For Howard Dean, New Voters Are Key Constituency
Candidate Bets He Can Beat Bush by Bringing Millions
Of People Into Electorate
By JOHN HARWOOD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Updated January 16, 2004
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Howard Dean's 2004 presidential rivals say he can't beat George W. Bush in November. And even Mr. Dean concedes that among Americans who voted four years ago his rivals may be right.
"We can't beat George Bush with the same people who voted in 2000," Mr. Dean told supporters at a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds this week. "The only way we can beat George Bush is by attracting people who have given up on politics."
On top of the 105 million Americans who showed up in 2000, Dean strategists believe they can attract as many as eight million new voters. If they succeed, they could change the paradigm for presidential campaigns as fundamentally as their Internet-fueled fund-raising efforts already have. For years, as voter turnout shrank and the two parties approached parity, politicians spent less effort on luring non-voters than on winning over weakly committed swing voters within the known universe of Americans who go the polls.
But that may not work for Democrats in 2004. A little more than half of eligible voters turned out in 2000, and if the same number or fewer go to the polls this year, President Bush's chances of re-election appear bright. A confluence of favorable developments in recent months have lifted the Republican incumbent's approval rating and given him new strength among swing voters. The economy is rebounding, a new Medicare prescription-drug benefit is on the way, and Saddam Hussein is in custody.
So this year, Mr. Dean is spearheading the use of a different tactic: Instead of focusing on winning over swing voters, they're trying to get additional voters to the polls. In this area, Mr. Dean has a leg up on his rivals. He has demonstrated his strength in grass-roots organizing by using the Internet to raise tens of millions of dollars and build a nationwide cadre of volunteers.
Mr. Dean's audacious goal is now being tested in places such as Larry and Barbara James's family room in an affluent neighborhood near downtown Des Moines. On a recent evening, the middle-age couple, a mortgage banker and a teacher, sat with three other Dean volunteers poring over computer-generated lists of neighbors they might persuade to participate in the presidential caucus on Monday -- the first contest of the 2004 campaign.
Mr. James retreated to the living room with a cordless phone and a few of the hard cases: Iowans who hadn't previously made time to venture out on a frigid winter night for caucus meetings that might take two hours or more.
A woman who answered the phone at the home of a woman named Lucinda said Lucinda wasn't there. Mr. James suspected it was Lucinda trying to avoid a conversation. He didn't reach Faith, either, so he couldn't tell how to code her on the scale ranging from 1 (sure-fire Dean supporter) to 6 (not showing up on Jan. 19). He did connect with a 29-year-old named Matt, but Matt said he wasn't interested. After the "Dean Leaders" for Des Moines's precinct 53 finish at 9 p.m., each of the five takes another 30 or so numbers to begin phoning the next day.
The campaigns of Democratic competitors close on his heels -- Rep. Richard Gephardt, Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John Edwards -- are also making frenzied efforts to turn out new caucus voters. But more than anyone else, Mr. Dean is banking on a surge of new voters, both in Iowa's Democratic contest and in the November general election.
"What this whole fight is about ... is about whether you can grow the electorate, or not," says Joe Trippi, Mr. Dean's campaign manager.
Recent American history says no, at least not in quantities sufficient to tilt the outcome. The rate of voter turnout has declined steadily in the four decades since 65.4% of those eligible cast ballots in John F. Kennedy's 1960 victory over Richard M. Nixon. In the Bush-Gore contest of 2000, 53.8% of Americans voted. The surface explanation is simple apathy. Underneath the trend lies the weakening of community institutions that once generated political participation, such as churches and civic clubs. So does the heightened cynicism about political leaders that began in the Vietnam and Watergate eras.
Mr. Dean's vault to the front of the Democratic pack raises the possibility that he can alter the equation. With a cadre of technology-savvy "Deaniacs," the ex-governor has tapped opposition to the Iraq war and antipathy toward Mr. Bush to enlist more than 550,000 supporters over the Internet. More than 280,000 of them have sent in a total of more than $40 million, far outpacing Democratic competitors who've been working more affluent and familiar sources of Democratic money.
Other candidates have made ambitious bids to attract new voters, from George McGovern's 1972 crusade against the Vietnam War, to Gary Hart's "new ideas" insurgency in 1984, to Ross Perot's independent bid in 1992, to Jesse Ventura's Minnesota gubernatorial win in 1998, to John McCain's Republican-primary challenge in 2000. All those political comets eventually flamed out
Mr. Dean's strategists insist he has more grass-roots strength. Unlike Mr. McGovern, they say, he can brandish a centrist fiscal record in Vermont to blunt attacks on his liberalism. Unlike Messrs. McCain and Hart, he can unite his party's base. And unlike Mr. Perot, Dean strategists say, he can run as a straight-talking foe of special interests from within one of the two major parties.
