Dean's the one
Dems set to pick former governor as party leader
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By Adam Nagourney and Anne E. Kornblut New York Times - Published: February 2, 2005
WASHINGTON — Howard Dean emerged on Tuesday as the all-but-assured new leader of the Democratic National Committee, as one of his main rivals quit the race and Democrats streamed to announce their support of a man whose presidential campaign collapsed one year ago.
Dean's dominance was secured after Martin Frost, a former representative from Texas, who many Democrats viewed as the institutional counterpart to Dean, dropped out after failing — in what had become an increasingly long-shot effort — to win support from national labor unions. The AFL-CIO instead announced it was remaining neutral, freeing its affiliate members to do what they want, which proved in many cases to board the Dean train.
"It's a fait accompli, it's over: Dean's going to be it," said Gerald McEntee, head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who runs the umbrella political organization for all the unions in the AFL-CIO.
Actually, the final word rests with the 447 members of the Democratic National Committee, who will vote in Washington on Feb. 12 on who should succeed Terry McAuliffe. And Dean faces one last obstacle in the candidacy of Donnie Fowler Jr., a Democratic operative from South Carolina. His aides said they hoped to benefit from the appearance of this as a two-man, 10-day race against an opponent with a history of sometimes unorthodox political behavior, although they acknowledged that the possibility of a real competition was growing ever dimmer.
Still, there were few Democrats in Washington who doubted that Dean, the former governor of Vermont, was on the verge of taking over the party, with the support of much, though certainly not all, of its establishment. They marveled at how someone who had been viewed as a symbol of what was wrong with Democrats — McEntee described Dean as "nuts" after he withdrew his endorsement of him in the middle of the presidential campaign — was now on the brink of becoming the face of the opposition to President Bush.
Democrats said that Dean overcame the hurdles of his failed presidential candidacy by intensely courting Democratic leaders, assuring them that he was not the liberal and undisciplined caricature that many said they saw last year. He also freely made the kind of bread-and-butter promises that have always helped politicians win elections in this country, promising to channel at least $11 million in national Democratic funds to pay salaries at the state parties, according to officials familiar with the discussion.
And Dean pledged that he would bring to the Democratic National Committee the base of young and enthusiastic voters, as well as the generous Internet contributors who helped power Dean's high-flying, if short campaign. Those overtures have been embraced by Democratic leaders, many of whom are still demoralized by the outsized Republican election machine that managed to outdo what Democrats had viewed as McAuliffe's extraordinary success in building the party's organization and fund-raising.
Not incidentally, Dean also benefited from a relatively weak field. Democrats uncomfortable with a Dean candidacy have had trouble finding someone to rally around; Fowler, 37, is viewed as a youthful political operative who even his allies concede may not yet have the stature to lead the party.
Dean is moving to the forefront of Washington politics at a moment when the party, seen as bereft of any obvious leaders in the wake of the November defeat of Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, has been struggling to define its case against Bush on the war in Iraq and on overhauling Social Security.
Dean has already shown that he may not be willing to be the traditional deferential party chair, declaring, for example, that he would have opposed the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales for attorney general and criticizing Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, for saying he would support Justice Antonin Scalia to be chief justice.
Not surprisingly, there were signs that the two Democratic leaders in Congress — neither of whom backed Dean and in fact encouraged one of his rivals, Timothy J. Roemer of Indiana — were not rushing to cede the stage to Dean. "I think that Governor Dean would take his lead from us," said Nancy Pelosi, the House leader.
And Reid said: "The Democratic chairman has a constituency of 447 people. Our constituency is much larger than that."
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans who had already been portraying the party as obstructionist and extreme, seemed somewhere between being delighted and bemused to have Dean to kick around again, instantly invoking a defining moment in his career.
"After 10 years, you wonder if Democrats are running out of ways to say no," said Tom DeLay, the house majority leader. "But then again, if they make Howard Dean the party chairman, I guess you could scream it."
(Carl Hulse contributed reporting to this article)
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