Kerry in Atlanta: ‘Let’s not eat our own’

Hours after Ralph Nader threw his hat back into the ring, Democratic front-runner John Kerry insisted he’s the best choice for reform-minded voters.

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“I’m going to speak to Naderites [and] to people who supported Howard Dean,” Kerry said in a brief interview with Creative Loafing in Atlanta. “I intend to speak to those folks. I think my career speaks to them.”

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Democrats fear Nader could draw just enough votes to again cost their nominee the presidency. Had only 600 of Nader’s 96,000 supporters in Florida voted for Al Gore in 2000, the official count would have made Gore the winner of both Florida and the overall election.

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To those tempted to back Nader this time, Kerry pointed out his own reformist credentials: He’s been a leading supporter of campaign finance reform and has refused for 20 years to accept contributions from corporate political action committees.

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The Massachusetts senator’s image was tarnished last month when the Center for Responsive Politics reported that Kerry raised more money since 1989 from lobbyists than had any other senator. Among his largest donors were employees of a Boston law firm that lobbies for the telecommunications industry — whose interests Kerry has pushed in the Senate.

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“Measure me by the number of times I’ve stood up to these interests,” Kerry countered. Despite contributions from the financial industry, for example, he noted that he opposed last year’s anti-middle-class bankruptcy bill, which was pushed by bankers.

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“The total amount of money any lobbyist has given me in my entire political career is about 1 percent of all the money I’ve ever raised, and if anybody believes that’s affected my votes, then they shouldn’t vote for me,” he said. “You’ve got a choice here between somebody who brings in millions of dollars from the oil companies and from the drug companies, and somebody who fights them.”

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It does make sense to place Kerry’s special interest money in perspective. President Bush’s campaign has raised more than $140 million dollars so far, nearly five times Kerry’s totals. While a fifth of Kerry’s contributions come from corporate and labor special interests, about half of Bush’s money — at least $67 million — is from corporate special interests, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

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A major theme of Nader’s 2000 campaign was that there’s little difference between the two major parties. But he seems to be avoiding such language so far in this year’s run for the presidency, pointing instead to the “corporatism” that has taken a grip on Washington.

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The eventual Democratic nominee will face the new challenge this year of tapping into the activist network organized by Howard Dean’s run at the presidency. Dean is urging his supporters to stick with the Democratic candidate — whoever that is — rather than to vote for Nader. But there’s some skepticism among Deaniacs as to whether Kerry’s too much of a Washington insider.

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In his interview with CL, Kerry seemed to argue against demanding ideological purity. “I mean, let’s not eat our own here, folks. Nobody’s been a stronger advocate of campaign finance reform than I have.”