Edwards Follows Vilsack’s Lead on Carbon Neutrality
Today John Edwards announced that his presidential campaign will aim to be carbon neutral. As the email the campaign sent out explains, “In February, Governor Tom Vilsack announced he would be the first presidential candidate to plan a carbon neutral campaign. Edwards shares his commitment to protecting our environment and reducing our carbon footprint.”
Edwards is angling to fill the “Vilsack Vacuum,” only weeks after Vilsack announced he would drop out of the campaign. He is trying to recruit as many former Vilsack supporters as possible at this point, and this was one of the Vilsack campaign’s more novel ideas — although the Vilsack folks seemed to want to use it more for fund raising than anything else.
Exactly one week ago, the Edwards campaign sent out another press release claiming “more than 100 Iowa Democrats who were formerly supporting Governor Tom Vilsack’s presidential bid are now supporting Senator John Edwards for President” (it provides the list of 100 names to prove it). 100 activists isn’t exactly a lot considering Vilsack released the names of over 1,100 of his supporters a while back, but Edwards’s list does contain a few big names.
At this point, although other candidates have certainly paid lip service to Vilsack’s service as our governor, etc., Edwards is the only candidate making explicit attempts at recruiting former Vilsack supporters — at least through the press. Whether this will make much of a difference, I don’t know; but frankly I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more attempts at the same sort of thing from other candidates. Maybe outside Iowa few appreciate the level of support Vilsack had here. He has been our governor for a while, and even those Democrats who weren’t supporting his presidential campaign like him.
2 comments March 13th, 2007
