Chapter 1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
“America has always been a land of opportunity, just as my father knew when he came to this country over sixty years ago from Italy. It is a place where any dream can come true, where any one can reach their potential through hard work and persistence. I am determined now, more than ever, to make sure that stays a reality for our children and every citizen of our great nation. I don’t think President Reagan or the Republicans have been doing enough to protect opportunities for working and middle class Americans nor do I think the Democrats have done enough to show that they stand with them and understand their concerns with the problems that our country is currently facing.
It is with this recognition and a conviction to fight for the equal rights of all Americans that I announce my candidacy for President of the United States.” – Geraldine Ferraro, March 17, 1987
Gerry Ferraro was not the first to enter the race nor was she the last but her entrance caused a splash in the media, much like her choice as Mondale’s running mate did three years prior. The national media took her campaign seriously, she had been one of the stars of 1984 presidential campaign and, while she declined to challenge Al D’Amato for the Senate in ‘86, there had been speculation for months that she was preparing to run for president. Although other women had run for president in the past – Margaret Chase Smith in 1964 and Patsy Mink and Shirley Chisholm in 1972 – none of them had come anywhere close to winning their party’s nomination. For Ferraro it was different because she had several advantages that these women lacked: name recognition, donor connections, and institutional support from prominent Democrats and outside groups. Indeed, after the declaration of her campaign she was almost immediately endorsed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Women’s Political Leadership Caucus (WPLC) which pledged their support to the first serious campaign by a woman for president. Riding high after her announcement, Ferraro traveled to Iowa for her first campaign stop where she was met with an enthusiastic response from women and blue-collar voters and premiered her campaign message focused on equal rights, law and order, education reform, reigning in the deficit, and standing up for American workers.
Ten days prior little-known Illinois Senator Paul Simon had declared his own campaign for president. Fiscally conservative but socially liberal, he promised to defend the principles of the Democratic Party that had been exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy and strongly appealed to the New Deal tradition. While the New Deal still had strong support from many elements of the Democratic base, the public at large had turned away from a belief in government solutions to the nation’s problems and toward Reagan’s calls for limited government and deregulation. Many considered his bid a long shot and he had little support outside of Illinois. Ferraro's entrance had complicated his own path to the nomination as she pulled away working class voters and liberals that Simon was seeking to rely on for his own path to victory.
Shortly after Ferraro’s campaign announcement Gov. Michael Dukakis, who had been widely expected to enter the presidential race, declared that he would not be running for president. The speculation regarding Ferraro’s entrance had given pause to his own presidential ambitions as there was a large overlap between their appeal to white ethnic voters, immigrants, and suburban voters. Once her campaign was launched Dukakis concluded that his path to the nomination was incredibly narrow and his warm opinion of Ferraro led him to end his own campaign before it even began. He was not the first potential candidate to refuse to run for president, Mario Cuomo had previously refused to enter the race himself, but he was one of the most speculated candidates to be preparing a run for the Democratic nomination and his announcement provided a much needed boost to the Ferraro campaign which was worried about the potential for Dukakis to split her vote in the Northeast and across the Midwest.
By mid-April another heavy hitter entered the race as Fmr. Senator Gary Hart, the runner-up in 1984, announced his campaign for president running once again on his “New Ideas” platform that had been more fleshed out after the criticism he had faced during the 1984 primaries for being too vague and fuzzy on what exactly it meant. He positioned himself as an opponent of special interests and wasteful defense spending, a champion of sensible budget policies and diplomacy over military, and called for investments in education, job training, and research that would move the country forward. He immediately became the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination as many Democrats looking for a new direction for the party coalesced behind his campaign. However, all was not well in Hartland as rumors began to swirl about an affair with a former Miss America contestant and his opponents pressed his reputation as a womanizer to reporters covering the presidential campaign. Finally a story broke in the
Washington Post on May 3 that alleged he had a sexual relationship with former Miss Colorado Carol Janson, whom he had met at a Christmas party in Boulder the previous year. Hart denied the allegations but soon pictures began to circulate showing her entering and exiting his townhome in Washington. At a televised press conference on May 4, Janson denied that her relationship with Hart was anything but as friends yet the media frenzy that ensued would not abate. In a widely covered press conference on the same day Hart dared the media to follow him around saying that he had “nothing to hide” and that they would end up bored because there was nothing for them to find. He also condemned the
Washington Post for intruding into his personal life, saying that such reporting “belonged in the tabloids.” Nevertheless, Hart’s popularity plummeted and a poll released the next day showed that he was trailing Ferraro in New Hampshire by 8 points, with 35% of New Hampshire voters saying they wouldn’t vote for Hart after learning of his alleged affair. He continued to take heat throughout the week from the national press, as the allegations of the affair continued to dominate media coverage of the presidential campaign.
Coverage began to die down the following week after Hart gave another press conference with his wife fervently denying the affair and saying that he was an “honest and loving husband who is being persecuted by the national media” for something he didn’t do. Despite the press conference the damage had been done to his campaign and he fell behind Ferraro in national polls. However, new polls released by
Newsweek showed that slightly over 60% of Democratic primary voters believed that Hart was telling the truth and just over half were unconcerned about the alleged affair. Still, Hart would struggle to recover from this episode which continued to dog him for the rest of his campaign for president.
