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Politics : Wesley Clark -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elpolvo who wrote (936)	12/21/2003 11:34:30 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 1414

Clark hits the road to stake his claim to the South _________________________________________ By DAVID HAMMER The Associated Press 12/19/03 7:22 PM LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- Wesley Clark's presidential campaign said Friday it is banking on the retired general's military record and Southern roots to appeal to Democrats in the critical region. "One of the strongest arguments for General Clark (as the Democratic nominee) is that we are going to force Republicans to defend their home turf and in any election that's very important," spokesman Bill Buck said. Buck announced a two-day, eight-state, 10-city trip the campaign is calling Clark's "True Grits Tour," to show "he has the true grit to take on George W. Bush in the South." Clark will leave his Little Rock headquarters with a breakfast of grits on Dec. 29 and head to Jackson, Miss.; Baton Rouge, La.; New Orleans; Birmingham, Ala.; Pensacola, Fla.; and Memphis, Tenn. He'll continue campaigning the next day in Nashville, Tenn.; Savannah, Ga.; and Charleston, S.C.; where he'll stay to prepare for the early South Carolina primary. The Clark campaign isn't only hoping to reach out to Southern voters, but to the party leadership, to emphasize its belief that Clark is the best Democrat to make the South a winnable region again. In 2000, then-Vice President Al Gore lost every Southern state to Bush -- including Gore's home state of Tennessee. Rep. Steve Jones, D-West Memphis, said Clark can "turn the Southern states around to make them Democratic again." "One of our problems in 2000 was we didn't qualify our position on guns," he said. "Around Arkansas and other states, my colleagues had heartburn over where Vice President Gore stood on guns. We won't have that problem with the general." South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, an avid Clark supporter, implied that party front-runner Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, is too liberal and out of touch with the more conservative values of the South. "Howard has a much larger learning curve than Wes Clark does," Hodges said. "Especially with the record on security matters, there's no doubt Clark could be a standard-bearer to the party. If we don't have that appeal to moderate voters in the South, we dig a deeper hole for ourselves." Dean came under fire this fall for a comment he made about wanting to appeal to poor whites "with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." Clark, who was new to the race at the time, didn't press the issue, but another Southern candidate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, attacked Dean over the statement. Clark was not born in the South, but moved from his native Chicago to Little Rock as a child. David Pryor, a former Arkansas governor and U.S. senator, said he was been impressed by how much Clark's childhood -- including during Little Rock's tumultuous integration battles of the 1950s -- shaped his 34 years as an Army officer. "It's important to underscore the values he grew up with here," Buck said. "As Senator Pryor pointed out, his upbringing in Little Rock, attending the schools here during integration in the 1950s and '60s, defined his entire military service and convinced him now to enter this race because of tremendous concern over the direction our country is headed." nola.com