Gov. Howard Dean

Web Site
deanforamerica.com

Personal
Born: Nov. 17, 1948, in New York City
Hometown: Burlington, Vt.
Family: Married to Judith Steinberg; two children, Anne, a Yale student, and Paul, 17
Education: Yale University, bachelor of arts in political science, 1971. Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1978
Career: Physician, 1981-1991; Vermont House, 1982-86 (assistant minority leader, 1985-86); lieutenant governor, 1986-91; governor, 1991-2002

By the numbers
$314,052
Amount the Dean campaign had raised by Jan. 1, 2003

$480,547
Amount the Dean campaign spent on TV ads during the last week of 2003
More than $15 million
Amount the Dean campaign estimates it raised in the last three months of 2003
35,000
The number of e-mails processed each day on the Dean For America website
75%, 69%, 71%
Dean’s share of the vote in Vermont’s 1992, 1994 and 1996 gubernatorial elections
56%
Percent who voted for Dean for governor in 1998
50%
Percent who voted for Dean in 2000
50%
Share of vote required to be elected governor in the state of Vermont
1,460,000
The number of hits a Google search for “Howard Dean” yielded

A closer look
• Dean, a five-term Vermont governor, began his political career (and reportedly ended his affiliation with the Episcopal Church) when he clashed with a local church over building a bike path along Lake Champlain on the church’s land.
• Dean’s two children, raised in their mother’s Jewish faith, play ice hockey and soccer. The Democratic frontrunner, who used to coach his son’s hockey team, tries to arrange his campaign schedule to accommodate the games.
• With the help of innovative Internet outreach, Dean’s campaign has popularized Web logs, or blogs, as a format for political communication, as well as broken Democratic fundraising records for two quarters in 2003 and the entire year.

The lowdown
Not since Jimmy Carter in 1976 has a candidate surged from obscurity to the kind of frontrunning prominence that Dean enjoys.
An insurgent who nonetheless enjoys a commanding fundraising lead, Dean has changed the way politicians use the Internet, probably forever.
But his shoot-from-the-lip style, so appealing to supporters, has resulted in a series of gaffes that have called into question his temperament and ability to bear up to prolonged scrutiny. Victories in Iowa and New Hampshire could all but lock up the Democratic nomination.

Analysis by Times staff writer Mark Z. Barabak

Sources: The Almanac of American Politics, https://www.deanforamerica.com, Associated Press