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Quotable:
“[Dean] has
tapped into pure hatred by rank-and-file
Democrats of the reigning Republican that I
have never seen in 44 years of campaign
watching. Not Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or
even Bill Clinton generated such animosity.”
Columnist Robert Novak
Quotable:
“With Lieberman
still narrowly leading in the national polls,
his strategists still seem to be running in a
non-existent national primary.”
Novak
Quotable:
“This time, labor
leaders say, simply being on labor's side
on issues such as trade won't be enough to
get their endorsement. They want to be
convinced they have a winner. In particular,
they want a candidate who's likable.”
– Detroit Free Press report on AFL-CIO
endorsement
Quotable:
Edwards “seems
like a nice young man, but I'm not sure he has
the clout to perform. He's a neophyte, a nice
neophyte, but I don't see him having the clout
Kerry would.”
-- Mary Boland, a recently retired
English teacher from Salem after hearing both
wannabes at the National Education Association
of New Hampshire convention
Quotable:
“In presidential
politics, the only thing worse than not
getting the AFL-CIO's endorsement is getting
it.”
– Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman,
writing that Gephardt’s obsession with
union support is a losing strategy
Quotable: “What
the former governor doesn't say is that he
raised hundreds of millions of dollars in
higher taxes, including sales taxes, cigarette
taxes, property taxes and corporate taxes, to
balance the books while paying for his social
welfare proposals.”
– Report in Washington Times by Donald
Lambro on Dean’s claims he was a
“fiscal conservative” as governor.
Iowa State Fair:
This
is County Fair Day, recognizing Iowa’s
100 county fairs, and Association of
Business and Industry Day, celebrating 100
years of “Iowa prosperity.” Draft-horse
pulling at grandstand, chainsaw sculptor Ben
Risney south of First Church. On Saturday,
International Motor Contest Association stock
car racing takes over the fairgrounds track
and Saturday night Rock ‘N’ Roll Reunion XXIV
will be in the grandstand.
GENERAL
NEWS:
Among
the offerings in today's update:
-
Novak writes that Dean “is
the Anti-Bush.”
-
Dean
gains and
Moseley-Braun loses
-
Michigan Poll: Lieberman
slipping as Dean moves on up
-
In New Hampshire – at NEA
session yesterday – Kerry defended
his vote for “No Child Left Behind”
-
After Kucinich attack, Dean
concedes change in stand on Social Security
benefits. In fact, Kucinich hammers two big
wannabes – Dean and Gephardt
-
Also in Iowa – ironically
taking on the same targets as Kucinich –
Lieberman also singles out Dean and Gephardt
for criticism. DSM Register says Smokin’
Joe’s attacks are “most direct” of the
campaign
-
At Iowa State Fair, Graham
draws comparison between Bush operation and
a previous GOP administration – Nixon’s
-
More from Sharpton’s Sioux
City stop – The NY activist says he’s not
writing off Iowa, tells Harkin-sponsored
forum Iowa and Brooklyn share a “commonality
of economic pain”
-
Washington Times’ Lambro blows
up prevailing theme that Dean was a
“fiscal conservative” as VT gov
-
Gore
saga gets stranger and even stranger:
Washington Post’s Balz writes that Draft
Gore group launches “a write-in campaign for
the thus-far non-candidate in New Hampshire.”
-
Different situation, same
split: Washington Times today reports
division on North Korean problem – Rummy
favors “regime change” while Powell wants
diplomacy
-
Chicago Tribune columnist
Chapman says Gephardt is reviving “a losing
strategy” – if it worked he would have been
elected in ’88 and he would now be writing
his presidential memoirs
-
Detroit report says
“likability” will be a key in deciding
AFL-CIO endorsement
-
Great Missouri flow feud
continues:
Chaos on the Missouri River – Sioux City
warns boats could be high and dry, Omaha
utility official says “we’re going into
territory we’ve never been in before”
-
Iowaism: Iowa & Illinois teams
ready for tomorrow’s cross-Mississippi
Great River Tug Fest. (Yes, traffic on
the river is shutdown for two hours during
the event.)
All these stories below and more.
Morning Reports:
… Morning
newscasts and Des Moines Register say former
Gov. Branstad will be named today as 14th
president of Des Moines University.
