Howard Dean

American politician (born 1948)

Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American physician, author, consultant, and retired politician who served as the 79th governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2005 to 2009. Dean was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election. Later, his implementation of the fifty state strategy as head of the DNC is credited with the Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Afterward, he became a political commentator and consultant to McKenna Long & Aldridge, a law and lobbying firm. Before entering politics, Dean earned his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1978. Dean served as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives from 1983 to 1986 and as Lieutenant Governor of Vermont from 1987 to 1991. Both were part time positions that enabled him to continue practicing medicine. In 1991, Dean became governor of Vermont when Richard A. Snelling died in office. Dean was subsequently elected to five two year terms, serving from 1991 to 2003, making him the longest serving governor in the history of the state of Vermont. Dean served as chairman of the National Governors Association from 1994 to 1995; during his term, Vermont paid off much of its public debt and had a balanced budget 11 times, lowering income taxes twice. Dean also oversaw the expansion of the "Dr. Dynasaur" program, which ensures universal health care for children and pregnant women in the state. He is a noted staunch supporter of universal health care. Dean denounced the 2003 invasion of Iraq and called on Democrats to oppose the Bush administration. In the 2004 election, initially seen as a long shot candidate, Dean pioneered Internet based fundraising and grassroots organizing, which is centered on mass appeal to small donors which is more cost efficient than the more expensive contacting of fewer potential larger donors, and promotes active participatory democracy among the general public. As a result of his unconventional strategy, he became the top fundraiser and front runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Dean had a disappointing third place finish in the Iowa caucus, and his campaign suffered after negative reactions in the media to a hoarse "Yeah" that he shouted after enumerating states that he hoped to win and ending up losing the nomination to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. In 2004, Dean founded Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee. He was later elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in February 2005. As chairman of the party, Dean created and employed the fifty state strategy that attempted to make Democrats competitive in normally conservative states often dismissed in the past as "solid red". The success of the strategy became apparent during the 2006 midterm elections, where Democrats took back control of the House and Senate, winning Senate seats from normally Republican states such as Missouri and Montana. In the 2008 election, the Democrats increased their House and Senate majorities, while Barack Obama used the 50 state strategy as the backbone of his successful presidential candidacy. Dean was named chairman emeritus of the DNC upon his retirement in January 2009. Since retiring from the DNC chairman position, Dean has held neither elected office nor an official position in the Democratic Party and, as of 2015, was working for global law firm Dentons as part of the firm's public policy and regulation practice. In 2013, Dean expressed interest in running for the presidency in 2016, but instead supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's run for president.

Dean was born in East Hampton, New York, to Andrée Belden (née Maitland), an art appraiser, and Howard Brush Dean Jr., an executive in the financial industry. Dean is the eldest of four brothers, including Jim Dean, Chair of Democracy for America, and Charles Dean, who was captured by the Pathet Lao and executed by the North Vietnamese while traveling through Southeast Asia in 1974. Howard's father worked at the stock brokerage firm of Dean Witter. The family was quite wealthy, Republican, and belonged to the exclusive Maidstone Golf Club in East Hampton. As a child, he spent much of his time growing up in East Hampton; the family built a house on Hook Pond there in the mid 1950s. While in New York, the family had a three bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side along Park Avenue. Howard attended the Browning School in Manhattan until he was 13, and then went to St. George's School, a preparatory school in Middletown, Rhode Island. In September 1966, he attended Felsted School, UK, for one school year after winning an English Speaking Union scholarship. UPI quoted one of Dean's friends in his youth as saying, "By Hamptons standards, the Deans were not rich. No safaris in Africa or chalets in Switzerland. Howard's father went to work every day. He didn't own a company, or have a father or grandfather who founded one, as mine did." Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal that:

he doesn't seem like a WASP. I know it's not nice to deal in stereotypes, but there seems very little Thurston Howell, III, or George Bush, the elder, for that matter, in Mr. Dean. He seems unpolished, doesn't hide his aggression, is proudly pugnacious. He doesn't look or act the part of the WASP It will be harder for Republicans to tag Mr. Dean as Son of the Maidstone Club than it was for Democrats to tag Bush One as Heir to Greenwich Country Day. He just doesn't act the part.

