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The People Powering Howard
By Ruth Marcus
Saturday, July 5, 2003; Page A19
The rain was coming down. The traffic on Rockville Pike was the usual aggravating slog. At the California Tortilla restaurant just off the pike, on a patio boasting a view of a suburban parking lot, nearly 70 people gathered around cafe tables with strangers, writing letters to people they didn't know.
A Howard Dean "meetup" is part Jane Austen, part Bill Gates. Across the country Wednesday night, thousands of people drawn together through the power of the Internet dusted off their epistolary skills, hand-writing letters to Iowa Democrats urging them to support the former Vermont governor.
"I am not some wild-eyed radical or someone who usually gets this involved, but I really, really feel that I need to be a part of a grass-roots effort to put Howard Dean in the White House," Richard Lutz, a 52-year-old Silver Spring linguist, wrote to Anna Houdek of Spillville, Iowa. "We must defeat George Bush before even more damage is done to the America that I know and that I love."
Many of the people behind "people-powered Howard" came to Dean through his stance against the war, but they have stuck around for the rest of the message. For them, Howard Dean holds much the same attraction as Howard Beale: They are mad as hell. Their anger -- and as the Rockville event shows, you don't have to go too far outside the Beltway to tap into it -- is aimed at Bush (they're angry after Florida, even angrier after Iraq) and at establishment Democrats for their perceived failure to stand up to the president.
"I'm blaming Bush for the fact that I'm working in a department store rather than doing something that uses my degree in business," said David Mayer-Sommer, a 23-year-old Ithaca College graduate.
The party establishment may see Dean as a general election disaster in the making (motto: Dukakis II -- just when you thought it was safe to go back to a New England governor), but these folks are convinced that their support for Dean is no mere symbolic protest vote. "What I'm looking for is who can beat Bush, really," said Joann Langston, 60, a Rockville lawyer.
If the Rockville event is any guide, the meet-uppers skew in two demographic directions: fresh out of college or heading toward 60, if not already past. (Of course, Dean supporters in between were probably stuck at home getting the kids to bed.) There was a smattering of anti-globalization protester types, a share of McGovern retreads. Nearly everyone was white.
But one of the most striking things was the number of those without a history in electoral politics -- people such as Langston, whose only previous political foray involved lobbying for more county dog parks, or John Monagle, 42, the kind of guy who watches New Hampshire house parties on C-SPAN but had never before turned out for a candidate. Wednesday marked his fourth monthly Dean meetup.
They reflect the same yearning for authenticity in politics that helped fuel John McCain's candidacy and hobbled Al Gore's in 2000 -- and that this time around seems to be dragging down much of the Democratic field. "He's not afraid to be a Democrat. He's not trying to hew to the center to please everybody and be Republican-lite," said Internet consultant Patricia Martin, 66. "Dean comes across as a real person," said Joe Corbett, 60, of Olney. "He's taking a position, whereas the other guys are 'Which way is the wind blowing?' " Much of that criticism is aimed at Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, particularly Kerry's pretzel-like -- he would say nuanced -- position on Iraq. Kerry was "trying to have it both ways," Monagle said. "His attitude is not sharp, it's a little too rounded, he doesn't deal with the issue head on."
For opposition researchers of both parties, Dean is like a newly discovered gold mine whose gleaming potential has barely begun to be tapped. Flip-flops? Try Dean's change of heart on the death penalty (con to pro -- sort of). Third rail? His support -- albeit no longer; see flip-flops, above -- for raising the Social Security retirement age. Responsible governing? Amending the Constitution to require a balanced budget is "not great public policy," but "we may have to have it anyway."
Where political professionals spy fodder for attack ads, though, the meetup crowd sees welcome candor; where the professionals see sharp elbows and a quick tongue that could cause problems down the road, the meet-uppers see straight talk. "I respect that he's not a hypocrite," said Mariam Gregorian, 23, a violinist.
Dean's ability to pull in money through the Internet -- he topped the Democratic field last quarter with more than $7.5 million -- cemented his place in the top tier, but there are ripple effects yet to be felt. Because so much of his take was in small donations, Dean stands to reap far more in federal matching funds (the federal government matches the first $250 of any primary donation) than rivals who were more heavily reliant on big checks. And while candidates who collected much of their money in $2,000 increments -- think North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and his trial lawyers -- can't return to that well because those donors have "maxed out," Dean has a group that can keep on giving.
Dean was such a long shot when he started campaigning for the Democratic nomination that his own mother dissed him. "I thought it was preposterous, the silliest thing I'd ever heard," Andree Maitland Dean told Meryl Gordon of New York magazine. "It seemed like such a quixotic quest." In Rockville, amid the peach salsa burritos and the cream-colored stationery, she might not have been quite so dismissive.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff.
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