Bush, 7 Democrats scheduled to speak before Urban League

Monday, July 28, 2003

By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Politics Editor

Twenty-one visits; 21 electoral votes.

That coincidental equation helps explain why President Bush, with his stop in Pittsburgh today for the National Urban League conference, will have visited Pennsylvania more often than any state but those of his family homes, Texas and Maine.

Among the nation's richer electoral prizes, Pennsylvania eluded Bush by some 200,000 votes three years ago, an outcome he has acted to reverse with his time and some of his policy decisions.

The seven Democrats who will follow him to the stage in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, don't have the luxury of concentrating on electoral votes just yet. For them, the trip to Pittsburgh is not a reflection of Pennsylvania's importance on any election calendar; rather it is a testament to the Urban League as a symbol of the black voters who have traditionally been one of their party's most reliable constituencies.

That the group's gathering is in Pennsylvania, in fact, is almost irrelevant to the competition that now consumes Bush's would-be challengers. By the time the state's April 27 primary rolls around, the Democrats are likely to have known the identity of their eventual nominee for six weeks or more.

Under the front-loaded primary schedule, more than a dozen states will choose their delegates in February, on the heels of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Even if a front-runner does not emerge from those contests, March 2 will yield a huge tally of delegates as major states including California, New York, Ohio, Texas and Georgia go to the polls.

Prominent among the signs of Bush's attention to Pennsylvania voting blocs was his deviation from pro-trade rhetoric to impose tariffs on imported steel, a decision declared to be a violation of international trade rules earlier this month by the World Trade Organization.

Despite such gestures, the national unemployment rate hit 6.4 percent in June, the highest level since March 1994. Pennsylvania has lost some 130,000 factory jobs since the first year of Bush's administration, roughly one in seven factory jobs in the state.

Bush maintains, however, that the job market is on the cusp of recovery. He argued in appearances in Michigan and Philadelphia last week that the major tax cuts that he has signed will spur employment in the coming months.

The Democrats who will speak later can be counted on to dispute that analysis, repeating their consensus contention that the tax cuts are so skewed to the wealthy that they will not promote general consumption. To a man -- and one woman -- the Democratic candidates have also criticized the tax cuts as a recipe for repeated deficits.

After 2 1/2 years marked by massive job losses, some recent economic statistics gave the administration hope that the long sought recovery may in fact emerge soon enough to buttress Bush's re-election prospects.

According to the U.S. Labor Department, the number of new applications for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since February. Later this week, new employment numbers are due to be released and scrutinized to see if the tide of net job losses has begun to ebb.

A Gallup Poll released last week showed that just 45 percent of those surveyed approved of Bush's handling of the economy while 51 percent disapproved. Bush's overall approval rating was considerably stronger, with 59 percent approving of his performance in office and 38 percent disapproving.

On both questions, Bush's ratings were almost identical to those recorded in Gallup surveys taken immediately before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The most recent poll also showed that a relatively narrow plurality of the registered voters surveyed -- 46 percent to 42 percent -- said they were likely to vote for Bush over an unspecified Democrat.

On all measurements in the new poll, Bush numbers had receded markedly from the spikes at the height of the crises after Sept. 11 and the beginning of the Iraq war, spikes Gallup analyst David W. Moore attributed to the "rally effects" driving public opinion.

The politicians who will follow Bush before the Urban League are still early in the process of turning that unspecified Democrat into a specific nominee. Though several have staged noticeable breakaways, no one has been able to permanently leave the others behind.

All but two of the Democratic candidates are scheduled to attend the early evening forum. Expected to appear are Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun; former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean; Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.; Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo.; Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.; and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Bob Graham, D-Fla., pleaded scheduling conflicts in extending their regrets.

The field is likely to sort itself out with dizzying speed over a few short winter weeks, but for now it has no single overwhelming favorite.

A Quinnipiac University Poll conducted last week found Lieberman, abetted by the name recognition gained as Al Gore's running mate, in first place with the support of 21 percent of the Democrats surveyed nationally. That put him in a tie with undecided/don't know. The only other candidates to hit double digits were Gephardt, with 16 percent; Kerry, 13 percent; and Dean, 10 percent.

The pivotal Democrats of New Hampshire, however, offered markedly different views of their candidates last week. In that survey. Kerry, with 25 percent, was leading Dean, another candidate from a neighboring state, who registered 19 percent. They were followed by Gephardt with 10 percent and Lieberman, the national polling leader, with only 6 percent.

Gephardt's partisans expect him to run strongly in the other starting block state, Iowa, where he came in first in the caucuses in his first presidential run in 1988.

Dean, however, is the candidate who has generated the most recent excitement and attention based on his combative rhetoric toward the Bush administration and the startlingly robust contribution totals he posted for the year's second quarter.

Edwards has also posted a strong fund-raising performance relative to his Democratic rivals, an important qualification.

In what is probably the most important campaign story of recent months, Bush, who faces no resource-bleeding primary opposition, has raised more money than all of his would-be opponents combined. In the second quarter of the year, the Bush-Cheney campaign amassed $34.4 million compared with some $31 million for all nine Democrats.

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