Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published Jan. 29, 2003

Candidate John Kerry
and the Electoral College

I agree it is disgustingly early, but presidential hopefuls for 2004 are already out there, telling us what they are, and showing us what they are not.

The Republicans have it easy. GW is their obvious choice, and VP Cheney has said he will hang in there for another round. The Democrats are up with their usual gaggle of candidates ranging from an Orthodox Jew, to a trial lawyer, to a reverend who has never had a church. And in the mix somewhere is multimillionaire U.S. Sen. John Kerry from Massachusetts.
Kerry has to be a qualified candidate, because he gets $150 haircuts from the salon of Christophe of Hollywood, the same hairdresser as former President Bill Clinton, and he came by his fortune the hard way - by marrying the widow of the Heinz Ketchup fortune!

This past week found Sen. Kerry beating the bushes in Dubuque, IA, in an effort to raise a little campaign money, and to position himself in the Iowa primary. But he ran into a bit of a problem on the eve of his fund-raising trip when Matt Drudge dug up a statement the senator made the last time he came to Dubuque.

Kerry then told a Boston Globe reporter, "I hate it! I detest it! I hate going to places like Austin and Dubuque to raise large sums of money. But I have to."

Dubuque resident Marsha Vittal commented, "I am sorry he hates coming here and taking our money! ... He wants to be my president, but he detests - detests coming to where I've chosen to live my life, to ask for support!"

So what has that to do with the Electoral College? Simply this. Sen. Kerry let slip what we have known of East Coast liberals for years. They consider themselves to be better educated, more sophisticated, and frankly just better people than those of us out here in America's heartland. We see this elitist attitude everywhere. Sen. Kerry was just dumb enough to admit it.

Were it not for the wisdom of our founding fathers in establishing the Electoral College system, our whole country would be controlled by the population centers of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami. Remember the "red" states that elected President Bush in the last election, and the "blue" states that gave Al Gore a popular vote lead? The red states make up about 90 percent of the county, but had it not been for the wisdom of the Electoral College system, the 10 percent would have elected Al Gore as president.

So Sen. Kerry, I am sorry it falls beneath your elitist dignity to have to deal with the likes of us from Dubuque, and Austin, and Middle Tennessee. But, thank God, in our American democracy that's the way it is. Get over it!

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.