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 Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers  SEN. JOHN KERRY�S FUNDRAISERS TELLING HIM IT�S GETTING NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND ANYONE WILLING TO WRITE A CHECK TO HIS CAMPAIGN Sun Nov 16 2003 10:09:36 ET --- Gov. Howard Dean Won Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Endorsement By Taking Advice of SEIU President Andrew Stern --- Stern Gave Same Advice To Each Candidate, Only Dean Took Him Up in Earnest, Stern Says New York � Senator John Kerry�s fund raisers are telling him it�s getting next to impossible to find anyone willing to write a check to his campaign, TIME�s Karen Tumulty reports in this week�s issue (on newsstands Monday, Nov. 17). Last week the Senator fired campaign manager Jim Jordan, announced he�s following Dean�s lead in opting out of spending limits for his campaign and vowed �to get really real and focused.� That declaration, of course, only raised the discomfiting question of what he�s been doing until now. How Dean Got the SEIU Endorsement: Over the past year, whenever one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates made his way to the downtown Washington office of Andrew Stern, head of the nation�s largest union, he came away with two things: a bit of advice and the names of local officials across the country. �I�m the voice of 1.6 million members,� the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) told those who sought his endorsement. �Go talk to them.� Only one candidate, Stern says, took him up on it. Howard Dean not only talked to SEIU members, he showed up on their picket line at Yale University, cheered their organizers at a San Francisco hospital and consulted the union�s nurses in Iowa as he put together his proposal for solving the shortage in their profession. �Howard Dean didn�t start on top,� Stern says, �but he certainly ended up on top.� If the onetime long shot looked like a front runner before last week, the political pundits were declaring him all but unstoppable after Wednesday�s joint endorsement by Stern�s union and the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Greatest Threat to Dean is Dean Himself: Dean has been running so fast that his vulnerabilities haven�t caught up to him. �He�s quick of lip, and quick of temper and stubborn,� says Democratic activist Harold Ickes, a close adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton. �In another time, the Confederate- flag story [Dean�s comment that he�s courting the voters who display them on their pickup trucks] would have taken him down the drain.� It took Dean five days to apologize for the Confederate-flag gaffe, but that mini-brouhaha might be just a prologue to the scrutiny he will face on inconsistencies in his record on issues from affirmative action to trade. That�s why many believe the greatest threat to Dean is Dean himself. Developing... |
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