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The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
If he can make it there ...
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Unit
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It's up to you, New York, New York: John Edwards campaigns hard this weekend in the Empire State, a contest that some say will make or break the Southern senator's nomination bid.
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Our weekend coverage includes reports and analysis in the run-up to Tuesday's presidential caucuses in Hawaii and Idaho and the primary in Utah. Watch for frequent live updates from our political correspondents and analysts.
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VIDEO
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CNN's Bill Schneider on John Edwards' approach in the contest with Kerry.
Gallup's Frank Newport on a new poll's indications about Kerry vs. Bush.
CNN's Soledad O'Brien talks with David Gergen about Bush and the polls.
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| UPCOMING PRIMARIES |
• Tuesday, February 24: Hawaii, Idaho Democratic caucuses; Utah primary • Sunday, February 29: Puerto Rico Republican primary • "Super Tuesday," March 2: Primaries in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Georgia; caucuses in Minnesota 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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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Southern Democrat landed yesterday in New York, where he'll spend part of every day this weekend. He arrived there armed with a Super Tuesday game plan, some fair-trade talking points and a joke about Alex Rodriguez, designed to endear him to die-hard Yankees fans.
"It's an honor to be here in New York," John Edwards told a crowd yesterday at Columbia University. "My staff tells me that the whole town is excited about the fresh new face who just arrived from the South to compete in the Big Apple. I told them I was flattered. They told me they meant A-Rod."
Ba-dump-bum.
And so it goes for Edwards in New York these days. It's just one of 10 states casting ballots on Super Tuesday, but it's the one that will make or break the Tar Heel Senator as he struggles to prove he's a viable alternative to John Kerry in states outside the South.
Edwards has said he'll focus on New York, Georgia and Ohio. He suggests he'll compete in California as well, having opened three campaign offices there yesterday. But Kerry enjoys strong advantages in California and Ohio, and a Georgia win would convince few that Edwards has national appeal.
So it's in New York -- base camp for another '04 Dem, of course, Al Sharpton -- where Edwards aides say his campaign will rise or fall, based solely on his ability to convey a message of economic inequality and the need for fair trade policies. "This is not a campaign that has relied heavily on endorsements or having the largest political structure," Edwards deputy campaign manager David Ginsberg told the Grind. "It's propelled by the strength of his message."
Insiders say Edwards still faces an uphill climb in the state, where Kerry has spent a considerable amount of time and focused his resources. Further evidence of Edwards's struggle came last night in a new Marist Poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday. The survey showed Kerry leading Edwards, 66 percent to 14 percent, among likely state voters.
Still, the poll offered some encouragement for Edwards, who has proven to be a strong closer in past primaries. Only half of the likely voters polled said they "strongly" support their candidate, and nearly half said they want the campaign to continue past Super Tuesday.
Because the state's media markets are prohibitively expensive, Dems are relying heavily there on free media, endorsements and surrogates to press their cases.
But Kerry has an edge there as well, having won support from Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and, after Joe Lieberman quit the race on February 3, state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. His state co-chairs are Mark Green and Dennis Mehiel, the party's '02 candidate for lieutenant governor.
Also backing Kerry are some of the state's most influential African-American leaders, including Rep. Charlie Rangel, who backed Kerry after Wesley Clark dropped out last week, and Rep. Gregory Meeks. No word on the plans of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, who also had backed Clark. But in the words of one New York wag, "Dinkins and Rangel are this close."
Running Edwards' state campaign is Brooklyn councilman Bill diBlasio, a widely and deeply respected New York strategist, who ran Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign in '00 and was the state director for Clinton/Gore in '96.
Wild card: Dean
The wild card we're watching closely is the Howard Dean vote, which we hear is largely split.
Ethan Geto, the state director of Dean's campaign in New York, said he sees the elected officials who had backed Dean, of which there were many, going for Kerry. But he said the grass-roots supporters, who sport a visceral antipathy toward the Massachusetts senator, are more likely to vote for Edwards.
Geto said elected officials are backing Kerry "either for practical, political reasons -- they think he's going to be the nominee -- or because many of them also have a deeper feeling that we've got to rally around the likely nominee. Their overarching motivation is to beat George W. Bush, and that's their take on how to do that."
The list of Dean's elected supporters (read: super-delegates) is long. It includes five House Democrats, dozens of state legislators, a majority of the city council, including council speaker Gifford Miller, and 38 of the state's 62 Democratic county chairs (Dean lined those county chairs up when he was running in a field of 10 candidates. Those were the days).
But Geto said it's hard to find a rank-and-file Dean voter moving toward Kerry, and that base is also sizable. How sizable? The Dean campaign had compiled a list of some 70,000 voters who had either contributed money to Dean twice or had volunteered for the campaign at some point.
"You always get resentful towards the guy who beats your guy, and in this case that was Kerry," Geto told the Grind.
"I think Edwards, if he played every card right from now until March 2 and hit his issues right on the head, he has a serious shot at scoring a startling victory here, which would mean a lot of delegates and, well, it would mean a lot," Geto said.
Also working in Edwards' favor: Unlike Kerry, he has delegates in all 29 congressional districts. Kerry last year failed to assemble slates in nine of the 29 districts, meaning he can't win delegates in those districts, even if he carries the popular vote.
To be sure, Edwards has nearly two weeks to introduce himself to New Yorkers, which is twice as long as he had in Wisconsin and other states, where exit polls showed he was most popular with voters who chose their candidate in the campaign's final week.
With that in mind, there was actually a second part to Edwards's joke at Columbia. It went something like this. "Let me tell you," he said, "I may not be a big-league slugger [like Alex Rodriguez], but after Wisconsin I hope you'll agree that I'm a pretty good closer."
Stay tuned.
