VICTORY SURPRISE
Sen. John Kerry was said by some volunteers and
staffers in Wisconsin to be stunned by his poor showing in the
Wisconsin primary. “We knew that Wisconsin was a weird state
politically, but not this weird,” says a Kerry staffer. “Tracking
polls and everything we saw for the past week had us feeling like
we were well ahead of [John]
Edwards.”
As it turned out, a few late endorsements of Edwards by local
newspapers and almost constant attacks by Dean and Edwards on the
frontrunner chipped away at Kerry’s lead. “In the end, Edwards has
a non-win victory because he came so close and Kerry has trouble.
That’s the spin,” says the Kerry volunteer.
Kerry held a late-night meeting and conference call demanding to
know why Wisconsin happened, according to another Kerry campaign
source in Washington. “He wanted to know what happened to his
victory. That’s what it was called, ‘his victory.’ Like somehow he
was entitled to it. Sometimes he forgets he’s running against other
people.”
Almost immediately, talking points were developed for Kerry
underlings and reporters were spun that (1) Edwards had won only
one primary (South Carolina); (2) Kerry had won 15 of the 16 other
contests, including Wisconsin; and (3) Kerry had a lock on the big
prizes of Super Tuesday.
One byproduct of the Edwards close call in dairy country is that
Kerry will be spending a lot more of his cheese to knock his
senatorial colleague back. The Kerry campaign, which for the past
two weeks had basically been ignoring Edwards and Dean and focusing
on attacking the president, is now looking to spend millions in
Ohio and New York and even California to keep a lid on any Edwards
insurgency.
While Kerry has a large double-digit lead on Edwards in
California, the Kerry folk believe Edwards has a shot to make
inroads in Ohio, New York, and Georgia on Super Tuesday.
“There is enough of a rumble that we’re going to have to deal
with Edwards. It was something we were hoping wasn’t going to
happen,” says the Kerry staffer in Wisconsin. “We have plenty of
stuff to use on him. We oppo’d him at the same time we were doing
research on Dean.”
HOWIE HANKERINGS
Former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean may be out of the
presidential race, but he’s apparently not through with politics in
2004. According to a Dean staffer, a number of the former
candidate’s most loyal staffers are traveling to the Washington,
D.C. area this weekend to meet with former campaign chief
Joe Trippi.
Trippi is said to have lined up a plan to utilize the more than
600,000 names the Dean campaign collected from fundraising and the
Internet, and roll the activists into a “movement.”
“We may be looking at a 527 similar to ones that have already
been set up, or perhaps something different,” says a Dean staffer
who is expecting to attend the meeting. “We started something
special and we want to keep it alive, but not necessarily for any
of the candidates who are still in the race. This would be
something unrelated to the Democratic Party, more about Dean and
his ideals.”
It isn’t known if Dean will play an active role in what Trippi
sets up, though it appears a major project would almost certainly
have to have Dean’s involvement and support.
In the meantime, Dean appears to have at least put off any
decision on a third party run for president, based on feedback he
has given many of his staffers in the past 24 hours. How serious he
was about such a run is now unclear. It’s also unclear whether Dean
will endorse a candidate.
Earlier this month, Dean failed in his attempt to draw Sen.
John Edwards into a kind of tag-team against Sen.
John Kerry. Now it appears that it is Edwards
looking to Dean to help him make life a little more difficult for
Kerry. Dean is known to like Edwards more than Kerry, but no sooner
were the final results in on Tuesday night than Kerry was calling
Dean for support and to chat about the future. Dean was said by
staff to be friendly but noncommittal.
“If I had to make a guess, I’d say Dean goes with Edwards, and
he spins it this way: a debate between these two men [Kerry and
Edwards] over the next three weeks is better for America, better
for Democrats, better for the fall campaign,” says a Dean
staffer.
SOUNDS SICK
There he goes again. While campaigning in Wisconsin, Sen.
John Kerry was approached by an AIDS protester, who tried
to hand him material about the threat of AIDS. Kerry, in front of
reporters, told the protester that he didn’t need to be educated.
“I wrote the AIDS legislation,” Kerry said, then walked away.
Kerry, in fact, did not write any AIDS legislation. The 2002
landmark AIDS legislation, known as the Kerry-Frist Global AIDS
bill, had little to no input from Kerry beyond his lending it a
bipartisan coloring.
Democratic Senate staffers credit Sen. Joe
Biden with doing much of the heavy lifting on the Senate
side for Democrats. In the end, much of the bill that was passed
came out of the House of Representatives’ version of the bill.
“It’s just another example of Kerry taking credit for basically
putting his name on something,” says a Democratic leadership
staffer. “[Sen. Bill] Frist was
the driving force on this, and Biden did a lot of work on it. Kerry
was just there for the photo-op.”
