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Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American politician and physician from the U.S. state of Vermont. A Democrat, Dean was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 1982 and was elected lieutenant governor in 1986. Both were part-time positions that enabled him to continue practicing medicine. In 1991, Dean became Governor of Vermont when Richard A. Snelling died in office. Dean was subsequently elected to five two-year terms, serving as governor from 1991 to 2003 making him the second longest-serving Governor in Vermont history, after Thomas Chittenden (1778-1789 and 1790-1797). Dean served as chairman of the National Governors Association from 1994 to 1995; during his term, Vermont paid off much of its public debt and had a balanced budget 11 times, lowering income taxes twice. Dean also oversaw the expansion of the "Dr. Dynasaur" program, which ensures universal health care for children and pregnant women in the state.

An early frontrunner in the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, Dean denounced the 2003 invasion of Iraq along with Democrats who he felt should have more strongly opposed the Bush Administration, pioneered the use of the Internet in campaigning and showed strong fundraising ability; however, he eventually lost the nomination to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who in turn lost the presidential election to incumbent Republican George W. Bush. Dean formed the organization Democracy for America and later was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in February 2005.

Early life and education

East Hampton and New York City Childhood

Dean was born in the Town of East Hampton, New York, to Howard Brush Dean, Jr. and Andrée Belden Maitland, an art appraiser.Cloud, John. "The cool passion of Dr. Dean." Time. August 3, 2003.* He was the oldest of the four children of the couple, all boys.Ibid.

Dean's father worked on Wall Street for Dean Witter Reynolds; the family was quite wealthy, Republican, and belonged to the very exclusive Maidstone Golf Club in East Hampton, which excluded Jews and other minorities. Dean's genealogy includes Richard Maitland,Cloud, "The cool passion of Dr. Dean." as well as three lines of descent to royalty: "through colonial forebears Thomas Trowbridge of New Haven and Mrs. Agnes Harris Spencer Edwards of Hartford, and also through Dean's great-great-grandfather, James William Maitland (died 1860) of New York, who was descended three times over from James IV, King of Scots who led the Scottish troops in the Battle of Flodden and was the grandfather of Mary, Queen of Scots."Roberts, Gary Boyd. Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States. Genealogical: 2004. ISBN 0806317450. Quoted in "Royal Ancestry of the Next U.S. President," Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, February 9, 2004.Dean's family has ties to Long Island dating back to the 1700s including several family members who were in the whaling business in nearby Sag Harbor, New York.Reitwiesner, William Addams. "Ancestry of Gov. Howard Dean." [http://www.wargs.com/political/dean.html

As a child of a wealthy and prominent New York family, he spent much of his time growing up in East Hampton; the family built a house on Hook Pondthere in the mid-1950s.Cloud, "The cool passion of Dr. Dean." There the boys–Howard, Charlie, Jim and Bill–"rode bikes, played with a model train set, [and built elaborate underground forts."Ibid. While in New York, the family had a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side part of Park Avenue, which Dean still sometimes stays in when he visits the city.Ibid. The apartment was rented by Dean's father for $200 a month after World War II and eventually bought for $9,500.Ibid.

Dean attended the Browning School in Manhattan until he was 13, then went to St. George's School, a preparatory school in Middletown, Rhode Island.Grove, Lloyd. "Dean looks back, dryly." November 2, 2003. *

Though Dean's early life was privileged, political opponents were reluctant to seize upon it. UPI quoted one of Dean's friends in his youth as saying "By Hamptons standards, the Deans were not rich. No safaris in Africa or chalets in Switzerland. Howard's father went to work every day. He didn't own a company, or have a father or grandfather who founded one, as mine did."Sailer, Steve. "Analysis: Is Howard Dean a modern Puritan?" UPI. October 16, 2003.Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "he doesn't seem like a WASP. I know it's not nice to deal in stereotypes, but there seems very little Thurston Howell III, or George Bush the elder for that matter, in Mr. Dean...He seems unpolished, doesn't hide his aggression, is proudly pugnacious. He doesn't look or act the part of the WASP...It will be harder for Republicans to tag Mr. Dean as Son of the Maidstone Club than it was for Democrats to tag Bush One as Heir to Greenwich Country Day. He just doesn't act the part."Noonan, Peggy. "The Dean Disappointment." The Wall Street Journal. January 8, 2004.[http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110004522

