Thursday, August 14, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Meeting for change

Locals get active for Howard Dean

By Larry Wills

The 50 or so people gathered at Sunrise Library in eastern Las Vegas last week looked more like a literary society than guerrilla warriors. After all, their first choice was to meet at Starbucks.

But this second local "meet-up," an Internet term where a cyber-group arranges to have a face-to-face, to spark support for presidential candidate Howard Dean steamed with enthusiasm and outrage over President Bush's policies. And the drum roll is bringing the disenfranchised out of the woodwork: Fully two-thirds of the group were political neophytes committed to defeating the entrenched party apparatus.

"This is my first campaign," says Clark Adams, a real estate appraiser and one of the organizers of the event. Dean's emergence as a viable Democratic Party candidate convinced Adams to jump into the arena.

"Dean is considered in some places as left or liberal and in others as a moderate," Adams says. But Adams sees the candidate's positions as moderate, in line with much of America. "I'm a social liberal and a fiscal moderate. I'm going to stay with this the whole way."

Dean has energized support with a strong populist drive that's using the Internet as never before. About 70,000 volunteers across the nation are writing letters to convince undecided voters to support Dean. The meet-ups are held simultaneously in 450 cities, where supporters are each given two names of the undecided from registration lists in other states. Last month, Iowans were targeted. This month, letters were sent to New Hampshire.

Supporters of Dean, former Vermont governor (for 10 years) and a physician, are principally moderates and liberals who are tired of Bush's theocratic agenda.

"I don't like the way they put religion into politics," Shirley Bossak says. A staunch Democrat, Bush administration policies ended her long period of political inactivity. "I'll support anybody to get this jerk out of office. It's gotten nasty."

That's also the view of Wade Lanier, who describes himself as "heavily Democratic." He too became active thanks to Republican policies over the past two years. "I'm more excited about this election," he says.

So too is his employer, he says: "She's a Reagan Republican. But she came here out of curiosity."

Doug Andrew calls himself a lifelong Democrat and independent who supports Dean because of his superior speaking ability, compared with the notoriously fumbling talks by the president. "He can say the most in the fewest amount of words," Andrew says.

Eric Reed sees Dean's grassroots strategy as a key to his support. "The campaign seems to be working. I'll stick with it."

Paul Gohmanson, an organizer of the meet-up, compares criticism of the Dean campaign to a similar one 12 years ago. He says the Republican strategy against Dean is to pretend to embrace him since he'll be easily beaten in the general election. "They did exactly the same thing against Clinton," he says.

Gohmanson sees growing support for his candidate, citing a recent poll that showed Dean would defeat Bush in California.

Dean's assets are in his record in Vermont where that state has avoided deficits, gay civil unions are legal and health care is provided to all children under 18. Dean also has a strong environmental record, is tough on crime and opposes federal gun control. His increasing political stature in a field of nine Democratic candidates has surprised many analysts who viewed him as a renegade like Ross Perot, Ralph Nader or Sen. John McCain of previous years. Dean describes himself, as the Associated Press reports, as "an odd kind of Democrat."

Whether he will gain the Democratic nomination and beat Bush, who has amassed a giant campaign war chest, remains to be seen.

The majority of people meeting at Sunrise Library were clearly energized. Only four of them had not decided on a candidate. Supporters panned Bush's policies toward gays, the war in Iraq and failed economic policies.

"Religion doesn't belong in politics," an older man thundered at the group.

"I don't want to live in a world that's ugly," a young woman answered.