PALMER - The "pragmatic" candidate.

On a cold weekday morning, the Hopemobile pulls out of the Giant Eagle parking lot on the corner of Snow and Ridge roads. The bright blue short bus carries congressional candidate Rosemary Palmer and is piloted by her husband, self-described "full-time volunteer" Paul Schroeder. Dressed in a red boiled-wool jacket and white gloves, Palmer looks as sensible as she bills herself: She says she's the "progressive pragmatic" in what's become a five-way Democratic primary with four challengers vying to take Dennis Kucinich's congressional seat in Ohio's 10th District. Along with Palmer, Barbara Anne Ferris, who took on Kucinich twice before, North Olmsted Mayor Thomas O'Grady and Cleveland Ward 13 City Councilman Joe Cimperman think they can do a better job of serving the district than Kucinich.

The Hopemobile sets out for a couple of hours of cruising the no-frills strip malls, family restaurants and grocery parking lots of Parma. Clusters of senior citizens in the Snow Road McDonald's take Palmer's literature and chat with her, but they're mostly Kucinich partisans. As she's leaving, an elderly man stands up and shouts jovially, "Dennis forever!"

Up the road at Arby's it's a different story. Palmer offers her standard opening line - "Hi, I'm Rosemary Palmer. I'm running for Congress against Dennis Kucinich." - to a 30-something man in work clothes as she drops a flyer on the tray he's carrying. He looks down at it and exclaims, "Can't wait 'til he's gone!"

Kucinich - or Dennis!, as his familiar yellow signs and bumper stickers bill him - evokes strong feelings that have only gotten stronger of late. Some of his supporters feel he's literally the only person who can save the world, a fearless fighter for the little man, for truth, justice and the American way. But increasingly, in the district where he's served for 12 years and been reelected each term with at least 60 percent of the vote, many have other strong feelings as well.

It's not about his positions, necessarily. Around the district you don't hear people quarrel with his stands - in favor of ending the Iraq war, instituting universal single-payer health care, dumping the free-trade deals that have decimated Northeast Ohio jobs. You don't even hear people grouse too much about his grandstanding bid to impeach Dick Cheney or, now, President Bush himself. A candidate won't win too many votes here by branding him a scary liberal.

What upset the people in this hard-working, mostly working- and middle-class district (which encompasses most of Cleveland's West Side and Western inner-ring suburbs such as Rocky River, Parma, Berea, Lakewood and Westlake) was decision to Kucinich's decision to run for president - again.

His run in 2004 didn't work out very well. The sole challenger to John Kerry to hang on through the Democratic national convention in July, his 43 delegates weren't enough to wrest the nomination away from Kerry, who arrived with 4,253. And prior to the 2006 election, Kucinich had indicated he wouldn't be getting back in the presidential race. But on Dec. 12, 2006, he faced a throng of TV cameras and exhilarated supporters at Cleveland City Hall to announce his 2008 run, telling them, "I fully expect to win."

While making national headlines for his attempt to wage presidential warfare, even to the point of suing TV networks that shut him out of debates and suing to get on the Texas ballot, his congressional campaign was invisible. His 2007 third-quarter financial report said he'd raised $40 for that campaign. He had no congressional re-election Web site, and calls to his office inquiring about his congressional campaign were referred to his presidential campaign office. He waited 'til the morning of the deadline, Jan. 4, to file the necessary paperwork to seek reelection.

But he'd made his way back on Jan. 9, when more than 150 supporters gathered at Laborers Hall on Prospect and E. 32nd to help him officially kick off his latest congressional campaign. Waving their yellow "Dennis!" signs, they cheered him and his lanky red-headed wife Elizabeth on stage where he was joined by more than 40 union representatives and fellow politicians, including State Sen. Dale Miller and Cleveland City Councilman Jay Westbrook. Kucinich brought down the house when he connected the cost of the Iraq war to the fortunes of the 10th District, citing the district's share of the cost and what could have been done with the money to pay for education or health care, and reminding listeners how powerful he could be and how well he connects with the blue-collar denizens of his district and their everyday concerns. Planted stage left, Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chair Jimmy Dimora nodded his head, a clear show of party support for the incumbent.

Kucinich also made an oblique last-ditch attempt to justify his presidential run, insisting he was only running on weekends in order to carry the banner for ending the Iraq war and that he would carry it until someone else picked it up. Or until, apparently, the race in his home district got so heated that it required his personal attention.

O'GRADY - A passion for education.

"I think there are people that would like him to spend more time in the district," said Sen. Miller shortly after that evening. "I think it would be good if he did."

Then, on Jan. 24, to the relief of even most of his avid supporters, Kucinich ended the quixotic presidential bid that he'd previously insisted would again extend all the way to summer. Clearly, he'd gotten the message: Dennis Kucinich, phone home.

