Crowded union hall gives Gephardt warm welcome

By J. Patrick Coolican
Seattle Times staff reporter

	BETTY UDESEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, a Democratic presidential candidate, acknowledges supporters yesterday at a union hall in South Seattle.
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Supporters packed a union hall in South Seattle yesterday for Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt — long a friend of organized labor — cheering raucously for his promise to bring health insurance to all Americans and protect U.S. jobs.

Unless the Missouri congressman wins in Tuesday's Iowa caucus and shows the grass-roots excitement and fund-raising acumen of front-runner Howard Dean, however, his swing through Washington may be little more than a farewell tour to his supporters here.

"He pretty much has to win in Iowa," said Cary Covington, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa who studies the presidency and campaigns.

Still, Gephardt, who's represented a working-class district in south St. Louis since 1976, seemed to draw energy from the crowd of several hundred as he attacked President Bush and boasted of his credentials as a union supporter.

"He's declared war on the middle class and on labor unions," he said of Bush. "And we need to get rid of him."

Conspicuously absent from his speech, however, was any reference to the war in Iraq, which Dean, a former Vermont governor, has used to distinguish himself from some of his rivals for the nomination. Gephardt and U.S. Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards all voted for a resolution authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq.

The union-hall crowd was more interested in economic issues, such as jobs and wages.

"I'm impressed," said Dave Bright, a laborer from Bellevue who was at the rally. "He's a working-class guy, and he has ties to us," he said.

Gephardt said he was in Washington state just a week before the Iowa caucus because he needs to run a national campaign. He said he hopes to win the Washington state caucuses Feb. 7, which are being held the same day as the Michigan caucuses, another strong-union state. A Washington victory would give him momentum, he reasons, even if he does poorly in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the sites of early primaries.

Covington called it a wise move. "Even if he were to win in Iowa, you don't want a Pyrrhic victory" — one that would leave him without supporters elsewhere.

The centerpiece of Gephardt's campaign is his health-care proposal, which he said would insure every American while reducing U.S. health-care costs by 9 percent. Gephardt would roll back the tax cuts the Republican Congress has passed since 2001, using the money to subsidize health-insurance plans for all Americans through their employers.

By covering all Americans, Gephardt asserted that the plan would eliminate the need for people without health insurance to visit emergency rooms well after basic preventive care would have cured them, at far less expense.

To the delight of the crowd, he also called for a new industrial policy that would use tariffs to protect U.S. jobs and demand an international minimum wage.

Gephardt, who's been both majority and minority leader in the House, cited his upbringing as a source of his special relationship with organized labor.

His father was a milk-truck driver and a Teamster, who bought the house Gephardt grew up in for $4,000 and was able to pay only the interest on the loan for 21 years, he said.

He said his family life informed his thinking on universal health insurance. His son Matt — one of three children — was diagnosed with cancer when he was 18 months old and wouldn't have survived if Gephardt hadn't had good health insurance, he said.

"This is a moral issue," he said.

Gephardt, who was second to Dean in several recent polls in Iowa, has distinguished himself by appealing to core economic concerns of Democratic voters and especially union voters, Covington said.

Unlike his main rivals, Gephardt is not a free-trade supporter. He did not back the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 or a more recent agreement with China.

Of future foreign-trade agreements, he said: "It's going to be a good deal, or no deal."

J. Patrick Coolican: 206-464-3315 or jcoolican@seattletimes.com

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