The Yale Years

Dean attended Yale University. As a freshman, he requested specifically to room with an African-American. The university housing office complied and Dean roomed with two Southern black students and one white student from Pennsylvania.Gilgoff, Dan. "The Yale Men." U.S. News & World Report. December 29, 2003.One of Dean's roommates was Ralph Dawson, the son of a sheetmetal worker in Charleston, South Carolina and today a New York City labor lawyer. Dawson was quoted in the New Yorker as saying:Singer, Mark. "Running on Instinct." The New Yorker. January 12, 2004. [http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040112fa_fact
Unless you operated from a stereotypic understanding of the Yale white boy as rich, you wouldn’t know that about Howard...When it came to race–and I don’t know whether this was a function of intent or just came naturally–Howard was not patronizing in any way. He was willing to confront in discussion what a lot of white students weren't. He would hold his ground. He would respect that I knew forty-two million times more about being black than he did. But that didn't mean he couldn't hold a view on something relating to civil rights that would be as valid as mine. There were lots of well-meaning people at Yale who wanted you to understand that they understood your plight; you'd get into a conversation and they would yield too soon, so we didn’t get the full benefit of the exchange. Howard very much thought he was capable of working an issue through. He was inquisitive. And when he came to a conclusion he would be as strong as anybody else. I don't think he's stubborn. He’s a guy who's always been comfortable in his own skin. That’s something you still see in him today, and it gets him into some degree of controversy.Ibid.

At Yale, Dean was a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1971.

Though now eligible to be conscripted into the military, he received a draft deferment for an unfused vertebra. He spent the next year, according to Time magazine, "skiing and bumming around...He hit the slopes, tried pot, washed dishes, poured concrete and drank impressive amounts of beer." He returned home and briefly tried a career as a stock broker before deciding on a career in medicine, completing pre-medicine classes at Columbia University. In 1974, Dean's younger brother Charlie, who had been traveling through southeast Asia at the time, was captured and killed by Laotian guerrillas, a tragedy widely reported to have an enormous influence in Dean's life; he wore his brother's belt every day of his presidential campaign.

The Move to Vermont as a Doctor

Dean received his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1978 and began a medical residency at the University of Vermont. In 1981, he married fellow doctor Judith Steinberg, whom he met in medical school, and together they began a family medical practice in Burlington, Vermont (where she continued to use her maiden name to avoid confusion with her husband).

Personal life

Dean has kept an unusually strict separation between his political career and his personal life. His wife, who has continued practicing medicine, mostly stayed out of the limelight during his presidential campaign, giving few interviews and not traveling with her husband on the campaign trail until the final days in Iowa and New Hampshire. She maintained that if her husband were elected president, she would continue practicing medicine and forgo many of the traditional activities of the First Lady. She had shunned the limelight of the campaign until Dean's later much-publicized "scream" gaffe. Dean brought her out for a lengthy sit-down network interview, where she dismissed the "scream" as silly.

Though he was raised an Episcopalian, Dean joined the United Church of Christ in 1982 after a dispute with the local Episcopal diocese over a bike trail (see below). By his own account, he does not attend church "very often"; at one point, when asked to name his favorite book in the New Testament, he offered the Old Testament Book of Job, then corrected himself an hour later. * Dean has stated he is more "spiritual" than religious. His wife has raised their two children, Anne, a senior at Yale University, and Paul, in Judaism.

A personal finance statement filed for his presidential campaign put the couple's net worth between US$2.2 and $5 million.