Sen. Miller, who has a close, decades-long relationship with Kucinich, even serving as his campaign manager when he ran for the Ohio Senate in the '80s, suggests it's Kucinich's very attentiveness to his job that's caused the current grumbling in his district. "For years and years, Dennis Kucinich has provided an incredible amount of personal hands-on contact with the district, and people got used to a very high level of visibility. I think he's partly created that problem for himself by how incredibly high a level he's set."

"I think there's some good people in the race," continues Miller. "But people that have [Kucinich's] level of courage and willingness to tackle tough issues don't come along every day. I think when you've got one, you've got to keep them. I strongly support Congressman Kucinich's views on war in Iraq, I support his proposal on universal health care, and I think that most of the people in the 10th district do as well. I think Dennis has been a phenomenal champion for ordinary working people and low-income people who often don't feel like they have a lot of people in the highest levels of government standing up for them."

North Coast Federation of Labor Executive Secretary Harriet Applegate, who hosted the gathering at Laborers' Hall, is another strong Kucinich supporter who hails his decision to leave the presidential race.

"I'm glad he got in and I'm glad he got out," she says. "You know he wanted to stay in. It's a measure of his commitment to the 10th district. He's got deep support. He's stood up for people and done great constituent service."

She says the unions will be working hard on Kucinich's behalf. "We don't turn our backs on someone who has been behind our issues. This was the easiest endorsement I think we've ever made. Practically everybody in the race is a friend of ours and a good friend. They all have good positions and good records. People don't feel negative about other candidates as much as they support Dennis."

Despite prodigal son Kucinich's return, none of the other candidates apparently intend to leave the race. O'Grady says he's "absolutely" staying in; Ferris says "I'm not dropping out." Palmer's campaign manager Anthony Fossaceca says, "Everyone is staying in." With Cimperman's TV ads already on the air, that seems accurate.

Palmer, a former teacher, journalist and campaign volunteer for John Kerry and Gov. Ted Strickland, is also a former supporter of Kucinich's, one of many irked by his second presidential run. Most of her positions - on the necessity of getting out of Iraq, expanding health care, protecting American jobs - aren't far from Kucinich's although she often differs in strategy. The roots of her decision to run lay in the same thing that's irked many of the congressman's former supporters.

"My husband did a lot of speaking for him in 2006, because Dennis said he was going to end the war," recalls Palmer, taking a break in her cluttered West Side work office from the schedule of fundraising phone calls she's kept up since her announcement in June 2007. "People asked him if he was going to run for president. He said no. Three weeks later, he was running. We wanted him to do what we elected him to do."

She was going to school at Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, "totally immersed in it," she says, when one day, "Paul runs in from the garden and said, "Rosemary, you have got to run.' I told him, "No way.' He said, "Call your political friends and see what they say.' They said, "Yeah.'"

CIMPERMAN - Big dogs on his side.

"Dennis called us as soon as he heard we were forming a campaign committee," she recalls. "He said, "What did I do wrong?' My husband talked to him and said, "Look, Dennis, you're running for president. Someone else needs to run for your seat.'"

For five months, Palmer was Kucinich's lone opponent. She organized a campaign, hired staff, raised money, made trips to DC to talk with activist organizations, canvassed neighborhoods, attended ward and city Democratic club meetings and released a series of thoughtful, detailed policy statements on such issues as the environment, jobs and the global economy, health care, veterans and reproductive choice. Developing a workable strategy for untangling the US from Iraq was understandably her lead issue: Following their son Augie's death in Iraq in August 2005, Palmer and Schroeder formed a group called Families of the Fallen for Change to work on such a plan.

Around the same time, many rumors bubbled up. One had Parma Mayor Dean DePiero jumping in; then it was said he'd only get in if Kucinich dropped out. There were whispers, fueled by the invisibility of his congressional campaign, that Kucinich might just do that, moving on not to the Oval Office but to the speaker circuit or a progressive think tank.

In late October, Barbara Anne Ferris joined Palmer in the field. Ferris, founder and head of the nonprofit International Women's Democracy Center, which works to involve women around the world in the democratic process, had challenged Kucinich and Republican Ed Herman in 2004 as an independent, garnering 6 percent of the vote. She'd challenged Kucinich in the 2006 Democratic primary as well, getting almost a quarter of the vote.

Though Ferris cites "lack of leadership" and the fact that "I looked at Dennis's record and it was pretty much a blank" as her reasons for running, she seems least motivated by Kucinich's presidential run of the four candidates. A former Peace Corps volunteer who volunteers with a monthly free meal at Lakewood's Trinty Lutheran Church, the Marion C. Seltzer school on West 98th Street, and a veterans' services organization, she's upbeat about the region's potential.

"I'm excited about the opportunities we've got," she says. "I've made a strong commitment to work with colleagues to bring back our fair share of the dollars." She talks about leveraging regional assets such as educational and medical institutions and area arts organizations as vehicles for economic development, better serving veterans and seniors, and making a stronger commitment to education.