The next Democrat to enter the race was Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt who had announced his campaign on May 1. Declaring that America’s economic position was declining, he promised to revive a struggling manufacturing sector, protect American workers, and work to get fair trade deals for America. Unfortunately for him press coverage of his campaign announcement was soon drowned out by Hart’s sex scandal. Regardless, he had strong connections to organized labor which he hoped would help him in Iowa and across the Midwest where he faced stiff competition from both Ferraro and Simon, who were both seeking to appeal to working class, blue-collar voters who were being adversely affected by the continuing transition of America toward a post-industrial economy.
In June two more candidates, both young moderates hoping to take advantage of Hart’s struggling campaign and their own youth to win the nomination, entered the race. The first was Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton who was being pushed by Southern Democrats and the Democratic Leadership Council to run for president and take advantage of new primary scheduling that placed all Southern contests on the same day which they hoped would allow a Southern moderate to emerge as the party’s nominee. He stressed the need to move away from solely government solutions to economic problems toward using the free market as a vehicle for wealth creation and economic growth tempered by regulations to protect consumers and the environment. At the same time he emphasized the commitment of the Democratic Party to protecting the rights of women and minorities while recognizing the need to take considered steps to achieve lasting progress. As the Democratic governor of a conservative southern state, many saw him as the candidate who would be able to adjust the party to the new political reality that Reagan’s presidency had ushered in.
Following Clinton was Delaware Senator Joe Biden who was widely considered a great public speaker and able to appeal to Baby Boomers just like Clinton. In his campaign announcement he called for a renewal of idealism and the need to put community over individualism, evoking John F. Kennedy whom he hoped to mimic in his campaign for president. On the issues he attempted to straddle the divide between the center and the left, taking a middle ground on the issue of trade while focusing on reducing poverty, supporting middle class families, continuing the war against drugs, and scraping the Strategic Defense Initiative. In a fierce battle with Clinton for the South, Biden’s message managed to resonate with voters in Iowa where he rose to third place behind Ferraro and Gephardt in the polls soon after his campaign announcement as Hart continued to struggle in the state in the wake of the Miss Colorado scandal.
The months of July and August only saw the entrance of one more prominent Democrat, Fmr. Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, a founding member of the DLC who had a reputation of being able to bring together opposing interests in Arizona to hammer out compromises that would benefit the state as a whole. However he also had a reputation for being an intellectual with complex ideas that were often hard to explain to regular voters and lacked charisma which showed in front of the camera after he announced his campaign for president. But it was these same ideas, including a national sales tax and a “universal needs test” to reduce social security and Medicare benefits for wealthy recipients to help reduce the budget deficit, that earned him positive coverage from the press where he was hailed as the only candidate who had ideas that would actually solve the problems that America was facing. While his nomination was still considered unlikely he had decent support in the West and drew support away from Hart in a region that he had swept in his first campaign for president three years prior, further complicating Hart's path to the nomination.
It wasn’t until September that the last major candidate entered the race for the Democratic nomination. That man was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, third-place finisher in 1984 and a champion for African-Americans and progressives. Running an anti-establishment left-wing campaign seeking to assemble a “Rainbow Coalition” of minorities, white progressives, and poor and working class voters to challenge the urge by Democratic leaders to move the party toward the center, Jackson hoped to improve upon his performance in ’84 and, if not win outright, at the very least win enough delegates to pressure the eventual Democratic nominee to take more progressive stances on the issues than they otherwise would. His campaign platform included implementing a system of single-payer universal healthcare, reversing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to be used to finance social welfare programs, ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment and more strictly enforcing the Voting Rights Act, and providing free community college for all Americans. Despite his campaign being widely dismissed by the national press, his strong support among blacks gave him a strong base of support in the South as Biden and Clinton split the white vote while his appeal to working class voters further muddled the state of the race in the Midwest which was already a tight competition between Ferraro, Gephardt, and Simon before Jackson had announced his campaign. Questions arose about his health, however, after he appeared unwell at his first campaign rally in Iowa which was dismissed by his campaign spokesman as “just allergies” yet sparked continued speculation from the press and from his opponents in the days and weeks that followed.
With the playing field shaken up and the candidates set, an article appeared in the
Wall Street Journal in late September deriding the Democratic field as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” saying that “the Democrats currently running for president will struggle to prove they are up to the job” and that “the only candidates of note are Geraldine Ferraro, Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson” but none of them demonstrated the leadership or the appeal needed to succeed Reagan as president. This spread to become a familiar talking point among political pundits but it proved the difficulty that any of the Democrats would face as the Reagan boom continued and peace reigned between America and the Soviet Union. While the Iran-Contra scandal had dented Reagan’s popularity the Republicans appeared, for the moment, to be the favorites to hold onto the White House in November 1988 although there was plenty of time for that to change. As the first debates with all eight Democratic candidates approached, it remained to be seen who would be able to rise above the rest of the pack and prove their worth and who would continue to languish in obscurity and struggle to convince voters that they were the best candidate for president.