Kerrey Ready to End Campaign for White House

Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, the war hero whose bid for the presidency had initially sparked sky-high expectations, abruptly called off a campaign trip to Miami on Wednesday, ready to abandon his uphill quest for the Democratic nomination.

Kerrey scheduled a press conference today to announce his decision. But as he spent the day conferring with friends and colleagues at the Capitol, the direction of his thinking was apparent. Faced with devastating election returns Tuesday from Western states in which he had hoped to do well, he strongly hinted that his quest was becoming an exercise in futility.

“I think I know what I should do,” Kerrey said shortly after his Gulfstream 2 campaign jet lifted off from Tucson, Ariz. Four hours later, as reporters walked off the sleek plane at Washington National Airport, he gave them signed souvenir napkins.

On one of the blue napkins, he wrote in longhand: “It was good having you on board. Sorry it ended so soon.”

The unhappy reckoning came just hours after Kerrey finished far back in the Democratic pack in Colorado and other Western battlegrounds that he once had hoped would propel his candidacy to national prominence. When the campaign got word about 6 a.m. Wednesday that Kerrey had finished fourth in Idaho and last in Washington state, “the full picture was painted,” the candidate explained. “All the dots were connected.”

Kerrey also finished fourth in the Georgia primary, last in Maryland and fourth in Colorado.

He seemed relaxed, nonetheless, and donned a pair of cheap sunglasses to joke that he and an aide were “the Blues Brothers,” while Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen tunes blasted on the sound system of the plane en route to Washington.

Kerrey huddled late Wednesday with Democratic Senate colleagues J. James Exon of Nebraska, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, Harry Reid and Richard H. Bryan of Nevada and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.

Early in the campaign, Kerrey had seemed less than interested in some of his own speeches and apparently hurt his own cause. But in the hectic days leading up to this week’s round of contests, the Nebraskan pressed his effort “to shake our government to its foundations” with a spirit and, at times, eloquence that fired up crowds in the Western states he was targeting.

Frantically seeking a comeback, in recent days he had slipped on a Jazz basketball T-shirt in Salt Lake City, bantered with students in Tucson and hopped onto a brown American Saddlebred horse, which loped off into the muddy hills outside Denver.

At recent stops, sometimes in ear-numbing range of airport runways, Kerrey hammered at his themes: the need for universal health coverage, the need for a new, post-Cold War economy--based less on producing “plutonium triggers” and more on making the goods and services people want to buy--and the need for a stronger social services safety net for children, working mothers and veterans. Of all his assets, he suggested, one of the best was his lack of apparent liabilities, in contrast to others in the Democratic field.

“I like his views on health care and I like his environmental ideas,” said Ken McLarman, an ecology major who was in an enthusiastic audi%nce at the University of Arizona in Tucson on Tuesday. The student, 27, then added what the Kerrey forces have viewed as their ultimate weapon: “I think he has a chance of defeating George Bush.”

But much of Kerrey’s early promise as a charismatic and glamorous challenger to the President never materialized. Unable to purchase large amounts of advertising--and increasingly overlooked by political reporters who were focusing on the front-runners--he did not succeed in conveying a cohesive, accessible message.

Also, he was criticized for running negative advertisements, such as one that attacked Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas for their environmental records. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver concluded that the ad was misleading. And his broadside against Clinton for waffling on his reasons for not serving in Vietnam--where Kerrey lost part of his right leg while serving as a Navy commando--may have seemed harsh to some voters.

As Kerrey strolled through Seattle’s Pike Place Market earlier this week, the reaction of secretary Helen Haugerud, 63, summed up Kerrey’s identity problem with voters. Although Kerrey is a former governor and successful restaurant and health club entrepreneur, Haugerud’s total impression of him was, “He was wounded in Vietnam and he’s gone with Debra Winger.”

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.’s success in Colorado stung especially, because Kerrey had counted on doing well in his neighboring state after his victory in nearby South Dakota.