How soon D.C. voters forget. This weekend John Kerry pulled off a decisive win in Valentine’s Day’s “official” D.C. caucus. His win followed the non-binding primary in January, in which former Vermont Governor Howard Dean was comfortably victorious.
On Saturday, Kerry finished first with 47 percent of the vote, Sharpton second with 20 percent and Dean third with 17 percent.
Of course, Kerry was not on the ballot for the first D.C. Primary. The Democratic National Committee didn’t like the idea of the city holding its primary before Iowa and New Hampshire, and thus asked all candidates to remove their names from the ballot.
Like all of the major candidates except Howard Dean, Kerry bowed to the DNC and removed himself. Dean’s January win in the District has been his only win so far in the primaries.
It’s rather disturbing to see D.C. voters change their minds so quickly. Howard Dean has been a staunch supporter of D.C. voting rights and withstood DNC pressure.
The entire point of the early primary was to attract attention to the lack of voting rights in the District. But by asking candidates to remove themselves from the ballot, the DNC further inhibited voting rights and only made the problem worse.
Candidates who claim to take the District’s plight seriously should have lost legitimacy when they removed themselves from the Jan. 13 ballot. However, it seems most D.C. voters had no problem overlooking that and jumping on the Kerry bandwagon.
I voted for Howard Dean in the D.C. Primary, but I did not caucus on Saturday. Perhaps the results of Saturday’s primary reflect its Valentine’s Day scheduling. Or maybe the caucus was simply more inviting to citizens because they knew it counted.
Regardless, Kerry could have shown more respect for the plight of D.C. voters. The Organization of American States recently said that the lack of congressional representation for D.C. citizens is a violation of basic human rights.
While John Kerry may have supported 1987 legislation regarding voting rights in the District, by agreeing to remove himself from this symbolic ballot, he showed that he does not take the problem very seriously. Such lack of conviction could come back to haunt Kerry later in the race.
If John Kerry becomes the Democratic nominee, and if he wins the Presidency in November, hopefully he will remember that the District supported him, even when he abandoned the District.
