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The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
Wheels up!
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Unit
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First vote: The initial ballot is cast in the New Hampshire primary, in Dixville Notch early Tuesday.
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| PRIMARY DAY ON CNN TV | 
Watch CNN-USA's ongoing extensive coverage of the results of the New Hampshire presidential primary, to stay up to the minute on all the candidates' reactions and plans.
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VIDEO
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CNN's Bill Hemmer talks with John Kerry on primary day.
CNN's Bill Hemmer talks with Wesley Clark as voters go to the polls.
Polls are open and a large turnout is predicted in the New Hampshire primary.
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| UPCOMING PRIMARIES |
• Today: New Hampshire primary • Tuesday, February 3: Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina primaries; New Mexico Democratic caucus; Virginia Republican caucus When is your primary? For more key dates in the 2004 election season, see our special America Votes 2004 Election Calendar |
SPECIAL REPORT
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MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) -- By the time we go to sleep tonight, or early tomorrow morning, '04 Dems will have ended their yearlong love/hate relationship with New Hampshire.
The candidates (most of them, at least) will fan out across the land, their destinations determined by where they plan to play over the next seven days.
So, what will our boys find when they land in such strange, exotic places as Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Tucson, Arizona? Phoenix, Arizona, and Fargo, North Dakota? Seeking some sense of what lies before us, at least in the four biggest states, the Grind spoke yesterday with "uncommitted" party operatives in each of the seven February 3 states.
The bottom line: No candidate, none of them, can truly invest in every state without unnecessarily draining his coffers. Most campaigns are already debating how to narrow their focus to fewer states without appearing to fold their tent.
For Howard Dean, one good place to avoid this week might be Missouri (74 delegates), according to state party operatives. More bluntly: He shouldn't waste one thin dime, or one minute, in Dick Gephardt's state, party operatives say.
"Voters here are not going to forgive the way Dean treated Gephardt in Iowa. I don't think you'll find any major person coming out for Dean. I'm fairly certain about that," a top state party official told the Grind.
If Dean does pull out an upset win in New Hampshire, the official said, look for every major Missouri officeholder, including Gephardt, to try to stop him by backing one of his rivals. Lt. Gov. Joe Maxwell already plans to endorse John Edwards, while sources told the Grind that St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is backing John Kerry.
The two Dems who hustled most last week to organize in the Show Me State are Edwards and Kerry, who's making Missouri his first post-New Hampshire stop Wednesday morning.
Kerry, who scored the coup hire of longtime Gephardt chief of staff Steve Elmendorf, has also hired Roy Temple, a longtime aide to Mel Carnahan and state party official, as his state director. Kerry grabbed Woody Overton, a veteran operative who ran Missouri for the Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign. (Gore lost the state to Bush by three points.)
Edwards recently hired Mike Kelley -- a former executive director of the state party and, more importantly, a Gephardt travel aide -- as his Missouri press aide. Julie Gibson, who has run past coordinated campaigns here and was Gephardt's Oklahoma director, is his new Missouri chief.
Stay tuned for word from Jean Carnahan. The former senator has so far remained neutral but is friendly with Kerry, who raised loads of money for her in her failed '02 re-election bid.
For his part, Wesley Clark has grabbed Tom Carnahan as a top lieutenant. But while he bears the Carnahan name, he's not considered the family's most seasoned political operator.
No one has bought TV ad time in Missouri, partly because the Kansas City and St. Louis media markets are expensive and inefficient (they bleed into the Kansas and Illinois markets). But sources say that could change tomorrow, when Kerry unveils his first 30-second ad in St. Louis.
Next, to South Carolina (45 delegates), where front-runner/native son Edwards plans to touch down first thing tomorrow morning. Edwards, born in Seneca, has made South Carolina his must-win linchpin. He actually left New Hampshire last week (Wednesday and Friday) to campaign in Greenville and Columbia.
Edwards started organizing here first, has visited often (more than anyone but Al Sharpton), spent the most money on TV and has the most extensive list of prominent endorsements in the state, including Columbia Mayor Bob Coble and state Sens. Brad Hutto, Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson, who introduced Edwards in Columbia on Friday. (Hutto is white; Jackson and Ford are black).
Kerry jumped from fifth to a solid second in two new South Carolina polls (behold, the beauty of the bounce), but he hasn't been to the state since a town hall meeting in Columbia on September 12 -- just days before his campaign started to self-destruct -- and he all but closed down his state campaign in late September to focus on Iowa. (He launched his national campaign September 3 before a decommissioned aircraft carrier in Charleston Harbor).
