[Mb-civic] HERE May Be Our Next Candidate

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 12, 2006
The Fallback
By MATT BAI

If you harbor serious thoughts of running for the presidency, the first
thing you do ‹ long before you commission any polls or make any ads, years
before you charter planes to take you back and forth between Iowa and New
Hampshire ‹ is to sit down with guys like Chris Korge. A real-estate
developer in Coral Gables, outside Miami, Korge is one of the Democratic
Party's most proficient "bundlers." That is, in the last two presidential
elections, he bundled together more than $7 million in campaign

For Korge, the 2008 presidential campaign began a few days after Kerry lost,
when, he says, one prospective candidate ‹ he won't say who ‹ called to
enlist his help. Having raised money for both of Bill Clinton's presidential
campaigns, which earned him an overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, Korge
already knew he would support Hillary Clinton if she ran; he considers her
the most impressive politician he has ever met, including her husband. But
that didn't stop her potential rivals ‹ John Edwards, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh,
Wesley Clark ‹ from dropping by, nor did it stop Korge, a guy who rightly
prides himself on knowing just about everybody in Democratic politics, from
taking the meetings. "In the last six months, I've pretty much seen or
talked with all of them, or they've tried to meet with me," Korge told me
during a conversation in late January.

A few weeks before we spoke, Korge had lunch at the Capital Grille in Miami
with Mark Warner, who was then in his final weeks as Virginia's governor.
Though little known nationally, Warner has emerged in recent months as the
bright new star in the constellation of would-be candidates, a source of
curiosity among Democrats searching for a charismatic outsider to lead the
party. Pundits credit Warner's popularity in Republican-dominated Virginia ‹
his 80 percent approval rating when he left office made him one of the most
adored governors in the state's history ‹ with enabling his Democratic
lieutenant governor, Tim Kaine, to win the election to succeed him last
November. Suddenly, Warner is being mentioned near the top of every list of
candidates vying for the nomination in 2008.

Over lunch with Korge and his real-estate partner, Warner made what has
become, more or less, his standard pitch. Much as he likes John Kerry and
worked hard for him in Virginia, Warner said, the Democratic Party had once
again, in 2004, nominated a candidate who could not appeal on a cultural
level to white, small-town voters in wide swaths of the country. Warner
argued that he was more likely than any of the other potential Democratic
candidates to break that cycle. The candidate he was really talking about,
of course, was Clinton. It wasn't that she wouldn't do a great job in the
White House, necessarily; what Warner was saying, without actually saying
it, was that she couldn't get there. Democrats, he liked to say, could not
afford to keep trotting out nominees who could expect to win only 16 blue
states and then hope, just maybe, for the "triple bank shot" that might
deliver Ohio or Florida. They needed a candidate who could compete
everywhere.

Korge had already heard some version of the same case from several of
Warner's rivals. "They can't help themselves," he told me. "What you hear is
two things: one, why Hillary can't win, and two, why they're going to be the
other candidate who emerges in the showdown with Hillary." Korge told Warner
the same thing he told the other suitors, including John Kerry: he was loyal
to Hillary and intended to stay that way. That was fine, Warner said, but
would Korge be willing to introduce him to friends who weren't yet decided?
Korge deflected the request. To him, helping Warner raise money would have
been "counterproductive."

You might think this would have deflated Warner. It didn't. He knows that
many of the money guys he goes to see at this early stage are going to
pledge their allegiance to Clinton. But the path of a campaign is long and
twisting, and there may come a time when Korge needs a fallback candidate.
More to the point, aside from being a fund-raiser, Korge is a validator, the
kind of guy to whom others in business and politics will listen. There are
perhaps 20,000 activists and contributors whose choices influence the
Democratic nominating process, and Korge talks with more than a few of them;
his casual appraisals mean something.