'Common interests' key to South vote, Dean says
Says he'll focus on jobs, education, health care
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean sketched a broad framework yesterday for how he plans to win the South, a region increasingly unfriendly to Democrats electorally and one that critics have questioned Dean's ability to win, since he has served and lived in a nearly all-white state.
South Carolina holds its primary on Feb. 3, one of seven states to select delegates that day, and is considered a bellwether for other Southern states and African-American voters, who are 30 percent of the state's population but make up nearly half the Democratic electorate.
Dean, a former governor of Vermont, said the key to winning the South lies in focusing on jobs, education, and health care rather than social issues -- such as abortion, guns, and religion -- that increasingly have pushed conservative voters into the Republican Party.
"We are going to talk about our common interests, not the things that divide us," Dean said at an appearance at a hotel. The state is a key battleground that could prove crucial for Dean to clinch the nomination.
Yesterday, Dean focused on African-American voters, attending a black church service in the morning and in an afternoon speech dubbed "Community Relations," arguing that the message he is sending to poor and middle-class white Southerners extends to African-Americans. "There are no black concerns or white concerns," he said before a largely white audience at the hotel. "There are only human concerns."
Asked afterward why he had not drawn more African-Americans to the standing-room-only event at the hotel, in contrast to the all-black audience at the church, Dean said, "You find people where they are, not necessarily invite them and they show up."
He made no mention of his past gaffe in which he said the Democratic Party should reach out to whites with Confederate flags on their trucks. Dean later apologized for any pain the statement may have caused.
A recent poll suggested Dean was neck and neck with other Democratic front-runners in South Carolina, but indicated that he had made notable improvement.
Dean, who recently hired a state director and yesterday opened a Columbia office, has campaigned in South Carolina eight times since January, including yesterday's visit. He also began airing commercials in the state last week.
Yesterday, Dean picked up the endorsement of Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois congressman who is the son of the former presidential contender and was born in Greenville, S.C.
Another key endorsement, that of US Representative James E. Clyburn, the only African-American in the South Carolina delegation, is expected to go to US Representative Richard A. Gephardt.
Also yesterday, Dean's campaign released a statement on the lawsuit filed last week against him and the state of Vermont by a conservative government watchdog alleging that the governor's papers he had sealed for 10 years should be made available to the public. Dean said at the time of the sealing that he was worried about embarrassing revelations coming out of the records while he was running for president.
"A judge will now decide which documents should be released," the campaign said in a statement. "This removes the issue from the context of a political campaign and puts it in the hands of an unimpeachable third party, which is where it belongs."
Polls indicate that Dean has a solid lead in New Hampshire and is battling for the edge in Iowa with Gephardt. In a measure of the Iowa contest's intensity, Dean has dispatched two top aides there, Tricia Enright, the campaign's communication director, and Mike Ford, a key aide to campaign manager Joe Trippi.