Vermont political career

In 1980, Dean spearheaded a (successful) grassroots campaign to stop a condominium development on Lake Champlain, instead favoring the construction of a bicycle trail. The effort succeeded, and helped launch his political career. That same year, he was also a volunteer for Jimmy Carter's re-election campaign. In 1982, he was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives, where he remained until being elected lieutenant governor in 1986. Both were part-time positions which enabled him to continue practicing medicine.

On August 14, 1991, Dean was examining a patient when he received word that then-Governor Richard A. Snelling had died of a heart attack while Snelling was cleaning his own swimming pool. Dean assumed the office, which he called the "greatest job in Vermont." He was subsequently elected to five two-year terms in his own right, making him the longest-serving governor in Vermont's history. From 1994 to 1995, Dean was the chairman of the National Governors Association.

Dean was faced with an economic recession and a $60 million dollar budget deficit. He bucked many in his own party to immediately push for a balanced budget (Vermont is the only state whose constitution does not require one), an act which marked the beginning of a record of fiscal restraint; during his tenure as governor, the state paid off much of its debt, balanced its budget eleven times, raised its bond rating, and lowered income taxes twice.

Dean also focused on health care issues, most notably through the "Dr. Dynasaur" program, which ensures near-universal health coverage for children and pregnant women in the state; the uninsured rate in Vermont dropped from 12.7% to 9.6% under his watch. Child abuse and teen pregnancy rates were cut roughly in half.

By far the most controversial decision of his career, and the first to draw serious national attention, came in 2000, when the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state's marriage laws unconstitutionally excluded same-sex couples and ordered that the state legislature either allow gays and lesbians to marry or create a parallel status. Facing calls to amend the state constitution to prohibit either option, Dean chose to support the latter one, and signed the nation's first civil unions legislation into law, spurring a short-lived "Take Back Vermont" movement which helped Republicans gain control of the State House.

Dean would receive some flak during his 2004 presidential campaign for another decision related to the civil unions. Shortly before leaving office, he had some of his Vermont papers sealed for at least the next decade, a timeframe far longer than most outgoing governors use. He claimed he was protecting the privacy of many gay supporters who sent him personal letters about the issue. On the campaign trail, he demanded Vice President Dick Cheney release his energy committee papers. Many people, including Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman accused Dean of hypocrisy.

As governor, Dean was endorsed by the National Rifle Association several times, furthering his moderate image; though he never returned the endorsement, nor was he ever a member of the NRA.

Elections as Governor of Vermont
Year Democratic Percent Republican Percent Other (>5%) Percent Other (<5%) Percent
1992 Howard Dean 74.73% John McClaughry 23.04% N/A 0% Scattering 3%
1994 Howard Dean 68.6% David F. Kelley 19% Thomas J. Morse (Independent) 7% Scattering 5.4%
1996 Howard Dean 70.5% John L. Gropper 22.4% N/A 0% Scattering 7.1%
1998 Howard Dean 55.6% Ruth Dwyer 41.1% N/A 0% Scattering 3.3%
2000 Howard Dean 50.4% Ruth Dwyer 37.9% Anthony Pollina (Progressive) 9.5% Scattering 2.2%
Source: Vermont Secretary of State

2004 presidential candidacy

Dean began his bid for President as a "long shot" candidate. ABC News ranked him eight out of 12 in a list of potential presidential contenders in May of 2002. That summer, his campaign was featured as the cover article in The New Republic and in the following months he received expanded media attention. His campaign slowly gained steam, and by autumn of 2003, Dean had become the apparent frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, performing strongly in most polls and outpacing his rivals in fundraising. This latter feat was attributed mainly to his innovative embrace of the Internet for campaigning, and the majority of his donations came from individual Dean supporters, who came to be known as Deanites, or, more commonly, Deaniacs. (Critics often labeled them "Deany Boppers", a reference to his support from young activists)

During his presidential campaign, conservative critics labeled Dean's political views as those of an extreme liberal; however, in liberal Vermont, Dean, long known as a staunch advocate of fiscal restraint, was regarded as a moderate. Many left-wing critics who supported fellow Democrat Dennis Kucinich or independent Ralph Nader charged that, at heart, Dean was a "Rockefeller Republican"—socially liberal, while fiscally conservative.

