I WON’T FOLLOW HIM
For all the excitement about presumptive Democratic presidential
nominee Sen. John Kerry, it isn’t translating into
volunteers for his campaign. In fact, according to a Kerry campaign
staffer in Florida, the Kerry camp is surprised by the lack of paid
staff and volunteer crossover from other dead Democratic primary
campaigns to theirs.
“We aren’t getting a lot of young people coming on board to help
from other campaigns, like Gephardt and Clark and Dean,” says the
Kerry staffer. “We don’t know if it’s sour grapes, lack of
enthusiasm, or them just being fried from the primary season.”
Kerry has made some strategic hires from other campaigns,
particularly to fill regional positions. But he apparently has
failed to get many Democratic worker bees’ hearts racing.
One potential hire, a former Clark campaign aide, was recently
offered a position by the Kerry campaign, but turned it down. She
may end up working for MoveOn.org or might sign on to do some
consulting for Howard Dean’s new 527.
“I thought about Senator Kerry, but couldn’t get into it. He
just isn’t my guy,” says the former Clark staffer. “General Clark
didn’t turn out to be everything we hoped, but he was someone I
could admire. Kerry just doesn’t have what Clark or Dean has. I
couldn’t work for him.”
According to a DNC source, the party overall is not having
trouble finding volunteers to help with the convention or at
headquarters. “But I know that in some areas, down south in
Florida, and in the Midwest, Kerry is having trouble getting large
numbers. He’s banking on the unions sending him some help. By now,
he should be turning volunteers away, but he has time to get things
straightened out.”
HYBRID FUMES
Toyota, the Japanese auto manufacturer, with a number of plants
here in the United States, approached the presidential campaign of
Sen. John Kerry several months ago about having it
use Toyota’s hybrid-fueled cars. But the campaign turned down the
offer.
“We thought given the candidate’s environmental position he
would want to use them,” says a Washington-based public relations
staffer who handles issues for Toyota. “We knew the senator
couldn’t ride in one for security reasons, but that there might be
other opportunities.”
Toyota’s approach is really only interesting now because it
turns out Sen. Enviro Kerry, who wants to impose tougher and higher
fuel standards that would gut the American auto industry, owns at
least one gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle, and regularly used
one on the campaign trail by choice, until the Secret Service
required him to ride in one for protective reasons. Kerry claimed
that technically his personal SUV was not even his, but his
“family’s.”
When Kerry was called on the SUV last Thursday, Kerry said that,
in fact, he had been thinking for a long time about having his
campaign use a hybrid as a “campaign car.” But his choice would be
a Ford model, which is an American-made automobile.
“It just goes to show that it’s all about being an opportunist
and using double-speak,” says a Bush campaign staffer.
MISERY INDEX
The Democratic National Committee has been laughing off the stories
about budget problems for its national convention in Boston. But
increasingly too much information about the planning and the
problems has been leaking out for the DNC to avoid the embarrassing
fact that the convention is going to be pretty low-rent.
Word is that money is so tight for various state Democratic
organizations and for the DNC that their requests for bids for
parties and receptions are being turned down by a number of
big-time party planners and caterers in Beantown.
“All of the money is being funneled into the campaign against
Bush and the Republicans, there is no money for pyramids of shrimp
or open bars with small batch bourbon,” says a DNC fundraiser.
“We’ll leave those kinds of things to our corporate sponsors.”
The lack of big-time money for big-time partying is coming at a
critical time for Boston’s Democratic Mayor Tom
Menino, who had been promising the city a huge windfall
from having the Democrats in town for a week. Over the past month,
it has become apparent that any cash coming in will be more of the
“light breeze” variety. Union shops — from construction to video
production — are complaining that they aren’t being given work.
That instead, the DNC and the convention planners are going out of
state — a kind of state to state out-sourcing for cheaper
labor.
Most embarrassing, from the Kerry campaign perspective, is that
many of the decisions are now being approved by the campaign’s own
people who were placed on the convention committee to ensure their
man’s vision for his coronation go according to plan.