Branstad, who served 16 years as guv, was
chosen after an eight-month search during
which about 150 applied for the job…Morning
reports say California guv players at 372.
CA Supreme Court rejects Davis bid to move
election to next March. What a surprise: The
court’s made up of six Republicans and one
Democrat
… WHO Radio (Des Moines) reports that
Pepperoni – a crossbred boar owned by Gene
Stoltzfus of North English – has
been named the winner of the Big Boar contest
at the State Fair. Pepperoni weighed in at
1,118 pounds – after a couple other
promising competitors dropped out due to the
August heat.
CANDIDATES
& CAUCUSES:
… Wannabes
in Iowa: Graham dominates the weekend
before other wannabes return next week to
visit Iowa State Fair and for other campaign
appearances. Today, Graham will be at
the National Balloon Classic in
Indianola and make appearances in Lucas
and Chariton. On Saturday, he will
stop in Ottumwa, West Point, Fort Madison
and Burlington. Sunday’s schedule
includes Mount Pleasant and Eldridge.
Next week – Graham continues “vacation”
touring IA, four wannabes (Dean,
Edwards, Gephardt, Kerry,
Kucinich) – as well as Graham – in
Iowa next Thursday.
… Carol Moseley-Braun’s Campaign
Manager, Andra “Andi” Pringle jumped ship
to the Dean campaign. The announcement was
made by Democrat Presidential contender Howard
Dean, Thursday. There was no response from
Moseley-Braun’s camp. Political observers
view the switch as shoring up Dean’s weakness
with Black voters, and indicating an early
demise for Moseley-Braun. Pringle’s record
includes: two of Rev. Jesse Jackson's
presidential campaigns; worked with Jackson
for a brief time in his Rainbow/Push
Coalition; served as deputy campaign manager
for John White, Jr.'s race for mayor of
Philadelphia; served as communications
director for the NAACP's National Voter Fund;
and recently joined the political consulting
firm Whistle Stop Communications as a partner
… Headline
from this morning’s Des Moines Register:
“Graham likens Bush administration to Nixon’s”
Coverage – an excerpt – by the Register’s
Thomas Beaumont: “Democratic presidential
candidate Bob Graham on Thursday compared the
Bush administration's reluctance to release
information about terrorism and war
intelligence to Richard Nixon's White House.
Graham, a U.S. senator from Florida,
said Bush was on track to eclipse Nixon as the
most secretive president. ‘There's not been
a president since Richard Nixon who has
practiced secrecy, withholding from the
American people important information,’
Graham said while campaigning at the Iowa
State Fair. ‘Most recently that has been in
the area of terrorism.’…’It may, at the end of
the first term, have even surpassed Nixon,’
Graham said later. Graham, the
former chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, has been the leading critic among
the 2004 Democratic presidential candidates on
the Bush administration's handling of
intelligence before the war with Iraq and the
handling of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001.Graham chaired the joint
intelligence commission that investigated
federal agencies' handling of pre-Sept. 11
information. Thursday he said the Bush
administration was wrong to keep confidential
parts of the report that linked officials in
the Saudi government to associates of the
hijackers who carried out the attacks on New
York and Washington, D.C. ‘Those are just
some of the more recent chapters in a thick
book of using secrecy to deny the American
people the right to know,’ Graham said
at the official opening of his Iowa campaign
headquarters on Locust Street in Des Moines.
Republican National Committee spokesman Chad
Colby said Graham's comments were
ridiculous. ‘Those kinds of statements are
eroding his credibility every single day, not
only in Iowa, but in his home state,’
Colby said. Joined by his family, Graham
toured the Iowa State Fair Thursday morning
and participated in The Des Moines Register's
Political Soapbox, where presidential
candidates can address fairgoers.”
… Michigan
poll reflects results elsewhere – Lieberman
drops, Gephardt levels off and Dean gains.
Numbers now: Lieberman 19%, Gephardt 19%,
Kerry 14%, Dean 13%. Headline from
yesterday’s Stamford (CT) Advocate – “Poll:
Lieberman down, Dean up in Democratic
presidential race” Excerpt from report in
the Detroit Free Press: “Support for
presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman has
dropped among Michigan Democrats while support
for Howard Dean has increased, according to a
poll released Wednesday by Lansing-based EPIC/MRA.
