It’s Something Borrowed and Something Blue for Dean Man

No one said life on the campaign trail was glamorous.

Just ask Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Democratic front-runner Howard Dean.

On his way from Iowa to Washington, D.C., to appear on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Trippi was stuck on the airport tarmac in Chicago for more than two hours Saturday night, eventually missing all the flights to D.C., because there were no gates available.

Determined to have him on the air, ABC chartered a plane to fly him in, but the only one they could find was in Cincinnati, and it couldn’t pick him up until 1 a.m.

That should have been plenty of time for Trippi to collect his luggage and get to the private terminal, but the airline had lost his bags.

He arrived in Washington at dawn, luggage-less, wearing his usual rumpled outfit. At the Mayflower Hotel, the concierge told Trippi he was in luck: Filene’s Basement was having a pre-Christmas sale at 7:30 a.m., so he could buy a suit there before his TV appearance.

Trippi set his alarm to get one hour of sleep, then rushed over to the off-price store -- only to find it didn’t open until 9 a.m. on weekends.

Desperate, he rushed back to the Mayflower and begged the concierge to look in the lost and found for any suitable attire. He was in luck. There was a crisp blue blazer, just his size. He bought a cheap shirt off a street vendor, found a crumpled tie at the bottom of his briefcase and made it to the studio just in time.

By Sunday night, he was already in New Hampshire, where, over Thai food, he regaled his staff and the press corps with the story of his arduous journey. But the day wasn’t over. After dinner, he hit the road to make it back to the Dean headquarters in Burlington, Vt., by morning.

And he still had to ship the blazer back to the hotel, just in case the owner came to claim it.

Is It Getting Chili in Here?

Sen. John F. Kerry: veteran, statesman -- chili connoisseur? The Beantown resident and Democratic presidential hopeful has made the chunky half soup-half stew cold-weather dish a centerpiece of his New Hampshire stump stops.

For the last month, the Massachusetts senator, who has been endorsed by the 260,000-member International Assn. of Fire Fighters, has served up chili in firehouses around the state.

“It’s just a fun way to meet as many people as possible,” said Mark Kornblau, the campaign’s New Hampshire communications director. The “chili feeds” were the firefighters’ idea, Kornblau said; they usually make the chili for the hundreds of people who show up at events, rain and snow notwithstanding.

“Usually, there’s one pot for mild and one pot for spicy,” Kornblau said. Kerry favors the spicy. So far, his predilection for the hot stuff has not gotten in the way of up-close-and-personal politicking.

Wes Is More

Meet Wes Clark, Democratic candidate for president. The general -- usually identified by reporters as Wesley K. Clark -- can now be seen in television ads calling himself Wes.

The shortened moniker is not a major campaign move, Clark campaign staffers say, but a sign that Clark is getting more familiar with the voting public.

“I think you always have to present someone initially with their full name when you’re building recognition,” said Marion Kahn, press secretary for Clark’s wife, Gertrude, and director of marketing and branding for the campaign. “As people know who you are, you have the freedom to” call a person by their nickname, she said.

Duly Quoted

“I don’t know if that was totally presidential, but it seemed like the right thing to do.”

-- Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut senator, after climbing onto Santa’s lap last week in Hampton, N.H., and wishing for a “better than expected” finish in the state’s primary Jan. 27.

Compiled from staff and wire reports by Times researcher Susannah Rosenblatt.