The Flow of Consciousness

I wrote this to editor Carolyn Washburn as a response to the news that the Des Moines Register is excluding Dennis Kucinich from the newspaper’s debates this month.

Ms. Washburn,

I’m sure you have received a plethora of email from Dennis Kucinich supporters, and hopefully supporters of other candidates, as well. Personally, I support Republican Ron Paul, but feel that Kucinich is the cream of the Democratic crop.

“It was our determination that a person working out of his home did not meet our criteria for a campaign office and full-time paid staff in Iowa” is the quotation from the Register, and the article, “Kucinich, Top-Rated Democrat, Excluded From Des Moines Register Debate,” can be found in the PR Newswire/US Newswire archive.

This statement is quite astounding. I fail to see how formal campaign office and full-time paid staff have anything to do with elections. I fail to recall a section of any part of US election law that says that a candidate must have a campaign office with a full-time staff in order to be considered eligible for the presidency. These things are commonplace these days in our elections because of the cost of nationalizing a campaign and maximizing public attention given to the candidate.

I direct your attention to another industry: the software industry. How many companies are run from a developer’s basement? How many companies use the local Starbucks as an office? I can think of a few off-hand, including the company for which I work.

I applaud Kucinich for maximizing the amount of money he can spend on advertising and such by minimizing his physical presence. The Paul campaign has done something similar, and it has raised more money per dollar spent than any candidate in recent years, thanks to the efforts of people like Kucinich Iowa Field Director and State Coordinator Marcos Rubinstein who chose to work from their homes.

I applaud the Register for following the rule, that is, if this rule was pre-existing and stated outright. The problem I and others have is not with the enforcement, but with the flawed rule itself. I see the point to the rule–the Register wishes to deny the participation of people who would declare their presidency just so they can participate in the debate.

However, this rule affects a popular candidate–a federal congressman from a state which has birthed the most presidents, a congressman who is a nationally-known and nationally-supported, viable candidate for the presidency. The effects of this decision can only stifle the election process and cause readers, local and national, to question the Register’s credibility as an unbiased source of election coverage.

I deeply urge you and the Des Moines Register to reconsider this decision and choose to include Dennis Kucinich in the debate. I thank you for your time in reading my message.
–
Colin Dean
Former Editor-in-Chief, The Holcad