Lieberman, the U.S. senator from
Connecticut who was the vice presidential
nominee in 2000, had 19 percent support in
the survey, down from 27 percent in May.
Support for Dean, the former Vermont
governor, jumped from 4 percent in the
spring poll to 13 percent in the latest survey.
Dick
Gephardt had the support of 19 percent of
the 300 voters who said they usually vote in
Michigan's Democratic caucuses, the same
percentage the Missouri congressman received
in May. U.S. Sen. John Kerry of
Massachusetts got 15 percent in the May poll
and 14 percent in the latest one. The
poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 6
percentage points, meaning Lieberman,
Gephardt, Kerry and Dean were roughly tied.”
Note: Fifteen percent were undecided with the
other five wannabes splitting the remaining
20%.
… “Only the Dean camp
perceived early on that Democratic voters
wanted no optimistic messages of growth, but
attacks on the president who has been
demonized ever since the Florida recount.”
– Sentence from following column by Robert
Novak. Headline from yesterday’s Chicago
Sun-Times: “Dean tapped into pure hatred by
rank-and-file Democrats of the reigning
Republican” Excerpts: “Not until Howard
Dean, the 21st century candidate of the
Internet, achieved old-fashioned 20th century
laurels of simultaneous Newsweek and Time
cover stories did the skeptical realize he
really may become the Democratic presidential
nominee. The party's establishment,
however, still cannot understand the
phenomenon, which is perfectly clear to his
own managers. Dean utilizes the
technology of 2004 to solve the insurgent's
usually fatal fund-raising shortcomings, while
his opponents are mired in 1992. He also
benefits from the institutional memory of
campaign manager Joe Trippi, who understands
the historic importance of the Iowa and New
Hampshire tests that his opponents have
downgraded. But the former governor of
Vermont is now the Democrats' recognized
front-runner mainly because he is the
Anti-Bush. Dean's campaign is a
remorseless assault on George W. Bush, far
exceeding his opponents'. Humorless and
unsmiling, the country doctor with upper-class
roots pummels the president. He has tapped
into pure hatred by rank-and-file Democrats of
the reigning Republican that I have never seen
in 44 years of campaign watching. Not Richard
Nixon, Ronald Reagan or even Bill Clinton
generated such animosity. Dean
stays far in front of the nine-candidate pack
in Bush-bashing. His latest coup was a
television ad, run in the president's home
state of Texas, showing Dean on camera
denouncing Bush (‘The only way to beat George
Bush is to stand up to him’). That feeds
Dean frenzy among Democrats.
Every other candidate, even the pleasant
Sen. Joe Lieberman, bashes Bush regularly.
Nobody, however, does it with Dean's relish.
Only the Dean camp perceived early on
that Democratic voters wanted no optimistic
messages of growth, but attacks on the
president who has been demonized ever since
the Florida recount. Sen. John Kerry and
Rep. Richard Gephardt caught on belatedly, and
Lieberman less vigorously. While Trippi is
celebrated for harvesting big money through
contemporary technology, he is also a
47-year-old politician who remembers the
recent past. I first interviewed him in 1984
when he worked for Walter F. Mondale in his
second presidential campaign. Trippi had not
been engaged in such an effort since 1988, but
he is a rare political operative who always
appreciated the potential of New Hampshire and
Iowa. Those early states have not been
determinative since 1988, but Trippi knew
that second place in Iowa and first in New
Hampshire would put Dean in front and a win in
both states probably would nominate him.
Dean's strategists sensed that quite
apart from the 2004 front-loaded primary
election schedule, the campaign was off to a
very early start. This nomination could be
clinched by Feb. 10, and slow starters are
doomed. With Lieberman still narrowly leading
in the national polls, his strategists still
seem to be running in a non-existent national
primary…Dean is actually in the
mainstream of the party, with all candidates
enunciating the same liberal line. Although
Lieberman calls himself a centrist, his
liberal rating in the Senate last year was
measured by Americans for Democratic Action at
85 percent (actually higher than the 80
percent for Iowa's supposedly ultra-liberal
Tom Harkin). What makes Dean so
distasteful to his Democratic detractors is
that he is not part of the establishment and
unlikely ever to become part of it. The native
New Yorker has become a flinty Vermonter,
looking a little like a Calvin Coolidge of the
left. But how to stop him from being
nominated? Former Clinton (and current)
Lieberman pollster Mark Penn predicts
Dean would lose 49 of 50 states to Bush,
while a former Clinton colleague (unwilling to
be quoted by name) told me: ‘Mark is wrong.
