Howard Dean, whose presidential campaign burned white hot here for months, is unexpectedly getting a cold, hard look from the state of New Hampshire.
On a radio station here, the former Vermont governor is mocked with the “Howard howl.” Inside his headquarters, a bruised political team frantically dials supporters, making certain they have no doubts about his candidacy. And a former U.S. senator, once on Dean’s steering committee, withdrew his endorsement late Wednesday.
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Two days after Iowa voters knocked the wind out of his high-flying candidacy, Dean retreated to his Vermont home to recuperate from a nagging cough, deep congestion and sheer exhaustion from the most chaotic and trying days of his campaign. Less than a week before the presidential primary, his troubles were noted by rivals and, perhaps more important, featured in the opening moments of the nightly news.
“Once the front-runner,” the anchor intoned, “now he’s trying to stop the bleeding.”
Never before in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination has Dean been the butt of so many late-night jokes and the subject of such genuine concern among his aides and admirers. After finishing a distant third in the Iowa caucuses, a scorching speech that he said was intended to inspire disappointed supporters has raised serious questions about his electability and has overshadowed his campaign.
Raising more money than any Democratic presidential candidate in history, Dean held a commanding, 29-point lead in a poll in New Hampshire only one month ago and began to focus on building a national campaign designed to overpower his rivals and prepare him to challenge President Bush. By Wednesday, the same poll indicated his lead had fallen to 2 percentage points, and some strategists worked hard to mask their worries.
`Race is tightening’
“Yes,” a top adviser conceded, “the race is tightening.”
On Wednesday, six days before New Hampshire voters deliver their verdict, Dean’s rivals subtly sought to capitalize on his turmoil. In a speech in Nashua, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts urged voters to carefully measure the candidates by what they say.
“You’re not just electing a president of the United States,” reminded Kerry, whose surprising win in Iowa has jump-started his campaign. “You’re electing a leader of a free world.”
After dominating public opinion polls, fundraising and the energy of the race for months, Dean’s front-running aura has disappeared and Democratic strategists say that despite his impressive national organization, it remains an open question how he will handle the political upset in Iowa. With the exception of his 2000 re-election bid as Vermont’s governor, when he received only 50.4 percent of the vote after signing a controversial law allowing civil unions for homosexuals, Dean has faced no serious challenges.
Dean’s aides said the fall in his political fortunes prompted a full-scale review of the campaign’s strategy in Iowa, where despite visiting all 99 counties in the state, he won just two and tied in two others. Though the New Hampshire primary system is far different from Iowa’s caucuses, the candidate’s message and campaign style are largely the same.
On a day already long with concern for the Dean campaign, former U.S. Sen. John Durkin, a Manchester attorney, withdrew his endorsement. Late Wednesday, a Dean spokeswoman touted support from other prominent Democrats and said Durkin “has the right to endorse whomever he likes.”
Karen Hicks, the state director of Dean’s New Hampshire effort, said Wednesday that in the final days of the campaign the message would return to themes Dean first voiced when entering the race: balancing the budget and expanding health-care coverage. Polls show voters no longer list the Iraq war — the issue that propelled Dean’s candidacy — as a chief concern.
“We know when people see Gov. Dean in person they respond really positively,” Hicks said. “It’s not a personality contest, it’s a contest about who can give people the change that they want.”
The butt of jokes
But over and over this week, the image that voters here and across the nation are seeing is one of Dean, his face red and his hands jabbing the air, in a televised tirade in which he ended a concession speech with a loud, curious howl.
On the late-night talk shows, which surveys indicate are a primary source of political news for many young voters, comedians excoriated Dean. On “The Tonight Show,” Jay Leno said: “I’m not an expert in politics, but I think it’s a bad sign when your speech ends with your aides shooting you with a tranquilizer gun.”
In the three days leading up to the Iowa caucuses, Dean’s favorable rating among New Hampshire voters dropped from 59 percent to 39 percent in a sample of 302 voters Tuesday, according to Dick Bennett of the American Research Group of Manchester. One reason, he said, was that voters not only found the remarks unpresidential but they only built on a nagging concern about his temperament.
Ted Werner, who manages a precision machine shop in Salem, pronounced Dean’s speech “scary.”
“For president, you need somebody who’s in control of any situation and he wasn’t even in control of his speech,” said Werner, 67, who is leaning toward Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Hoping to change the subject and borrow a page from the winning New Hampshire playbook of Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the 2000 Republican primary, the Dean campaign announced a major campaign finance reform plan. Dean, who opted out of a public finance system that encourages small donations by matching them with federal money, will propose at a Thursday debate reducing the contribution limit from $2,000 to $250 per person.
The debate, to be televised statewide, is a critical moment for Dean. It is the final time that all candidates will appear together before the primary. strategists said two poor debate performances by Dean contributed to his defeat in Iowa.
“He needs to be extremely calm and in control,” said Jim Demers, a New Hampshire Democratic activist who had run Rep. Richard Gephardt’s campaign in the state. “The slightest sign of emotion is going to make people nervous.”
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Democrats debate
The final Democratic presidential debate before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary will be held Thursday night at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.
The two-hour debate will be broadcast live at 7 p.m. CST on the Fox News Channel, Fox News Radio, ABC News radio and the ABC News Live Web site. Excerpts will air on a one-hour special edition of ABC-TV’s “Nightline” at 10:35 p.m.
All seven Democratic candidates are expected to participate.
Brit Hume of Fox News and Peter Jennings of ABC News will serve as moderators.
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