Dean graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1971. One of Dean's roommates was Ralph Dawson, the son of a sheet metal worker in Charleston, South Carolina, and today a New York City labor lawyer. Dawson said of Dean:

Unless you operated from a stereotypic understanding of the Yale white boy as rich, you wouldn't know that about Howard. When it came to race—and I don't know whether this was a function of intent or just came naturally—Howard was not patronizing in any way. He was willing to confront in discussion what a lot of white students weren't. He would hold his ground. He would respect that I knew forty two million times more about being black than he did. But that didn't mean he couldn't hold a view on something relating to civil rights that would be as valid as mine. There were lots of well meaning people at Yale who wanted you to understand that they understood your plight; you'd get into a conversation and they would yield too soon, so we didn't get the full benefit of the exchange. Howard very much thought he was capable of working an issue through. He was inquisitive. And when he came to a conclusion he would be as strong as anybody else. I don't think he's stubborn. He's a guy who's always been comfortable in his own skin. That's something you still see in him today, and it gets him into some degree of controversy. Though eventually eligible to be drafted into the military, he received a medical deferment because of an unfused vertebra. In response to Tim Russert asking on Meet the Press whether Dean could have served in the military had he not mentioned his back condition during his draft physical, Dean replied "I guess that's probably true. I mean, I was in no hurry to get into the military." He briefly tried a career as a stockbroker before deciding on a career in medicine, completing pre medicine classes at Columbia University. In 1974, Dean's younger brother Charlie, who had been traveling through southeast Asia at the time, was captured and killed by Laotian guerrillas, a tragedy widely reported to have an enormous influence in Dean's life; for many years he has worn his brother's belt nearly every day as a memento.

Dean received his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in 1978 and began a medical residency at the University of Vermont.

In 1980, Dean spearheaded a grassroots campaign to stop a condominium development on Lake Champlain, instead favoring the construction of a bicycle trail. The effort succeeded and helped launch his political career. That same year, he was also a volunteer for Jimmy Carter's re election campaign. In 1980, he was a Carter delegate at the Democratic National Convention. In 1981 he was elected chairman of the Chittenden County Democratic Committee. He served in this position until resigning in May 1984. In 1982, he was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives; he was reelected in 1984 and became assistant minority leader. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1986 and reelected in 1988 and 1990. On August 13, 1991, Dean was examining a patient when he received word that governor Richard A. Snelling had died of sudden cardiac arrest. From 1994 to 1995, Dean was the chairman of the National Governors Association. Dean was faced with an economic recession and a $60 million budget deficit. He bucked many in his own party to immediately push for a balanced budget, an act which marked the beginning of a record of fiscal restraint. During his tenure as governor, the state paid off much of its debt, balanced its budget eleven times, raised its bond rating, and lowered income taxes twice. Robert Dreyfuss wrote that as a fiscal conservative:

blockquote|Dean navigated a triangular course between the two parties, clashing often with the Democrats over taxes and spending and helping to drive many liberal left Democrats into the arms of the Progressive Party and of Representative Bernie Sanders, Congress's lone socialist. Inheriting a fiscal crisis from Snelling, Dean slashed the budget and dramatically reduced taxes. During the 1990s, Dean repeatedly unsheathed his veto pen, and he often allied with a growing contingent of conservative Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans to outmaneuver the Democratic leadership on issues such as taxes. Child abuse and teen pregnancy rates were cut roughly in half. The first decision of his career to draw significant national attention came in 2000, after the Vermont Supreme Court, in Baker v. State, ruled that the state's marriage laws unconstitutionally excluded same sex couples and ordered that the state legislature either allow gays and lesbians to marry or create a parallel status. Facing calls to amend the state constitution to prohibit either option, Dean chose to support the latter one, and signed the nation's first civil unions legislation into law, spurring a short lived "Take Back Vermont" movement which helped Republicans gain control of the State House. Dean was criticized during his 2004 presidential campaign for another decision related to civil unions. Shortly before leaving office, he had some of his Vermont papers sealed for at least the next decade, a time frame longer than most outgoing governors use, stating that he was protecting the privacy of many gay supporters who sent him personal letters about the issue. On the campaign trail, he demanded that Vice President Dick Cheney release his energy committee papers. Many people, including Democratic Senator and failed 2004 presidential candidate Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who left the party after losing his primary for re election in 2006, accused Dean of hypocrisy. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit to force the papers be opened before the seal expired but lost.

