Democrat John Kerry capped a stunning political comeback on Monday with a victory in Iowa's caucuses that dramatically reshaped the Democratic presidential race and ended Richard Gephardt's White House quest.
In the first test on the road to find a challenger to US President George W. Bush, Kerry won 38 percent and John Edwards scored a surprise second-place finish with 32 percent of the vote. One-time favorites Howard Dean, the front-runner for months, and Gephardt trailed badly with 18 and 11 percent, respectively.
The win was a huge momentum boost for Kerry, the four-term senator from Massachusetts and decorated Vietnam War veteran who weeks ago was given up for dead but roared back into the race with an emphasis on his foreign policy and war experience and his ability to beat Bush.
PHOTO: AP
"We came from behind and we came for the fight and now I have a special message for the special interests that have a home in the Bush White House: We're coming, you're going, and don't let the door hit you on the way out," Kerry told roaring supporters in Des Moines.
Kerry and Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, benefited from perceptions that they offered the best chance to beat Bush, which television network caucus polls showed was a crucial issue for Iowa Democrats.
The result turned the Democratic race upside down, sending Kerry and Edwards roaring into the next primary state of New Hampshire and dealing harsh blows to Dean and Gephardt, one-time favorites who were left behind by their rivals' surge.
Gephardt, the congressman from neighboring Missouri and one-time leader in Iowa polls, canceled his planned flight to New Hampshire and dropped out.
"My campaign to fight for working people may be ending tonight, but our fight will never end," said an emotional Gephardt, who won Iowa during his first presidential bid in 1988 and had said a loss here would end his campaign.
The loss by Dean, the former Vermont governor who had been considered the party's front-runner based on big fund raising and a series of major endorsements, turned what was shaping up to be a quick Dean victory into a dogfight.
"We will not give up," a fiery Dean said, letting out a whoop as he recited the states with later primaries that he promised to compete in. "We have just begun to fight."
At his side was Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, whose recent endorsement did little to help Dean.
Edwards, the senator from North Carolina who also was mired in the single digits in polls just weeks ago, vastly exceeded expectations in Iowa and described his campaign as "the little engine that could. We made this work and the reason it worked, I think, was the message."
Edwards had stressed a positive agenda and stayed out of the increasingly bitter exchanges between the front-runners.
About 120,000 Democrats braved sub-freezing temperatures on Monday night to attend one of nearly 2,000 local precinct caucuses around the state and publicly declare their support for a candidate. The turnout was double the 60,000 Democrats who showed up in 2000.
Kerry and Edwards have risen in the polls in the past week as voters took a fresh look at the candidates after the holidays, evaluating which one had the best chance to beat Bush in November and responding negatively to an exchange of harsh attack ads by Dean and Gephardt.
"For Iowa Democrats, the key question was who could beat President Bush?" Iowa State Democratic Party Chairman Gordon Fischer said. "Electability was everything in Iowa."
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS