Their support goes the distance
Local Democrats travel to Iowa
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff, 1/15/2004
He isn't an American citizen and can't vote, but Ofer Inbar is so passionate about Howard Dean that he just left Massachusetts for Iowa -- more than 1,100 miles away -- to urge residents there to cast ballots for the former Vermont governor in the all-important Democratic caucuses on Monday.
An Israeli-born computer systems administrator from Waltham, Inbar, 33, has organized monthly coffee klatches for Dean activists across Massachusetts through the online site www.meetup.com and he has canvassed potential supporters in New Hampshire. Last week, the day after attending a Dean meet-up in Dartmouth, he got into his green 1997 Saturn and headed west.
''I think the race is very close there," said Inbar, who came to the United States with his family at the age of 7 and applied for citizenship a few months ago. ''I think a few more people can make a difference, and I think it's important because I don't want a long drawn-out primary race where we don't know who the nominee will be until April. I want to get it over with quickly."
Inbar isn't the only Democratic foot soldier from the area making the pilgrimage to corn country. Supporters of Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry and US Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri are among those who have headed west to help their candidates in the caucuses, the first contest in the race for president.
For months, political activists have made forays to New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary election Jan. 27. (Caucuses are essentially neighborhood meetings where people indicate a preference for a candidate through the delegates they elect to conventions; in a primary, voters actually go to the polls.)
Although considerably fewer activists have the time or money to travel to Iowa, several said they feel so strongly about their candidate that they have nonetheless made the trip.
Since Dec. 28, some 140 Kerry supporters from Massachusetts have converged on Iowa, including several from communities west of Boston, according to Michael Meehan, a spokesman at Kerry's national campaign headquarters in Washington.
''It is sort of the Super Bowl, so people do go where the political action is," he said.
Kerry activists in Iowa include John Hurley, a 60-year-old retired lawyer from Wellesley and a Vietnam War veteran who heads Veterans for Kerry. His group is mailing campaign literature to 73,000 Iowan households with veterans, politicking at American Legion posts, setting up phone banks, and arranging screenings of the documentary ''Brothers In Arms." The film tells the story of Kerry and five crewmates on a swift boat in the Mekong Delta in 1969.
Kerry, who entered politics after returning from combat in Vietnam and denouncing the war in congressional testimony, is ''held in very high regard by veterans, and we're reaching out to them," said Hurley, a volunteer and a Kerry friend for 35 years, from Des Moines.
Although Kerry is trailing Dean and Gephardt in public opinion polls in Iowa, Hurley said, ''I think we're going to surprise people. Voters are taking a second look at the candidates, and when they look at John Kerry, they like what they see." Hurley has visited Iowa four times in the past few months.
Another Vietnam veteran volunteering on the Kerry campaign in Iowa is Bill Dooling, a 60-year-old retired Millis High School social studies teacher.
Dooling, who lives in Holliston and sits on the Democratic State Committee, acknowledged that some Democrats fault Kerry for supporting a Senate resolution in the fall of 2002 that authorized President Bush to use military force against Iraq. But veterans in Iowa understand that when the commander in chief says another country threatens American security, ''you almost have to take him at his word," said Dooling, who was also in Des Moines.
Pat Bench, 24, of Brookline, left his job as a mutual funds analyst for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston to work as a paid field organizer for Gephardt in Sioux City, Iowa, in early October. Bench, who has volunteered on Democratic campaigns in Rhode Island and Massachusetts since he was a student at Providence College, said he couldn't resist working for Gephardt, the one Democrat he thinks is capable of beating Bush.
''I knew I wanted to get involved with a Democrat that would not only win on Nov. 2 but also that I could believe in what he said," Bench said last week from a campaign office in Sioux City. ''It all kept coming back to Gephardt."
Bench, who had never been to the Midwest, said his job is to help Gephardt win three counties in northwest Iowa. Expectations are high for Gephardt, who comes from neighboring Missouri and has stumped on, among other things relevant to Iowans, his opposition to trade deals with Mexico and China that have been blamed for severe job losses.
The Dean campaign in Iowa, perhaps in a reflection of the excitement his candidacy has generated across the country, seems to be attracting some of the most enthusiastic supporters, including Con Hurley, a 58-year-old lawyer from Belmont and an adjunct law professor at Boston University. He planned to fly to Iowa last week with several Massachusetts state legislators who are helping Dean.
Inbar got involved in the Dean campaign at a get-together of about 40 supporters at Toscanini's Ice Cream parlor in Cambridge last March. He was so impressed by the grass-roots campaign that he decided to become a full-time volunteer after he was laid off by a start-up company soon afterward.
Inbar believes any Democrat is better than Bush, calling ''the worst president that this country has had in its history."
But Dean is the best, he said, because he has displayed courage by supporting civil unions for gays as governor of Vermont and opposing the war in Iraq.
Inbar said it was his passionate reactions to Bush and Dean that made him stop ''procrastinating" and apply for citizenship. Even if he can't vote, Inbar said, his volunteering has already had an impact that ''is many thousands of times more than the impact of a single vote."
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