Progressive elfin prince and Ohio Representative Dennis
Kucinich was defeated
in a Democratic primary on Tuesday, ending a long, punchy
career marked by impassioned floor speeches, furtive presidential campaigns and
prescient anti-war positions.
Kucinich lost not due to any shifts in the political winds,
but rather partisan redistricting. Ohio hemorrhaged two congressional seats in 2010’s
census, and a republican legislature charged with redrawing the state’s
electoral map consolidated two democratic districts in Cleveland, eliminating
much of Kucinich’s territory and forcing him into a showdown with colleague
Marcy Kaptur on her home turf. FireDogLake called
the new district “a monument to gerrymandering, connecting a small piece of
Cleveland and Toledo on a 120-mile
stretch along Lake Erie.”
In his concession speech, Kucinich congratulated Kaptur but immediately
condemned her campaign. “I do have to say that she ran a campaign in the
Cleveland media market that was utterly lacking in integrity, with false
statements, half truths, misrepresentations,” said Kucinich. “I hope that that
is not the kind of representation that she would provide to the community.”
That quote is good example of the former representative's often thorny
nature. Kucinich had little patience for the packaging that comes along with so
much of contemporary politics, a stance that allowed him to remain firm and
vocal in his anti-Iraq war positions, but also often led him into the land of caricature,
such as when he brought up trying George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes
in the middle of a democratic
presidential primary debate.
Though Kucinich’s anti-war positions could come off as
pacifist parody, it seems relevant to mention that was, well, right. Kucinich
was one of the few elected officials to
oppose the disastrous Iraq War from the start, and he maintained his
opposition throughout the entire the debacle. Given that many of the more
mainstream Democratic candidates who trounced him in the presidential primaries
would like
to have their authorization vote back, Kucinich gets points for both
prescience and principle.
These principles earned him a large amount of popularity
among the minority progressive faction of the Democratic Party, and garnered him some celebrity
endorsements along the way (including my favorite).
But his iconoclasm has never transferred to mainstream acceptance; Kucinich
rarely registered above a percentage point in any of his runs for President,
and is known outside the political sphere mostly for having
an attractive wife.
Republicans, meanwhile, have spent this morning bragging
about their scalp. “MSNBC Hosts Grieve Over Kucinich Loss,” read
the headline at Real Clear Politics, though the actual tape reveals nothing
more than the usual post-election commentary.
If anything, Kucinich’s defeat should serve as one more
example of the travesty of legislature-authored redistricting. “Whichever party
controls a state legislature typically sets redistricting so that incumbents in
the majority party are protected and minority party seats are put at risk,” claims the conservative
New Media Journal, neglecting to add
that, with the exception of Democrat-controlled Illinois, Republicans are the
almost always the party to exploit the tactic to such mischievous ends. Republican redistricting has
twice created massive legal battles in Texas, with the current maps just
finished such a long
tour through the courts that Texas’ primary was delayed. Efforts in
redistricting reform, in which the legislature would be replaced or
supplemented by non-partisan commissions, are picking up steam, gaining
victories in states like California
and Florida.
For those who need a Kucinich fix today, here’s a page of
the Representative’s greatest
hits.
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