Trail tough for dark horse candidates

The middle-aged man with a USMC Semper Fi ball cap and a “Freedom is not Free” T-shirt stretched over an ample stomach was arguing with candidate Hong Tran about the slogan on her campaign sign: Vote NO on war.

Everyone volunteered, so no one in the military should be surprised at being in the war, he told Tran while lingering at her booth at Pig Out in the Park. She listened patiently and interjected thoughts about bringing troops home from Iraq and redirecting the money spent on war to other things.

The conversation was friendly rather than heated, and finally the man looked at Tran and asked, “What are you running for?”

U.S. Senate, as a Democrat, against Maria Cantwell, Tran explained.

“Yeah. She talks a good game, but you never see her around,” said the man. That wouldn’t be a problem with her when she won, Tran assured him.

“I wish you the best of luck,” he said before moving down the row of candidate booths.

The exchange seemed to typify the uphill battle of dark horse candidates in general, and Tran in particular. This year’s U.S. Senate primary features an acknowledged front-runner for each major party – incumbent Cantwell for Democrats and former Safeco executive Mike McGavick for Republicans.

Republicans and Democrats also have their “usual suspects,” citizens who seem compelled to file for office the way a mosquito is compelled to siphon blood through exposed skin. They get their names on the ballot, a few paragraphs on voters guides posted on county elections Web sites, a few minutes of video on state-sponsored TVW and the occasional invitation to a debate or forum.

For the Republicans, Lynnwood fisherman Warren Hanson, who started running for statewide office in 1976, is again railing against illegal immigration and land managers. Gordon Pross, who has sought some kind of congressional seat since 1998, is again calling for smaller government. William Chovil, a Tacoma resident who espouses more “Americanism,” is making his third run for a congressional seat. Brad Klippert, a Benton County deputy sheriff, is running on traditional family values, just as he did in 2004.

Only Barry Massoudi, a self-employed Mercer Island management consultant, is in his first campaign among the Republican also-runners. He openly admits he can’t beat McGavick, but still wants to talk about the economy, energy and health care.

The Democrats have Mike The Mover, whose yearly runs seem to be mostly a marketing strategy for his moving company. Mohammad Said, an Ephrata physician who has run for governor and U.S. senator, wants to change the country’s “pro-Israel” policy in the Middle East. Michael Goodspaceguy Nelson – who changed his middle name to coincide with one of his key issues, orbital space colonization – has run for everything from Metropolitan King County Council to governor.

And then there’s Tran, making her first run for office, working hard to prove it’s a serious campaign and not just one more quixotic quest.

A 40-year-old lawyer with the Northwest Justice Project who specializes in housing issues, Tran has a compelling personal story, fleeing South Vietnam by barge with her family in 1975, coming to the United States after a stay in a refugee camp, growing up in Florida, graduating from law school and working as a legal services attorney in several cities, including Spokane.

She’s sharply critical of Cantwell’s vote giving President Bush authority to invade Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, as well as her vote for the Patriot Act and support of U.S. trade policy. While Cantwell has said lately the administration should begin bringing troops home from Iraq this year while pushing for a diplomatic solution, Tran says the war is a mistake and would bring U.S. troops home from Iraq immediately.

When she spoke to the state Democratic Convention in June, delegates who had chanted “No More War” at Cantwell gave Tran a warm response. The other anti-war candidate, Mark Wilson, got a better ovation, but he dropped out of the race in July to take a paid staff position with the Cantwell campaign.

“It totally helped me,” Tran said. “We’ve gotten a lot of the people who were working on Wilson’s campaign.”

Tran said in a recent interview she expects to pick up most of Wilson’s votes in the Sept. 19 primary, as well as members of the party’s more liberal or “progressive” wing.

She insists she is more than just a “protest vote” against Cantwell and the war. She also supports same-sex marriage, an increase in the federal minimum wage to make it a “livable wage,” and tougher gas mileage standards for automakers. She opposes any major overhaul of Social Security, the Bush administration’s Part D plan for prescription drugs for Medicare users, and any crackdown on undocumented immigrant workers who are otherwise obeying the law.

Like Cantwell, she opposes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; to up the ante on a key Northwest environmental issue, she criticizes the incumbent for supporting former Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s nomination to Secretary of Interior, because he has backed ANWR drilling.

She has an extensive Web site, and a campaign manager/press spokesman for road trips like the recent journey to Spokane for two days at Pig Out in the Park and a few campaign house parties. That was, however, her first, and likely last, major preprimary campaign visit to Spokane. (Despite the impression of the man who’d wished Tran luck during at Pig Out, Cantwell has been in Spokane three times in the last month to talk about Social Security, health care and the fight over minimum wage.)

Her supply of yard signs and campaign T-shirts is limited and there’s no money for television commercials. During the remaining two weeks of the primary, she said, her campaign will concentrate on phone calls to likely voters and appearances at large public events, primarily in King County, which has the biggest concentration of Democrats. Tran’s main battles are not with Cantwell – like most incumbents, Cantwell mainly ignores all challengers on the primary ballot – but with state party officials for things like access to addresses, phone numbers and precinct lists of recognized Democrats. It may be a sign of her newness to politics that she seems genuinely surprised by the lack of party support for a little-known challenger over an incumbent.

“It’s a primary. I’m not doing anything but giving people a viable alternative to vote for,” she said. “Why do we have a primary if you’re going to do everything you can to quiet dissent?”

With that kind of animosity from the party, and her admittedly low-budget campaign, one might wonder how Tran could hope to win a general election race against McGavick, should lightning strike and she beat Cantwell in the primary.

State and national party officials would be quick to offer money and logistical support to keep that Senate seat Democratic, she predicted, while Greens, Libertarians and liberal independents would likely abandon their candidates to support her against McGavick.

State Party Chairman Dwight Pelz, with whom she’s had her biggest arguments, “would be calling me at 1 a.m. on election night,” she said. “The national party and state party are going to coalesce behind my campaign.”