Why doesn't Howard endorse Edwards and why are Dean & Trippi being so secretive?:
Dean, Ex-Aide Movements Confuse Backers
Friday, 27-Feb-2004 2:50PM Story from AP / ROSS SNEYD
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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- Former presidential candidate Howard Dean is creating a political organization to advance the issues that fueled his candidacy. So is his one-time campaign manager.
And while both the former Vermont governor and Joe Trippi say they intend to work in a complementary fashion, the efforts are spreading uncertainty among thousands of Web-savvy supporters of the fallen Democratic front-runner.
"I'm confused. Please answer. Is this separate from (Dean for America) or in conjunction with DFA? I think the point needs to be clarified," one person wrote recently on Trippi's Web site.
Wrote another, "Is their separation or not? This question goes repeatedly without answer ... The movement has Howard Dean at its heart and soul. It cannot continue onward with two or more divisions."
Dean abandoned the race last week after failing to win a single state, a disappointing finish for his thousands of supporters who were counting on the candidate to move smoothly toward the nomination. In departing the race, he promised to continue his grass-roots movement.
"The governor's going to create his own organization but looks forward to working with like-minded organizations," Dean spokesman Jay Carson said. "These organizations will work in complement, not in competition."
Trippi said he and Dean talked often, and it wasn't clear yet whether the two groups would be "separate or different ... they may be parallel."
"We're not working at cross-purposes," he added.
On the same day that Trippi announced that he was creating his own organization to promote progressive politics and "the change that Howard Dean's campaign represented," Dean disclosed that he would be announcing his own plans in mid-March.
Trippi, who left Dean's campaign in late January after being replaced as campaign manager, issued a call Thursday to everyone who had worked for, volunteered for, or supported Dean's presidential bid to join his new cause.
The name he chose, Change for America, mimics the one to which supporters of the presidential campaign rallied -- Dean for America.
Within hours of Trippi's announcement, Dean announced in a speech to supporters in New Haven, Conn., and on his Web site, that he was proceeding with plans for his own movement.
"On March 18th, I will announce our plans for a new organization to focus our nationwide grass-roots campaign on transforming the Democratic Party and changing America," Dean said in an e-mail message to his supporters.
Trippi said in an announcement on his own Web site that he had invited former Dean staffers and supporters to his Maryland farm to discuss the future.
The group "decided that we needed to take immediate steps to continue the work we were doing at Dean for America," he wrote. "The work is too important and the community we built is too valuable to end with the primaries."
Trippi's group plans a series of "summits" in two weeks in Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis and Denver.
AP Special Correspondent David Espo in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report. |
