Dean goes bust

The $40 million war chest is gone -- and so is campaign manager Joe Trippi. What happened?

By Josh Benson

Jan. 29, 2004 | Joe Trippi, the iconic architect of Howard Dean's Internet-driven campaign, is gone. And so are the millions of dollars that Dean raised from legions of grass-roots supporters over the last year.

Following defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire, and less than a week away from a make-or-break series of Democratic primary election contests, Trippi on Wednesday quit the Dean campaign after being offered a lesser position. At the same time, Dean announced that his high-flying campaign is broke, and he announced to workers that their paychecks will be suspended for two weeks because of a multimillion-dollar debt.

Roy Neel, former chief of staff to Al Gore, was appointed CEO of the campaign, supplanting Trippi, who served as a high-profile campaign manager, ad man and inspirational icon to many of Dean's Internet supporters.

It was devastating news for a candidate who, just four weeks ago, had been seen as the strong front-runner to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The campaign was basking in the glow of upbeat news coverage, fundraising prowess and endorsements from elected officials, labor leaders and celebrities. But after two decisive losses in the space of eight days, chaos that apparently had been percolating through the campaign organization broke into open view.

After Tuesday's clear defeat at the hands of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Dean's "one remaining hope was to be able to pivot very quickly this week onto a sort of new substantive message," said Democratic consultant Howard Wolfson. "This is going to completely interfere with that."

The pessimism even had spread to many of the operatives and volunteers who staffed an organization known for its idealism and optimism. "The wheels are coming off the chassis," one said yesterday.

Even before Wednesday's shakeup, Dean had been undergoing a public, on-the-fly makeover -- tempering his language, making fun of himself on the David Letterman show and appearing with his wife, Judy Steinberg Dean, for an emotional TV interview. But the latest developments were more than cosmetic, and they made clear that a campaign once deemed unstoppable is now in very real danger of disintegrating.

Financially, donors wondering about the viability of the campaign are likely to hold onto their money. And critics are certain to question whether a candidate who could not manage the estimated $40 million he raised last year is capable of managing the world's biggest economy.

There will be political fallout, too. With a crucial, seven-state primary day coming Tuesday, stories about the campaign turmoil are likely to drown out Dean's appeals for votes. And with John Kerry coming off of two monumental wins, and with John Edwards and Wesley Clark moving into contests on friendly soil in the South and West on Feb. 3, prospects for the former Vermont governor are not bright.

While Dean was in Burlington Wednesday reorganizing his campaign and dealing with the fallout, front-runner Kerry and other candidates were already on the ground and courting votes in crucial states like Missouri and South Carolina.

The Dean campaign was a pretty disorganized affair from the beginning. That was almost the point: It was a "different" kind of campaign, driven by the candidate's refreshing spontaneity and consultant-free cadences, and fueled by the zeal of its idealistic volunteers and small grass-roots donations. That "roll with it" aspect carried over to the campaign's organization as well, which was roughly divided into three groups of the governor's top advisors from Vermont -- Kate O'Connor and Bob Rogan in one camp, Trippi in another, and everyone else in a third.

The result was that internal decision-making processes tended to be chaotic, with top supporters getting contradictory marching orders from Trippi and the Burlington staff in the same day.

"We couldn't get answers on simple things," said one, who asked to remain anonymous. "It just seemed like there was no coordination between Trippi, the fundraising machine and the governor's closest aides from Vermont. I guess that turned out to be the case."

But none of that mattered in the fall, when the Dean campaign could seemingly do no wrong. The media was writing process story after process story about the brilliance of the movement and Trippi, its tech-savvy orchestrator. After all, it was hard to argue with the enthusiastic crowds who flocked to campaign events, the estimated $40 million the campaign raised over the Internet, and the resultant lead compiled by Dean in the polls.

While Dean fought fierce opposition from moderates in the Democratic Party and from Kerry and Dick Gephardt on the campaign trail, he won an avalanche of high-profile endorsements from politicians such as Al Gore and Bill Bradley and from activist celebrities like Rob Reiner and "Acting President" Martin Sheen, star of the popular "West Wing" television series.

By early January, Dean's strategy was clear: The campaign would overwhelm all contenders in Iowa and New Hampshire, making clear that opposition was futile. But a series of inopportune comments and outright gaffes fueled questions about whether an antiwar candidate with no foreign policy experience could defeat President George W. Bush. And in Iowa, voters repeatedly suggested that they found the candidate arrogant.

Next page: Dean: "It's going to be a long, long war of attrition"