Like Ferris, Mayor O'Grady, a former teacher who says he'll return to the profession when he's out of politics, has an audible passion for education. Though it's hard to sense it from his somewhat vague Web site, a conversation from Washington, DC, where he was attending a meeting of the National Conference of Mayors, tells a different story.

"Jobs, education, health care: That's my mantra," he says. "I'm uniquely suited to go to Washington with my background, experiences as teacher and a veteran."

He says that on his last trip to Washington, he met with Sen. Ted Kennedy's staff about No Children Left Behind, legislation on which Kennedy was the leading Democrat. "It's terrible. I think it's dead, thankfully. I'd like to think I played a role in it. I met with Sen. Kennedy's commission and said, "This is not equitable, not fair.' We very directly see issues of unfunded mandates here [in North Olmsted]."

He suggests he brings a unique perspective to the race. "I am the only suburban elected official in the race. The fact is this congressional district is heavily suburban. It may be time to have suburban representation and I will offer myself as an alternative to Dennis Kucinich."

Yet O'Grady, like Palmer, is an erstwhile Dennis supporter who says he wouldn't be running if Dennis hadn't jumped in the presidential race.

FERRIS - Running for her own reasons.

"Quite frankly, if he had [quit the presidential race] four months ago, I wouldn't have done this," says O'Grady. He pooh-poohs another rumor, that he's a Kucinich pal who entered the race to split the anti-Kucinich vote. (He does admit to being friendly with Kucinich, saying, "I think well of Dennis. I think he has had courage in the past to stand up and say what others aren't saying.")

O'Grady announced his run rather unceremoniously in early December, almost stumbling over Joe Cimperman, who announced a few days earlier with $226,000 already in his war chest and was greeted by a veritable shower of rose petals from the Plain Dealer. The paper virtually endorsed him the day after he announced, wrote another mini-love-letter editorial on Jan. 21, and then officially endorsed him in an almost unprecedented, ultra-early, 1,125-word editorial on Jan. 27. (Two-thirds of it was devoted to Kucinich, most of the rest to patting on the head and dismissing the other candidates, and less than 100 words to praising Cimperman for such nebulous assets as "boundless energy and idealism" and "zeal." There wasn't a single word about Cimperman's proposals, his ideas, what he would devote his boundless energy to beyond "revitalizing Cleveland.")

This despite a campaign that seems undefined. So far, it's entirely based on Kucinich's alleged inattention to his job, a tack that may be less effective with Kucinich's departure from the presidential race. Cimperman's Web site issues page, which went up long after he announced and after the PD greeted him as the district's savior, is mostly bio. Some accomplishments he cites, such as helping to build downtown condos, could be perceived as opposing the interests of the district, since their tax abatements come from the pockets of senior citizens in Kamm's Corner bungalows and families who worked hard and scrimped to move to Rocky River or Westlake.

Cimperman's the sole candidate with the bucks to run TV ads this early, but his ads are all negative, claiming that Kucinich has missed so much work in Congress he should be fired. But he offers viewers no compelling reasons for voting for Cimperman over one of the other challengers with more specific goals.

It's possible that Cimperman's attack ads and the PD's attack editorial could backfire. Kucinich supporters are notoriously passionate and seem energized by the idea that everyone's against them. The PD claimed it did not "come to this conclusion lightly" that Kucinich should be replaced, but its consistent opposition to Kucinich (it endorsed Ferris in 2006) has made it an enemy with the congressman's supporters. Enemies, as Bush's constant evocation of "the terr'ists" shows, can make good rallying points.

That sentiment is expressed by Ward 21 (Kamm's Corner) Democratic activists, husband and wife Murray Evans and Margot LaRosa, who have worked in Kucinich's campaigns since he ran for the Ohio Senate in the '80s. "There's going to be a lot of people voting for a lot of people, and I think that helps Dennis if his people turn out," says Evans. "I hope Joe [Cimperman] keeps running those commercials. I think the more Joe attacks, the more it galvanizes the people who support Dennis."

"Even a lot of us supporting him weren't necessarily gung-ho about him running for president," says Evans. "I'm glad Dennis dropped out of the presidential race. Now the idea of him being out of town is now a moot point."

"Some people feel because he was running for president, he was abandoning the district, but his congressional office has a wonderful staff and they take care of business," says LaRosa.

Evan Coaker, a North Olmsted resident, says much the same thing. "Dennis has done a good job for the district. Those Cimperman commercials are all negative. Why should I vote for him? He doesn't say."

It's that sort of support, whether from party insiders like Miller and Dimora, activists like LaRosa and Evans, or just engaged voters like Coaker, that primary victories, which attract the most motivated voters, hinge on. Kucinich has it. Palmer's been building such a grassroots campaign for seven months, and Ferris and O'Grady have support based on their previous work in the district. Cimperman, who didn't return calls for comment, has his attack ads, his war chest of unknown provenance and the adoration of the Plain Dealer. Only one will be left standing when the dust settles on the March 4 primary.