Quotes of the Day

On a summer afternoon two months ago in Waterloo, Iowa, five workers on strike stood down the road from their meat-processing plant, waving signs that said "Support Our Union." There was little traffic on this country road until three cars suddenly pulled up, and out popped Dennis Kucinich with six campaign aides. The Ohio congressman cheered the strikers on, testified to his career-long support for organized labor and said the struggle for better pay and benefits was being waged across the nation. After Kucinich had wished them luck and made his way back to his car, a reporter asked the workers what they thought of the presidential candidate they had just met. No one spoke for several seconds until one replied, "Is he running for president?"

Even for front-runners, being a candidate for the highest office in the land can be humbling, especially in the dog days before the Iowa caucuses launch the primary season. But Kucinich, who officially announced his candidacy last Tuesday, is no front-runner; the fourth-term Ohio congressman and former mayor of Cleveland is usually lumped together with the Rev. Al Sharpton and former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun at the bottom of the pack of nine declared Democratic candidates. Party leaders and voters consider him unelectable, mainly because he's so far to the left that he makes Howard Dean look like Barry Goldwater. Among other unorthodox ideas, Kucinich says that as president he would: slice the Pentagon budget by 15% to fund a universal pre-kindergarten program; create both a national Department of Peace and a universal, government-run health care program; and withdraw the U.S. from both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization. He's raised relatively little money, gets almost no support among the Democratic Party establishment and registers as an asterisk in most polls of primary voters.

And those are just the conventional problems with Kucinich's presidential bid. "People call and say, ‘We love that Ku-cu-nik,'" says Jessica Davis, the campaign's college outreach director. "We have to say, ‘Ku-sin-itch, rhymes with spinach." For Kucinich, who has been a vegan since 1995, even finding food can be a chore while campaigning in Iowa, one of the red meat capitals of the world; his campaign has become an endless journey in search of votes, donations and bean burritos. To make light of his predicament, Kucinich held a dinner with the Vegetarian Community of Iowa at Dong's Restaurant in Des Moines, a Vietnamese place that's become a Kucinich favorite. And the candidate himself isn't beefy enough for many voters. At the Iowa State Fair, while Kucinich was standing in a barn, surrounded by cows and talking to farmers, people kept coming up to his taller campaign aides and asking, ‘Are you Congressman Kucinich?" while the 5'6", 135-pound candidate stood a few feet away.

With all these disadvantages, why are Kucinich and his staff wasting their time on a presidential run? They're not deluded about his chances; campaign workers routinely liken their man to Seabiscuit and have a poster that reads "Long Shots Can Win" on the wall of their Iowa headquarters. But Kucinich supporters say they've found a principled liberal with a message the other candidates aren't offering, and that he could catch on with voters the way Jesse Jackson did in 1988. And even if he doesn't win many votes, they say, his message still needs to be heard. Members of his small staff — at one point during the summer Howard Dean had many people in his Des Moines press office as Kucinich did statewide — routinely compare him to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., an odd choice for a politician whose stormy tenure as the mayor of Cleveland earned him the nickname Dennis the Menace.

Invoking the words of Desmond Tutu, John Rogers, a staffer in the Iowa office, described Kucinich as "one of the rare people with keys to the prison of hope." Jeff Cohen, another aide, said "our motto is the Gandhi quote: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Kucinich himself seems confident, because he says he's always overcome long odds. "That's what my life's about." He grew up in a family with seven kids that struggled to make ends meet, living in 21 different places as a child. He was elected mayor of Cleveland at the age of 31 in 1977, becoming one of the youngest mayors of a large city in America history. But Kucinich had a terrible tenure as the city defaulted on loans in part because Kucinich refused to sell the public municipal power company as the banks demanded. Kucinich became a laughingstock around the country and was roundly defeated in his campaign for re-election. "I didn't know if I would ever get any another chance," Kucinich said recently about his plight. And for 15 years, he didn't, losing election after election in Ohio, before finally capturing a seat in the State Senate in 1994. Two years later, he won his congressional seat and has become one of the most liberal members of the House, gaining notoriety among Democratic activists early this year for his fiery speeches opposing the war.

Kucinich says after overcoming all those odds, he can win the presidency, noting that he defeated Republican incumbents in 1977, 1994 and 1996. Unfortunately for the Ohio congressman, Democratic primary voters seem to be locked into the prison of reality. After hearing Kucinich speak at a pizza parlor in Waverly, Iowa, 74-year-old Earlene Hawlay said, "I liked everything he said, but I'm not sure he's strong and handsome enough looking." Art Hessburg, also 74, was similarly impressed, and dismissive. "I wish him a lot of luck," Hessburg said, "but I'm in a caucus for the man I think can win." And those are the voters who actually know who Kucinich is.

• Perry Bacon Jr.
• The former boy mayor of Cleveland is the most quixotic of Democratic candidates. And he thinks he can win