Kerry Pumps Obama At Reggie Mayo’s House

by Paul Bass | February 3, 2008 5:32 PM | | Comments (9)

DSCN8305.JPGA funny thing happened on the way to Super Tuesday: New Haven and Connecticut took center stage.

One presidential candidate — albeit from 2004 — came to the Stevenson Road home of New Haven schools Superintendent Dr. Reggie Mayo just before the Super Bowl Sunday. John Kerry gave a brief, energetic pitch for Barack Obama to a gathering of some 60 political activists and Yale students busy this weekend lining up votes for the Illinois senator in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary.

Meanwhile, the two current Democrats candidates made plans for last-minute stops nearby. Hillary Clinton was planning a Monday morning appearance in New Haven at the Yale Child Study Center, her second Connecticut visit in eight days. And Obama plans to visit Hartford’s Civic Center Monday afternoon for a campaign rally.

And leading GOP presidential candidate John McCain came to Fairfield Sunday.

All this in a small state, just one of 22 states (plus American Samoa) voting in what is basically a national primary Tuesday, with delegate-heavy states like California and New York the big prizes. Until the past week no one expected Connecticut to play much of a role in the primary or to host visits from leading candidates. Now the race between Clinton and Obama has tightened, too close to call, Nutmeggers have registered to vote in record numbers, and the state suddenly matters. New Haven has come alive with hundreds of volunteers canvassing neighborhoods all over the city in the lead-up to the primary.

DSCN8271.JPGWith another “Super” contest closer at hand — the Super Bowl — Obama organizers decided not to try to organize a mass rally for John Kerry’s stopover Sunday afternoon. Instead, they chose Dr. Mayo’s house near the Yale Golf Course and Hopkins school in Upper Westville as the gathering place for a quick pep rally. (Mayo is pictured in his driveway with Obama supporter Henry Fernandez.)

A sizable portion of the crowd consisted of Yale students who have knocked on 4,700 doors and contacted more than 1,300 voters in person the past few days, “71 percent of whom were for Obama,” according to organizer Rachel Plattus. Plattus, a Yale undergraduate, represents Ward 1 on the Board of Aldermen.

In his remarks, Kerry spoke of his days as a Yale undergraduate in the early ’60s, going south to fight for racial justice. This campaign is another one of those historical moments, he said. (Click on the play arrow to watch his remarks.)

By electing Obama, he said, “We can point to people that we are a country where we hold these truths to be self-evident — written incidentally by a 33-year-old. Where we actually can remind people that this is a country that makes real the dream of Martin Luther King when he was 34 years old, that in fact we judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

He repeatedly referred to Obama’s “story.”

“This is that race, where we give life to the story of an individual who was raised by a single parent whose maternal grandparents gave him values, gave him purpose,” to go on to become the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama, Kerry noted, went on “not to Wall Street to make millions of dollars but to go back to Chicago to help make the lives of disenfranchised people better. Those are the values that you want in the White House.”

Kerry spoke also of the “excitement and focus” Obama’s candidacy generated in Indonesia and Botswana, where he recently traveled on Senate business. “I saw the way that his presidency would have the ability to reach out to less developed countries, to reach out across the divide.” Click on the play arrow to watch his remarks on that subject.

The CT Spin

So what explains all this political star power descending on Connecticut?

One Kerry staffer volunteering for Obama said that when she and colleagues asked where they should volunteer, the answers were Connecticut and an even smaller Super Tuesday state, Delaware. “This is where they said they needed the bodies.”

Why that is depends, of course, on which camp’s spin you consult.

State Rep. Jason Bartlett, co-chair of Clinton’s Connecticut steering committee, said his candidate is looking for a knock-out punch. Obama has no chance of winning other New England and mid-Atlantic states, Bartlett argued, which leaves Connecticut — currently too close to call — his only hope of a regional victory.

“He needs a state in the Northeast. That’s why it’s a battleground. Wednesday morning, he’s got to point to a win,” Bartlett argued. “We would like to deny him a win. Then he doesn’t have a win in the northeast.

“That’s the real reason Connecticut’s in play. To be brutally honest, the delegates are going to be fairly even.”

Connecticut’s 60 Democratic delegates are apportioned partly by results in each Congressional district, partly by overall statewide percentage of the vote.

DSCN8318.JPGObama worker Marty Dunleavy (pictured), a New Havener and National Democratic Committeeman, argued that the closeness of the national race makes every delegate worth fighting over for each camp. That makes even small states more important, he said.

Dunleavy spun the race as Obama’s chance, not Clinton’s, to score a devastating symbolic knock-out. He noted that Clinton lives “just 12 miles” from the Fairfield County border.

“This is an opportunity for Hillary Clinton, with all her Wall Street and Fairfield County connections, to get a black eye,” Dunleavy said. He observed that until recently CLinton had been leading Connecticut by more than 20 points in some polls. “For her to all of a sudden have to spend time and resources here shows how soft her support really is.”