Political veterans in both parties remain skeptical that Mr. Dean can succeed where others have failed. Bush advisers envision a potential turnout surge for Mr. Dean that is measurable but marginal. Some nonpartisan observers agree that's the likeliest outcome.
Experience proves that "there is an upward limit," says Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for Study of the American electorate. He sees a 3- to 4-percentage-point uptick in turnout in November whomever Mr. Bush faces, largely because Americans see higher stakes in 2004 than in 2000. For Mr. Dean to expand the voter pool beyond that isn't impossible, he concludes, but would be very difficult.
There's no doubt that rousing new enthusiasm in the country as a whole will prove more difficult for Mr. Dean than it has been in the nomination contest. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows greater Democratic sympathies for Mr. Dean among those who aren't registered to vote than among those who are. But among all unregistered voters, there isn't a greater propensity to vote for Mr. Dean -- either in the Democratic race or in the general election.
In fact, those not registered are slightly more supportive of the Iraq war than Americans as a whole. So are younger voters, whom Mr. Dean has been counting on but who have rarely turned out in large numbers. An exception was Mr. Ventura's third-party win. So far, "Dean is no Jesse Ventura" when it comes to drawing young voters, observes Robert Teeter, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with his Democratic counterpart Peter Hart.
In some ways Iowa is an unfriendly venue for Mr. Dean, since its population is disproportionately elderly, and Mr. Dean is counting on rallying the young.
But in other ways it is just the sort of place that's ripe for a display of his campaign's mobilizing potential. Past efforts to enlarge Democratic turnout -- such as a new $15 million effort that the nonprofit Center for Community Change announced in Washington this week -- have focused largely on finding new low-income voters, especially minorities. Mr. Dean's antiwar, fiscally centrist, socially liberal message has proved most appealing so far to upscale whites who may be easier to goad to the polls. In Iowa, as in Mr. Dean's Vermont home base, whites make up well over 90% of the population.
Most auspicious of all for a show of strength is the tiny number of Iowa Democrats who have participated in past caucuses. Just over 10% turned out for the Al Gore-Bill Bradley contest in 2000. That means any significant increase could yield a big dividend on Monday night.
"Most people in campaigns don't have faith in organizing tactics," says Jonathan Rosen, a blue-jeans-clad New Jersey native who helps direct Iowa turnout efforts from Mr. Dean's buzzing, paper-strewn headquarters on Locust Avenue. "They don't believe a new universe is coming out. [But] that's the only way Dean wins."
The process starts with a cadre of paid organizers armed with lists of Iowans supporting Mr. Dean, compiled in part from the candidate's phone banks; any Iowan who has donated to Mr. Dean over the Internet or clicked to register support on the candidate's Web site is already listed. Organizers then seek to identify "captains" in each of the state's 1,997 voting precincts, and an even more elite corps of "Dean Leaders" who ultimately carry much of the burden of generating turnout.
In the final weeks before caucus day, each of the roughly 900 Dean Leaders has received a list of 100 potential backers to "own," or take responsibility for contacting and turning out. In addition, each one is charged with generating a list of 50 other personal acquaintances that they may be able to win over.
With the caucuses just days away, Mr. Rosen assembled about 75 Des Moines-area Dean Leaders to exhort them to close the deal. About one-fourth had themselves never attended a caucus, so Mr. Rosen and other campaign organizers walked through how it's done: "Drag" as many as possible to caucus sites by 6:30 p.m., "hug" new participants who might be uncomfortable, make sure to arrive with a fat stack of voter-registration cards to enroll those who haven't registered before.
Afterward, the Dean Leaders received new lists of Iowans to call. Most reached into a nearby box of cellphones and started calling right away.
Buffy Wicks, a 26-year-old organizer from San Francisco with a diamond stud in her nose, asked the Jameses to broaden their efforts by examining lists of independents and Republicans whom they know and consider persuadable.
A good turnout, in Mr. James's estimation, is if he and his volunteer helpers can pull 10 new participants to his Monday night caucus at Roosevelt High School. If the Dean campaign could manage the same in every Iowa precinct, those 20,000 additional allies would almost certainly deliver a landslide victory.
Even the most optimistic Dean strategists don't expect that many. The polls, which focus on Iowans whose past behavior makes pollsters think they'll turn out, have grown extremely tight.
"We have a big chunk of people who are total newcomers and thus are not ... being polled," says Dean strategist Paul Maslin. "Whether it's 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000, we can't say."
Thursday night, Mr. James said he could identify at least two of them. Barbara James finally connected with Lucinda, who pledged that she and her sister would both attend their first presidential caucus on Monday. |
