Gephardt tailors his appeal to America's workers

Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt shakes hands with supporters during a campaign stop at the Allen Temple Community Center in downtown Greenville Thursday. e-mail this story

Dick Gephardt left a downtown St. Louis law firm, moved back to his blue-collar neighborhood and launched a political career he hopes to culminate next year by winning the Democratic presidential nomination and sending George W. Bush home to the ranch.

You may never hear the former House Democratic leader singing "Look for the union label," but he does.

Alone among the Democratic candidates, Gephardt cleared his calendar for three days in February to hang around the Diplomat Resort and Spa for a major AFL-CIO meeting.

In a state that has been hemorrhaging textile and apparel jobs for years, Gephardt seeks — and needs — to use that working man's empathy to forge a coalition of workers — union, nonunion, employed, unemployed or just plain worried — plus blacks and the party's progressive wing.

Wednesday, just after Pillowtex announced it was shutting down and eliminating 7,500 textile jobs, most of them in the Carolinas, Gephardt blamed the current Republican administration butdid not letting his intraparty competitors off the hook:

"Many of my opponents have supported trade deals such as 'most favored nation' status for China that have resulted in a race to the bottom as manufacturing moves around the globe looking for the cheapest available labor. I will be a president who will not negotiate away the future of American workers or the health and welfare of workers overseas."

Earlier, he predicted to The Associated Press he would draw significant support from workers "for a simple reason: I have shared their beliefs, and I have bled and fought on their issues for 26 years in the United States House. They know that."

To Merle Black, an Emory University expert on Southern politics, "Gephardt looks like a player if he doesn't bomb in New Hampshire as he did in 1988."

He said Gephardt stands to benefit handsomely from an expected endorsement by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state's lone black congressman and a powerful Democratic figure.

"The black vote could determine the winner, and if there's anything close to a consensus in the black community, they will determine who wins," said Columbia's Don Fowler, a former national party chairman.

Blacks are expected to account for 40 to 50 percent of the Democratic turnout.

Gephardt and his rivals have built their campaign visits around stops at black churches and Lowcountry union halls.

Iowa a 'must'

To claim the nomination, Gephardt almost certainly will have to win Iowa's Jan. 19 caucuses and run strongly Feb. 3 in South Carolina, long the nation's second least unionized state.

Gephardt told The Greenville News his ties to organized labor is one of his strengths, "but the issues I've fought for — like trade and health care — are issues that are important to workers whether they're unionized or not. Workers will respond to my message. The fight for working families is in my bones."

The campaign Web site illustrates Gephardt's union ties.

"Gephardt Gear" is sold from a site itself prominently proclaimed as "Union Made." A half-dozen items, from buttons to yard signs to T-shirts, come with a declaration they all are "union made" or "union printed."

That's fine with Gray Court's mayor, John Taylor, an early Gephardt backer.

"He's a caring person, concerned for the man at the grass-roots level," Taylor said.

Gephardt, still reddish-blond and an avid Cardinals fan at 62, was raised in a working class area of St. Louis but left for college in Illinois and law school in Michigan, settling in as a rising star in a prominent downtown law firm in his hometown.

By the late 1960s, his political interest was emerging. He moved back to his old neighborhood and won a seat on the board of aldermen in 1971. When the 3rd Congressional District seat came open in 1976, he won it an anti-establishment candidate.

He quickly made his mark on Capitol Hill, becoming that rarest of rarities in Washington, a freshman member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Gephardt became the Democrats' House majority leader in 1989, shifting to the minority leader when the GOP won control of the House in 1994. He stepped down after the 2002 elections when Democrats again failed to win back the House.

As a mainstream Democrat, he voted for President Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and was a founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Today, Gephardt consistently draws top ratings from liberal organizations, including Americans for Democratic Action, which gave him a 90 percent support rate for 2002. Conservative groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Conservative Union, rated him 35 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

He has been endorsed by 11 trade unions, including the Teamsters, although the biggest of all — the AFL-CIO — hasn't determined whether it will settle on a single candidate.