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Comments

Posted by: andre walker | February 3, 2008 6:37 PM

If you believe we can make a change...
http://www.dipdive.com/
Obama 08

Posted by: robn | February 3, 2008 10:29 PM

A Kerry stopover isn't a good thing for a good candidate like Obama. Theres a lot of people (me included) who volunteered to be in the field for Kerry in 2004 becuase he promised not to put up with Florida-2000-like vote fraud shennanigans. Lo and behold, with shennanigans galore in Ohio he didn't even wait a one day before he conceded.

Shame on you John Kerry!

Posted by: MarjorieG | February 4, 2008 12:13 AM

Robn, at some point you need to understand it couldn't be contested in a state that wouldn't allow it (Bush v Gore). More votes walked due to long lines, and before starting, we needed to find evidence of outcome altering fraud within the time allowed to contest. Certainly with better help from the Democratic party, securing the polls and building party infrastructure, better support as surrogates, any a media not wanting the other guy (like they wanted Bush for deregulation). He reasoned like a prosecutor.

Carville told Mary of election night plans to have the ballots counted, who told Cheney, and then Blackwell, if Woodward's book is to believed. Provisionals disappeared. He has never publically been asked or answered.

We need to secure the polls before an election, with audits, chain of custody and legal procedures, before the media announces the winner.

I say this a longtime voting activist, realistic about what needed to be done. Kerry would have, if he could have.

He, instead, spent major money and time on the 2006 midterms, where voters would be and were better willing to listen, than if we went on a fishing expedition that failed.

Kerry has often said how much he regrets the loss, even more for the people who worked so hard for a different result.

Posted by: True New Havener | February 4, 2008 7:20 AM

GO OBAMA!!!

NEW HAVEN will push Obama well over the top in Connecticut. With the race close all over the country (closing to a few points even in California), Connecticut is now the center of it all and more Democrats vote in New Haven than anywhere else in the state. So we are the biggest prize in a very important state in the biggest election in many of our lifetimes.

So get out New Haven and vote for OBAMA!!!

Posted by: beachmom | February 4, 2008 7:40 AM

Kerry raised or gave more money for the 2006 elections, including supporting Fighting Dems like Jim Webb in Virginia in the primaries. We all know how well that turned out. Kerry didn't just do a driveby endorsement of Obama -- he is making appearances like this one that really matters in rallying volunteer support. In the end, it comes down to Obama, but he can use all the help he can get, especially by someone like Kerry who steamrolled through his own primary season.

Posted by: robn | February 4, 2008 9:00 AM

MarjorieG,

I'm probably preaching to the choir but your statement that Kerry didn't have the option to question the vote is off base. Citing BushVGore isn't exactly a good precedent. Firstly, (Vincent Bugliosi has most clearly pointed this out) since Bush wasn't a resident or voter of Florida he had no standing to sue for equal protection. Secondly, the Supremes conservatie majority (in an act of unprecedented unbridled arrogance) restricted their decision to this one single event (if you're scratching your head, you've got company...it doesn't make any sense.) Sandra Day O'Conner now regrets that decision, but then she'll have plenty of time in hell to reconsider her actions.

Kerry could have questioned the election as long as he wanted to and fought its legality on a number of points including unequal access to polls which appeared to be targeted at democratic leaning cities, defective equipment, improper chain of custody for ballots, and conflict of interest (like in Flordia, the secretary of state, the person who counted the votes, was Bush's campaign chairperson).

My personal opinion as to WHY Kerry deployed his chute so quickly is that he wanted to preserve the remainder of his campaign chest and ride it through the end of his senate career.

Posted by: Poppy | February 4, 2008 2:43 PM

Robn-

John Forbes Kerry lost because he was a bad canidate. It is really that simple.

ohh.. BTW 9/11 is an inside job by the neo-cons to steal oil

Posted by: robn | February 4, 2008 10:39 PM

Poppy,

Whether or not he was a bad candidate, the reason why John Kerry, as well as Al Gore, lost the presidential election was becuase of one large state with largely corrupt voting systems.

Thanks for the 911 comment...proving my theory once again that conservatives will exploit tragedy for any purpose, including ad hominum attacks.

Posted by: westvillecairns | February 7, 2008 6:50 PM

Dunleavy spun the race as Obama's chance, not Clinton's, to score a devastating symbolic knock-out. He noted that Clinton lives "just 12 miles" from the Fairfield County border.

"This is an opportunity for Hillary Clinton, with all her Wall Street and Fairfield County connections, to get a black eye," Dunleavy said. He observed that until recently CLinton had been leading Connecticut by more than 20 points in some polls. "For her to all of a sudden have to spend time and resources here shows how soft her support really is."

Shame on you Mr. Dunleavy. Support your candidate as you will, but this was not a national presidential race - merely a primary and last time I looked Hillary Clinton was a Democrat. I suppose you might be an Obama supporter who rationally says that if Obama is not the candidate you won't be showing up to vote or will vote Republican. Chilling words I have heard. Perhaps it is time for a "Cult of Personality" check.

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