The presidential candidate says he wants to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq.
LEWISTON – With less than a month to go before Maine’s presidential caucus, Democratic hopeful Dennis Kucinich met during an afternoon visit Wednesday with Bates College students, local progressive activists and Somali leaders in an effort to shore up support.
The Ohio congressman outlined his positions on a range of issues, from health care to space exploration.
The chief focus of his campaign, he said, is to press for withdrawal of the 130,000 U.S. troops from Iraq and turn over the job of rebuilding that beleaguered country to the United Nations.
“I see this as being the defining issue,” he told reporters during a brief press conference shortly before a student rally at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates.
His platform should appeal to Mainers because the state has one of the highest per capita rates of National Guard members who have been called to active duty, he said. Maine also led the nation in per capita manufacturing job losses, he added.
In addition to pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, Kucinich said he would “cancel” the North American Free Trade Agreement that has been blamed for the export of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
At the Bates College rally, about 250 students and a few local residents filled seats, lined walls and spilled onto the floor.
Kucinich sermonized on the difference between the notion of fearlessness that fueled the Revolutionary War leaders and the Bush Administration’s politics of fear as justification for invading foreign nations “illegally.”
He sometimes used humor to make a point.
Asked about President Bush’s concurrent announcement of a new space program, Kucinich answered: “Maybe he’s looking for those weapons of mass destruction.”
As co-chairman of the Aerospace Caucus in Congress, he said he supports the current space program. But not when the money funding it is being diverted from needed domestic programs such as health care, which he would remedy with a single-payer universal health care system.
After the hour-long rally, Kucinich was scheduled to walk a half-dozen blocks along Lisbon Street, from Main Street to the office of the Maine People’s Alliance so that he could meet with shop owners.
But organizers canceled the trek due to subzero temperatures.
At a crowded MPA office, Amanda Anderson, an English teacher at Leavitt Area High School asked his position on the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act. “This law is making my life impossible,” she said.
“We’re gonna end that program,” Kucinich said.
Facing a field of eight other major candidates for the Democratic nomination, Kucinich predicted the Party’s nominee would not be decided before the Democratic National Convention next summer. None of the nine would garner enough delegates throughout the primary process, he said.
Kucinich has been polling near the back of the pack in early contest states such as Iowa and New Hampshire as well as nationally.
He plans to return to Maine next Wednesday to continue campaigning.
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