Defeat spells the end for Gephardt's career

DES MOINES -- Iowa Democrats, who 16 years ago launched Richard A. Gephardt to national prominence, last night sent the former House minority leader into political retirement.

The Missouri congressman acknowledged in remarks to his supporters last night that the decisive defeat -- he finished a distant fourth -- meant the end of his candidacy. He said he would support the eventual party nominee "in any way I can" to help oust President Bush.

Gephardt will formally announce his withdrawal from the race today in his hometown of St. Louis.

"This didn't come out the way we wanted," said Gephardt, who won the state's caucuses in 1988 before dropping out of the presidential race two months later. Addressing about 200 supporters last night, his voice cracked and his eyes watered as he thanked his wife, family, supporters, and staff.

Gephardt was the early favorite in Iowa, and polls for months showed him dueling Howard Dean for the lead. But in the final days, his candidacy collapsed, along with Dean's, as Iowans flocked instead to late-surging Senators John F. Kerry and John Edwards.

As his standing sank, Gephardt banked heavily on a formidable field organization to be a firewall. In the end, his troops were overwhelmed by a heavy turnout and late-deciding voters. Apparently, voters who had told his campaign callers that they would support Gephardt deserted him by the thousands. An intensive effort by labor organizers from out of state failed to generate a blue-collar tide for Gephardt.

Dean, who was backed by the big white-collar unions, also plunged. The results are certain to raise questions about organized labor's political clout, even in a contest where organizational skills are paramount.

Gephardt has said in the past that he would not seek reelection to his congressional seat if he lost the race for the Democratic nomination.

The Gephardt campaign had mastered the first part of the formula to win the Iowa caucuses: "organize, organize, organize." But it failed to solve the second part: "get hot at the end."

Many of his ground troops were union members committed to him, Gephardt said, because "they really feel this is their last best chance to save their jobs."

As the Iowa contest wound down, Gephardt's bond with trade unionists seemed to intensify. His campaign showed its most spark at labor rallies, especially those of the Alliance for Economic Justice, a group of unions that endorsed Gephardt and flew nearly 900 members from other states to Iowa to try to turn out their local members for him.

In 1988, he won the caucuses as a raw, emerging national talent. This time around, he was a mature, experienced party elder running on what he called his "good ideas" for national health care and trade reform. In 2004, electability -- beating Bush -- was perhaps the most important issue on the minds of Iowa Democrats.

Gephardt earnestly sold those ideas in small towns. These were substantive, realistic proposals, he asserted, not "pie in the sky" promises to solve complex national and international problems.

For instance, his pitch on trade sought to distill, in a few minutes, not only an explanation and condemnation of a global capitalist system that searches the world for the least expensive labor, but also a potential solution -- an international minimum wage to raise standards in other countries. The result, he said, would protect jobs at home and create new consumers abroad for US products. He even billed his proposal as a way to attack the grinding poverty that kills human hope and creates a "fertile ground" to breed terrorism.

Iowans knew Gephardt best among the four major contenders, but caucusgoers had given him their blessing once, only to see him fail later.