Momentum Forces Dean To Shift to Higher Gear
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A01
washingtonpost.com
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Howard Dean, who had planned to run as an insurgent on a shoestring, is adjusting his campaign to befit his new lot in life: the well-funded, emerging front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Recent polls show the former Vermont governor leading here and in Iowa, the first two stops on the road to the 2004 nomination, running strong in vote-rich California and surging nationally. To build on the momentum, Dean is expanding operations in key states such as Washington and Michigan, and increasingly reaching out to centrists by talking up balanced budgets and gun rights, an issue with broad appeal in key southern states. Today he will embark on his first presidential-style, multistate trip with the national media in tow.
The race remains far too close and volatile to consider any of the nine candidates a true front-runner in a contest much of the public is ignoring, but several rival campaigns now privately talk of the Vermont Democrat as the man to beat. Several challengers are adjusting their campaigns to prepare for a one-on-one showdown with Dean.
"I see ourselves as someone with a big surge, but I don't think we have cemented our position as the front-runner at this point," Dean said in an interview. Still, "we're prepared for all of the attacks we're going to get. Clearly, now, that shoe is on the other foot, and they are going to come after me."
Growing popularity is forcing Dean to shift gears. He's expanding his fundraising and political operations to profit from the surge. Campaign manager Joe Trippi said Dean will raise at least $7.6 million this quarter and perhaps much more as he expands his donor base beyond the mostly Internet-generated liberals who fueled early fundraising.
At the same time, Dean is trying to expand the appeal of his message.
His stump speech to party activists contains some of the most poignant, partisan and crowd-pleasing attacks on President Bush, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Indeed, most of Dean's ideas are clearly to the left of the other Democratic contenders. He's the most outspoken defender of gay rights, a popular position with some activists but one that could hurt him in the South. He's a strong critic of Bush's tax cuts, has offered a costly health care plan and would increase education spending.
The challenge for Dean now is to transition from champion of the antiwar, anti-Bush left to electable Democrat without losing his steam and solid liberal base, according to Democratic strategists. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the race moves south and out West, where centrist Democrats tend to do better and where many think Dean could stumble.
This transition is no easy task for the most outspoken critic of the Iraqi war and one of only two major candidates to call for the complete repeal of Bush's tax cuts, the strategists said. Many think Dean will crumble under the intense scrutiny that comes from being perceived as the front-runner.
"He's yelled the loudest [and] pounded the podium the hardest, and there's a certain market for that style," said Jim Jordan, manager of Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign. "He's going to have to convince [voters] that he has the strength, the experience, the preparation, the temperament and the judgment that's required. . . . Ultimately, that's where he's going to come up short."
Anticipating a relentless wave of attacks that he is too liberal and perceived as too antiwar to win a national election, Dean is playing up his "centrist" views, mostly his support for a balanced budget and gun rights. He is planning to outline his proposal for tax reform in early October.
He wrote an opinion piece yesterday for the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. In it, he hit on a theme troubling independents and fiscal conservatives: soaring government spending. "Discretionary spending must be sustainable, and the federal budget must be balanced over the business cycle," Dean wrote.
The Dean campaign drew much of its early energy -- and money -- from a mix of antiwar activists, rabid Bush haters, gays and, perhaps most importantly, newcomers to politics, mostly college-age people. Yet to win the nomination and defeat Bush, Dean will likely need to broaden his appeal to attract southern Democrats, who tend to be more conservative; independents, who often swing between the two parties, and even Fox News watchers and Journal editorial page readers, who tend to be Republicans.
Dean is increasingly reaching out to these audiences, which brought him to a bipartisan breakfast at the Queen City Rotary Club meeting here early Thursday morning. The 250 Democratic activists who listened to Dean bash Bush repeatedly the night before in a supporter's back yard might not have recognized the tame policy wonk detailing his positions on the economy and foreign affairs to this crowd. It was a sneak preview of how Dean might sound in a general election campaign.
"The nice thing about talking to this Rotary is I can take the spin off my fastball," he told the 50 or so Rotarians. "This is a bipartisan audience, so we don't do the red meat. I am just going to talk about programs."
What started as a point-by-point review of his economic and health care policies turned quickly into his dissertation on foreign affairs in Cuba, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Iraq. Dean has been getting tutored on foreign policy by numerous experts, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar. He has also had several private conversations with retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander who some Democrats see as an attractive running mate for Dean if Clark does not join the race himself.
At the Rotary, Dean insisted he is tougher than Bush on national defense, even if he opposed the war in Iraq. He said he supported the Persian Gulf War, the attack on Afghanistan and, unlike Bush, wants to confront Saudi Arabia over its ties to terrorist groups. "Our oil money goes to the Saudis, where it is recycled and some of it is recycled to Hamas and two fundamentalist schools which teach small children to hate Americans, Christians and Jews," Dean said. "This president will not confront the Saudis."
He essentially agrees with Bush's peace efforts in the Middle East and limited U.S. military assistance to Liberia. Dean, like most Democrats, wants to internationalize the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he would like to greatly increase the number of troops. "What we have to do is get out of this caricature that's been painted [of him] as an antiwar candidate," Trippi said.
Many Democrats, led by presidential candidate Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), argue that Dean would destroy the party's chances of winning a national election because he opposed the Iraq war, which feeds the notion Democrats are soft on defense, and is too liberal on social and spending issues.
Lieberman "is coming after me on policy differences, which is fine," Dean said. "I think some of the others might be little less high-brow about it. We'll find out."
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