Dean would only lose 40 states.’ This ‘he
can't win’ argument did not stop Barry
Goldwater, George McGovern, Ronald Reagan or
Jimmy Carter from being nominated, and the
last two actually were elected. The party
faithful liked the purity of those candidates
and did not care about electability, and the
same might be proved true of the Anti-Bush.”
… Chicago Tribune
columnist Chapman says Gephardt’s union-based
strategy is a loser – as Gephardt already
proved in ’88.
Headline from the Trib – “One more time:
Gephardt revives a losing strategy”
Excerpt from Chapman’s column: “Rep. Dick
Gephardt (D-Mo.) has a theory of how to become
president. It starts with being the most
protectionist candidate in the Democratic
field, which he hopes will lead to his
endorsement by the AFL-CIO, lifting him to
victory in the primaries and the general
election. But if it were such a great plan,
Gephardt wouldn't be running. He'd be writing
his presidential memoirs. He tried this
approach in 1988, campaigning on a bill to
punish countries that ran trade surpluses with
the United States. But after winning in Iowa,
with the advantage of being from neighboring
Missouri, he soon fell out of contention.
The guy who beat him in the Democratic
primaries, Michael Dukakis, was strongly in
favor of free trade. So was the guy who beat
Dukakis in November, George Bush. In
presidential politics, the only thing worse
than not getting the AFL-CIO's endorsement is
getting it. The last two candidates to get
its blessing early in the race were Walter
Mondale and Al Gore, neither of whom spent the
following four years being serenaded with
‘Hail to the Chief.’ Bill Clinton won even
though the labor organization didn't get
behind him until he already had the 1992
nomination sewn up. The support of
organized labor would be nicer if it didn't
force a candidate to take positions that
alienate so many other Americans.
Gephardt has already gotten the
endorsement of both the Teamsters and the
United Steelworkers. But pandering to labor,
though it may help him now, will probably doom
him once actual voters get involved. The
AFL-CIO endorsement wasn't enough to save
Mondale in 1984, when union members made up 19
percent of all workers. Since then, organized
labor's share has shrunk to 13 percent of all
employees--and just 9 percent in the private
sector. Gephardt, who brags that he has
been fighting free trade for 20 years, is
offering top dollar for a dwindling asset.
Mondale lost partly because he was perceived,
fairly or not, as the slavishly obedient son
of Democratic special interests. Gephardt
makes Mondale look like the soul of
independence. Trade is a make-or-break
issue with unions, which regard imported goods
the way Californians regard earthquakes.
Most Americans, however, don't share that
fear. To the contrary, they like being able to
buy a range of economical products from all
over the world, and they understand that
foreign competition makes American companies
more efficient and more attentive to consumers.”
… Kerry defends
education vote in New Hampshire – and hits GWB
for inadequate funding. Headline from this
morning’s The Union Leader: “Kerry faces
skeptical teachers at NEA conference”
Excerpts from coverage by AP’s Holly
Ramer: “Facing a skeptical crowd of
teachers, Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry defended his vote for the federal
‘No Child Left Behind Act’ on Thursday while
criticizing President Bush for underfunding
the far-reaching education reform law.
Speaking at the National Education Association
of New Hampshire convention, the Massachusetts
senator repeated his promise to ‘hold this
president accountable for making a mockery of
the words no child left behind." But some
in the audience wanted to hold Kerry
accountable for supporting the 2002 law, which
requires states that accept federal money to
broaden academic testing, triple spending for
literacy programs and meet new standards for
pupil performance. Cathie Partridge-White
asked Kerry how he could say a
1,200-page bill preserves local control over
education. Kerry responded that states do
not have to accept federal money. He
defended his support of the bill's goals,
saying it wasn't his fault that Bush has not
provided enough money. ‘We can't sit here and
pretend there wasn't something to address,’
Kerry said of problems plaguing the
education system. ‘Regrettably, this
administration turned its back on the deal it
made.’ Administration officials and
Republican lawmakers have insisted that the
law is adequately funded. Kerry
acknowledged that the law needs to be changed.
