Dean asking supporters to help Iowa Rep. being targeted by GOP [View All]

Dean pushing Democratic Congress
Asks supporters to help influence other key races

By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 12/2/2003

Howard Dean has said repeatedly that he would, against the odds, help elect a Democratic Congress to move his agenda if he were elected president next year.

Within the next 24 hours, the former Vermont governor will take the first step to live up to his word. An official said the campaign will send a mass e-mail to Dean's 513,220 registered campaign supporters, asking them to donate immediately to Representative Leonard L. Boswell, an Iowa Democrat who has been targeted for ouster by the Republicans.

The appeal is part of a broader effort by Dean to use his unexpectedly potent fund-raising network to support the campaigns of 19 or 20 congressional candidates. Collectively, their victories would break the Republican grip on both the House and Senate.

One political analyst said Dean's effort to simultaneously direct his supporters not only to his campaign but to those of congressional candidates as well is both unusual and also the latest indication of Dean's unconventional thinking.

"Most politicians would view money as a zero-sum game -- that if they get it somebody else doesn't, or if somebody else gets it then they don't," said Stuart Rothenberg, author of a nonpartisan Washington political newsletter. Supporting Boswell and other congressional candidates "would add a very interesting twist, and make it much more of a case of Howard Dean trying to transform the broader political system than just winning the White House."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/12/02/dean_pushing_democratic_congress/