Kerry tries to rejuvenate his campaign
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
LEBANON, N.H. — The line stretches through the door of the firehouse, edges along the wall and curls in front of the table where Massachusetts senator, Boston Brahmin and presidential hopeful John Kerry is ladling bowl after bowl of chili.
Presidential contender John Kerry says the presidential contest has so far been 'humbling.'
AP
"I could keep spooning this stuff all night," Kerry assures one diner. Chili's not the only thing on the menu tonight: So is Kerry.
When the year began, he was seen as the Democratic candidate to beat — the contender with the Vietnam War heroism, Washington experience, fundraising prowess and craggy good looks to take on President Bush.
But no more. If he fails to win the opening New Hampshire primary in nine weeks — and former Vermont governor Howard Dean now holds a formidable double-digit lead here — Kerry could be in line for a different distinction: The first major candidate to be pushed from the race.
The contest so far has been "humbling," he acknowledges. Now, after waging an unfocused campaign and watching Dean define the race, Kerry is scrambling to revive his prospects. In recent days, he has fired his campaign manager, decided to tap his considerable wealth to pay for a barrage of TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire and promised to deliver a sharper message against Bush and Dean. On Friday, he outlined plans for his first 100 days in the White House. On Sunday, he joined Massachusetts colleague Edward Kennedy in an attempt to filibuster the GOP bill adding prescription drug benefits to Medicare.
And at firehouse suppers from Laconia to Lebanon, he's trying to dispel complaints that he is aloof. Chili, anyone?
"This electorate is entirely volatile and waiting to hear where we're going to take America," Kerry, 59, says in an interview on his campaign bus. His narrow 6-foot-4 frame is folded into a seat in the first row. His 26-year-old daughter, Vanessa, taking a break from Harvard Medical School to campaign, is one row back. "You folks are much too focused on the now. It's not now. They don't vote until two months from now."
But he doesn't argue with the premise that his campaign has gotten off-track. "I'm not trying to gild the lily here," he says.
Presidential candidates have staged successful comebacks before, sometimes in these same Granite State precincts. In 1980, frontrunner Ronald Reagan limped into New Hampshire after losing the Iowa caucuses to George Bush, the current president's father. Reagan fought back, then won New Hampshire and fired his top strategists on the same day. In 1992, Bill Clinton, wounded by allegations of womanizing and draft-dodging, campaigned indefatigably and declared himself "the comeback kid" when he finished second.
But skeptics question whether Kerry has Reagan's ideological base or Clinton's political skills. His comeback depends in part on what others do: A victory by Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt in Iowa's caucuses on Jan. 19 would deny Dean momentum into New Hampshire's primary on Jan. 27. A misstep by Dean would help, too.
Kerry needs voters who are now flirting with Dean to reconsider. Some have: "Dated Dean, Married Kerry" reads a bumper sticker on a car in the firehouse lot.
At the moment, though, Dean continues to be this year's phenom. He has combined Internet savvy and an antiwar message to propel himself to the top of a crowded field. Kerry has been the heavyweight hopeful who has failed to land much of a punch.
Irmi Snowden, a retiree who declines to give her age ("just say I'm a senior citizen") drops by the firehouse Friday to take a look. She likes Kerry's environmental views and his support of gun control. But she likes Dean, too. "He doesn't seem to be afraid, like so many other Democrats," she says.
Who has her vote? "I'd say it's Dean first, Kerry second," she says. But she allows that could change.
Shaping the race
Kerry's fade has been as important as Dean's surge in shaping the Democratic race. is vote in favor of the congressional resolution authorizing the war with Iraq, and his awkwardness in defending that decision, handed Dean his hottest issue. His campaign drift left an opening for another veteran, retired general Wesley Clark, to jump into the race.
And questions about his candidacy have prompted some Democrats to take a second look at Gephardt and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as alternatives to Dean. Some party leaders worry that the former Vermont governor lacks the national-security experience and temperament to appeal to moderate voters next fall.
Kerry's do-or-die state is New Hampshire, usually friendly territory for politicians from neighboring Massachusetts. Five have run in the primary since it became an important first stop on the way to the presidential nomination a half-century ago; four of them won it. But Dean now leads Kerry there by 14 percentage points.
"Kerry will need a little bit of divine intervention in order to lock down that nomination," says Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. "Kerry has to ignite a flame inside the party. It was there in the beginning when he was presumed to be the frontrunner, but he lost it."