Message and themes

Dean began his campaign by emphasizing health care and fiscal responsibility, and championing grassroots fundraising as a way to fight special interests. However, his opposition to the U.S. plan to invade Iraq (and his forceful criticism of Democrats in Congress who voted to authorize the use of force) quickly eclipsed other issues. By challenging the war in Iraq at a time when mainstream Democratic leaders were either neutral or cautiously supportive, Dean positioned himself to appeal to his party's activist base. Dean often quoted the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone (who had recently died in a plane crash) as saying that he represented "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party". His message resonated among frustrated Democratic primary voters who felt that their party hadn't done enough to oppose the policies of the Republicans. Thus, Dean also succeeded in differentiating himself from his primary opponents.

Dean's approach organizationally was also novel. His campaign made extensive use of the Internet, pioneering techniques quickly adopted by politicians of all political persuasions. His supporters organized real-world meetings, participated in online forums, donated money online, canvassed for advertising ideas, and distributed political talking points. In terms of money, publicity and activism, Dean therefore quickly staked out a leadership position in the field of candidates. In this way, he was able to bypass existing party and activist infrastructure and built his own online network of supporters. In terms of traditional "ground troops", however, Dean remained at a disadvantage. Dean adopted a coffee shop strategy to visit grassroot activists in all 99 Iowa counties, but he lacked the campaign infrastructure to get voters to the polls that his opponents had.

Dean's other political vulnerability also dovetailed with one of his strengths. The same positioning that drew strong support from the left wing generated anxiety in the Democratic leadership, and alienated centrists who were still supportive of a war in Iraq. Dean was vulnerable to both direct attacks on the wisdom of opposing war in Iraq and to indirect attacks that a candidate who took such a position would be too extreme to win a general election. The visibility of Dean's progressive supporters, and his own forceful rhetoric, lead many voters to consider him a radical (despite his moderate record in Vermont). Dean had a difficult time before the climax of the Iowa caucus.

Use of the Internet

Dean's presidential campaign was remarkable at the time for its extensive use of the Internet to reach out to its supporters. The candidate's staff, and occasionally even the candidate, frequently "blogged" while on the campaign trail and even sought advice on important campaign-related decisions -- in at least two instances even making decisions through online polls of supporters. By soliciting contributions online, the campaign shattered previous fundraising records for the Democratic presidential primary. The Dean campaign also encouraged its supporters to join monthly Meetups, which would lay the groundwork for volunteers at the local level. Dean has been credited with being the first national candidate to play to the strengths of the Internet, in particular by engaging the American public directly in the political process. His Internet success is often attributed to campaign manager Joe Trippi.

Fundraising

In the "invisible primary" of raising campaign dollars, Howard Dean led the Democratic pack in the early stages of the 2004 campaign. Among the candidates, he ranked first in total raised ($25.4 million as of September 30, 2003) and first in cash-on-hand ($12.4 million). However, even this performance paled to next to that of George W. Bush, who by that date had raised $84.6 million for the Republican primary campaign, in which he had no real challenger. Prior to the 2004 primary season, the Democratic record for most money raised in one quarter by a primary candidate was held by Bill Clinton in 1995, raising $10.3 million during a campaign in which he had no primary opponent. In the third quarter of 2003, the Dean campaign raised $14.8 million, shattering Clinton's record. All told, Dean's campaign raised around $50 million.

While presidential campaigns have traditionally obtained finance by tapping wealthy, established political donors, Dean's funds came largely in small donations over the Internet; the average overall donation size was just under $80. This method of fundraising offered several important advantages over traditional fundraising, in addition to the inherent media interest in what was then a novelty. First, raising money on the Internet was relatively inexpensive, compared to conventional methods such as events, telemarketing, and direct mail campaigns. Secondly, as donors on average contributed far less than the legal limit ($2,000 per individual), the campaign could continue to resolicit them throughout the election season.

