KERRY THE TORCH
Sen. John Kerry spent part of his holidays in New
Hampshire, where he believes a win in the nation’s first primary
will give his candidacy the look of an unbeatable. Kerry has been
meeting with small groups of New Hampshire Democrats since 2000,
even attending election-night parties for Democratic New Hampshire
legislature candidates, in an attempt to build up a solid
grassroots network. All along, Kerry and his associates have been
talking up New Hampshire as key to his success in 2004. In reality,
if Kerry doesn’t win there, his campaign may be toast. This, after
all, is a primary in a state that is basically a suburb of
Massachusetts.
Kerry’s possible geographic edge is why Sens. John
Edwards and Joe Lieberman, Vermont Gov.
Howie Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt
have been spending more than mere token time in the Granite State.
To knock Kerry down a peg or two in the polls a year from now could
mean the difference for their own presidential bids.
That said, Kerry has more than geography going for him.
According to a Kerry adviser, their man has been putting heavy duty
pressure on former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne
Shaheen to back his campaign. Despite losing her U.S.
Senate bid against John Sununu, she remains a
popular in-state political figure. And while no one is saying there
would ever be a quid pro quo for her support, she is expected to
accept a nice lecturing gig at Harvard’s Kennedy School of
Government .
VIRGINIA TERRITORY
Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is credited with winning
his seat by reaching out to traditionally conservative rural voters
and luring them over to the Democratic Party. The rural outreach is
the brainchild of hot shot Democratic political consultant
Dave Saunders, who is based in Roanoke. Saunders
designed a campaign for Warner that had him playing up to the
so-called NASCAR voter. And it certainly appeared to work for
Warner, who became Virginia’s first Democratic governor since
Douglas Wilder.
With the increasing importance of the Southern primaries for
Democrats now setting in, Saunders is suddenly a very hot property.
He’s already doing work for Sen. John Edwards’
PAC, the New American Optimists, and is being wooed by Edwards to
join outright his presidential campaign. Edwards is most in need of
Saunders’ rural approach, if only because almost all the political
cognoscenti agree that if Edwards is to make a splash in 2004, he
has to win the South Carolina primary and perform well elsewhere
below the Mason-Dixon line.
But some Virginia political know-it-alls say the Saunders
approach, while smart, might not be replicable elsewhere in the
South. “Virginia is a weird state in that a lot of the rural
voters, while perhaps personally conservative, tended to vote
Democratic anyway. We’re talking old mill towns, coal mines, that
kind of thing. Back in the '40s and '50s and '60s they were always
voting Democratic,” says a Virginia Democratic Party staffer. “Just
from what I’ve seen lately in places like Georgia and South
Carolina, Republicans there have a stronger ideological hold on the
rural voters than they do in Virginia.”
