Dean called 'real Democrat'
Front-runner's strategies add boost from Bradley
Jon Kamman
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 6, 2004 12:00 AM
With former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley's endorsement of presidential candidate Howard Dean today, the former Vermont governor's campaign is likely to emphasize that the front-runner is "a real Democrat" and more decisive than former Gen. Wesley Clark.
In a telephone conference call that reporters were invited by mistake to hook into, Dean's campaign staff spoke candidly about strategy surrounding the impending Bradley endorsement.
"Tomorrow, (Tuesday) we're going to start by having Bradley do sort of a subtle thing, if we can, by saying that Dean is a real Democrat, and then follow that up the next day with an in-state person that's probably a little more direct," one unidentified staffer said.
The "in-state" appeared to be a reference to New Hampshire, where Bradley, Al Gore's opponent for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, was to appear this morning at a previously unscheduled breakfast.
Another staffer indicated that in a survey of voters Monday by telephone, people expressed concern that "this guy (Dean) is indecisive" and Bradley, a former Hall of Fame player in the National Basketball Association and a three-term senator from New Jersey, could help counter that.
"The Bradley message could be, like, (Dean) knew where he stood on the war, is still a Democrat, takes . . . positions, blah, blah, blah," the staffer said.
The next day, the speaker said, "surrogates" for Dean, both local and national, could "then hit Clark on the flip side of the argument: that he's indecisive, didn't know what party he's with, doesn't know his position on the war," she said.
The strategists ended their conversation when another reporter joined the conference, telling him, "I think you may have the wrong call-in number. This isn't a press call."
Minutes later, by calling the same line, Arizona reporters conducted a 10-minute interview with Dean on the No Child Left Behind Act, the educational reform measure championed by President Bush.
Dean said the 2-year-old law "in general has been a disaster for American public education." He said some of its measures were worthy, but the law "asks for much more than it's willing to pay for."
"Property taxes all over Arizona have gone up, as they have elsewhere in the country, because these standards are so foolish," he said.
In Phoenix, Kevin McCarthy, president of the nonpartisan Arizona Tax Research Association, said that although expenditures for public education in the state have grown dramatically, it would be a "huge stretch" to attribute an extra property-tax burden to the federal act.
Arizona is less dependent than many other states on property taxes for support of schools, McCarthy said. He added, however, that some of the effects of No Child Left Behind may not have hit Arizona yet.
Courtney O'Donnell, a national spokeswoman for Dean's campaign, said she did not know what colleagues discussed in the earlier telephone conference, but the important development was Bradley's alignment with Dean.
"It's big in Arizona," state campaign manager Frank Costanzo added. "Bradley had a lot of support here in 2000," including that of then-state Democratic chairman Mark Fleisher.
Meanwhile Monday, in Bakersfield, Calif., Dolores C. Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, endorsed Dean along with her longtime companion, Richard Chavez, brother of the late UFW leader Cesar Chavez.
azcentral.com |
