As money rolls in, Dean strives to hold on to outsider status
SHENANDOAH, Iowa -- Howard Dean has made a name for himself as the antiwar candidate, the guy who opposed invading Iraq when his rivals did not. That, along with his outside-the-Beltway political resume, have made the maverick mantle his to claim from the get-go.
But with official word going out this week that Dean had raised more money in the most recent quarter than other contenders -- or any Democrat in history -- the former governor of Vermont went on the offensive, seeking to deflate his image of front-runner in early voting states and resurrect that of the outsider taking on the behemoth that is Washington.
Streaking across southern Iowa, Dean repeatedly went for the capital's jugular and by extension his rivals, who include three US senators, one former senator, and two members of the House.
"We have had enough hot air from Washington folks," he told a crowd in Centerville. "The only way to change America is to bring someone in from outside," he said at the Depot Deli & Lounge in Shenandoah.
And in Mount Ayr, in answer to a question about his temperament, Dean said, "When people get in my face I get in theirs right back. I think we need a little bit of that in Washington."
The anti-Washington message, to be sure, is not a new one for presidential candidates. Ronald Reagan used it, as did Jimmy Carter before him and Bill Clinton after. Others, such as H. Ross Perot, did so with less success.
It is a risk, to some degree, because it chances alienating -- or at least, irking -- the establishment players capable of delivering chunks of votes in large states like California and Texas, where the door-to-door campaigning that wins Iowa and New Hampshire makes only a dent.
Dean has fewer endorsements from members of Congress than other first-tier candidates. Gephardt leads with 32 congressional endorsements and Kerry follows with 19. Dean has nine.
Which is not to say that Dean avoids Washington. He can't. Yesterday, Dean chose the city as his backdrop for an economic speech in which he pledged to create a $100 billion job creation fund for distribution to states and localities and said that President Bush's tax cuts should be repealed.
On the trail, though, Washington is the enemy.
"The Washington culture is not the culture of America," Dean said at a stop in Shenandoah. "What people in Washington worry about is status, privilege, and information. What people worry about in all the rest of America is their jobs, their kids' education, and health insurance."
With that in mind, Dean notes that his campaign donations come mostly in small increments from tens of thousands of people, many of whom appear to be unaligned moderates or voters who supported Senator John S. McCain, Republican of Arizona, in the 2000 primaries. He has recently taken to telling crowds that he got his start in politics by supporting the presidential bid of Carter -- whose rural roots resonated deeply in places like Iowa.
He also lays blame on his rivals for health insurance costs Medicare's financial woes. "What they don't get is they have been there for two-thirds of a century and America has gotten worse, not better, for their efforts," Dean said.
His rivals have taken note and fired back. "Governor Dean keeps saying he's the ony person who balanced budgets," Kerry said at an AARP forum in Des Moines this week, noting that Democrats in Congress did so under Clinton. "We know how to balance budgets in Washington -- we did it."
The argument is an easy one to trip on. In Iowa this week, Dean touted a mobile unit that visits and provides health care to veterans in his state, saying, "Look what we did in Vermont -- it's not all a lot of hot air." But wrapping the program in the anti-Washington rhetoric quickly proved unwise since the program, as Dean dutifully noted, had been the work of Vermont's two US senators.
Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at schweitzer@globe.com.