Dean began his bid for president as a "long shot" candidate. ABC News ranked him eighth out of 12 in a list of potential presidential contenders in May 2002. In March 2003 he gave a speech strongly critical of the Democratic leadership at the California State Democratic Convention that attracted the attention of grassroots party activists and set the tone and the agenda of his candidacy. It began with the line: "What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President's unilateral intervention in Iraq?" That summer, his campaign was featured as the cover article in The New Republic and in the following months he received expanded media attention. His campaign slowly gained steam, and by autumn of 2003, Dean had become the apparent frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, performing strongly in most polls and outpacing his rivals in fundraising. This latter feat was attributed mainly to his innovative embrace of the Internet for campaigning, using Meetup. com to track supporters and encourage grassroots participation in the campaign. The majority of his donations came from individual Dean supporters, who came to be known as Deanites, or, more commonly, Deaniacs, a term coined to describe meetup participants, who passed out campaign materials supporting Dean and the broader movement. (Critics often labeled them "Deany Boppers", or "Deanie Babies", a reference to his support from young activists.) Following Dean's presidential campaign, some Deaniacs remained engaged in the political process through Democracy for America and similar locally oriented organizations.

Many pundits blamed such endorsements for the campaign's eventual collapse. In particular, Al Gore's early endorsement of Dean weeks before the first primary of the election cycle was severely criticized by eight Democratic contenders particularly since he did not endorse his former running mate, Joe Lieberman. Gore supported Dean over Lieberman due to their differing opinions on Iraq which began to develop around 2002 (Lieberman supported the war and Gore did not). When Dean's campaign failed, some blamed Gore's early endorsement.

On January 19, 2004, Dean's rivals John Kerry and John Edwards pushed him into a third place finish in the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses, representing the first votes cast in primary season. Dean's loud outburst in his public address that night was widely rebroadcast and portrayed as a media gaffe that ended his campaign. According to a Newsday editorial written by Verne Gay, some members of the television audience criticized the speech as loud, peculiar, and unpresidential. In particular, this quote from the speech was aired repeatedly in the days following the caucus:

Senator Harkin was on stage with Dean, holding his suit jacket. This final "Yeah!" with its unusual tone that Dean later said was due to the cracking of his hoarse voice, has become known in American political jargon as the "Dean Scream" or the "I Have a Scream" speech. Comedians and late night comedy show hosts such as Dave Chappelle and Conan O'Brien satirized, mocked, and popularized the sound bite, beginning a media onslaught that many believe contributed immensely to his poor showing in the subsequent races. Dean conceded that the speech did not project the best image, jokingly referring to it as a "crazy, red faced rant" on the Late Show with David Letterman. In an interview later that week with Diane Sawyer, he said he was "a little sheepish but I'm not apologetic." Sawyer and many others in the national broadcast news media later expressed some regret about overplaying the story. CNN issued a public apology and admitted in a statement that they might have "overplayed" the incident. The incessant replaying of the "Dean Scream" by the press became a debate on the topic of whether Dean was the victim of media bias. The scream scene was shown an estimated 633 times by cable and broadcast news networks in just four days following the incident, a number that does not include talk shows and local news broadcasts. Some in the audience that day reported that they were unaware of the "scream" until they saw it on TV. On October 11, 2007, it was reported that Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney were in early talks about making a "political thriller" based on Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, tentatively titled Farragut North. The movie, finally titled The Ides of March, was released on October 7, 2011. It is based on the play Farragut North, which was named after the Washington Metro station located in the center of the lobbyist district. The play was written by Beau Willimon, a staffer on the Dean campaign. The main character is based on a former press secretary for the Dean campaign. In November 2008, a documentary film about Dean and his campaign, Dean and Me, was released and shown at several film festivals around the country.

Following Dean's withdrawal after the Wisconsin primary, he pledged to support the eventual Democratic nominee. He remained neutral until John Kerry became the presumptive nominee. Dean endorsed Kerry on March 25, 2004, in a speech at The George Washington University in Washington, D. C.

