As Iowa Voting Nears, Attack Ads Appear
By Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei, Washington Post Staff Writers
DES MOINES, Jan. 13 -- Former Vermont governor Howard Dean (news - web sites) and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (news - web sites) (Mo.) launched new television commercials Tuesday criticizing each other and their rivals on Iraq (news - web sites) and free trade in the latest sign of how competitive the nomination battle has become six days before the Iowa caucuses.
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Fighting for a victory here that his advisers believe could start him on a quick march to the nomination, Dean returned to the issue that first fueled his rise to prominence in the Democratic race, using his new ad to attack his three major rivals here by name for supporting the resolution that authorized President Bush (news - web sites) to go to war in Iraq.
Although the caucuses are less than a week away, the candidates largely abandoned Iowa on Tuesday for campaigning and fundraising elsewhere, with Dean not even scheduling a public event and spending his day in Burlington, Vt. But the new commercials captured the state of a tightening race, with the candidates fighting for narrow advantages in a highly fluid environment and attacks flying in multiple directions at once.
In Dean's ad, an announcer asks: "Where did the Washington Democrats stand on the war? Dick Gephardt (news - web sites) wrote the resolution to authorize war. John Kerry (news - web sites) and John Edwards (news - web sites) both voted for the war. Then Dick Gephardt voted to spend another $87 billion on Iraq. Howard Dean has a different view."
Gephardt's ad starts with his support for President Bill Clinton (news - web sites)'s 1993 economic package and then quickly turns to trade. "Dick Gephardt led the opposition to NAFTA and the China trade deal," the ad states. "Wesley Clark (news - web sites), Howard Dean, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman (news - web sites) all supported NAFTA."
Mandy Grunwald, Lieberman's media adviser, said: "These guys are trying to secure their slice of the vote, and they're trying to do it in not very secure times. From what we've seen and what Joe Lieberman has been feeling around New Hampshire, people are wide open and undecided and not sure. The one thing they've been consistent on is they want to beat George Bush."
Dean still stands as the Democratic front-runner, in part because of his fundraising advantages, but he does not have a commanding lead overall and has been hurt by rivals' attacks and questions about his electability.
Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi said that weeks of attacks aimed at Dean have allowed the other candidates, particularly Sens. Kerry (Mass.) and Edwards (N.C.), to avoid attention on their records and that it was time to remind Iowa Democrats of the differences on the issue that dominated much of the Democratic race in the past year.
Dean and Gephardt are engaged in an intense battle for first place in Iowa, but veteran Democrats say the order of finish remains highly unpredictable, and Dean's attack on all three of his top opponents appeared to be a ratification of that assessment.
Both Kerry and Edwards are hoping to slip into second or finish a strong enough third in Iowa to give them a boost as the campaign turns to New Hampshire the next week and to a series of states a week later, and a rise by them here could come partially at Dean's expense. Dean's ad seeks to slow them down while keeping pressure on Gephardt.
Bill Carrick, Gephardt's media adviser, said the new Iraq ad showed how worried Dean's advisers are about the state of the race in Iowa and elsewhere. "The truth here is that Dean has constantly used the war to prop up himself when he sags," he said. "This is a further indication that he's got troubles."
The race in New Hampshire is quite different. Polling there shows Dean still leading but the race tightening, with Clark, a retired Army general, gaining ground on the Vermont governor. Gephardt trails not only Dean and Clark there but also Kerry and Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut. The new ad is aimed at carving out enough support to avoid a disappointing finish there if Gephardt defeats Dean in Iowa.
Gephardt wants to muscle his way into a contest in which he has been a bit player by trying to set himself apart from the other major candidates as the one consistent opponent of free trade in the Democratic field. The ad "distinguishes us from our opponents," Carrick said.
Gephardt spent the day flying coast to coast, delivering a foreign policy address in New York and then leaving for campaign events and fundraising in Washington state and Los Angeles. Edwards held a rally Tuesday morning in Des Moines and then left for New Hampshire.
Clark returned to New Hampshire after events in Texas and then flew to New York to meet with Jesse L. Jackson, as his advisers touted Clark's support from former Clinton administration officials.
Lieberman also sought to capture the Clinton mantle with a speech in Dover, N.H., at the site where Clinton delivered one of his most memorable addresses as he was fighting to recover from scandal in 1992, saying he would stick with the voters "until the last dog dies."
In a line that was aimed directly at Clark, Lieberman said: "I didn't just fall out of nowhere into this party or into this campaign for the presidency. If the voters of New Hampshire want to know what I will do as president, they don't have to guess or rely on slick 30-second television ads."
Clark has been hoping to avoid engagement with his rivals, at least until the campaign moves into New Hampshire after Monday's caucuses here, but his rise in New Hampshire makes it likely that he will begin to draw more criticism from others, as he did Tuesday from Gephardt and Lieberman.
Jackson, after his meeting with Clark, said Democrats "must not self-destruct in a blood bath" of attacks on one another. Praising Clark for being both competitive and civil, he added: "We would hope that the candidates would focus on their vision. Many of them have mad Dean disease."
Dean had no public events, but Trippi confirmed that on Sunday, Dean will travel to Plains, Ga., for a meeting with former president Jimmy Carter. Trippi said the campaign does not expect an endorsement, but he said on CNN's "Crossfire" that people should "tune in on Sunday" to see what Carter has to say.
Kerry, whose standing in New Hampshire has eroded dramatically, continued to campaign aggressively in Iowa on Tuesday. He gave a speech on military service in Waterloo and ended the day at a concert with singer Carole King in Cedar Rapids.
Without being asked, Kerry offered the following comment on Dean's new ad: "I woke up this morning in my hotel room to turn on the television to see a negative advertisement by Howard Dean attacking Democrats. Now, last week Howard Dean said that he was running a campaign on straight talk and that he was going to run a positive campaign. But today we see he's gone back to the old-style negative attack ads of campaigning when the real target is George Bush."
Edwards was asked to respond to Dean's criticism that his status as a freshman senator did not make him immune to being called a Washington insider. "There's a lot of excitement and energy surrounding my campaign, a lot of movement, and I'm sure he sees that," he said. "But the people of Iowa know that my campaign is a positive campaign."
Edwards said he was still excited about the building interest in his campaign, noting that at campaign events on Monday "we had three or four times the number of people we expected." |
