Dueling Senators Trumpet Causes

Trumpeting core Democratic values in the days before the Super Tuesday primaries, John F. Kerry and John Edwards reached out to voters in California with pledges of support for the poor and working class.

In a day abbreviated by the Los Angeles Times/CNN candidate debate at USC, Kerry flew into Los Angeles from Minnesota on Thursday afternoon and headed immediately to a Vons supermarket in Santa Monica to show his solidarity with striking grocery workers.

The Massachusetts senator pushed for a benefit dear to his heart and theirs -- affordable and available healthcare.

Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, meanwhile, spent the morning in San Francisco, imploring voters there to join him in a crusade aimed at wiping out poverty and improving the lives of millions of Americans. He continued to pound themes he has promoted for several days in Ohio, New York and eight other states that will hold nominating contests Tuesday -- trade and tax policies.

“The real battleground states in this election,” he said, are poverty and class divisions.

Kerry got to Santa Monica just in time.

Less than five hours after he shook hands, signed autographs, shouted “si se puede” (yes, we can) and called the strikers “heroes to this country,” the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the grocery chains reached a tentative agreement in the five-month dispute.

“I want to say to every single one of you that I believe that it would be better for this country if George Bush had an understanding at all of what all of you have been going through and what you’re fighting for right here on this line,” Kerry told the workers, who chanted “Kerry! Kerry! Kerry!”

“Every single one of you are heroes to this country, because you’ve been out here fighting not just for yourselves but for the right for every single person in this country to have healthcare,” he said.

He promised to place affordable healthcare at the top of his legislative agenda if he becomes president.

Kerry told the small throng of picketers -- who were outnumbered by the crush of media, Secret Service agents and Santa Monica police officers -- that he was not a latecomer to their struggle. In fact, he said, several months earlier he’d visited a picket line at a different market.

Edwards spent the morning in the community room of the Delancey Street Project, a drug and alcohol treatment facility on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, where he received the endorsement of a coalition of neighborhood activist groups.

“Whenever we see misery that reveals itself in a hungry child, a homeless family, or one American who is working all day long, every day, to support his family on minimum wage and still living in poverty, that’s our battleground,” Edwards said, flanked by a dozen activists from the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now wearing red T-shirts who represented the California and New York chapters of the coalition.

Appearing in San Francisco just hours before actress Rosie O’Donnell married her lesbian partner at City Hall, he was asked by reporters about his position on gay marriage.

“I think if you look at what George Bush is doing, he’s trying to make it a political issue,” Edwards said after speaking to nearly 300 people at the Delancey Street Project.

“He’s doing very little to help married couples support their families and the very struggles that people face every day in their lives. And yet he proposes a constitutional amendment that’s both wrong and unnecessary.”

Edwards said states already “are not required by law to recognize the marriage from another state, but we don’t need a constitutional amendment for this.”

Thursday was a day of endorsements for Kerry and Edwards. In addition to the ACORN endorsement, Edwards received the support of California state Senate President Pro Tem John L. Burton.

“John Edwards is not only a candidate who can beat George Bush; he is the candidate who should beat George Bush,” Burton said in a written statement. “John Edwards wants to eliminate the worst of the Bush tax cuts and give tax breaks to working families.”

Kerry was endorsed Thursday night by former California Gov. Gray Davis, an endorsement he had been seeking since last year, before Davis was recalled. Davis appeared with Kerry at a rally at the California African American Museum shortly after the debate.

“I was proud to serve with you” in Vietnam, Davis said, saluting the candidate. “I am ready to enlist in the Kerry army” for president.

Kerry was also endorsed by Rep. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and by the New York Times.

Saying that it is easy to envision Edwards as a presidential candidate -- in the next four years, or maybe eight -- the New York Times threw its support behind Kerry, citing what it called his experience, depth and maturity.

A day earlier, the San Jose Mercury News also endorsed Kerry on the basis of his resume and his support of free trade.