Added Nov. 5

Gephardt whips up Democratic voters to boost party chances — and maybe his own

By JON FRANDSEN
Gannett News Service

SHELBURNE, N.H. — Would-be House Speaker Dick Gephardt is a man who preaches the virtues of democracy with as much fervor as any politician, but he is losing faith.
The House Democratic leader and possible 2004 presidential candidate sounds downright devout when he extols the power of a system where the rich and poor have "the same power in equal measure" at the polls.

But Gephardt is also adding a dire warning that twin perils are endangering democracy: the power and influence of moneyed special interests and the apathy of voters.

"If you could see what I see every day, you would go crazy!" Gephardt told a dinner meeting of Coos County Democrats here deep in the North Woods 11 days before the midterm elections. "And you would wonder when the people of this country are going to wake up ... and take their government back."

Gephardt hopes such exhortations will lead to winning enough seats Tuesday for Democrats to retake the majority for the first time since the 1994 Republican revolution. Current odds slightly favor Republicans retaining the speaker's gavel for another two years.

However, it appears likely that, win or lose, Gephardt will pursue even loftier ambitions than the speaker's chair. In an interview with Gannett News Service, Gephardt said he is fixated on winning back the House before fully considering such a step. But unlike his counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, he has not set a deadline for making a decision. Daschle is promising to decide before the year is out.
"I'm not worried about that," Gephardt said about his White House ambitions. "I'm focused on this. …I'll figure out what comes after that, well, after that."

But Gephardt also has two full-time coordinators here and spends time meeting privately with key Democrats here. This was his sixth trip since 2000. He's also made three trips each to Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina and Arizona, also early caucus and primary states.
Gephardt says he is the only one of several Democratic presidential contenders who can justify frequent visits this election cycle to New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state.

"Of everybody who has been talked about (as potential challengers to President Bush), I think I am the only that has a really legitimate and important reason to be here a lot. We've got two very good races here," he said.

Whether he has his eye on the White House or not, Gephardt has taken an increasingly tough approach to the stump, using inflammatory, almost apocalyptic language even for the final, heated days of a close campaign.

"We are turning people off in this country," he said with alarm as he noted the slight turnout in elections. "People think it is all fixed. And guess what? ...It may be."
Gephardt sees himself as the leader of a war on behalf of working Americans against conservative Republicans that he portrays as the guardians of corporate interests and the wealthy.

"You give us the gavel back and we'll give you America back" is the promise Gephardt made to voters at the end of every speech he made during a recent four-stop tour of New Hampshire.

Gephardt, who ran for president in 1988, would likely be at the crowded, left of center part of the Democratic Party as a presidential candidate.

He makes frequent appeals for moving to the middle and says repeatedly that if he becomes House speaker he would work toward bipartisan solutions much harder than he believes the Republicans have.

But he also has ignored advice from more moderate Democrats like Al Gore's 2000 running mate Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who suggested recently that the party would be better off if it left behind the "politics of class warfare."

Gephardt is close to labor unions and frames Republicans and big business as the enemy of the middle and working classes.

In 1993, he voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement that called for expanding trade with Mexico and Canada. Since then, many other Democrats have become ardent free traders, but Gephardt voted this summer against giving Bush broad authority to negotiate new trade pacts.

Beth Page, vice president of the New Hampshire State Employees Association, introduced him to a union gathering in Waterville by saying his new stance showed, "He's teachable."
Gephardt is also emerging as a leader of the hawkish wing of the party, departing from some of the Democratic Party's leading liberals. Saying "September 11th changed everything," he backed Bush repeatedly on security issues this year and forcefully came out in favor of going after Saddam Hussein long before the administration made Iraq the focus of the war on terror this summer.

During a campaign stop, Ruth McKay of Concord told Gephardt his role in brokering a deal on the Iraq resolution "was heartbreaking."

But Gephardt held his ground and turned the conversation to his favor by criticizing other aspects of Bush's foreign policy and his tactics in the war on terrorism that heartened McKay and a small knot of others worried about the approach on Iraq.

Regardless of reservations about his Iraq vote, Gephardt won over every crowd during the recent New Hampshire trip with an evangelical plea to get friends, neighbors and family to the polls.

"People are dying in other countries for the ability to cast their votes and we drive by the polling place time after time because it is too much trouble," he said. "Well, it isn't too much trouble."

And then his rallying cry comes again, the reason for this trip and 191 others to 113 cities during the past two years.

"We've got to take this country back. You give us the gavel back, we'll give you America back."