LaRouche Campaign,
Leading in Contributors,
Breaks Blackout

News of the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) April report, showing Lyndon LaRouche with more campaign contributors than any of the nine other Democratic Presidential candidates, has "let loose the fox among the chickens" in the race for the Democratic nomination, as LaRouche's campaign is breaking the blackout and containment which the media and Democratic National Committee were trying to keep around it. Despite "frontrunner" Sen. John Kerry's reported attempt to downplay the news by assuring that he has "more deep-pocket contributors," LaRouche's more than 40,000 contributions from over 18,000 individuals show that he has broader and more active support than any of the nine media-recognized candidates in this otherwise timid and nearly invisible primary election campaign. This is big news internationally, in all the countries where LaRouche's New Bretton Woods and Eurasian Land-Bridge anti-depression policies are well known. And the spreading reports of it, beginning to break the anti-LaRouche blackout policy of the U.S. media, are of great interest to those political factions in the United States which are opposing the imperial "perpetual war" policies now dominating the Bush Administration.

State, Local Leaders: Let LaRouche in Debate

South Carolina media reported on April 29 that the state's Democratic Party chairman had received a letter from nearly 40 current and former Democratic elected officials asking that LaRouche be invited to the May 3 Presidential debate in Columbia (see box). The Democratic leaders—roughly half from South Carolina and the other half from other states, joined by former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders—pointed out LaRouche's lead in contributors over the other Democratic candidates invited to the debate, from which the party was excluding him. "It's outrageous. It's stupid" that LaRouche has not been invited, campaign spokeswoman Dr. Debra Freeman was quoted in a statewide AP wire. "The Democratic Party in the state of South Carolina has long been under the influence of Don Fowler," she said, adding that the campaign did not plan legal action. "We will continue doing what we have been doing, and take the campaign directly to the people."

On April 30, the South Carolina Democratic leadership still refused to invite LaRouche. But as coverage of this intervention spread from South Carolina ABC affiliates and the state's radio networks, to dozens of local papers via a statewide AP wire, to the very widely read national political Internet site, "The Drudge Report," to the C-SPAN national political cable network's "Washington Journal" program on April 30, and then to the Washington Times newspaper on May 1, some national press and media began to warily circle around the new development, which many wanted to bury but some wanted to cover. A national AP wire on May 2 appeared in many newspapers, citing LaRouche's $3.7 million raised. ABC-TV's national network dropped live coverage of the May 3 debate, none of whose nine participants, with LaRouche excluded, generate any measurable interest among the electorate.

More Democratic leaders are now signing the letter which originated in South Carolina, and the demand is being raised to include LaRouche in upcoming candidates debates and fora in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio. On May 1, LaRouche's Presidential campaign released figures showing that he is number-one in contributors in those three states, and also outdistances all other candidates in the total amount of campaign funds raised from residents of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio. In Iowa, for example, fundraising by "leading" candidate Rep. Dick Gephardt (Mo.), who won that state's primary in 2000, is "anemic," with only three contributors and $1,000 raised, wrote The Hill, a Washington political weekly. "Although the race for the Presidency is still in its early stage, first-quarter filings are significant for campaigns, because they demonstrate the viability of a candidate. Financial support from such early-decision states as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina is especially important." LaRouche has raised over $24,000 from 43 Iowa residents.

LaRouche also has the only coherent and growing corps of youthful campaigners—the LaRouche Youth Movement—among the candidates, who are otherwise unable to reach and mobilize the apparently apolitical "no future generation." During April's final weekend and the first days of May, the LaRouche Youth held "schools" in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Baltimore, addressed by the candidate and attended by hundreds of "cadre." The LaRouche Youth have waged war since February against the Democratic National Committee's "LaRouche exclusion rule," cooked up in 1996 by the DNC's then-Chairman, Southern conservative Donald Fowler, and enforced by repeating the discredited anti-LaRouche slanders in the media.

As of the first of May, upcoming scheduled debates still had not invited LaRouche, but as the candidate told one newspaper, the DNC would either have to end the exclusion policy, or it would take them down. There is no popular interest in the other Democratic candidates, because none of them is a serious opposition to the policies of Vice President Cheney's imperial warhawks; and because with most Americans focussed on the plunging U.S. economy, none but LaRouche knows any more about an economic recovery, than did Herbert Hoover in 1932. The South Carolina letter signers' demand for "the FDR recovery policy" represented by LaRouche, is the sign of what has made him, as of now, the most-supported Presidential candidate in the Democratic 2004 race.