State's caucus to test new Dean machine

By David Postman
Seattle Times chief political reporter

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Now that Dean has turned his campaign for president into something looking more like what his supporters would have ridiculed, the test will be whether they are loyal to him or to the innovative startup that once made him the front-runner.

Dean arrives here today as he tries to recover from big losses in Iowa and New Hampshire to Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Instead of Trippi, who pioneered Internet grass-roots politics, the campaign is being managed by a Washington, D.C., insider, former Al Gore aide Roy Neel. Dean himself promises a more centrally controlled, programmed approach he hopes can deliver a badly needed win.

Record-setting fund-raising has slowed to the point that Dean on Wednesday said he'd stop paying his staff for two weeks. The strategy of hitting the airwaves and tarmacs in seven states that hold contests Tuesday has been swapped for a low-budget approach aimed at Washington and Michigan, which hold contests Feb. 7.

Other candidates visiting here this week Other Democratic candidates plan to visit Washington after Tuesday's primaries and caucuses. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is expected Wednesday, though no details are available. The Kerry campaign can be reached at 206-839-8713. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich will spend Wednesday and Thursday in the state. On Wednesday, he will speak at Saint Martin's College in Lacey, meet with Arab-American leaders at the Idriss Mosque in Northgate and hold a "multicultural" event at Town Hall at 7 p.m. On Thursday he will have a campaign breakfast in Everett, meet with Microsoft workers on the company campus and be featured at a state Democratic Party lunch in Seattle before flying to Spokane. For more information, call 206-633-6068.

Top supporters of Dean, a former Vermont governor, say they think the campaign is now on the right track.

"Sometimes idealism and naiveté go hand in hand when it comes to political campaigns," said state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt, among the state's most prominent Dean backers.

"I think what Iowa and New Hampshire did was kind of splash cold water into the face of the Deaniacs that essentially said, 'Look, we have to buckle down and just do a classic campaign here.' They're not just relying on the Internet to solve all of their problems."

Dean's early success was due in part to "the use of open-source politics: a decentralized Internet-based campaign that relinquished a level of control over message, technique, organization yet created a successful and loyal grass-roots network and fund-raising base," said a report by the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University.

The report was released the day of the Iowa caucus, in which Dean finished third.

And after a second loss a week later in New Hampshire, Dean said his campaign needed a more traditional management structure.

"I had felt for some time that we had needed a strong organizational force in the office," Dean told reporters Wednesday. "We had really geared up for what we thought was going to be a front-runner's campaign. It's not going to be a front-runner's campaign. It's going to be a long war of attrition. What we need is decision making that's centralized."

Replacing Trippi is Neel, a former telecom lobbyist, who was named the campaign's chief executive officer.

This is not to say that anyone suggests the campaign's early reliance on the Internet was a mistake.

"A year ago no one knew who Dean was," Alexis Rice, the author of the Johns Hopkins report, said this week. "Dean was able to build a grass-roots network and successfully fund raise online, and was raised to the front-runner level by using the Internet.

"But when it came to getting out the vote, the Internet could not get Dean to come in No. 1 in Iowa or New Hampshire."

In part, she said, that's because the other Democratic campaigns had leveled the field by adopting Dean's Internet strategies. They all raised money online, used Meetup.com to organize supporters and had campaign Web logs based on Dean's Blog America, where supporters could get news and leave their comments.

"I think Dean started an Internet movement, and my question is what happens to Blog America if the Dean campaign does not survive," Rice said. "I think it's become more an online community and movement as much as it is a campaign for a candidate."

And that may have been a problem for Dean.

Trippi was a celebrity in his own right, the target of unbridled ardor from supporters. Staffers called Trippi a "mad scientist" because he "doesn't even realize there's a box to think outside of," as USA Today put it.

There was plenty of excitement about the mechanics of the campaign and the record-setting tallies of small donations raised online.

Ron Faucheux, editor-in-chief of Campaigns & Elections magazine, said much of Dean's appeal was based on the campaign approach, as opposed to the candidate's message. He pointed out that when former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Dean, he talked a lot about the campaign and how Dean had brought so many new people to presidential politics.

"He seemed more enamored with the campaign than the candidate," Faucheux said. "If they're going to change the campaign, it sort of calls into question why some of those people were there to begin with."

The campaign clearly has hit some bumps, and Dean suffered another blow yesterday when Kerry picked up the endorsement of Washington's senior House member, Norm Dicks of Bremerton and Rep. Rick Larsen of Lake Stevens. But a campaign official says there's no question about where supporters' loyalty lies.

"I believe that the people are with this campaign because of Gov. Howard Dean and what he stands for and the powerful message that he's had the courage to stand up and deliver since more than a year ago," said Pamela Eakes, a Seattle woman and national finance co-chairwoman of the campaign.

She is also a longtime friend of Neel's. She said he is a consensus builder who can also run the "lean, mean machine" Dean says he wants in this phase.

"In times of distress in any campaign you're lucky if you can find someone with the skills as well as the personal capacity to pull people together," Eakes said.

"I think the whole campaign is in a transition," she said. "When you're deemed the front-runner 30 days ago and now you're not, all of those dynamics change and you become very strategic and you become, as Howard Dean has always been, a penny pincher."

Money is a new problem for Dean. He finished last year as the top fund-raiser in the Democratic field, collecting record amounts in small donations through the Internet.

But on Thursday, as the campaign sought to stabilize itself, it was big-bucks donors top officials reached out to. Dean, Eakes and others talked to the campaign's top donors in a conference call to assure them that the new campaign organization meant money would be well spent and marshaled for the long haul.

For his part, Neel took a page from Trippi's book and introduced himself to Dean supporters with an entry on Blog America. He told them about his family, pooh-poohed the "Washington insider" label and praised what Trippi had done.

"My job here is pretty simple: help the staff regain the momentum we had prior to Iowa," Neel wrote. "But I'm not here to do Joe Trippi's job — we have different skills and backgrounds. I'm hard at work with the staff today, looking for ways to streamline the operation, make the best use of our money and staff and, most importantly, Gov. Dean's time. I'll be back in touch with you as this process moves forward."

The Deaniacs were quickly in touch. As of last night, more than 800 responses had been posted to Neel's entry.

David Postman: 360-943-9882 or dpostman@seattletimes.com

Information on Kerry's endorsements is from The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company