Dean's director of grassroots fundraising, Larry Biddle, came up with the idea of the popular fundraising "bat", an image of a cartoon baseball player and bat which appeared on the site every time the campaign launched a fundraising challenge. The bat encouraged Web site visitors to contribute money immediately through their credit cards. This would lead to the bat filling up like a thermometer with the red color indicating the total funds. The site often took suggestions from the netroots on their blog. One of these suggestions led to one of the campaigns biggest accomplishments - an image of Dean eating a turkey sandwich encouraged supporters to donate $250,000 in three days to match a big-donor dinner by Vice President Dick Cheney. The online contributions from that day matched what Cheney made from his fundraiser.*

In November 2003, after a much-publicized online vote among his followers, Dean became the first Democrat to forgo federal matching funds (and the spending limits that go with them) since the system was established in 1974. (John Kerry later followed his lead.) In addition to state-by-state spending limits for the primaries, the system limits a candidate to spending only $44.6 million until the Democratic National Convention in July, which sum would almost certainly run out soon after the early primary season. (George W. Bush declined federal matching funds in 2000 and did so again for the 2004 campaign.)

In a sign that the Dean campaign was starting to think beyond the primaries, they began in late 2003 to speak of a "$100 revolution" in which 2 million Americans would give $100 in order to compete with Bush.

Endorsements

Though Dean lagged in early endorsements, he acquired many critical ones as his campaign snowballed. By the time of the Iowa caucuses, he led among commitments from superdelegates — elected officials and party officers entitled to convention votes by virtue of their positions. On November 12, 2003, he received the endorsements of the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, two politically powerful (and often rivalrous) labor unions. Dean received the endorsement of former Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore, on December 9, 2003. In the following weeks Dean was endorsed by former U.S. senators Bill Bradley and Carol Moseley Braun, unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates from the 2000 and 2004 primaries, respectively.

Other high-profile endorsers included former Governor Bruce Babbitt, Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., former Governor Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., Senator Tom Harkin, Baltimore Mayor Martin J. O'Malley, Congressman John Conyers, Governor Jim McGreevey, former Governor Toney Anaya, former Senator Fred R. Harris, Congressman Major Owens, former Senator Howard Metzenbaum, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, former Governor Ann Richards, Senator Jim Jeffords, and Senator Patrick Leahy Several hollywood celebrities also endorsed him, including Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, Susan Sarandon, Paul Newman, and Robin Williams[http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/diaryofapoliticaltourist/trail/howard_dean.html.

Many pundits would blame such endorsements for the campaign's eventual collapse. Dean was running as an outsider, and accepting the support of such establishment figures was seen by some as hypocritical.

Iowa results and the campaign's collapse

On January 19, 2004, Dean's campaign suffered a blow when a last-minute surge by rivals John Kerry and John Edwards led to an embarrassing third-place defeat for Dean in the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses, representing the first votes cast in primary season. Dean had been a strong contender for weeks in advance in that state, battling with Richard A. "Dick" Gephardt for first place in the polls. To the surprise of the Dean and Gephardt campaigns, Dean finished third in Iowa behind Kerry and John Edwards, with Gephardt finishing fourth. Since Dean had spent months leading Iowa tracking polls, his third-place finish was widely considered a sign that the campaign was losing momentum. Most analysts blamed intense negative campaigning between Dean and Gephardt as the reason for their losses. Many Dean supporters questioned whether allegedly unfair media coverage played a role in the result. The Atlantic Monthly's Joshua Green reported that in early January, the Wesley Clark campaign had leaked information to the press showing Dean to be "unelectable." Though every campaign, including Dean's, sends negative information to the press about rival candidates, Green claims the media turned against both Clark and Dean. Other insiders attribute the loss to staff and supporters inexperienced with the caucus process.

