Dean Shakes Up Staff After Losing Ground

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean shook up his top staff Wednesday, replacing his campaign chief with a close advisor to former Vice President Al Gore after punishing setbacks in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Dean’s hiring of Roy Neel, 58, as chief executive prompted Joe Trippi to quit as campaign manager.

Trippi, 47, the oft-quoted campaign guru and Internet jockey, helped lead the former Vermont governor’s startling rise from obscurity in 2003. But he was unable to stop Dean’s slide to a weak third place in Iowa on Jan. 19 and second place in New Hampshire on Tuesday after Dean had previously led in polls in both states. Trippi declined an offer from Dean to stay on as an advisor.

During a conference call with reporters Wednesday night, the former Vermont governor said he had felt for some time that his campaign needed a stronger manager at the helm.

“I think you’re going to see a leaner, meaner organization that really got geared up,” he said. “ ... It’s going to be a long, long war of attrition. We’re now preparing for that.”

By tapping Neel, a longtime advisor to Gore and former lobbyist for phone companies, Dean has brought aboard a consummate Washington insider to reorganize his campaign, a sharp contrast to the image he has fashioned as an outsider with disdain for the political establishment.

“Roy is a very nice guy, but he’s a quintessential member of the political establishment,” said Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, who most recently was advising Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt for his presidential bid, which Gephardt abandoned last week.

Some campaign experts questioned whether a switch in the top leadership would be enough to get Dean’s candidacy back on track. Top aides were asked to defer their paychecks for two weeks to help the candidate husband his money for critical and expensive upcoming contests.

The Dean campaign shakeup in Burlington, Vt., came as Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts moved to capitalize on his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, and as other Democratic candidates scattered across the country hunting for support before the next round of presidential contests on Tuesday.

Kerry scooped up a key endorsement Wednesday from Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a leading black politician in a state where the African American vote is critical. Kerry also flew to St. Louis to plant his flag as the new Democratic frontrunner in delegate-rich Missouri.

Meantime, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark of Arkansas each touched down in Oklahoma at the outset of a week that should showcase their southern rivalry. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut traveled there too, despite increasing doubts about his campaign’s viability after his fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.

With seven states holding contests the same day next week, the quickening developments signaled that the nomination battle had surged into a new delegate-amassing stage.

The major Democratic presidential candidates no longer have the luxury of focusing on one state at a time. Instead, they must hopscotch across seven states that stretch from the western canyons of Arizona to the northeastern shore of Delaware: Missouri (74 pledged delegates at stake), Arizona (55), South Carolina (45), Oklahoma (40), New Mexico (26), Delaware (15) and remote North Dakota (14).

For every candidate but Kerry, victory somewhere is fast becoming essential to generating the money and momentum needed to keep going. That challenge is especially urgent for Dean, who had long been considered the frontrunner after leading the field in fundraising last year with $41 million and gathering plum endorsements -- such as Gore’s -- that led to stratospheric expectations for his candidacy.

Now it is Kerry who has the invaluable buzz that goes with being a winner. In an intimidating show of financial muscle, Kerry’s campaign announced it had launched television advertising for all seven of Tuesday’s contests and made plans to visit every state.

In addition to the backing of Clyburn, who had previously endorsed Gephardt, Kerry lined up endorsements from Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and former Sen. Jean Carnahan of Missouri. His campaign also reported a surge of more than $1 million in Internet contributions after his Jan. 19 win in Iowa.

“We have to build. We have to grow,” Kerry said, speaking with reporters on his way to St. Louis, after a rare handful of hours sleeping in his own bed in Boston. “We’re starting to grow. We’re going to grow significantly over the next few days.”

Boarding a chartered 737 jet, Kerry was asked what voters could expect to see through the blur of cross-country campaigning over the next six hectic days. “I hope they’re going to learn that I’m a guy who doesn’t give up,” he said as snowflakes settled on his head and shoulders. “I’m going to fight for the people in this country.”

In St. Louis, Kerry gave a raucous speech to hundreds of pompom-waving supporters -- and others undecided -- who filled a community college hall to overflowing.