‘I'm on your side,’ he said. ‘I don't want you
to have to teach rote. I don't want testing to
be the be-all and end-all.’ The answer didn't
satisfy Partridge-White, president of the
Derry, N.H., teacher's union, but Mary Boland
had a more favorable impression. ‘I understand
what he's saying. We have to make a start
somewhere. And I think if he gets elected,
he has enough clout that he could fix it,’
said Boland, a recently retired English
teacher from Salem, N.H. Both women were among
250 educators who also heard from Kerry
rival, Sen. John Edwards of North
Carolina, a day earlier. Noting that
Edwards didn't face the same grilling as
Kerry, Boland suggested that the group may not
have taken him as seriously. He ‘seems
like a nice young man, but I'm not sure he has
the clout to perform,’ Boland said. ‘He's a
neophyte, a nice neophyte, but I don't see him
having the clout Kerry would.’”
… Kucinich forces
Dean to concede position change on Social
Security retirement age – and then takes on
both Dean and Gephardt on trade. Headline
from yesterday’s Des Moines Register: “Kucinich
takes aim at Dean” Excerpt from coverage
by the Register’s Lynn Okamoto: “The
presidential campaign for former Vermont Gov.
Howard Dean on Wednesday acknowledged that
Dean has changed his position on whether to
raise the age at which retirees qualify for
full benefits under Social Security.
‘Governor Dean in 1995 was open to the
idea of raising the retirement age to balance
the budget,’ said Sarah Leonard, a spokeswoman
for the Dean campaign. ‘He then learned
from Bill Clinton that it was not necessary to
do so. Now, in this campaign, Governor Dean
has never proposed raising the retirement age
and has no plans to do so.’ The statement
came in reaction to criticism launched
Wednesday by Ohio Congressman Dennis
Kucinich. According to Kucinich,
Dean said on ‘Meet the Press’ that he
would consider moving the retirement age to 68
or 70. He later denied it. ‘We must find
out what his real position is on Social
Security,’ said Kucinich, speaking at a
Des Moines union hall. Kucinich's economic
plan calls for moving the retirement age from
67 back to 65…Kucinich also criticized
Dean and U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri
for their positions on trade. America has
lost 2.4 million manufacturing jobs in the
past two years, but none of the other
candidates would cancel the North American
Free Trade Agreement and the United States'
membership in the World Trade Organization as
Kucinich would. ‘Our trade laws have
permitted and even encouraged a race to the
bottom,’ Kucinich said. Bill Burton, a
spokesman for the Gephardt campaign,
confirmed that Gephardt was the key
negotiator for the World Trade Organization.
‘He thought it would be a powerful force in
raising labor standards throughout the world,’
Burton said.”
… Sharpton
Revisited: Although most of the coverage
yesterday focused on Sharpton’s comments about
the white-dominated media, he actually said
something else along the way – he’s not going
to write off Iowa. Excerpts of coverage –
under the headline, “Sharpton seeks to tap
into ‘economic pain’ – by Bret Hayworth in
yesterday’s Sioux City Journal: “The Rev.
Al Sharpton is not writing off Iowa in his run
for the 2004 Democratic presidential
nomination.
Iowa may be
whitebread compared to the melting pot of
Brooklyn from where he hails, but there is a
‘commonality of economic pain’ nationwide that
Sharpton hopes to tap into.
"I want to
talk about the commonality of small
entrepreneurs, Ma and Pa shop owners in urban
areas, that are affected the same way as
family farmers in Iowa,’ Sharpton said. ‘If
we can get that commonality of economic pain,
that will be the key to winning in 2004.’
Continuing, Sharpton said, ‘(President)
Bush has benefited by a divide-and-conquer
strategy, so if he tells people in the suburbs
or people in the heartland that you have
nothing in common with the people Al
Sharpton is talking to, then we are
divided. If we start talking and understanding
the same tax cut that hurts a family farmer
here hurts a guy in the South Bronx, then Bush
is toast. That's what I intend to do, help put
him in the toaster.” Sharpton said he
brings a core constituency in minorities and
labor that many Democrats prize. But he
said the Democratic Party needs to broaden its
base in order to be victorious. ‘We must
expand and correct the party on our way,’
Sharpton said. Young people in particular
need to be brought into the party tent,
Sharpton said, adding he will bring in
some hip-hop performers who ‘know young
people's ear.’ Said Sharpton, ‘I don't
think we have done enough to try to capture
and energize the young vote.’”
