The ship's Captain Ahab is seeking to find the great,white whale that destroyed his former ship and bit off his leg.
VOA: special.2010.06.11
It fixates the party, and the candidates, in much the same way that a certain greatwhitewhale obsessed Captain Ahab, dooming him and almost his entire crew.
In 1841, Herman Melville set out to sea from the city on the whaling ship Acushnet, returning after an 18-month voyage to eventually write Moby Dick, the tale of Captain Ahab's obsessive search for the greatwhitewhale.