"Is Kerry's Campaign Colorblind?"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCLXXIV

Colbert I. King writes at WaPo, Apr. 24.

John Kerry, oh, John Kerry, say it isn't so. But, alas, apparently 'tis true.

The Massachusetts senator, putative 2004 Democratic standard-bearer and soon-to-be leader of the party that most voting African Americans and other people of color call home, has an innermost circle of advisers that is practically as white as the driven snow. That slam against the Kerry high command appeared last week in "The Inside Edge" column of Carlos Watson on CNN.com.

Not wanting to believe that Kerry would assemble a team of insiders with faces that exclusively resembled Europe — especially after proclaiming throughout the length and breadth of the land that he wants our workplaces to reflect the full face of America — I called the Kerry campaign in Washington and got press spokesperson Stephanie Cutter on the phone.

I asked her: Is Carlos Watson's assertion true?

Watson, for the record, had written that, unlike former vice president Al Gore, who had an African American campaign manager, political director and finance director, Kerry has no person of color in his inner circle, including the campaign manager, campaign chairperson, media adviser, policy director, foreign policy adviser, general election manager, convention planner, national finance chairman and head of the vice presidential search team.

Cutter's answer to my question was truly Clintonesque. It all depends, she said, on what you mean by inner circle.

Whoop, there it is.

Watson may be on to something after all. Could it be that at the start of another election cycle, the Democratic Party's most loyal constituencies are on the outside looking in?

But wait a minute, Cutter interjected. Kerry just so happened to have issued a press release on April 16, the same day Watson's column appeared, announcing a significant expansion of his campaign's senior staff. The release did not identify the appointees by color, but Cutter obtained a copy and ran down the list, carefully identifying which of the listed "all-stars" were of a darker hue.

Cutter said the Kerry campaign would have more to say on the subject this week. And sure enough, on Thursday it unveiled another list: the "community outreach senior leadership." These staffers are charged with energizing "core Democratic constituencies across the country."

While the "all-stars" and the "community outreach senior leadership" are different groupies with ostensibly different missions, their purposes are much the same: to go forth with marching orders from the Kerry leadership, to mobilize the party's base, to link up and make nice with various party and special interests, and to implement the strategy and carry the message formulated by the tight circle of white Kerry leadership.

No non-WASP group, by order of the Kerry high command, shall go untouched. Well, almost.

This week, according to the release, senior leaders have been assigned, pretty much according to their race, religion or ethnicity, to handle their respective groups. There's a separate outreach official for African Americans and one for Hispanics. The Jewish community outreach person also handles Middle East and Jewish affairs. One senior outreacher has a full plate, with responsibility for Arab Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarian Americans, Polish Americans and Portuguese Americans.

Greek Americans are apparently out of luck. So are Turkish Americans. They don't seem to be assigned. But Asian Pacific Islanders have a senior outreach official of their own. So do the environmental crowd, women and LGBT, which the press release fails to spell out (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people).

Regardless of how much the Kerry press releases make it sound as if those "all-stars" and "senior advisers" are the Dream Team, they aren't the people calling the shots. They don't have a hand in positioning the candidate or in guiding his campaign. That is the special preserve of the inner circle.

Let's be fair, you might argue. Doesn't Kerry have a right to surround himself with close friends and top assistants who click with him? Of course. But is it too much to expect that the Democratic Party's top liberal, the candidate who cries that he has "fought for civil rights and equal opportunity for every American my whole life," who brags about his efforts to "enhance diversity," and whose message is inclusiveness, would in fact have a presidential campaign inner circle that is reflective of the diversity of his party and the country? And if elected, will Kerry govern that way?

As for grand strategists, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill made it plain in a story this week by The Post's Jim VandeHei that only six people qualify in Kerry's camp as real insiders: herself, Bob Shrum, Michael Donilon, Tad Devine, Tom Kiley and Mark Mellman.

And they don't look like America.

Maybe Carlos Watson got it right.

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Here's the WaPo article to which King refers:

.... Cahill said six people equally dominate campaign strategizing sessions: Shrum, Donilon and their partner, Tad Devine, as well as pollsters Kiley and Mark Mellman and herself. Others privately said the true powerhouses are Cahill, Donilon and Shrum — and not necessarily in that order. It was Donilon who devised last year's "100 days" campaign, which outlined how Kerry would change the country during his first three months in office and who advocated this new, biographical ad campaign. Donilon is helping produce the ads and recently traveled to New York to determine whether a new Madison Avenue ad firm should be added to the campaign mix....

Shrum? That would be Bob Shrum, a much-vaunted strategist for a whole generation of Democratic losers:

.... Nevertheless, all the controversy has lately begun to catch up with Shrum — and not all of it is about his personality. At issue is whether he is as valuable as he is reputed to be or whether his populist message has become shopworn and ineffective. As far back as 1980 The Washington Post pointed out how often he failed: "Friends of Shrum's joke that he's had so many losers that he wouldn't know what to do with a winner." That year he was Ted Kennedy's chief speechwriter when the senator challenged Shrum's old ideological bête noire, Jimmy Carter. But Kennedy lost. By 1988 Shrum, now a full-service consultant, had graduated to Mario Cuomo, who never ran, and then signed on with Richard Gephardt in the primaries. Gephardt lost too. Shrum wound up working for Michael Dukakis's ill-fated general-election campaign. In 1992 his horse was Bob Kerrey. But Kerrey soon bowed out, and Shrum never managed to penetrate Bill Clinton's inner circle. In 2000 he was one of Al Gore's top advisers, with all-too-familiar results. At one point Shrum even attended a strategy meeting for the ultimate losing candidate, New Coke.

Throughout his professional rise, Shrum's political message has remained constant. Therein lies a source of criticism. In the death throes of his 1988 campaign Dukakis adopted Shrum's populist rhetoric. Four years later Bob Kerrey did too. An advocate of free trade, Kerrey even permitted himself to be portrayed in a corny commercial as a hockey goalie ("Fight back, America!") to illustrate how he would protect American markets from Japanese imports. A look back at Shrum's clients quickly becomes a pugilistic blur: Jon Corzine ("fighting for us"), Michael Coles ("a fighter for Georgia"), Geraldine Ferraro ("a fighter who's taken on the big insurance companies"), Ron Klink ("strong enough to fight for us"), Bob Casey ("a proven fighter" who "had the courage to take on the most powerful forces"), Kathleen Kennedy Townsend ("fighting for Maryland's families"), Mark Dayton ("fighting for what's right, fighting for you"). After Al Gore struck the same note in the 2000 Democratic primaries (promising to "stay and fight") and then lost the election, Shrum was criticized, both for imposing a populist message on a candidate ill suited to deliver it and for failing to champion the economic success that was the clear legacy of the Clinton-Gore years. Shrum remains undeterred. Though John Kerry is perhaps even unlikelier than Gore as a figure to deliver the message, his campaign is suffused by populist themes. "I'm a fighter," Kerry roared to the crowd on the night he effectively secured the nomination. The newly minted nominee promised to attack "the powerful forces that want America to continue on exactly the path that it's on today." This time Shrum stood with the candidate....

See "Kerry's Inner Circle Lacks Color".

(Thanks to Herb for calling King's column to my attention.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 04/26/04 07:41:28 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.