Dennis Kucinich presidential campaign, 2004
| Dennis Kucinich presidential campaign, 2004 | |
|---|---|
| Campaign | U.S. presidential election, 2004 |
| Candidate |
Dennis Kucinich House Representative of Ohio (1997–2013) Mayor of Cleveland (1977–1979) |
| Affiliation | Democratic Party |
| Website | |
| http://www.kucinich.us/ | |
The 2004 presidential campaign of Dennis Kucinich, House Representative of Ohio and former mayor of Cleveland, began in February 2003, with a formal announcement made in June. Ralph Nader praised Dennis Kucinich as "a genuine progressive", and most Greens were friendly to Kucinich's campaign, some going so far as to indicate that they would not have run against him had he won the Democratic nomination. However, Kucinich was unable to carry any states in the 2004 Democratic Primaries, and John Kerry eventually won the Democratic nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
Kucinich was criticized early in his 2004 campaign for changing his stance on the issue of abortion. His explanation was "I've always worked to make abortions less necessary, through sex education and birth control. But the direction that Congress has taken, increasingly, is to make it impossible for women to be able to have an abortion if they need to protect their health. So when I saw the direction taken, it finally came to the point where I understood that women will not be truly free unless they have the right to choose."
On December 10, 2003, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) announced the removal of its correspondents from the campaigns of Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton.
The announcement came one day after a Democratic presidential debate hosted by ABC News' Ted Koppel, in which Koppel asked whether the candidacies of Kucinich, Moseley Braun and Sharpton were merely "vanity campaigns," and Koppel and Kucinich exchanged uncomfortable dialogue.
Kucinich, previously critical of the limited coverage given his campaign, characterized ABC's decision as an example of media companies' power to shape campaigns by choosing which candidates to cover and questioned its timing, coming immediately after the debate.
ABC News, while stating its commitment to give coverage to a wide range of candidates, argued that focusing more of its "finite resources" on those candidates most likely to win would best serve the public debate.
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