Vote preceding Iowa and N.H. tries to spur electorate

Monday, January 12, 2004

By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- "Technically," claims Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, the nation's first test of the field of Democratic presidential candidates is not in Iowa next Monday or New Hampshire on Jan. 27 but tomorrow in his very own city.

But until just a few days ago, when some party activists took the Democratic mayor to task, Williams wasn't even planning to be around for his hometown presidential primary. He was planning to visit Pittsburgh.

National political reporters aren't hanging around Washington, either. They're storming Iowa and New Hampshire, along with the candidates.

The vast majority of Washingtonians probably won't even know there is a primary tomorrow. Only four of the major Democratic candidates are even on the ballot, which is merely "advisory."

Traditionally, the D.C. primary has been held in May, but in recent years it has drawn less than 10 percent of registered voters. This year, Williams and the city council were persuaded by some Democratic activists to try to gain more local and national attention for the primary by moving it ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire, which have been widely criticized for being too white and too rural and too out-of-the-mainstream to deserve first crack at culling the country's presidential candidates.

But with even the mayor paying the event little mind, it looks as though Iowa and New Hampshire need not worry about Washington stealing their place in the presidential line of succession.

Around City Hall a few small signs say "Vote. Stand up for your rights." They're plastered to light poles but can't be read by passing motorists. Nobody walking around the building last week had even heard about D.C.'s "first-in-the-nation advisory primary."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Cleveland Democrat and former mayor who has gained more fame for looking for a wife than he has as a serious contender for the White House, has campaigned in Washington. A spokesman said the campaign has phone banks and people out "dropping literature at doors."

Carol Moseley Braun, the former Illinois senator who has done most of her campaigning in Illinois, is on the ballot, and so is New York City minister Al Sharpton, who has spent most of the past several days in Washington. Moseley Braun and Sharpton are the two African Americans in the national race, and the city of Washington is primarily black. In Sharpton's radio ads he exhorts voters to keep Martin Luther King's memory alive by voting for him and says he supports making the District of Columbia the 51st state.

In a TV appearance on Friday, Sharpton himself didn't put much stock in the results tomorrow, saying no matter the outcome he would keep running through March 9 and expected to do well in the South.

Such candidates as Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, and Wesley Clark, former Army general, are trying to stay out of the city in an effort to show they aren't part of the Washington establishment.

"This party [the Democrats] needs new leadership, someone who isn't a Washington insider," Dean has said. Dean is on the ballot tomorrow and has a solid lead in the polls -- he is about 35 points ahead of Sharpton -- but he angered local Democrats when he didn't show up for a radio debate on Friday sponsored in part by the NAACP and the Urban League.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting D.C. delegate to Congress, said that those who didn't campaign in Washington won't get a "bump" from the primary they might have. Dean has been to about four campaign events in the city but has not publicly mentioned the primary or even asked for votes tomorrow.

Clark, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, John Edwards of North Carolina and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut are not on the ballot. Under pressure from national party leaders -- especially party chairman Terry McAuliffe -- all withdrew in November. National Democratic leaders are dismissive of the D.C. primary, preferring to keep the traditional process alive where everyone flocks to Iowa and then, immediately, to New Hampshire, which votes a week later.

The election will cost the city several hundred thousand dollars. The polls open at 7 a.m. and remain open until 8 p.m. But Republicans aren't even bothering to vote and will pick delegates for President Bush at their caucus meetings in February.

Tomorrow's non-binding vote ensures nothing except that each voter will be able to express a preference for a candidate. Write-ins are not permitted. And, in fact, the 38 Democratic delegates to the National Democratic Convention in Boston this summer, who will be chosen on Feb. 14 and March 6, are not bound by the results tomorrow.

Nonetheless, local Democratic Party officials say they are spending $100,000 on signs, telephone calls and radio spots urging voters to go to the polls tomorrow to show that the primary is meaningful.

Three out of every four registered voters in Washington are Democrats, but in some elections fewer than 8 percent of them turn out. As of Friday fewer than 1,000 absentee ballots had been requested.

Ann McFeatters can be reached at amcfeatters@nationalpress.com or 1-202-662-7071.

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