Kerry insists that he has the resources and the will to recover. He's a better campaigner when his back is against the wall, he says. In his first race for the Senate, in 1984, he won the nomination over a more prominent Democrat. In his 1996 re-election bid, Kerry trailed Republican Gov. William Weld for much of the campaign but eventually prevailed.
And he has followed Dean's lead in opting out of the public-finance system. That means he can negotiate personal loans for his campaign using his fortune and half of the assets he holds with his wife, ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry.
"This thing's not done, it's not over," Gephardt told USA TODAY last week when asked about Kerry. "He's a good candidate and he's going to be well-funded. But it seems to me that for him to really get in the race he's got to beat Howard in New Hampshire."
Yes or no?
The decision that has dogged Kerry was made before the campaign really began. At a breakfast with reporters in September 2002, he seemed conflicted about the Iraq resolution then before Congress. Would he vote yes or no? He gave a rambling response that didn't answer the question. "I'm inclined to want to hold Saddam Hussein accountable," he said, "but I'd like to see it done in a responsible way."
He voted for the resolution a few weeks later but was never comfortable explaining it. It seemed at odds with the cause that first brought him to national prominence, opposing the Vietnam War after fighting in it.
Meanwhile, Dean hammered the point. "You vote for the war because you don't want to be called soft on defense," Dean scoffed at a town-hall meeting in Salem, N.H., Thursday night, not mentioning Kerry by name.
Judy Alson, 55, a customer service representative, has put a Kerry lawn sign in front of her house but came by Salem High School to hear Dean. Kerry's vote on Iraq gives her pause. "I don't think he was sure which way he wanted to go on it," she says.
But she also worries that a Dean nomination "would be like McGovern all over again." In 1972, the frontrunner was Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, upended by an outsider riding a wave of youthful support and antiwar sentiment. George McGovern won the nomination but then lost 49 states to the Republican president, Richard Nixon. "I'd hate for that to happen again," Alson says.
Kerry's staff says that sentiment is a key to his comeback strategy:
•Fan concerns about Dean's experience and electability. In the past 10 days, Kerry has been harsher and more direct. "Governor Dean has zero foreign-policy experience, zero national-security experience, zero military experience," Kerry says in the interview. "And this is not a time, as George Bush has proven, for on-the-job training in the White House."
But attacking a rival is risky; it often raises negative impressions of the attacker as well. With a big field, voters who are persuaded they shouldn't vote for Dean have options other than Kerry.
•End disputes about the campaign's direction. Kerry fired campaign manager Jim Jordan, a hard-nosed strategist who had clashed with another senior adviser, Robert Shrum. The new campaign manager is Mary Beth Cahill, a Kennedy veteran.
To prevent Kerry from hearing a cacophony from competing voices, Cahill considered taking the job only if the candidate gave up his cell phone. She relented but has moved to make sure that he hears from fewer advisers and that they offer more consistent views.
•Focus on Iowa and New Hampshire. More than 65 paid staffers are now working in New Hampshire; the Iowa staff has almost doubled to more than 80. TV ads are on the air in both states, and Kerry's decision not to accept federal matching funds means he won't have to follow rules that limit spending.
The strategy of showing strength in later contests has been sidelined. If he can't win in New Hampshire, his standing in later states isn't likely to matter.
"I intend to win in New Hampshire," Kerry says. He acknowledges that, more than any tactical calculation, his campaign will revive only if he can articulate a more combative, compelling message to voters.
At the Lebanon firehouse, he delivers his new stump speech for the third time that day. He accuses Bush of giving Americans "a raw deal" and promises he will deliver "the real deal." The room is suffused with the smell of chili spices. He shouts into a microphone, the color rising in his long face, one arm jabbing toward the crowd.
"I believe we need a nominee who has the ability to stand up to George Bush and go right at him on the national-security issue," he says. A Navy patrol-boat skipper in Vietnam, he came home with three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. "If George Bush wants to make national security the issue of this campaign, I have three words for him and his cohorts that I know they understand: Bring it on."
In the interview, Kerry cautioned his rivals not to count him out just yet.
"I was about 30 yards away from Billy Buckner when that ball wiggled away," he says, a reference to the infamous error by the Red Sox first basemen when the team was on the verge of winning the World Series in 1986. "I had cracked a bottle of champagne, was jumping up and down — prematurely. Nobody should celebrate prematurely. This race is really open."
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