It is hard to believe that it was 30 years ago this month that Dennis Kucinich realized his dream of becoming mayor of Cleveland.

Kucinich toiled 10 years to become mayor.  Yet he kicked it away in a very short time.

Now, he is spending a decade fighting to realize another dream... to be President of the United States of America.

I’ve known Dennis for many years.  Been a fan and been a critic.

As I’ve written before, he was running copy when I was at The Plain Dealer in the mid-1960s and he was the copyboy, as they were called in those days, at the Wall Street Journal bureau when I was with the Journal.  (I am likely wrong about the copyboy label at the Wall Street Journal. Dennis, in his new book, “The Courage to Survive” about his first 22 years of life, says his job was as a copy reader.)

I walked the streets of the Tremont area with him in 1967, on his first run for office.  As we left one house, Dennis said, “If I win this one, I can go all the way.”  I remember stopping and asking Dennis what he meant by “all the way.”  Of course, I knew what he meant.  I wanted to hear him say it.  He brushed it off, saying that I didn’t have to print that.

Dennis wasn’t yet 21-years old.  He became eligible to vote by Election Day.  He lost that election only to return two years later to win that seat.

Now, 40 years after that walk, his dream is still alive.

Dennis has touched the nerve of leadership-deprived activists nationally today just as he did in Cleveland years ago – by poking his finger into the chests of the powerful with demands no one else would make.

He has not changed much.

I left the Wall Street Journal in 1968, pushed away from conventional journalism by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the tragedy of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.

Instead, I covered Cleveland City Hall for more than 30 years, writing in a self-published newsletter every other week.

I closely followed the pressure cooker days of the Kucinich administration.  The good and the bad, and there were both.

Was there a Cleveland business cabal to take down Dennis?

No doubt about it.  Their desires were articulated in war-like jargon in a Fortune Magazine article. Here’s how Fortune assessed the actions of Cleveland business leaders in an article, “How Business Bosses Saved a Sick City,” March 1989:

“E. Mandell de Windt, the now retired chairman of Eaton Corp. and dean of Cleveland businessmen, organized the troops and devised a strategy, setting in motion a benign conspiracy of executives and entrepreneurs that still operates.

“The impressive feat of organizing that cabal and persuading Cleveland’s most senior businessmen to take charge of the grittiest aspects of civic life was the real key to the town’s turnaround,” the Fortune article continued.

(Turnaround? Cleveland in two of the last three years was rated the most impoverished American city.)

A cabal to overthrow an elected government.

The article quoted a top Cleveland lawyer from Jones & Day saying...

“In a sense, Kucinich was the best thing that ever happened because he was a unifying element.  People looked at him and said, ‘Enough is enough here.  Let’s get together and change things.’”

Truth was that the business establishment, along with the city’s two newspapers, Plain Dealer, which had endorsed him, and the Cleveland Press, were trying to destabilize Kucinich during most of his two-year term.

I wrote in July of 1979...

“Mayor Dennis Kucinich plunged a bare hand into the pulsating hornet’s nest when he opposed Cleveland’s business establishment on four major economic issues close to the heart of Corporate Cleveland.  The result has been a bitter, open war with unconditional surrender the only path to ‘peace.’”

Two of the major issues were tax abatements and control of the city’s electric power system.

The article presented a chart of 88 Cleveland business and lawyers and their interlocking interests.  Almost half of them, for example, had contributed financially to the recall campaign against Kucinich a year earlier.

However, there were times when you had to question the quality of his character.

The public battle Kucinich carried on with Richard Hongisto led to the attempt to recall Dennis.  Kucinich had recruited Hongisto from San Francisco where he had been county sheriff.  He had earned significant progressive credentials.  He thwarted a court order and went to jail rather than remove elderly people from a hotel.

Hongisto, however, became too close and popular with the Cleveland Police and the news media.  This made Kucinich uncomfortable.  Hongisto also made charges against the administration, which led to showdown.

Kucinich - before live TV cameras - fired Hongisto.  He came across as harsh and dictatorial.  Hongisto kept a calm attitude in sharp contrast.

I wrote at the time in Point of View...

“One man – Hongisto – has shaken the Kucinich Administration to the very foundation by serving as a focal point for bitter resentment against a City Hall operated by codes of punishment and intimidation.

“Hongisto’s charges – none so solid or dramatic to cause a major crisis – have been so destructive because they build upon a four-month Administration record of being willing to steamroller almost anyone for good or no reason.

“The administration has created a climate of fear and resentment. It caught the backlash.”

After the firing, Hongisto told reporters in front of City Hall...

“I could have managed to save my job, to bow out gracefully.  But, in fact, the truth is that I thought back several years ago to the stories about people who once knew Richard Nixon and how he trod over people and rose to become President and I could not in good conscience participate in watching the growth and development of a parallel career.”

It’s curious that Hongisto saw Kucinich as a potential Presidential candidate back in 1978.

Kucinich, despite his near perfect positions on progressive issues, sent out other worrisome signals.  His actions often divided progressives here.

Kucinich once patrolled a neighborhood with his bodyguard, and observed some kids playing in an empty pool.  Instead of a friendly scare and warning about possible vandalism, Kucinich chose to make an arrest.  He called for another patrol car to take the boys to jail.  One of the youths was 7-years old, a fact that a friendly talk would have revealed to the Mayor.  (Hongisto gained popular acclaim when he went out on patrol and made arrests, possibly Kucinich’s motive for doing likewise.)

On another occasion, protesting elderly citizens, led by a Catholic organizing group, came to City Hall, demanding a meeting with Kucinich.  Some of them were lame and in wheel chairs.  Kucinich, rather than leaving his office, one floor up, sneaked out of City Hall.  He then informed the group that he would meet them across the street at the city’s Convention Center.  The charade angered people who should have been strong supporters.

He also split progressives on issues of race.

One supporter with a long record of left activism broke with Kucinich.  He said...

“I have never encountered anywhere the contempt that they have for people, not even among Southern cracker sheriffs who wanted to kill me.”

Kucinich now presents a figure that attracts the same progressive factions nationally as he once did in Cleveland.

He is seen as the most honest of politicians as he clearly states positions that others fear to voice.  He steadfastly opposes the war in Iraq, for example.

He positions himself similarly to his posture in the final days of his campaign for mayor in 1977.  In a stiff battle with Edward Feighan, who later became a Congressman from Cleveland, Kucinich promised anything voters asked.

Kucinich had a line – “You want it, you got it.” – to voter demands in the waning days of the campaign.  He won by fewer than 3,000 of 180,000 votes.

It isn’t much different from stances he takes to lure progressive voters now.  He offers, however, what he cannot deliver.  He can afford to be inflexible since he does not have enough support to be a real factor in the campaign.  However, he can make other Democrats look weak and waffling with his unwavering positions in the many televised debates of this campaign.

The dilemma for those who see the tremendous potential of Dennis Kucinich – particularly as a spokesperson for the economic interests of the working and middle class – is the gnawing reminder that Dennis will do almost anything for power.

The audacity of a go-it-alone Kucinich is that he can take courageous stands because there is no potential of his losing anything.  Since he registers in the low single digits in national polls, he can afford to go where no others will tread.

Dennis plays the hero role skillfully.