… The
ongoing saga of the Reluctant Wannabe – Draft
Gore zealots now planning a New Hampshire
write-in campaign. In his political
roundup – under the headline “Reinstating
the Draft” – the Washington Post’s Dan
Balz reported yesterday on the latest from the
Gore Non-campaign. An excerpt: “A 10th
Democratic presidential candidate? Draft
Gore 2004, one of a handful of groups trying
to lure former vice president Al Gore back
into public life, will announce today a
write-in campaign for the thus-far
non-candidate in New Hampshire. The effort
will largely consist of a publicity campaign
intended to rally voters there, the site of
the first presidential primary, to support the
only person the committee says can defeat
President Bush. ‘The desire for a rematch
is a very powerful motivator,’ said one of
its organizers, Mac Hathaway, referring to the
2000 election. ‘I think the Democratic Party
is tremendously remiss in ignoring that.’
The group will send letters to the Granite
State Democratic Party, along with its town
committees around the state. Later,
Hathaway said, the California-based group will
probably place newspaper ads there and open a
local campaign office. The group got a bit of
moral support yesterday from former New York
governor Mario M. Cuomo.”
… Smokin’
Joe Lieberman comes out of the corner again to
– according to the Des Moines Register –
unleash the “most direct” attacks of the
campaign on Dean and Gephardt. His comments
would probably be more credible and believable
if Lieberman would get better numbers in IA
and/or NH. Headline from yesterday’s Des
Moines Register: “Lieberman assails Dean,
Gephardt” Partial coverage of coverage by
Register’s Tom Beaumont: “Democratic
presidential candidate Joe Lieberman accused
Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt Wednesday of
favoring raising taxes, leveling his most
direct attack on the two rivals to date.
The Connecticut senator, while campaigning in
Iowa, also said Dean's opposition to
the war in Iraq means he would have ‘a hard
time’ beating President Bush, should the
former Vermont governor win the 2004
Democratic presidential nomination. ‘This
whole business of Dean and Gephardt wanting to
repeal all the Bush tax cuts would mean an
increase of middle class taxes at a time when
the middle class is really stressed,’
Lieberman said. ‘To me that's wrong and
not what the economy needs.’ The comments came
as Lieberman, a moderate Democrat and
early supporter of the war, has begun
criticizing the field's more-liberal members'
positions on taxes, trade and national
security, saying they represent the Democratic
Party's previously unsuccessful efforts to win
back the White House. ‘I'm not going to sit
back and let other candidates advocate
positions that look a lot like what Bill
Clinton was arguing against in 1992,’ he
said after a noontime campaign event at state
Rep. Mark Davitt's house in Indianola. ‘It's
really a debate for the heart and soul of the
Democratic Party,’ he said. Lieberman,
a 2000 vice presidential candidate, leads the
Democratic field in recent national polls.
Meanwhile, Dean, who was campaigning in
southwest and central Iowa on Wednesday, has
emerged as the frontrunner in Iowa after
gaining early support from anti-war activists
and raising the most second-quarter money
among his rivals...Dean and Gephardt, a
U.S. House member from Missouri, have proposed
repealing all of the income tax rate cuts
enacted since President Bush took office,
calling them failed attempts to ignite the
sluggish economy. Dean and Gephardt
would spend the money to provide universal
access to health insurance. Both campaigns
rejected Lieberman's accusation that they
favor raising taxes. Lieberman supports
keeping in place all of the tax cuts except
those that apply to the top two income
brackets, saying Wednesday cuts for moderate-
and low-income earners are good for the
economy.”
… So much
for the recent flurry of news reports and
columns contending that People Powered Howard
was a “fiscal conservative” during tenure as
Vermont governor. Headline from
yesterday’s Washington Times: “Dean’s
budget-balancing act left taxpayers in red”
Excerpt from report by Times’ political ace
Donald Lambro: “Vermont had one of the
highest per capita tax burdens in the country
when Howard Dean left the governorship in
January to run for president. Mr. Dean,
a Democrat who calls himself a ‘fiscal
conservative,’ says he balanced all his state
budgets by cutting spending. And allies and
critics alike praise his budget-balancing
record. Vermont enjoyed a budget surplus this
year while most states were in the red because
of the recession that began three years ago. What
the former governor doesn't say is that he
raised hundreds of millions of dollars in
higher taxes, including sales taxes, cigarette
taxes, property taxes and corporate taxes, to
balance the books while paying for his social
welfare proposals. After 11 years under Mr.
