Kucinich, Declaring for President, Takes Populist Stance

By JENNIFER LEE

Published: October 14, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/politics/campaigns/14KUCI.html?th

CLEVELAND, Oct. 13 — Dennis J. Kucinich, the four-term Ohio Congressman, officially announced his longshot candidacy for president on Monday, laying out a populist platform of nonviolence, universal health care, workers rights and increased spending for education.

The announcement in Cleveland, where Mr. Kucinich once served as the youngest mayor elected to lead a major American city, kicked off a frenzied three-day, 11-state tour.

Speaking to a crowd of about 300 in the Cleveland City Council chambers, where he started his political career at the age of 24, Mr. Kucinich described a sculpture that stands over the entrance of the House of Representatives. The artwork, called "Peace Protecting Genius," portrays a woman with her arm outstretched over a winged boy.

"I am running for president of the United States to enable the goddess of peace to encircle within her arms all the children of this country and all the children of the world," Mr. Kucinich said. "As president I will work with leaders of the world to make war a thing of the past, to abolish nuclear weapons."

Mr. Kucinich basked in the favorite-son status with a childlike smile on his face before offering a list of progressive agenda items from a speech scribbled on sheets of paper from white and yellow legal pads.

He said he would return to bilateral trade by revoking United States participation in Nafta and the World Trade Organization, repeal the antiterrorism legislation called the USA Patriot Act, create a universal health care system, establish universal prekindergarten schooling and create a cabinet-level Department of Peace that would bring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s principles of nonviolence into government.

Despite trailing in nationwide polls and fund-raising among the nine Democratic presidential candidates, Mr. Kucinich has garnered a grassroots, almost cultlike, following. Supporters even threw parties nationwide to celebrate his 57th birthday this month.

In a campaign where all the Democratic candidates are fighting to establish themselves as the most anti-Bush, Mr. Kucinich notes that he has one of the most consistent records of voting against the Bush administration. He said he had helped rally almost two-thirds of Congressional Democrats to vote against the Iraq war resolution, and he was the only one of the presidential candidates serving in Congress to vote against the antiterrorism act, which broadly expanded law enforcement powers after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We stand strongest in challenging terrorism when we do not give up an inch of our civil liberties," he said.

Mr. Kucinich also said he had stood up against corporate interests, pointing out that as mayor, he refused to sell the city's municipal power company to a private company in 1979. Cleveland became the first American city since the Depression to go into default, with a debt of $15 million.

Deeply unpopular, Mr. Kucinich wore a bulletproof vest when he threw out the first pitch at a Cleveland Indians game. He lost his mayoral re-election campaign by a landslide but made a political resurgence some 15 years later, after local leaders said he had saved city residents hundreds of millions of dollars in bills by refusing to sell the utility. After serving as a state senator, he defeated an incumbent Republican for a House seat in 1996.

On Monday, Mr. Kucinich reminded the audience in the City Council chambers of the importance of education in breaking out of humble beginnings. His family lived in 21 places by the time he was 17, including in cars, and literally counted pennies to pay the bills.

While many candidates have criticized the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, Mr. Kucinich is the only one who has explicitly said he would withdraw American troops from there upon becoming president. "We need to bring the U.N. in and get the U.S. out," he said to wild applause.

The Cleveland event had a tailored multicultural appeal, starting out with prayers from a rabbi, an imam and a Baptist preacher. The speakers were racially diverse, and Mr. Kucinich took a moment to acknowledge the American Indian communities on Columbus Day.

He also called for a study into whether reparations should be paid for slavery, noting that he has co-sponsored legislation to this effect with Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan. And he spoke on behalf of amnesty and legalization for illegal immigrants.

The 12-city tour, with Mr. Kucinich scheduled to be on the ground in some places for as little as an hour, is an abbreviated 21st-century equivalent of Harry S. Truman's 350-speech whistle-stop tour, campaign aides said. In part, the tour is prompted by the campaign's idea that Mr. Kucinich's rile-'em-up style has more appeal to audiences in person than on television.

The cities include Detroit; Madison, Wis.; Manchester, N.H.; Albuquerque; Austin, Tex.; Oklahoma City; Minneapolis; Chicago; St. Louis; and Des Moines. The other events along the tour are more modest than the Cleveland appearance, taking place mostly in colleges, hotels and regional airports.

Mr. Kucinich's fund-raising operation has been steady but small, raising about $1.5 million in each of the two previous quarters, putting him behind every other candidate but the Rev. Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun, the former senator. But he has attracted an eclectic list of endorsements from entertainers like Willie Nelson and Ani DeFranco, the author Studs Terkel and former fringe presidential candidates like John Hagelin.