Dean Now Says He’ll Press On

A few days ago, Howard Dean said he would quit the Democratic presidential race if he lost Wisconsin’s Feb. 17 primary. On Monday, he took back that pledge.

“I know. An absolute contradiction,” he said after announcing that regardless of the Wisconsin results, he would continue his campaign in response to “enormous pressure” from supporters.

He added: “I’ve just changed my mind.”

Dean said that as John F. Kerry has swept to victory in almost every primary and caucus, many Democrats were conducting “this coronation rush” to anoint the Massachusetts senator as the nominee. “I don’t think this is a responsible time to leave the playing field,” Dean said.

Left unanswered by Dean’s reversal were several key questions: How long would the race’s onetime front-runner continue his pursuit of the presidency if he failed in Wisconsin? What effect would his continuing candidacy -- which retains a core of committed backers -- have on Democrats’ ability to unite behind another candidate and turn their attention to defeating President Bush? What sort of campaign would he run? And why?

If nothing else, Dean’s initial declaration that he would leave the race if he lost Wisconsin gave his lagging campaign an infusion of cash. In one day, his campaign said, it received $700,000 in donations. Over the last week, aides say it has taken in more than $1.2 million.

Dean insisted neither his commitment to quit the race nor his switch on Monday were designed to spur donations. “This has nothing to do with fundraising,” he said.

The former Vermont governor said his decision to fight on after Wisconsin, even if he loses the state, was an effort to honor the hard work and financial contributions of thousands of supporters, whom he said had been disillusioned with politics.

“We’re not going to let those people go,” Dean said.

Dean’s campaign has been marked by innovative use of the Internet to raise money and, at times, to validate strategic decisions. Late last year, Dean supporters voted overwhelmingly on his website that he should opt out of the federal public financing system after the campaign made it clear that such a move would allow it greater flexibility.

While Dean campaigned in Wisconsin on Monday, Kerry made one stop in each of the states with primaries today -- Virginia and Tennessee. Polls have shown him leading in both contests.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina campaigned in Tennessee and Virginia, while retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark focused his efforts on Tennessee. Both are trying to keep their campaigns alive with respectable showings on Tuesday.

Dean disclosed his intention to remain in the race beyond Wisconsin during back-to-back interviews with local television stations in the state. He made no mention of it during three public appearances.

On Wednesday night, his campaign sent an e-mail to supporters that said: “We must win Wisconsin. Anything less will put us out of the race.”

“I stand by it,” Dean said the next day.

On Monday, he was asked in an interview with WBAY, an ABC affiliate in Green Bay, whether he would drop out if he loses here.

“No,” he replied.

To FOX-11, he said that whether he finishes second or third, “we’re in.”

Later, in a lengthy question-and-answer session with reporters traveling with him, he sought to explain the turnabout, and seemed unsure about how he would conduct his campaign.

“Over the last three or four days we have had enormous pressure from [supporters] not to drop out,” he said. He added: “This has always been a two-way campaign. So my feeling is we’ve got to listen to them.”

But he also said that Wisconsin “really is the make-or-break state for us in a lot of ways. The question has been, ‘What are you doing to do if you don’t win Wisconsin?’ And we’ve avoided that, as you know, assiduously, by saying, ‘Well, we’re going to win, we’re going to win.’ ”

“The truth now appears to be that we’re going to have to find a way to stay in. We don’t know what that’s going to mean. Clearly, if we don’t win Wisconsin there’s going to be a real problem trying to run the kind of conventional campaign,” he said.

In a comment that could allay the fears of some Democrats, Dean said he would not run “a quixotic campaign that’s going to attack the nominee of the Democratic Party. That we’re not going to do under any circumstances.”

Still, among party officials who want to turn the attention toward running against Bush, Dean’s decision prompted consternation.

It meant, said one veteran of the Clinton White House and Al Gore’s campaign four years ago, that Democrats “spend less time focused on George Bush and more time focused on ourselves, which is not good for those of us who want to get rid of George Bush.”

