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FOLLOW-UP
Candidates opt out of DC
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

When we last checked on the January 13 non-binding primary in Washington, DC, things stood at the tipping point (see "DC Takes Center Stage," News and Features, October 24). Terry McAuliffe of the Democratic National Committee was pressuring the presidential candidates to skip the event in deference to the first-in-the-nation status held by the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, but former Vermont governor Howard Dean had committed to participating in the DC contest, and several others were hinting they would too.

The DC ballots have just been printed, and when push came to shove, the rest of the major candidates shoved off. General Wesley Clark, Senator John Edwards, Congressman Dick Gephardt, Senator John Kerry, and Senator Joe Lieberman all removed their names from the ballot in November. That leaves Dean, former ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, as well as the usual few off-beat characters (including perennial candidate Lyndon LaRouche).

Call it a win for McAuliffe. But according to some in DC, this wasn’t about the DNC’s threats — this was about Dean. Specifically, the other candidates were trying to nullify the effect of the vote, which Dean seemed on his way to winning. Sean Tenner, executive director of the DC Democracy Fund, says that several "high-up national-campaign staff members" of candidates who withdrew told him as much. "Better the story be that Dean won, but nobody else participated, rather than Dean beat John Kerry or John Edwards four-to-one in the black precincts of DC," Tenner says.

A WTOP/WJLA-TV poll of likely DC primary voters, taken in late November, showed Dean leading with 27 percent, Clark second at 11 percent, and the others in single digits. Chuck Thies, a DC political consultant, says that several candidates ran internal polls prior to dropping out of the primary, presumably with similar results. "They made a strategic decision to not do poorly in the first voting event of the year," says Thies. "I certainly think John Kerry dropped out specifically for that reason, and Dick Gephardt as well."

Four of the candidates withdrew on November 7, with Clark following the next day. This was widely seen as a shared effort to hurt Dean without causing political fallout for themselves. "The five candidates coordinated this effort among themselves, and the other four clearly didn’t get copied on the memo," says Donna Brazile, a political consultant and chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute, set up in the wake of the 2000 Florida fiasco.

Unlike Iowa, where caucus-goers can still vote for Clark and Lieberman even though they have officially withdrawn from that race, DC will not even offer a ballot write-in line. That ensures solid zeroes for the five no-shows — whereas write-in votes could have resulted in single-digit showings, which at first glance would have looked like they got badly beaten in a contested election. (Or, worse, that they had barely edged out LaRouche.)

The no-show candidates now must hope that the lack of competition will keep the media from covering the results. Good luck. Unless something else grabs headlines that day, the news media will squeeze anything they can out of the first actual voting results. In fact, Thies suspects that the other candidates will try to create news that day just to distract attention.

Either way, the media can already look forward to a story from the DC primary results: how Dean fares among black voters, given that he’ll be competing with Sharpton and Moseley Braun, two high-profile African-American candidates. An impressive showing not only could get Dean positive attention in the last days before the January 19 Iowa contest, but could answer lingering questions about his appeal among the crucial African-American constituency of the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Tenner’s group intends to push for a DNC-sanctioned early primary for the next election cycle. "All bets are off for 2008," says Brazile. "I think DC has a very good argument to make, but they have to get in a very long line with Michigan and other states that would like to be first."


Issue Date: December 26, 2003 - January 1, 2004
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