In ‘Stretch Run,’ Gephardt Steps Up His Pace

It’s near midnight, and a cold wind is gusting through the airfield where a Texas trial lawyer’s sleek private jet has deposited an exhausted Democratic presidential candidate and his modest entourage.

After a dawn-to-dusk day of stumping in New Hampshire and an evening stop in Oklahoma to raise money and thank union backers, the candidate and an aide squeeze into a small Saturn sedan, their luggage stacked high in the back seat, and head for a budget motel to begin a three-day road trip through rural Iowa.

Before they leave, though, the jet crew scores what must be a scarce souvenir: a photograph inside the terminal with a Dick Gephardt the public never sees -- his tie knot slackened, his eyes glazed and his strawberry-sand hair disheveled.

The Missouri congressman -- so clean-cut and groomed that he often jokes he looks like a CNN weatherman, so disciplined that he seems to have a teleprompter in his head, so familiar after 13 years as a congressional leader -- is now sprinting to stay in the hunt for the Democratic presidential nomination.

He knows he faces a Howard Dean headwind. If Gephardt’s Eagle Scout hair falls out of place once in a while, so be it.

“Even in a marathon, you kind of give it a kick at the end when you get to the stretch run,” Gephardt told reporters this week in Iowa. “Everybody’s working hard. But we’re going to work as hard as anybody in this campaign.... You do what it takes.”

With less than a month until the make-or-break Iowa caucuses on Jan. 19, Gephardt is seeking to enliven, although not shed entirely, his bland image to help position himself as the main Democratic alternative to the front-running Dean, the fiery former Vermont governor. Gephardt acknowledges he has less money than Dean -- having raised barely half of Dean’s roughly $25 million through Sept. 30 -- but says he has far more experience.

Victory in this state, where the two rivals are locked in a fierce county-to-county, town-to-town, door-to-door fight, with Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts in hot pursuit, would raise Gephardt’s chances. A loss, even if narrow, could derail what may be the last campaign of his 32-year political career.

At 62, the oldest candidate in the nine-way field is taking his second shot at the White House, nearly 16 years after his first fizzled. Win or lose, Richard Andrew Gephardt will leave the seat he has held for nearly 27 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gephardt’s campaign, seen up close this month in four states, is lean, nimble and -- usually -- punctual and predictable, like the man himself. But flashes of passion, humor and personal anecdotes leaven his script. He denounces President Bush as “by far the worst” chief executive he has worked with in Washington, declaring himself “nostalgic for Ronald Reagan” -- a sure laugh line for Democratic audiences. But Gephardt also insists that the Republican incumbent cannot be beaten with anger alone, a dig at the Dean insurgency.

Instead, Gephardt says, his candidacy offers “bright, bold, positive, realistic” ideas, clear contrasts with the president on domestic policy (if not on the Iraq war) and a Democratic edge in crucial states of the Midwest.

Before he can win the nomination to face Bush, however, Gephardt will have to eat a lot of ribs and greens in places like Big T’s barbecue in Columbia, S.C., and caramel pecan pie in places like McNally’s Bake Shop in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

“Really good; really, really good,” he murmured as he dug into a barbecue lunch plate slathered with a vinegary yellow sauce during a South Carolina bus trip. Glued to his side was Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), a prominent African American politician, whose endorsement boosted Gephardt’s hopes in the state’s Feb. 3 primary.

A week later, at McNally’s, Gephardt extolled the pie before launching into his speech. His wife, Jane, buttonholed owner Lorrie McNally afterward, gave her an e-mail address and insisted on getting the recipe.

The flattery paid off. McNally, who this year has also hosted Dean and another Democratic rival, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, said she was leaning toward Gephardt.

“He’s from the Midwest, and he kind of started out from the bottom up,” McNally said. “I appreciate where he comes from, and he appreciates where I come from.”

That is exactly the message Gephardt seeks to drive home. Wherever he speaks, he mentions that he grew up in a poor family in St. Louis, the son of a man whose best job was driving a milk truck. (He omits, however, that his dad the Teamster often voted Republican when Gephardt was young.)

Many union members respond to the working-class appeal.

“It’s rare that you call a politician a brother, but he really is. He has never said no to working people,” said Sonny Hall, president of the Transport Workers Union, introducing Gephardt to his rank and file during a Christmas party at the fairgrounds in Tulsa, Okla. Hall’s is one of 21 unions to have endorsed Gephardt.

Gephardt also talks about his family to help voters connect with his policies. His 33-year-old son, Matt, has become the symbol of Gephardt’s plan for near-universal health-care coverage through government tax credits, which would cost about $214 billion a year in 2005 and more in later years. He says he would repeal Bush’s tax cuts to pay for it.

Matt, Gephardt recounts, was diagnosed with terminal cancer at age 18 months. But he got a lucky break with experimental chemotherapy and radiation treatments, paid for by his family’s insurance.

“I get this,” Gephardt tells voters. “I really get this. There’s nothing you can tell me about health care. I will not rest as your president until I get it done.”

As for his wife, Gephardt draws chuckles when he tells “Dick and Jane” jokes that mock but underscore his apple-pie image. Gephardt always notes that they have been married for 37 years -- no shortage of “family values” with him. Her background is another plus: As a native Nebraskan, she boosts Gephardt’s claim to be the Midwest’s favorite son.

Gephardt’s stump delivery is typically calm, but his voice rises sharply on the subject of international trade. Gephardt spits out “NAFTA” and “the China deal” as if it were obvious to everyone that the congressional votes in 1993 for the North American Free Trade Agreement and in 2000 for permanent normal trade relations with China were grave mistakes.

He shouts about the hardships of Third World workers, saying he has seen them living in cardboard boxes with raw sewage coming down the street. He mocks rival Democrats who voted for or supported one or both trade agreements -- Kerry, Dean, Edwards -- and now appear to be backing away from free trade.

Unmentioned in Gephardt’s speech: his support for the Iraq war resolution in 2002, which gave Bush authority to invade, and the $87-billion funding package for Iraq and Afghanistan this year. When voters ask about Iraq, he notes his own foreign policy experience in Congress and attacks Bush’s failure to secure broad international support for the invasion and reconstruction of that country.

People who see him give mixed signals.

“He’s very sincere, very moral,” said Donna Smith, 68, a retired nurse in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and a potential backer. “I do think we need health care -- everybody needs health care, and also education.” But her vote could also go to Kerry or Edwards.

“I like the fact that he is one of us, in the sense that he knows struggle,” said Barbara Kurz, 60, after hearing Gephardt at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. But she too is pondering Dean, Kerry and Edwards. “I want the candidate that can beat George Bush.”

In an interview aboard the private jet as it chased a sunset, Gephardt devoured yet more barbecued ribs his aide had grabbed in New Hampshire. He said the year’s highlight came when his mother, Loreen, saw his February announcement speech, shortly before she died at age 95. Since then, he said, he had encountered no low points, just “bumps in the road.”

He observed that much of the race was out of his control, citing as an example the sudden capture of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

“We could have another terrorist attack, God forbid. We could catch [fugitive terrorist] Osama bin Laden.” With a laugh, he added: “We could have 10% growth! We could have the terrorists give up! We could crown George the king!”

If elected, Gephardt would be the first sitting representative since James A. Garfield in 1880 to attain the White House. But a more apt comparison is probably Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Texas who became vice president and then president. Gephardt can claim similar legislative credentials as House Democratic leader.

“I always have believed that experience at the highest levels of government is going to be an important factor in this race,” Gephardt said. Voters “are not going to turn this over to somebody who doesn’t have experience. It’s not going to happen.”