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Posted: October 9, 2007 5:58 PM
Kucinich Celebrates Birthday, Opens Second Life HQ
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, celebrated his 61st birthday over the weekend by holding a birthday fundraiser with wife, Elizabeth, in Portland, Ore.

“Please come energized and ready to party for peace,” reads the invitation on his campaign Web site.

The birthday celebration ended a long day of campaigning on the West Coast, which began with a speech at the Latino National Congress Convention in Los Angeles. At the event, sponsored by the Latino Votes Caucus, Latino voters unanimously adopted a Kucinich-sponsored resolution that calls for an Arizona sheriff’s department “to shut down a telephone hotline set up to encourage people to report the whereabouts and activities of persons the callers suspect of being in the country illegally,” on the basis that the hotline “encourages racial profiling and promotes discrimination of the Latino community in Maricopa County,” the Immigration Prof Blog reported.

Besides advocating for the support of the Latino community, Kucinich’s campaign has been at work setting up headquarters in the virtual-reality world of Second Life, joining other candidates such as former Sens. John Edwards, D-N.C. and Mike Gravel, D-Alaska.

Kucinich promoted his new headquarters in a YouTube virtual tour, and it’s gotten attention from an unlikely crowd: gamers.

“Dennis Kucinich is exactly like Billy Joel,” reported Joystiq.com. “If you get a group sitting around a table and one mentions that he like[s] Billy Joel, slowly the whole table will start to open up, going from ‘Yeah, “River of Dreams” was pretty good’ to ‘Actually, I celebrate the guy’s entire canon.’ That’s what Kucinich is like for Democrats: They secretly love him, but you know there’s going to go for the safe pick like Clinton or Obama. Or, to continue our earlier analogy, Bob Dylan.”