Former Virginia senator Jim Webb announced Thursday that he will run for president, setting himself on an uphill trek for the Democratic nomination with little national name recognition and scant financial support.
Webb adds a decidedly more conservative option for Democratic voters in a field in which former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton has tacked to the left under criticism from liberal former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Yet Webb is hard to pin down politically. A former Republican who served as secretary of the Navy for Ronald Reagan, Webb talks often of his military service in Vietnam. He is known for an idiosyncratic collection of positions that include opposition to the war in Iraq and advocacy for sentencing reform. An economic populist, he has accused Clinton of coming late to the conversation about excessive chief executive pay, and he has regularly championed the plight of rural and
working-class Americans.
One of his central challenges will be to parlay those credentials into support among an increasingly liberal Democratic primary electorate.
Also uncertain is whether Webb can appeal to women, a crucial constituency that could be difficult to win over given
his past opposition to letting women serve in combat.
Jim Webb, in his own words(1:44)
Former Navy secretary and Virginia senator Jim Webb is a Democratic contender for the White House in 2016. Here's his take on Obamacare, his issues with the Democratic party, and more, in his own words. (Julie Percha/The Washington Post)
As an often prickly iconoclast who chafes at the demands of the campaign trail — and who has openly doubted whether he could raise the necessary money to run for president — Webb also must demonstrate that he can build a viable presidential campaign operation.
In an announcement message that ran over 2,000 words on his campaign Web site (which crashed for more than an hour after its release Thursday), Webb presented his differences with the rest of the field as his signature strength.
“I understand the odds, particularly in today’s political climate where fair debate is so often drowned out by huge sums of money,” he said. “Let’s clean out the manure-filled stables of a political system that has become characterized by greed.”
[Five things to know about Jim Webb]
In the announcement, Webb mixed his policy goals with his personal narrative — and dwelled far more than his rivals on national security.
[ Don’t call him redneck ]
Reminding voters that he has spent his “entire life in and around the American military,” the former Marine reiterated his early and passionate opposition to the war in Iraq, his subsequent opposition to intervention in Libya and his concern about ongoing negotiations with Iran. He promised not to allow Chinese
territorial expansion and cyberattacks.
“We need a President who understands leadership, who has a proven record of actual accomplishments, who can bring about bipartisan solutions, who can bring people from both sides to the table to get things done,” Webb said in an e-mail to supporters.
As his Democratic rivals have, Webb called for investment in infrastructure and early childhood education as well as reform in the areas of immigration, student debt and criminal justice. He was
an early advocate of overhauling the American prison system;
earlier this week he said that drug addiction should be treated as a medical rather than criminal concern. He called for a return to “true economic fairness” through changes in tax and labor policy.
Many of his positions place him squarely to the right of his Democratic rivals.
He has
accused fellow Democrats of using low-income white men as a “whipping post” and argued against broad affirmative action and diversity programs. Just this month, he
defended those who retain fondness for the Confederate flag. He opposes any increase in income taxes while supporting capital gains tax increases. He was critical of Obamacare, though he voted for it. He advocates for gun rights and against coal plant regulations.
[A real political eccentric takes on Clinton]
While several presidential contenders have professed indecision about their plans merely as a way to
keep raising unlimited funds, for months Webb appeared genuinely undecided.
He has made stops in early primary states, but not nearly as consistently as his top rivals. And already, he has experienced campaign turmoil, with two top staffers
leaving his campaign in Iowa, the only state where he has an operation.
Also, his political action committee has
come under scrutiny for paying out $90,000 to his wife and daughter for Web site design and management. A spokesman defended the payments as legitimate.
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