Dean attended a post-caucus rally for his volunteers in Iowa to deliver his concession speech, aimed at cheering up those in attendance. Shouting over the cheers of his enthusiastic audience, Dean didn't realize the crowd noise was being filtered out by his unidirectional microphone, leaving only his full-throated exhortations audible to the television viewers. To those at home, it sounded as if he was raising his voice out of sheer emotion. Additionally, Dean began his speech with a flushed-red face, clenching his teeth as he rolled up his sleeves. Recordings from within the crowd made it clear that Dean was shouting in order to be heard over the cheers of the crowd.

Many in the television audience criticized the speech as loud, peculiar, and unpresidential. * In particular, this quote from the speech was aired repeatedly in the days following the caucus:

"Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York … And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! Yeaaaaagggggh!!!"
This final "yeaaaaagggggh" has become known in American political folklore as either "the Dean Scream" or the "I Have a Scream" speech (an allusion to I Have a Dream). There is disagreement as to how to transcribe the scream. Some supporters suggest that it should be spelled "yeah!," while many in the print media, such as Time Magazine transcribed it as "yearrgh!" or some variation thereof.

Dean conceded that the speech did not project the best image, jokingly referring to it as a "crazy, red-faced rant" on The Late Show with David Letterman. In an interview later that week with Diane Sawyer, he said he was "a little sheepish … but I'm not apologetic". Sawyer and many others in the national broadcast news media later expressed some regret about overplaying the story CNN issued a public apology and admitted in a statement that they indeed may have 'overplayed' the incident. The incessant replaying of the "Dean Scream" by the press became a debate on the topic of whether Dean was the victim of media bias. Such reports certainly fit with reports of "unelectability", as shown by Green's Atlantic Monthly piece. The scream scene was shown an estimated 633 times by cable and broadcast news networks in just four days following the incident, a number that does not include talk shows and local news broadcasts. [http://www.loyolaphoenix.com/news/2004/02/11/Discourse/The-Scream.That.Left.Us.Blind-603629.shtml" target="_blank" >* However, those who were in the actual audience that day insist that they were not aware of the infamous scream until they returned to their hotel rooms and saw it on TV.

On January 27 Dean again suffered a defeat, finishing second to Kerry in the New Hampshire primary. As late as one week before the first votes were cast in Iowa's caucuses, Dean had enjoyed a 30% lead in New Hampshire opinion polls; accordingly, this loss represented another major setback to his campaign.

Iowa and New Hampshire were only the first in a string of embarrassing losses for the Dean campaign, culminating in a disappointing third place showing in the Wisconsin primary on February 17, 2004. The next day, Dean announced that his candidacy had "come to an end," though he continued to urge people to vote for him, so that Dean delegates would be selected for the convention and could influence the party platform. He later won the Vermont primaries on Super Tuesday, March 2, 2004. This latter victory, a surprise even to Dean himself, was due in part to the lack of a serious anti-Kerry candidate in Vermont (John Edwards had declined to put his name on the state's ballot, expecting Dean to win in a landslide), and in part to a television ad produced, funded, and aired in Vermont by grassroots Dean supporters.

Impact

While his presidential bid ultimately ended in failure, his supporters felt it was not a lost cause, serving to frame the White House race by tapping in to voters' concerns about the war in Iraq, in the process energizing Democrats and sharpening criticism of incumbent George W. Bush. At present, many political pundits affirm that Dean's contribution was "cathartic" for the party. Dean's lone Pennsylvania delegate, State Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, said Dean's decision, ultimately emulated by Kerry, to forgo primary federal matching funds and exceed the matching fund spending limits "marked the day the Democratic Party became a serious contender for national power in 2004."

Campaign timeline

See also U.S. Democratic Party presidential nomination, 2004, U.S. presidential election, 2004 timeline.