It also meant that, with enough money, Dean could continue to promote his message that a Washington “outsider” offers the best hope of beating Bush -- an implicit criticism of Kerry, a four-term senator.

Dean said that the compacted primary schedule created a rush toward choosing a nominee that should be slowed.

“The voters of Wisconsin could put a stop to this -- say, ‘Wait: let’s have a look, let’s have a real discussion and debate about this,’ ” Dean said. “The truth is, people know more about me than they know about John Kerry.”

“Let’s take a look at Sen. Edwards, for example; let’s give people a chance to see if they think he’s a more viable candidate,” Dean said.

The largest batch of Democratic convention delegates -- 1,151 -- are at stake on March 2, when 10 states, including California, conduct contests.

As the race continues, Dean will have two models to draw on if he continues losing, said a senior White House aide in the Clinton administration who is neutral in this year’s race.

They are Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Patrick J. Buchanan, who lost their bids for the Republican presidential nomination after attracting intense support as insurgents.

McCain competed against Bush four years ago. Although he was angered by tactics used against him by the Bush campaign, he quit the race after losing a string of primaries and then stayed mostly on the political sidelines.

Buchanan challenged Bush’s father -- then the president -- in 1992. He turned his losing effort into a months-long crusade, prompting sharp divisions within the Republican Party.

Kerry, whose campaign announced new endorsements from other Democrats, including Rep. Nita M. Lowey of New York and Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, declined to discuss Dean’s decision.

“It’s not for me to comment on the choices of other candidates in this race,” he said.

Even as Dean said he would press ahead against the odds, one of the largest of the three major labor unions that endorsed him late last year, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, formally announced it was withdrawing its support. Dean was informed of the union’s decision Saturday, and news of it surfaced then.

“We agree that the most important priority for America’s working families is to defeat George W. Bush,” AFSCME president Gerald McEntee said in a statement. “We will continue to work together to unify the Democratic Party to do just that.”

In Tennessee, Clark, the former NATO supreme commander, said his Southern roots and 34 years in the military made him the best-qualified Democratic candidate.

“You got a great lawyer in John Edwards. You got a great guy who’s been in the Senate for 18 years in John Kerry,” he said, cutting a year off Kerry’s tenure. “But you got me.”

He spoke of having been a business executive since retiring from the military four years ago, starting a company, serving as chairman of another and sitting on corporate boards. This history, he said, gave him the best understanding of any of the candidates about how jobs are created and lost.

Edwards visited the workers of a Carrier Corp. air conditioning plant in Tennessee, a 1,300-employee factory that is slated to close next year.

“The president we have now does not understand what these folks are going through,” he said.

He ended the day speaking to more than 1,700 people who spilled out of a large community room at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. For the first time in days, his crowd displayed the sort of energy Edwards encountered in Iowa just before his surprise second-place showing there three weeks ago.

Meanwhile, an analysis of broadcast television advertising showed that Kerry outspent Edwards and Clark by a wide margin in Virginia as today’s primary approached.

Kerry spent about $560,000 for ads beamed into the state from Feb. 1 through Saturday, according to data compiled for The Times by TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group. Edwards spent about $212,000 and Clark roughly $153,000.

In Tennessee, Kerry spent about $100,000, Edwards about $135,000, and Clark about $210,000.

Dean did not run TV ads in either state during this period.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Delegate count

Here is the current breakdown of presidential preferences of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. It includes choices by ‘super delegates,’ those not picked through primaries or caucuses and who can change their minds.

Needed to nominate: 2,161

*--* Candidate Pledged delegates John F. Kerry 431 Howard Dean 182 John Edwards 117 Wesley K. Clark 84 Al Sharpton 12 Dennis J. Kucinich 2

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Source: Associated Press

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Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Rainey from Wisconsin. Times staff writers Maria L. La Ganga, Matea Gold, Scott Martelle, Eric Slater and Nick Anderson contributed to this report.