He accused the Bush administration of perpetuating a “creed of greed” that sacrifices the interests of average Americans.

“I’ve got news for the HMOs and the big drug companies and the big oil companies and influence peddlers,” Kerry hollered. “We’re coming, you’re going and” -- here the crowd took up the shout -- “don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”

But the day’s drama clearly was playing out behind closed doors in Burlington.

There, Dean, huddled with his staff, had to decide who would run his faltering campaign and where he would focus his suddenly tight resources.

Dean’s schedule signaled he might seek to leapfrog past some of the states with primaries or caucuses on Tuesday to make a stand in Michigan and Washington state on Feb. 7 and in Wisconsin on Feb. 17. For instance, today Dean plans to stop in Lansing, Mich., before heading to Greenville, S.C., for an evening candidate debate. Such stops take precious hours away from the seven states that vote and caucus next.

Analysts said Dean faced narrowing choices.

“It’s hard to see where in the Feb. 3 mix of states Dean does well,” said Charles Cook, an independent analyst based in Washington.

Dean held a telephone conference call to reassure jittery lawmakers who had endorsed his candidacy but were now watching it stumble.

“The campaign is retooling, and clearly it needs to be retooled, and we’re hopeful that will assist in letting the world know about the guy who we think has the very best chance of beating George Bush,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), one of the first members of Congress to endorse Dean.

Between meetings, Dean spent four hours taping 26 satellite interviews in 12 upcoming primary and caucus states.

For the first time, the former governor fielded questions about whether he would consider pulling out of the race, a sharp reversal from queries he got last month about whom he would select as a running mate. Dean batted away questions about whether he has considered such a move.

“Nope, not a bit,” he told an ABC affiliate in Bangor, Maine. “We’ve got enough money and enough volunteers and organization to go to the convention.”

In the conference call with reporters, Dean praised Trippi’s work and said that he hoped his former campaign manager would change his mind and return to help the campaign in another capacity.

“I am hopeful in a couple days I’ll be able to talk him into it,” he said.

Neel, the campaign’s new top executive, was chief of staff to Gore when he was vice president and a top advisor when Gore ran for the White House in 2000. He also spent seven years as head of the United States Telecom Assn., pushing for deregulation on behalf of Baby Bells and other independent phone companies.

Dean opened a new line of attack against Kerry, repeatedly questioning the source of Kerry’s campaign contributions in an effort to tie him to large corporate interests.

“His contributions, most of them are $1,000 and $2,000 contributions from special interests in Washington and people who are tied in with the financial industry and so forth,” Dean told a Fox affiliate in Fargo, N.D. “Ours aren’t.... I do not think that you’re going to clean up Washington by sending in somebody from Washington as our nominee for the president.”

In South Carolina, Edwards began a final push for a state he considers a must-win. He emphasized his southern roots before a racially mixed crowd in an overheated music room in Orangeburg at South Carolina State University.

“I have family in South Carolina; I have roots in South Carolina,” Edwards told the crowd of about 100 people, many of whom had braved the remnants of a deadly storm to hear him speak on a campus where icy streets prompted school officials to cancel classes.

Returning to the state where he was born, Edwards also sought to make cultural links, saying that “talking like all of us talk,” he can beat President Bush in the South. Before a largely African American crowd, Edwards again said he felt a moral responsibility to work toward uniting what he sees as a racially divided nation.

Clark, who finished an eyelash ahead of Edwards for third place in New Hampshire, also is battling him in South Carolina and Oklahoma. He stopped in Tulsa, Albuquerque and Phoenix.

In Tulsa, Clark tailored his message for a conservative and largely Christian audience.

“I accepted the Lord as my savior” as a young boy, the retired general told a crowd of 300 at Oklahoma State University. It was the first time Clark had made such a strong statement about his religious beliefs on the campaign trail.

“We are the most religious country in the world,” Clark told the crowd. “That’s just the way it is.”

Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Scott Martelle, Eric Slater and Lisa Getter contributed to this report.