Democrats Mostly Positive About a Later Nomination

A day after Sen. John F. Kerry’s campaign floated the idea of postponing his nomination for president, many Democrats embraced the proposal Saturday as an effective way to blunt a key financial edge that President Bush holds over his challenger.

Still, Republicans signaled they would use any postponement of the nomination to buttress their attacks on Kerry, and some Democrats fretted about potential unrest among delegates.

The candidate himself on Saturday sought to reassure residents of Boston -- host city for the Democratic National Convention, being held July 26 to 29 -- that the gathering of thousands of Democrats would still be worth the expense and hassles.

“No matter what decision is made, Boston is going to have the greatest convention America has ever known,” the Massachusetts senator told local television crews after a visit to his campaign office here. “No decision has been made, but nothing we do will reduce in any way the energy and intensity of the convention in Boston.”

Authorities plan nearly 40 miles of road and highway closures for the four-day event, and economists now project it could cost city businesses as much as $50 million in losses.

For Kerry, the aim of postponing the nomination would be to undercut Bush’s advantage in the timing of campaign spending limits.

Each candidate plans to rely on $75 million in federal money as the sole source of campaign cash once his party formally nominates him for president. Republicans have scheduled their convention in late August -- so Kerry would have to make his public money last five weeks longer than Bush would unless he postpones the nomination.

To New York delegate Alan B. Lubin, the postponement makes sense.

“It’s a shame it has to happen,” said Lubin, a leader of the New York State United Teachers union. “But the way the law is written, it would give whatever party has the latest date a five-week bonus. We can’t afford that now.”

By late Saturday, campaign officials had spoken with more than 2,000 Kerry delegates around the country about the possibility of delaying the nomination, said Stephanie Cutter, Kerry’s campaign spokeswoman.

Although some had “personal concerns” about such things as travel arrangements, “the response has been overwhelmingly positive,” she said.

A Kerry aide laid out the proposal for Tennessee delegates Saturday morning in a conference call.

Robert Tuke, a Nashville attorney, said some fellow delegates were upset at the prospect of not being able to cast votes in Boston for the nominee, but the Kerry aide left the impression there would, in fact, be a state-by-state vote. Tuke called the proposal “fascinating.”

“I hope Kerry will leave it out there as a possibility, if for no other reason than to keep the Republicans off balance,” he said. “I think it’s a hoot.”

The swift rallying of party rank and file behind the proposal underscored the intensity of the Democrats’ determination to unseat Bush -- even if that meant wiping out the central purpose of their national convention: the formal nomination of Kerry.

But some Democrats say the proposal could be politically costly. If delegates were deprived of the traditional coronation of the presidential nominee, many would be alienated from the campaign, said Dan Payne, a Boston Democratic consultant who worked on three Kerry Senate campaigns.

Beyond that, he said, the absence of an official nomination risks undermining the incentive for television networks to provide substantial coverage of the convention, already a vastly expensive undertaking for a tightly scripted spectacle.

“They’re going to be profoundly unhappy,” Payne said.

The television exposure at the convention offers Kerry one of his most important opportunities to build support among voters. Despite waning television coverage of recent conventions, a huge portion of the American electorate has continued to tune in.

In 2000, 24 million viewers watched Bush’s acceptance speech and 25 million saw his Democratic rival Al Gore’s. Gore won 51 million votes in November; Bush captured 50.5 million.

“Political operatives already spend a tremendous amount of time trying to jawbone network executives about the importance of the convention and the responsibility they have in covering it,” said Ben Austin, who was communications director for the 2000 Democratic Convention Committee in Los Angeles.

“The Democrats need to be very careful about not making the convention appear even less important than it actually is. We may hit a tipping point where networks just walk away.”

Network reaction to the potential postponement has been cautious. ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine said it was too soon to say how the absence of an actual nomination would affect the network’s decision.

“We haven’t announced our schedule yet, and a lot of factors go into deciding the schedule,” she said.

Whatever the networks decide, postponement of the nomination would leave Kerry “open to a lot of attack from the Republicans,” said Robert Salisbury, professor emeritus of political science at Washington University in St. Louis. He called the proposal foolish. “It would just be a whole bunch of avoidable mess,” he said.

The Bush campaign’s initial reaction to the proposal suggested Republicans would use it to enhance their portrayal of Kerry as a New England elitist.

“This is a typical example of Sen. Kerry believing that the rules apply to everyone but him,” Bush campaign spokesman Reed Dickens said.

David Keating, executive director of Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, questioned the propriety of the Democratic Party accepting more than $14 million in federal funds for a convention that would not produce a presidential nominee. “It’s not meant to have a party. You don’t have a party for several days at taxpayers’ expense,” Keating said. He accused Democrats of “changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

When Democrats picked the convention dates, many thought the party’s candidate would be broke in July. They figured it made sense to crown the nominee at that point to get the $75 million in public money for the general election.

Democrats did not know their presumptive nominee would opt out of the public financing system in the primaries. That move lifted fundraising restrictions for Kerry, enabling him to raise huge sums. Defying expectations, Kerry has collected $117 million.

Bush, who also declined public financing for the primaries, has raised $201 million in private donations and still has a $44-million cash advantage over Kerry.

Cutter said an alternative to postponing the nomination would be to steer donors to the Democratic Party, which could ease the financial imbalance between Kerry and Bush after the Boston convention.

To Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic chairman and a delegate at the last three presidential conventions, postponement of the nomination could be worth the fallout, even if it might be seen by some voters as “a little too cute.”

“It may send a message that we’re playing fast and loose with the rules,” he said, but he added that Kerry “has got to use every tactical advantage that he has.”

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Finnegan reported from Boston, Getter from Washington. Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this report.