.
Last week, the group began airing television advertisements in Cedar Rapids, and this week it expects to air the ads in Des Moines and other markets, said John Hlinko, co-founder of DraftWesleyClark.com.
He said the group also is airing ads in New Hampshire, which hosts the nation's first primary on Jan. 27, as well as in Washington, D.C., and Little Rock, Ark., where Clark lives.
"We're fighting a two-front war," Hlinko said. "We want Democrats to keep from making up their minds at the same time we're trying to get General Clark to run."
Hlinko, whose group commissioned a portion of the Zogby poll, pointed to results that showed poll respondents rated Clark's resume the highest compared with the other Democrats in the field.
Donna Brazile, who managed the 2000 campaign of Democratic nominee Al Gore, said Clark would have an instant effect on the race.
But he would have to be very aggressive in courting big-name endorsements to compensate for his late entry, she said.
"He would have to come in with a huge splash," Brazile said. "He'd take a little from this campaign and a little from that one, but he will have to make his own footprints. He's no Bill Clinton."
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts announced on Tuesday the formation of a group of Iowa veterans that pledged to help him campaign for the Iowa caucuses.
The group will be led by state Sen. Steve Warnstadt of Sioux City, an Army veteran of the first Persian Gulf War.
The group will try to persuade veterans who are Democratic caucus activists to support Kerry, a decorated naval officer and Vietnam War veteran.
"I am determined to see to it together with these veterans who are supporting me that we keep faith to the full measure of what it means to be an American," Kerry said during the announcement, accompanied by about two dozen veterans at the Iowa Vietnam Veterans Memorial near the state Capitol in Des Moines. Above, in the foreground, Vietnam War veteran Gene Thorson of Ames, left, talks with Kerry at the meeting. |