On March 18, 2004, Dean founded the group Democracy for America. This group was created to house the large, Internet based organization Dean created for his presidential campaign. Its goal is to help like minded candidates get elected to local, state, and federal offices. It has endorsed several sets of twelve candidates known as the Dean Dozen. Dean turned over control of the organization to his brother, Jim Dean, when he became Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean strongly urged his supporters to support Kerry as opposed to Ralph Nader, arguing that a vote for Nader would only help to re elect President George W. Bush because he believed that most who vote for Nader are likely to have voted for Kerry if Ralph Nader was not running. Dean argued that Nader would be more effective if he lobbied on election law reform issues during his campaign. Dean supported several election law reform issues such as campaign finance reform, and Instant Runoff Voting.

Dean was elected Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on February 12, 2005, after all his opponents dropped out of the race when it became apparent Dean had the votes to become Chair. Those opponents included former Congressman Martin Frost, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, former Congressman and 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer, and strategists Donnie Fowler, David Leland, and Simon Rosenberg. Many prominent Democrats opposed Dean's campaign; House Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid are rumored to be among them. Dean satisfied his critics by promising to focus on fundraising and campaigning as DNC Chair and avoid policy statements. He was succeeded by Tim Kaine, who at the time of his election was the governor of Virginia, in 2009. Dean ran for the position a second time in 2016. Two days after Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 presidential election, he announced that he would again seek the chairmanship. There were other contenders at the time who had been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Senate Minority Leader elect Chuck Schumer of New York. On December 2, 2016, Dean withdrew his candidacy. During his 2005 9 tenure, he promoted a "fifty state strategy" and developed innovative fund raising strategies.

After Dean became Chairman of the DNC, he pledged to bring reform to the Party. Rather than focusing just on swing states, Dean proposed what has come to be known as the 50 State Strategy, the goal of which was for the Democratic Party to be committed to winning elections at every level in every region of the country, with Democrats organized in every single voting precinct. State party chairs lauded Dean for raising money directly for the individual state parties. Dean's strategy used a post Watergate model taken from the Republicans of the mid seventies. Working at the local, state and national level, the GOP built the party from the ground up. Dean's plan was to seed the local level with young and committed candidates, building them into state candidates in future races. Dean traveled extensively throughout the country with the plan, including places like Utah, Mississippi, and Texas, states in which Republicans had dominated the political landscape. Many establishment Democrats were at least initially dubious about the strategy's worth—political consultant and former Bill Clinton advisor, Paul Begala, suggested that Dean's plan was "just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose." Further changes were made in attempting to make the stated platform of the Democratic Party more coherent and compact. Overhauling the website, the official platform of the 2004 campaign, which was largely criticized as avoiding key issues and being the product of party insiders, was replaced with a simplified, though comprehensive categorizing of positions on a wide range of issues. Dean's strategy arguably paid off in a historic victory as the Democrats took over control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2006 mid term elections. While it is likely this is also attributable to the shortcomings of the Republican Party in their dealings with the Iraq War and the scandals that occurred shortly before the election, Dean's emphasis on connecting with socially conservative, economic moderates in Republican dominated states appears to have made some impact. Indeed, Democratic candidates won elections in such red states as Kansas, Indiana, and Montana. And while former Clinton strategist James Carville criticized Dean's efforts, saying more seats could have been won with the traditional plan of piling money solely into close races, the results and the strategy were met with tremendous approval by the party's executive committee in its December 2006 meeting. While he was chairman of the DCCC, Rahm Emanuel was known to have had disagreements over election strategy with Dean; Emanuel believed a more tactical approach, focusing attention on key districts, was necessary to ensure victory. Emanuel himself was criticised for his failure to support some progressive candidates, as Dean advocated. The 50 state strategy relied on the idea that building the Democratic Party is at once an incremental election by election process as well as a long term vision in party building. Democrats cannot compete in counties in which they do not field candidates. Therefore, candidate recruitment emerged as a component element of the 50 state strategy. To build the party, the DNC under Dean worked in partnership with state Democratic parties in bringing the resources of the DNC to bear in electoral efforts, voter registration, candidate recruitment, and other interlocking component elements of party building. Decentralization was also a core component of the party's approach. The idea was that each state party had unique needs but could improve upon its efforts through the distribution of resources from the national party. The 50 state strategy was acknowledged by political commentators as an important factor in allowing Barack Obama to compete against John McCain in traditionally red states, during the 2008 presidential contest. In 2008, Obama won several states that had previously been considered Republican strongholds, most notably Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Through grassroots fundraising, Howard Dean was able to raise millions more than the previous DNC Chairman at the same point after the 2000 election. The year after his election, Dean had raised the most money by any DNC Chairman in a similar post election period. This was especially apparent when the Federal Election Commission reported that the DNC had raised roughly $86.3 million in the first six months of 2005, an increase of over 50% on the amount raised during the same period of 2003. In comparison, the RNC fundraising activities represented a gain of only 2%. Additional attempts to capitalize on this trend was the introduction of "Democracy Bonds," a program under which small donors would give a set amount every month. Although it only reached over 31,000 donors by May 2006, far off pace from the stated goal of 1 million by 2008, it nonetheless contributed to a new small donor funding philosophy of the DNC. Dean continued to further develop online fundraising at the DNC. Just one month before Election Day 2006, he became the first to introduce the concept of a "grassroots match," where donors to the DNC pledged to match the first donation made by a new contributor. The DNC stated that the resulting flood of contributions led to 10,000 first time donors in just a few days.