The "Almanac of American Politics" describes Gephardt as "a superb caucus politician and a good listener ... a hard-working detail man, eager to absorb information, with a gift for molding compromises."

Bombed in '88

Gephardt first ran for the presidency in 1988.

He won the Iowa caucuses with labor's help, as he expects to do in 2004, but his positions on tax hikes brought him criticism in New Hampshire and he ran a distant second to Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. By "Super Tuesday" — the first Tuesday in March — his campaign was broke. He won only one other state, Missouri.

Gephardt had a dismal showing in South Carolina's precinct caucuses in 1988, winning 2 percent of the estimated 15,000 activists who turned out. Greenville native Jesse Jackson was first with 53 percent, followed by then-Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, 19 percent, and the eventual nominee, Dukakis, at 6 percent.

Now, a more seasoned Gephardt with a more focused message is trying again.

"I think experience matters," he said in his announcement speech earlier this year. "I'm running for president because I'm tired of leadership that's left us isolated in the world and stranded here at home."

This time, he appears to be a top-tier candidate in the nine-person field, by virtue of midrange polling numbers, fund raising and political status, up there with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Connecticut Sen. Joseph Leiberman.

But his immediate problem in South Carolina may be a second-tier national candidate, John Edwards, a Seneca native now a North Carolina senator.

In the game of political expectations, Edwards is the regional favorite, just as Gephardt is in neighboring Iowa and Kerry and Dean are in New Hampshire.

Must 'do well'

Gephardt doesn't talk about winning South Carolina but says he must "do well," leaving it undefined.

Black thinks Gephardt must look elsewhere: South Carolina will be the chance for the Southern candidates, Edwards and Florida Sen. Bob Graham.

He faces some hurdles.

No sitting U.S. House member has captured the White House since James Garfield in 1880.

He failed to meet his second-quarter finance goal by more than $1 million. With a goal of $5 million for the period, enough to keep pace with the fund-raising front-runners, he took in $3.87 million, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Gephardt leads in Iowa polls, but Dean and Kerry have been eating away at his edge. He barely registers beyond mid- to upper single digits in New Hampshire, where Kerry and Dean are running neck and neck.

His national campaign staff has a South Carolina flair.

Bill Carrick, an Aiken native who is now a top California-based consultant, is one of his strategists; Maurice Daniel, who grew up in Belton and was an aide to Vice President Al Gore, is political director; and Richard Sullivan, who's from Columbia and now lives in Raleigh, heads the fund-raising apparatus.

Gephardt has proposed a crash program to develop "environmentally smart," renewable energy sources, wants to make the first $10,000 of higher education costs tax-deductible and suggests an international minimum wage to create a country-by-country "living wage" that will make U.S. products more competitive and halt the outflow of jobs overseas.

Also, he supports affirmative action programs, favors expanding federal jurisdiction over hate crimes and has said he will nominate pro-abortion rights judges to the federal bench.

But Gephardt's signature issue is guaranteed health care for virtually all Americans in the form of $200 billion-plus in tax credits for businesses. He would pay for it by ending the Bush tax cuts.

He has called it "the centerpiece of my campaign." In South Carolina, it gets co-billing with trade.

He sees himself as the lone voice on the trade issue, one that has resonance for the state's textile workers.

"I'm the only candidate who fought against NAFTA and China free trade," Gephardt said. "The trade policy we have has really constructed a green light for companies to go wherever they can get the cheapest labor."

What single issue will play best in South Carolina?

"The same as everywhere: good jobs and secure jobs."

But in recent weeks, he has stepped up his criticism of Bush's Iraq policy. While Gephardt supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, last month he told about 50 supporters gathered in a union hall near the Charleston docks, "We're in serious danger of losing the peace. (Bush) must go to the U.N. now. He must go to NATO and get the help we need to solve this (insurgency) problem."

James T. Hammond of the Capital Bureau contributed to this report.

Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.