Post-campaign & Democracy for America

Following Dean's withdrawal after the Wisconsin primary, he pledged to support the eventual Democratic nominee. Though many supporters encouraged him to support the only remaining "non-establishment candidate," John Edwards, he remained neutral until John Kerry became the presumptive nominee. Dean endorsed Kerry on March 25, 2004 in a speech at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

On March 18, 2004, Dean founded the group Democracy for America. This group was created to house the large, Internet-based organization Dean created for his presidential campaign. Its goal is to help like-minded candidates get elected to local, state and federal offices. It has endorsed several sets of twelve candidates known as the Dean Dozen. Dean turned over control of the organization to his brother, Jim Dean, when he became Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Dean strongly urged his supporters to support Kerry as opposed to Ralph Nader, arguing that a vote for Nader would only help to re-elect President Bush because he believed that most who vote for Nader are likely to have voted for Kerry if Ralph Nader was not running. However fears that Ralph Nader would play a "spoiler" role that would harm the Democrats in the 2004 election proved unfounded -- Kerry's margins of loss in states won by President Bush were all substantially larger than the percentage of votes gathered by Nader. Dean argued that Nader would be more effective if he lobbied on election law reform issues and during his campaign. Dean supported several election law reform issues such as campaign finance reform, and Instant Runoff Voting.

Successful campaign for DNC Chair

Dean was elected Chairman of the Democratic National Committee on February 12, 2005, after all his opponents dropped out of the race when it became apparent Dean had the votes to become Chair. Those opponents included former Congressman Martin Frost, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, former Congressman and 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer, and strategists Donnie Fowler, David Leland, and Simon Rosenberg. Other prominent Democrats considered running but ultimately declined.

Many prominent Democrats opposed Dean's campaign; House Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid are rumored to be among them. Dean satisifed his critics by promising to focus on fund-raising and campaigning as DNC Chair, and avoid policy statements. This strategy, on his part, may be partly to blame for some of his controversial statements.

50-state strategy

After Dean became Chairman of the DNC, he pledged to bring reform to the Party. Rather than focusing just on 'swing states,' Dean proposed what has come to be known as the 50-State Strategy. The goal, the DNC says, is for the Democratic Party to be committed to winning elections at every level in every region of the country, with Democrats organized in every single voting precinct in the country. State party chairs have lauded Dean with praise for raising money directly for the individual state parties.

Dean’s strategy uses a post-Watergate model taken from the Republicans of the mid-seventies. Working at the local, state and national level, the GOP built the party from the ground up. Dean's plan is to seed the local level with young and committed candidates, building them into state candidates in future races. Dean has travelled extensively through out the country with the plan, including places like Utah, Mississippi and Texas, states in which Republicans have dominated the political landscape.

Further changes have been made in attempting to make the stated platform of the Democratic party more coherent and compact. Overhauling the website, the official platform of the 2004 campaign, which was largely criticized as avoiding key issues and being the product of party insiders, was replaced with a simplified, though comprehensive categorizing of positions on a wide range of issues.

Dean’s plan marks a long-term shift, instead of the old Presidential politics Democrats played in the past.

Fund-raising

Through grassroots fundraising Howard Dean has been able to raise millions more than the previous DNC Chairman at the same point after the 2000 election. Dean has raised the most money by any DNC Chairman in a similar post election period. This was especially apparent when the Federal Election Commission reported that the DNC had raised roughly $86.3 million in the first six months of 2005, an increase of over 50% on the amount raised during the same period of 2003. In comparison, the RNC fundraising activities represented a gain of only 2%. Additional attempts to capitalize on this trend was the introduction of "Democracy bonds", a program under which small donors would give a set amount every month. Although it only reached over 31,000 donors by May 2006, far off-pace from the stated goal of 1 million by 2008, it has, nonetheless, contributed considerably to the funding of the DNC.

Further reading

  • Dean, Howard. You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America. Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0743270134
  • Dean, Howard. Winning Back America. Simon & Schuster, 2003. ISBN 0743255712
  • Dunnan, Dana. Burning at the Grassroots: Inside the Dean Machine. Pagefree (vanity press), 2004. ISBN 1589612612
  • Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. ReganBooks, 2004. ISBN 0060761555
  • Van Susteren, Dirk. Howard Dean: A Citizen's Guide to the Man Who Would Be President. Steerforth, 2003. ISBN 1586420755

Notes

  1. A copy of the speech, in addition to an audio file available for Windows Media Player, is available here.

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