Dean's governorship, Vermont now ranks in the
top tier of high-tax states, a fiscal
legacy that President Bush's campaign
strategists say they intend to highlight
should Mr. Dean become the Democratic
presidential nominee next year. Congressional
Quarterly's Governing magazine, based on data
from the U.S. Census Bureau, ranks Vermont
second highest among the 50 states in the
amount of tax revenue collected as a
percentage of personal income in 2001 — about
9 percent to 10 percent. In a separate
ranking that measured state tax revenue per
capita in 2001, Vermont was in second place
with six other high-tax states, including
Massachusetts and California. Another
ranking in June by the Government Finance
Officers Association put Vermont in 12th place
when state and local tax burdens are combined,
well ahead of more populous industrial states
such as New Jersey, Michigan and
Illinois. Vermont's budget has climbed
sharply, too, from $662 million in 1991 to
$1.8 billion last year. Between 1997 and last
year, inflation and population growth combined
totaled 18.1 percent, but spending rose 51.7
percent. Once known for its Yankee thrift,
the state has become a mecca for affluent
liberals from neighboring New York.
Vermont's sole congressman, independent Rep.
Bernard Sanders, is an avowed socialist. ‘Roughly
20 percent of the population does not depend
upon jobs for income, people who are trust
funders or independently wealthy,’ says
Michael Quaid, executive director of
Vermonters For Tax Reform. Tiny, bucolic
Vermont, with a population of 610,000 — about
the size of Austin, Texas — does not many of
the problems of other states. More than 96
percent of Vermont residents are white; only
3.8 percent are immigrants. The unemployment
rate is barely 4 percent. The birth rate is
the lowest in the nation, which means Vermont
requires less spending on education and
welfare than other states. With a median age
of 37.7, the population is the third oldest
among the states, and its under-18 population
(24.2 percent) ranks as the eighth
smallest. Analysts give a mixed assessment on
Mr. Dean's fiscal record. The Cato
Institute, a libertarian think tank that rates
the fiscal performance of the states, gave him
a grade of B from 1994 to 1996. By 2000, his
grade had plunged to a D.”
… “AFL-CIO
test for ’04 hopefuls: Likability” –
Headline from Detroit Free Press. Excerpt from
report by Steve Thomma: “U.S. Rep.
Dick Gephardt gets along with union leaders,
but would working people want him in their
living rooms? Would they buddy up to U.S. Sen.
John Kerry or find him too aloof? And what
about former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean? Is he a
warm friend or a hothead? As labor leaders
ponder whether the full AFL-CIO should endorse
a Democratic presidential candidate this fall
and take sides in a primary contest, they're
asking these questions along with the usual
ones about the candidates' positions on health
care and the economy. Both of the AFL-CIO's
earlier choices -- Walter Mondale in 1984 and
Al Gore in 2000 -- lost the general
election. This time, labor leaders say, simply
being on labor's side on issues such as trade
won't be enough to get their endorsement. They
want to be convinced they have a winner. In
particular, they want a candidate who's
likable. ‘A lot of voters will vote for
someone that they can relate to,’ said Andy
Stern, president of the 1.5-million-member
Service Employees International Union, the
largest in the AFL-CIO. ‘George Bush passed
that test. Al Gore didn't do as well.’ All
nine Democratic candidates courted labor
leaders such as Stern at a gathering of
AFL-CIO leaders this week in Chicago. Each
wants support from the unions that make up the
AFL-CIO. Gephardt, a favorite of industrial
unions for his long opposition to free trade
agreements that they blame for sending jobs
overseas, already has won endorsements from 10
of 65 AFL-CIO unions…But what Gephardt
really wants is the preprimary endorsement of
the full AFL-CIO, which would bring him a lot
more money and volunteers in crucial early
primary states. A preprimary endorsement would
require votes representing two-thirds of the
AFL-CIO's 13 million members. ‘We have a
significant majority of organized labor
supporting us,’ said Gephardt adviser
Steve Elmendorf. ‘But we're not at two-thirds
yet.’”
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