Democrats’ Turmoil Tests Party’s Low-Key Leader

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By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: April 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — The turmoil in the Democratic presidential race has presented a sharp test of Howard Dean’s low-profile approach to leading the Democratic National Committee, bringing calls from many Democrats for him to take a more aggressive role in defusing the threat of a protracted and divisive nominating fight.

After months in which he was largely absent from public deliberations about how to avert a risk to the party’s hopes of taking the White House in November, Mr. Dean stepped forward last week to say he wanted the contest resolved by July 1 and for Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to tone down their attacks on each other.

Yet three years after he won election as the party chairman by running largely as an outsider, it is not clear that Mr. Dean has the political skills or the stature with the two campaigns to bring the nominating battle to a relatively quick and unifying conclusion.

Indeed, 24 hours after he made his remarks, Mrs. Clinton said she intended to keep fighting for the nomination through the summer, if necessary. It was an unmistakable rebuke to Mr. Dean, who has never had good relations with the Clintons.

In an interview, Mr. Dean said he was taking steps to pave the way to a smooth convention in Denver this summer, suggesting that he had had private conversations with both campaigns.

Mr. Dean and his aides said they were assembling resources — voter lists, political organizations and polling on vulnerabilities of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Beyond that, Mr. Dean and other Democrats argued that with the party so divided — and in the midst of a fight between two outsized political figures — there were limits to what he could, or should, do.

“I’m making calls all the time to people,” he said. “I’ve spoken to a great number of leaders who are not aligned. The operative thing here is let the voters get to have their say before the Washington politicians have their say.”

Still, senior officials in both campaigns said they had heard rarely from Mr. Dean on matters like the tone of the contest and how it might be concluded and what to do about the Michigan and Florida delegates, the subject of a bitter and potentially debilitating debate between the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

The chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, Karen Thurman, said she could not recall the last time Mr. Dean had called her to try work out the dispute. She and other Florida Democrats are to meet with Mr. Dean on Wednesday to try to persuade him to agree to a compromise.

Some Democratic Party leaders, while offering sympathy for Mr. Dean’s plight, said it was urgent that he take a more assertive role to restore peace. Several suggested that Mr. Dean — who has sought to build a legacy by expanding party operations to all 50 states — risked having his tenure as party leader remembered for a traumatizing loss in a year where most Democrats think victory should be easy.

“I think he should be talking to governors and Al Gore and John Kerry,” said Donald Fowler, a former party chairman who supports Mrs. Clinton. “I think he should be convening almost daily conversations with people — including the campaigns — trying to reach a solution.”

“If I were a chair, I would be a little more public in what I was doing and suggesting,” Mr. Fowler said. “The D.N.C. chair rarely has an opportunity to do stuff, but this is one of those occasions.”

Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee drew attention last month when he proposed a solution: Have the elected Democratic officials and party leaders known as superdelegates convene after the voting is done on June 3 to resolve the fight. Mr. Bredesen said he had acted in part because he saw no evidence that Mr. Dean or other leaders were trying to resolve the situation.

“What I try to do is when I see a problem to step up,” Mr. Bredesen said. “I think the party needs to take a hand in this thing.”

Mr. Dean, a reserved former governor of Vermont, goes home most weekends and spends most of his weekdays on the road. In Washington, he stays at a hotel. His approach and style offer a sharp contrast to a string of big-shoulder, high-profile party chairmen —Terry McAuliffe or the late Ron H. Brown — who rose through the party ranks and were fixtures at the parties, fund-raisers and restaurants that make up this city’s political culture and where much of the political conversation takes place.

He in many ways ran for chairman as a candidate defying the Democratic establishment, and his first years were marked by a very public feud with Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, over Mr. Dean’s trademark proposal to use Democratic National Committee money to build organizations in all 50 states. He does not have particularly close relationships with many of the people who are central to the Clinton and Obama campaigns or Washington Democratic players.

“I have never heard from him,” said Charles T. Manatt, who was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985. “But he is a totally different style from someone like me who came in through the party process. Dean doesn’t live in town so he hasn’t connected with a lot of people in town.”

Whatever difficulties Mr. Dean may be having, he remains extremely popular with state leaders across the country, in no small part because of the money he has invested in building the state organizations.

He has asserted that the expenditures are vital to allowing the party to make inroads in Republican territory, but his approach has been mocked by Mr. Emanuel, who, like some other Democrats, has pressed the party to direct money toward high-priority races now rather than toward a hope of gains in the future.

Some Democrats said Mr. Dean was wise to stand back in the presidential race, saying that nothing could be done until tensions between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama were resolved.

“I honestly think it’s laying too much at his door, laying too much on his plate,” said Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the national party and a prominent supporter and friend of Mr. Dean. “He truly only has limited impact on this despite people’s sense that a party chair can wave a magic wand and make it happen. I know other people will disagree with that.”

“As a former chair, I have to acknowledge that I don’t think any former chair has in my memory gone through a period of time that is as complex as this,” Mr. Grossman said. “Howard has been scrupulously nonpartisan in terms of all his activities in dealing with this campaign.”

Mr. Dean’s allies argued that his call for the fight to be settled by July 1 or so — after the last primaries in early June — was providing a rallying point for other party leaders. “I would hope there would be a resolution of the contest before July,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who will preside over the convention, said Tuesday.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told reporters that he believed that the superdelegates, who could determine the nomination, should make their preferences known by July, embracing at least the concept proposed by Mr. Dean.

But frustration with Mr. Dean’s hands-off approach was reflected across Democratic ranks. Peter S. Lowy, a prominent Los Angeles contributor who has held regular fund-raisers for Democratic campaign committees, sent Mr. Dean a letter complaining about his leadership of the party during this period.

“As long-term supporters of the party, we have been singularly dismayed with your performance during the current Democratic presidential primary season,” Mr. Lowy wrote.

Paul G. Kirk, a former party chairman and supporter of Mr. Dean, said that he thought it was possible for exchanges between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama to hurt the eventual nominee, and that Mr. Dean could do something to avoid that.

“Some of the stuff going on today could be problematic, something that the nominee is going to wish hadn’t happened,” Mr. Kirk said. “There are things that a party chairman can do. He could be quietly trying to bring people to the table and say we’ve got to knock off this noise levels and get things back on a positive tack.”

In the interview, Mr. Dean suggested that he was doing something like that, although he would not elaborate.

“I do think that’s part of my role — and I have been doing that,” he said. “But I don’t start doing it publicly. It’s much more effective not to share a private conversation.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/us/polit...ml?ref=politics