Supporters of Dean were angry that he was not given a position in the new Obama administration and not invited to the press conference at which Tim Kaine was introduced as his successor as Democratic National Committee chairman. Joe Trippi, who was Dean's presidential campaign manager in 2004, told Politico, "[Dean] was never afraid to challenge the way party establishment in Washington did business, and that doesn't win you friends in either party." Trippi further explained the apparent snub of Dean by stating, "You don't have to look any further than Rahm Emanuel." Trippi was referring to the tension between Emanuel and Dean over Dean's 50 state strategy. Sources close to Emanuel dismissed these charges. Dean said: "I didn't do this for the spoils. I did this for the country. I'm very happy that Barack Obama is president, and I think he's picked a great Cabinet. And I'm pretty happy. I wouldn't trade my position for any other position right now. I'm going to go into the private sector, make a living making speeches, and do a lot of stuff on health care policy." After being passed over for the post once again, Dean commented: "I was pretty clear that I would have liked to have been Secretary of HHS but it is the president's choice and he decided to go in a different direction."

Outside the US Dean is a supporter of the Liberal Democrats party of the United Kingdom. He has close links with the party and has spoken at their party conference in the past. Since the UK began the Brexit process, he has continued to tweet his support for the party.

After leaving office Dean emerged as a major supporter of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (Mujahedeen e Khalq, or MEK), calling for it to be delisted as a terrorist group by the United States, which occurred on September 21, 2012.

Dean endorsed Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election instead of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders from his home state in September 2015. Dean questioned on Twitter whether Donald Trump's sniffing during a presidential debate was due to cocaine use, and later apologized for "using innuendo."

In a January 2009 interview with the Associated Press, Dean indicated he would enter the private sector after 30 years in politics. Dean told the AP he would deliver speeches and share ideas about campaigns and technology with center left political parties around the world. He became a contributor to the news network MSNBC in shows such as The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. He has also guest hosted Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show. He is on the board of the National Democratic Institute. Dean also serves as a Senior Presidential Fellow at Hofstra University. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a visiting professor at Williams College. He been a Senior Strategic Advisor and Independent Consultant for the Government Affairs practice at McKenna, Long & Aldridge. In December 2018 Dean joined the advisory board of Tilray, one of the world's largest cannabis companies. Dean is a member of the Canadian American Business Council's Advisory Board.

In 1981, Dean married fellow doctor Judith Steinberg, whom he met in medical school, and together they began a family medical practice in Shelburne, Vermont (where she continued to use her maiden name to avoid confusion).

Although raised as an Episcopalian, Dean joined a Congregational church in 1982 after a dispute with the local Episcopal diocese over a bike trail. By his own account, he did not attend church as of the early 2000s; at one point, when asked to name his favorite book in the New Testament, he offered the Old Testament Book of Job, then corrected himself an hour later. Dean has stated he is more "spiritual" than religious.