Dean Basks in Gore’s Support

Enjoying a new stamp of establishment approval, Howard Dean on Tuesday accepted the endorsement of Al Gore, who urged rivals in the Democratic fight to shift their focus to defeating President Bush.

The former vice president, who stunned Dean’s opponents with his early endorsement, said he was swayed by the vigorous grass-roots support for the former Vermont governor, as well as Dean’s staunch opposition to the war in Iraq.

Gore said that among the nine Democratic contenders, Dean alone had generated “the kind of passion and enthusiasm for democracy and change and transformation of America that we need.”

“We need to remake the Democratic Party; we need to remake America; we need to take it back on behalf of the people of this country,” Gore told Dean supporters at a breakfast fundraiser in Harlem, N.Y., the first of two joint appearances Tuesday.

The former vice president, who has carefully rationed his political appearances since conceding to Bush after the prolonged 2000 election, decided to endorse Dean last week, but the two kept it secret until word leaked Monday.

While praising the Democratic contenders as “a great field,” Gore urged them to lay off each other and “keep their eyes on the prize” -- unseating the Republican incumbent in November 2004.

He called the invasion of Iraq the worst U.S. foreign policy blunder in more than two centuries, took a swipe at fellow Democrats who supported it and dismissed questions about Dean’s electability by saying the candidate would “prove the cynics and pessimists wrong.”

“It was a mistake to get us into a quagmire over there,” Gore said of Iraq. “So don’t tell me that because Howard Dean was the only major candidate who was right about the war, that that somehow calls his judgment into question on foreign policy.”

But Gore’s counsel went unheeded by the other candidates. Denied a coveted endorsement, Dean’s rivals sought to downplay its significance; some even suggesting it was inconsistent with Gore’s past beliefs.

Moreover, they challenged the assertion that Dean was the strongest contender. Opening a debate Tuesday night in New Hampshire, the moderator, ABC’s Ted Koppel, said to the candidates, “Raise your hand if you believe that Gov. Dean can beat George Bush.”

Only Dean raised his hand.

Earlier in the day, the campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts issued a long statement calling Dean and Gore an “odd couple” and asserting differences over policies ranging from gun control to the environment. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Gore’s vice presidential running mate in 2000, didn’t conceal his pique, describing a Tuesday morning phone call from Gore as “four to five minutes in length, and too late,” according to an aide.

For his part, a beaming Dean sought to maximize the benefit by flying Gore halfway across the country to Iowa, site of the first balloting of the 2004 election. Accompanying them were two jets packed with reporters. Dean then flew back to New Hampshire for the debate.

At a boisterous rally at a hotel in Cedar Rapids, Dean introduced Gore as “the man who got 500,000 more votes than the occupant of the White House” and “the moral leader of this country.” The audience of several hundred boosters screamed and cheered as the two men, dressed in matching dark-gray suits and blue ties, grinned and waved.

“We are the insurgent campaign, but the truth is, we’re not going to win this campaign against George Bush unless we unite the entire Democratic Party,” Dean told reporters after the Cedar Rapids rally. “This is a big step in doing that today.”

Gore’s endorsement of Dean came after months of closed-door policy discussions between the two men, Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi said.

The practical benefit of Gore’s endorsement remains to be seen. The former vice president, who won the popular vote in the 2000 election but lost the White House to Bush after the U.S. Supreme Court halted the tally of disputed votes in Florida, still enjoys a strong Democratic following, particularly among African American voters. He also enjoyed strong support among blue-collar labor unions, such as auto workers and machinists unions, in his fight for the party nomination three years ago against former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

Both are political weak spots for Dean. Although he has won endorsements from some of the nation’s largest employees unions, most trade unions are backing Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. As Gordon Fischer, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, put it, “Whether Vice President Gore’s popularity translates into votes for Dean is something we’ll have to wait and see.”

In the shorter term, Gore’s surprise move did not so much change the dynamic of the Democratic contest -- Dean versus the rest of the field -- as it lengthened the odds of those already struggling to surmount the front-runner’s advantages in money, organization and momentum.

For Dean, “it starts to answer one question that has dogged him, and that is whether the party insiders will get behind him,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a Washington campaign analyst and an early skeptic of Dean’s chances. “Now he has the Good Housekeeping Seal of the poster boy of the Democratic establishment, Al Gore.”

In another small signal of that shift, some Washington insiders seemed to warm to Dean’s candidacy. Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the No. 2 man in the party hierarchy, described Gore’s support for Dean as a big boost that could propel the former longshot to the nomination. While making no endorsement, Reid told Associated Press, “as each day goes by, Dean seems to do better.”

Trippi, speaking to reporters en route to Iowa, predicted a dozen or more lawmakers would jump aboard now that Gore has signaled his support for Dean.

The candidate’s Web site, meanwhile, registered a record level of traffic, with people posting notes at a rate of 30 comments a minute. Supporters urged the campaign to start a fundraising drive as a thank-you to Gore; the campaign responded by setting a goal of $500,000, and within hours donors had contributed $82,000.

With Gore’s endorsement, the attention of political insiders immediately shifted Tuesday to two other pillars of the Democratic Party establishment: former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. Both have stayed neutral in the primary contest and reiterated their intentions to stay that way.

Sen. Clinton said she considered it “more important to coalesce around a nominee” picked by voters in the Democratic primaries than a front-runner during the nominating season. A spokeswoman for the former president said he had no formal statement, but referred to comments he made on Monday restating his neutrality.