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player ready...The ghosts of Democrats past haunted the east side of Charleston, S.C., on Saturday afternoon.
Rep. William Jefferson, the first African-American since Reconstruction elected to Congress from Louisiana, rallied volunteers for retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who grew up in Arkansas, by retracing some of his party’s presidential missteps.
“We need to have a candidate with Southern roots to get this job done,” he told a dozen Clark canvassers preparing to leaflet a public housing complex. “We went through Mike Dukakis in ’88. People down here didn’t understand what he was saying.
“When Al Gore ran last time,” he said, “he didn’t pay enough attention to the South, and we wound up losing everything.”
Jefferson went on to underscore the importance of South Carolina’s Feb. 3 primary: “This is the gateway to Arizona and Oklahoma and the rest of it. Give us a chance to fight for his nomination.”
Joining him was Thomas Blanton, one of the Clark campaign’s self-described “Buffalo Soldiers.” Named for the nation’s unsung black Army units of the 19th Century, Clark’s soldiers are political consultants and others trying to rally the state’s substantial black vote to his side.
Blanton, a Texas native, looked at home in his black cowboy hat. Quoting a fellow Buffalo Soldier, he quipped: “If you’re going to be a soldier, you have to work for a general.”
–Flynn McRoberts
KERRY ALMOST ICES HAT TRICK
None of the reporters who ride John Kerry’s Real Deal Express campaign bus took him up on an offer to lace up skates and join him on the ice Saturday afternoon in Manchester, N.H.
Instead, Kerry played a friendly hockey game at JFK Arena with high school players, two stars of the U.S. Women’s Hockey team, firefighters and a group of Boston Bruins legends, including Ray Bourque.
“I’m in the worst shape I’ve ever been in my life,” Kerry said before the game, for which he wore a No. 04 jersey from the University of New Hampshire.
Kerry scored twice, but the crowd groaned when he narrowly missed getting his stick on the puck for a goal late in the game.
“I muffed my hat trick,” Kerry said later in the day, back in a business suit, at Dartmouth College.
–Dan Mihalopoulos
BIGGEST CATCH OF ALL
It’s the Richard Gephardt primary.
The moment the congressman from Missouri abandoned his presidential bid last week, his rivals began scooping up his staff. A few dozen aides went to the Wesley Clark campaign. John Edwards tried to lure some too.
The biggest catch, though, came Friday night when Gephardt’s former chief of staff, Steve Elmendorf, was snatched by John Kerry. In a telephone call late Friday to the Tribune, Elmendorf announced his move to the new camp.
Just in time too. Missouri, Gephardt’s home state, has a critical primary on Feb. 3.
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–Jeff Zeleny