Prince William County Democratic Committee

Prince William County's Democratic Committee is a model for how others should operate, former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis said Saturday night.

Speaking at the committee's 30th Annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner fundraiser, Dukakis said he would praise local Democrats when speaking at other party gatherings.

"They're going to be hearing about Prince William County from me," the former Massachusetts governor said.

The key was that Dems here connected personally with voters—down to the level of individual election precincts and even to blocks within those areas.

Dukakis said that when he ran against President George H.W. Bush in 1988, strategists told him to focus on raising money to spend on the campaign and on buying advertising.

However, that's one of the reasons he lost, he told the crowd of more than 200.

"It's not all about money and media," Dukakis said. "It's about you."

Now 75 and a professor at Northeastern University and UCLA, the former officeholder indeed looked the part of relaxed academic and pundit.

He took some digs at conservatives and endorsed the current occupant of the White House.

Dukakis said he was in law school at Harvard with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and "even then he was to the right of Marie Antoinette."

And about the man who defeated him for the job of commander in chief:

"If I had beaten Old Man Bush," Dukakis said before being interrupted by applause, "you'd have never heard of the son, and we would never be in this mess."

Before the event, he told a reporter that President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Sonia So-tomayor was "first-rate."

"I think having somebody who grew up in public housing sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States is a very good thing," Dukakis said. "She also happens to be very smart, and she happens to be a very good judge."

He also compared Obama to a famed chief executive from another era.

"I can't remember anybody since Jack Kennedy who kind of walked into the place and, from Day One, seemed to belong," Dukakis said.

To end the event, every Democrat who will be on the ballot in Prince William over the next few months gave a stump speech of two minutes or less.

And Rep. Gerald E. "Gerry" Connolly, whose 11th District includes much of eastern Prince William, spoke about "Democratic values," including the importance of social justice and social pro-grams.

He said he knew he was on to something when members at the Gainesville-Haymarket Rotary Club nodded in agreement when he spoke to them Wednesday about the federal stimulus package.

"If these values are playing in Haymarket, Prince William County is ours," Connolly said of the town, not necessarily known as a Dem stronghold.

Staff writer Jonathan Hunley can be reached at 703-369-5738.

By JONATHAN HUNLEY, news & messenger
Published: May 31, 2009