E-Mail This Article to a Friend DC takes center stage (continued)

PRESUMABLY, THE reason to take early nominating events seriously is that they serve as a bellwether for later contests. In that light, the district’s unique demographics — that it is so heavily black — provide reason to discount the DC primary’s forecasting power.

On the other hand, that’s perfect reason to take those results especially seriously — as a corrective to the "uniqueness" of whiter-than-white Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact, DC doesn’t even fully make up for the lack of color in those two states: the three taken together have a combined population roughly nine percent black — still less than the US average of 12 percent.

New Hampshire and Iowa also inadequately represent Hispanics, urban dwellers, foreign-born citizens, the poor, and Southerners — all not only legitimate voices, but potentially important constituencies for the Democratic Party. If Washington’s primary gives those groups a disproportionate say in choosing the party’s nominee, it will only correct their current disproportionate lack of influence.

In the end, however, the major media will ultimately decide how important the DC primary is, by the way they cover it. "Will it be a little article inside the paper or a big article on the cover?" asks Sabato. In any event, he says, "Many of the reporters and pundits have a vested interest in maintaining the distinction in these two states. Part of it is familiarity, part of it is they honestly think these states do a good job of vetting the candidates, and some of it is they know where the good places are to eat and stay."

But given how the media love horse-race reporting, the DC primary will be hard to resist — if the results are not a foregone conclusion.

"Ironically, if there weren’t two black candidates in the race, it might be more meaningful," says Mayer. He and other pundits suspect that Sharpton and Braun will do disproportionately well in DC because of the large black votership, which accounts for well over half of DC’s registered Democrats, and perhaps for as much as two-thirds. (Sharpton, who lists DC voting rights as one of his 10 reasons for running for president, is especially popular there.) If one of the two black candidates wins, it will confirm for the press that DC is an aberration, and thus justify ignoring the results, he says.

But some think that such expectations hint of prejudice. "I think it’s a misconception to believe that Sharpton and Braun should carry 80 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia," says Bolen. For one thing, a newly released Gallup Poll of African-Americans nationwide has Sharpton leading at 22 percent, but facing a very competitive race: Retired General Wesley Clark, 13 percent; Lieberman, 12; Dean, eight; Moseley Braun, seven; Gephardt, six; Kerry and Edwards, five; and Kucinich, one, with 22 percent undecided.

Plus, the population of DC is not just poor and black, but a complex and changing array of people. "We are being gentrified like any other urban area," says Maudine Cooper, president and CEO of the Greater Washington Urban League.

The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the district’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender organization, split between Dean and Clark in a straw poll last week. Tenner guesses that a district-wide poll taken today would show Dean, Lieberman, and Kerry in the top three spots. Chuck Thies, a DC political consultant and political director of DC Democracy First, speculates that Lieberman, Dean, and Sharpton will win the top three spots. Lieberman’s on that list because he has name recognition from the 2000 election and a history of supporting DC rights, Thies says.

"We may not be a typical state, but we have typical voters," says Hughes. "Statehood is very, very important, but more important is jobs and taxes. We are concerned about the war."

"It’s a pretty sophisticated electorate," Tenner adds.

A poll of likely DC-primary voters, commissioned by Tenner, will come out in the next few weeks. Others are in the works. If polls show a competitive situation, that could shatter the Braun-Sharpton myth and prompt a full-scale battle.

And there’s still plenty of time for candidates to jump in. Television advertising is a nonissue for practical purposes, because the strange nature of the district — where TV stations serve a metropolitan area of some four million, only a fraction of whom are DC residents — makes advertising costs way too high for the results. Campaigning therefore takes place at the ground level. Kucinich’s DC/Maryland campaign coordinator, Yu-Lan Tu, says she has 200 volunteers in the district. Moseley Braun is moving an organizer from Illinois to start building a volunteer staff in Washington. Sharpton, with little money to spend, has a sizable movement of volunteers in DC, according to both Tu and Hughes.

"You give me $50,000 and a candidate that is open-minded and favorable about [DC] voting rights, and you can get that candidate to victory," Thies says. "It’s good old-fashioned retail politics." Which is what New Hampshire’s claim has always been.

SO FAR, THOUGH, no one’s spent $50,000 in the district. Gephardt has spent by far the most — $36,000 through the end of September — with Kerry coming in next at around $12,000. But in both cases, most of that money has gone toward maintaining their national campaign headquarters, which are located in the capital.

Indeed, the big picture is that the campaigns have spent peanuts in the district compared with the hundreds of thousands of dollars they’ve spent so far in Iowa and New Hampshire. But that may be about to change.

Kucinich, whose campaign needs a boost somewhere to survive, has declared himself a serious candidate in DC, going so far as to end last week’s national campaign "announcement" tour there last Friday. That appearance followed a rally he held in Washington just 10 days earlier, reportedly attended by 750 people.

Lieberman, whose decline in the other early-contest states has led him to go looking for greener pastures, has announced intentions to rev up his campaign in DC, beginning with a meet-and-greet event this Thursday. Lieberman has begun a pullback in Iowa, diverting people and resources to other early-primary states. So far, though, that hasn’t included moving staff to DC.

Edwards may have the most reason to dive into DC, but it’s not clear that he will. He is banking on doing well in the South, but without some strong showing before the South Carolina primary on February 3, he may fade into obscurity. He has pumped a tremendous amount of money into New Hampshire and Iowa, but remains mired in single digits in both states’ polls. That leaves him with $4 million in the bank as he looks for an early-primary contest he can do well in. Speaking from DC in July, Edwards declared, "We’re going to be campaigning hard here." He has a base of support in the district, Thies says, dating from his 1998 defeat of North Carolina senator Lauch Faircloth, a DC-representation opponent. Edwards has not followed up, but his campaign says it has not decided not to participate. Asked if the senator had any plans to campaign in the DC primary, Edwards’s press secretary, Jennifer Palmieri, says, "We don’t have anything I can point to."

It is Howard Dean, however, who has decided to take the risk and go whole hog in DC. "His people have been strategically and tactically brilliant, and this is another example," says Sabato. "They recognize that he is white bread, and that the DC primary can be a way to get the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval among African-Americans." Dean has coordinators in each of the district’s eight wards; he’s won endorsements from half the city council and got his first local labor endorsement last week. He has visited frequently, giving a speech at Georgetown University last week to unveil his economic plan.

It’s brilliant if it gets Dean black votes in other primaries — but what if winning DC costs him Iowa and New Hampshire? Kerry and Gephardt’s devotion to the customary two "first" states seems to indicate that they expect a reward for their loyalty. "Maybe Kerry decides to repeat for the 24 hours after the DC primary that Howard Dean dissed New Hampshire," suggests Thies. Gephardt could do the same in Iowa. Could the "betrayal" of those states cost Dean a win in one or both?

More important, what if Iowa and New Hampshire voters don’t blackball Dean for participating in the DC primary? Wouldn’t that expose them as toothless tigers?

It also appears that the candidates are set to defy McAuliffe and the DNC in Florida, where the state Democratic Party intends to run a straw poll at its December convention. The Miami Herald reported this week that McAuliffe has asked each campaign to sign a pledge to boycott not only the straw poll but the convention as well. Not only have the candidates thus far declined, according to the Herald, but several have stepped up their Florida campaigns in anticipation of the event.

Could this string of events turn DC into this year’s kingmaker? And if it does, what about 2008? "We’ll be happy to go last," says Tenner, "as soon as we get the right to vote."

David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein[a]phx.com