WP: Dean Staff Shake-Up Long Coming

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Changes Foreseen, But Manager's Departure Abrupt

GREENVILLE, S.C., Jan. 29 -- Long-simmering tensions within Howard Dean's high command and the demand for swift changes in his campaign after losses in Iowa and New Hampshire triggered the staff shake-up that brought former Al Gore adviser Roy Neel to the top of the campaign and prompted the abrupt departure of longtime manager Joe Trippi, Dean advisers said Thursday.

Neel offered a pep talk to beleaguered staffers at Dean's Vermont headquarters as the former governor insisted that he intends to keep campaigning for the Democratic nomination even if he wins none of the seven states with contests Tuesday. As if to symbolize that strategy, Dean's first stop was in Michigan, whose caucuses come four days after that seven-state battle. There, he took a veiled shot at front-running Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) over trade.

"We're going to have to win eventually," Dean told reporters. "But the question was, do we have to win on February 3? Of course we want to, but we don't have to. We need to amass as many delegates as we can."

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Signs that Trippi was in trouble appeared immediately after Dean's disappointing finish in Iowa. The once-ubiquitous campaign manager virtually disappeared, while Bob Rogan, a senior campaign official whose service dates to Dean's tenure as governor, suddenly appeared as a member of the traveling party.

Trippi loyalists said they believed pressure from Rogan and Kate O'Connor, one of Dean's longest-serving advisers, forced the changes at the top. Others said Dean was surprised, and unprepared, when Trippi decided not to continue in the campaign in a diminished role. "That's not true," O'Connor said Thursday.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61580-2004Jan29.html?nav=hptop_ts