The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

On the Road with DENNIS KUCINICH
Forty-eight hours with the man who won't be our next president.

BY LISA LOVING

503 243-2122

End of a gravel road near Corvallis, Thursday, March 25, 11:17 am.

My husband's cell phone chirps while we're in a cabin in the woods. He hands it to me. Willamette Week's news editor just figured out that a presidential candidate is coming to town later in the week.

He wants someone to hang out with Dennis Kucinich for a few days and, he assures me, I'm the first person he called. I'm flattered. More important, I'm broke. Sure, I say, I can be witty and insightful while explaining why an herbivore from Ohio is still running in the Democratic primary while John Kerry is celebrating on the slopes of Sun Valley. No problem.

What was I thinking?
Portland International Airport, Friday, 6:41 pm

The photographer and I make visual contact with the K-man; I recognize him from a Saturday Night Live skit a few weeks ago. Television stations and newspapers have worked hard to ignore Kucinich's presidential bid. Yet almost every story written about him mentions his height. Or, more precisely, his lack of it. (He's 5-foot-7.)

The congressman hasn't cleared the baggage claim area, but he's already been embraced and handshaken by an exuberant hippie woman and two gray-haired gentleman-types, and held three telephone conversations. He marches up to the baggage round-and-round and actually grabs his own. Wow. You think Kerry, a guy who owns five homes, totes his own bags?

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