Kerry does have some impressive staff, including Bernice Scott, the chairwoman of the Richland County Council, and businessman Sam Tenenbaum, whose wife Inez is running for the Senate. Kerry also has Ken Riley, a black community leader in Charleston; James Smith, the state Democratic House leader; Steve Benjamin, the party's '02 nominee for state attorney general; and James Dukes, a longtime aide to retiring Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina.
But he's the only major candidate who has not run TV ads here and currently has no press contact in Columbia. (His lack of a press presence became evident last Thursday, when D.C.-based spokesman David DiMartino had to fly down to the state to handle the news conference for Hollings' endorsement). Marcus Jardotte, a deputy campaign manager, relocated to South Carolina last Friday to help run the campaign for the next week.
That is all changing slowly, operatives say. "He was lagging behind everyone, but Iowa has rejuvenated his field here," Dick Harpootlian, the former state party chairman, told the Grind.
While they await word from Rep. Jim Clyburn on his candidate of choice, both Edwards and Kerry can claim loyalty from the congressman's top lieutenants. Edwards has Ike Williams, Clyburn's longtime field operative, on his team; Kerry has Robert Nance, the congressman's district director.
Dean, who's in fifth place in the latest poll, hired his first full-time staffer in December and has maintained a minimal presence here. More bluntly, Harpootlian calls him "nonexistent."
"He's got a bunch of college kids, it's basically your cappuccino and latte crowd. I don't see how he comes out of South Carolina any better than fourth. He could even come in below Sharpton," he said of Dean.
Kerry and Clark are the clear front-runners in Arizona (55 delegates), aided by the large number of veterans who live here (550,000, about 10 percent of the electorate). Strategists say Kerry has the largest full-time operation here, while Clark has spent the most money on TV ads.
Kerry suffered a setback here last Friday when his campaign's political director, Luis Navarro, quit after the senator brought Elmendorf on to oversee politics. Navarro had been stationed in Arizona.
Nonetheless, his staff is strong. His state director is Mario Diaz, who ran Janet Napolitano's '98 race for state attorney general and her 2002 race for governor. Summer Oesch, the field director for the state's '02 coordinated campaign, who spent early January in Iowa, has returned to Arizona for the primary.
He didn't spend a lot of time there until December, but Kerry was there to march in the Arizona Veterans Day parade.
Clark has established his strongest presence here, running a 60-second bio TV spot for two weeks and an additional two rounds of ads. He now has a staff of about 10 people, led by Mark Riddle, a Kentucky political operative.
Joe Lieberman is making one of his biggest pushes in Arizona, traveling outside the main media markets to the Nogales and the Navajo Nation.
Edwards was the first candidate to have a full-time staff here (Sonya Gonzalez), but state officials don't expect him to invest heavily in the state.
Dean, whose base here is mostly volunteer-driven, has run more than $1 million in ads and has the most extensive vote-by-mail effort (anyone can vote by mail, starting January 19).
And finally, to Oklahoma (40 delegates). Democrats have felt ignored here by Dean, but they were tickled last week when he mentioned their state not once, but twice, in his post-caucus rant.
"I think we were the only ones mentioned twice, which is nice. We appreciated that," state Democratic Party chairman Jay Parmley told the Grind.
Parmley said Dean has a strong volunteer base and "has done the best job of all of them, working with nothing. It seems to me that they just haven't had much commitment from the national office. It's sad."
Nonetheless, Dean has strong establishment backing from ex-Rep. Jim Jones of Tulsa and former Sen. Fred Harris, a well-respected liberal and former DNC chairman who ran for president in 1972 and 1976. Former Gov. David Walters is his state campaign chairman.
Clark is the clear front-runner here, helped by an early focus on building his ground operation. Most of those aides are from out of state, people who were working on Sen. Bob Graham's presidential campaign in Iowa before he dropped out in October. He started running TV ads -- good ones, people say -- in December and has stayed up since then. His state chairman is Vince Orzo, a prominent restaurateur who won the '02 gubernatorial primary but lost the runoff to Gov. Brad Henry.
As for Kerry, this is a state Democrats say he'll likely decide to skip. Others say he has already decided to do so.
"Nothing. No staff, no organization, no advertising. He's never been to Oklahoma in his entire campaign, which personally I think is a mistake," Parmley said. "They've totally missed the boat on this deal here."
