A community

Orlando Sentinel: The people connection: Dean 'walks' a mile in Lawton's shoes

" Campaigns are all about making connections.

Howard Dean, former governor of a small rural state, has connected with supporters of his campaign for president in a manner oddly reminiscent of the way Lawton Chiles, onetime governor of a major metropolitan state, once connected..."

The people connection: Dean 'walks' a mile in Lawton's shoes

by Mark Silva

August 31, 2003, Orlando Sentinel

Campaigns are all about making connections.

Howard Dean, former governor of a small rural state, has connected with supporters of his campaign for president in a manner oddly reminiscent of the way Lawton Chiles, onetime governor of a major metropolitan state, once connected.

This isn't the only connection Dean has with Florida, the pivotal state that made George W. Bush president in 2000, and the state that Bush's chief political adviser calls "ground zero" in the president's bid for re-election in '04.

As a teenager, Dean spent an eye-opening summer in Florida.

The wealthy stock-trader's son from East Hampton, N.Y., shipped off for field work in Belle Glade during one summer break from prep school. A schoolmate's father owned a cattle ranch along Lake Okeechobee and offered the kids work as ranch hands. Dean, whose middle name is Brush, cleared plenty of it.

He lived above the ranch manager's office. He learned Spanish from farmworkers who weren't going home to the Hamptons that fall:

"We had the greatest Spanish-speaking-only parties of anybody in Belle Glade."

Dean, who went on to become governor of Vermont, moves easily through crowds. He is attracting huge ones with a humbly financed presidential campaign, which suggests that small pocket change might well add up to big political change.

Near midnight Tuesday, Dean stood before several thousand people amassed outside the New York Public Library for the closing rally of a four-day, cross-country tour. With a baseball bat pictured on his campaign Web site, he had issued an Internet-anchored network of supporters a challenge: Match, with many small donors in a few days, $1 million that Bush had raised at $2,000-a-head in one day. Dean was here, Louisville Slugger in hand, to announce he had batted $1,003,620.

The average donation, he told a cheering crowd, was $51.

"The way we're going to beat George Bush," Dean said, "is to take those $2,000 checks he has and match them with $50 from ordinary citizens."

This is the same appeal that the late "Walkin' Lawton" made at the start of a 1,000-mile trek across Florida in his first bid for U.S. Senate in 1970. Chiles was asking for just $10 -- indeed, limiting donations to that. At the height of his legendary career, he upped the ante to $100. In 40 years, he never lost an election.

Chiles sought something else at the climax of his career, becoming governor. He spoke of restoring a lost sense of "community" in Florida.

Dean is making the same appeal today, calling for a renewed sense of community nationwide, and making it with the technological equivalent of the 1,000-mile walk. He has built a following with a mushrooming e-mail list, claiming 330,000 names in his address book, with a goal of 1 million by year's end.

The Dean campaign has become the runaway No. 1 subject at MeetUp .com, a Web site that connects ostensible strangers to talk about what they have in common.

Rick Klau, a young software salesman in suburban Chicago, says he has discovered his own community in his campaign for Dean. He hadn't met many of his neighbors since moving to Naperville three years ago. Since holding "Meet-Ups" for Dean, he has met dozens. He played host to 12 people in April, 50 in August, and he's not sure what to expect at the next one.

Chiles, of course, was onto something when he set out to connect with people.

Dean is onto something, too.