In Macon, Dean urges Democrats to re-establish power of party

[babylonsister]

In Macon, Dean urges Democrats to re-establish power of party
By Travis Fain - [e-mail]

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, right at bottom of stairwell, addresses party supporters Saturday at the Wilson Convention Center.

Beau Cabell/The Telegraph


Howard Dean, a 2004 presidential candidate and current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, brought the party's "Register for Change" tour to Macon on Saturday and called on Democrats replant the party's flag in Georgia.

He said Democrats need to find 500,000 new voters in a state of 9 million people for their presidential candidate to win the state for the first time since 1992. He called this a lofty goal, but said the party can't write off the South any more.

"The South has changed a great deal in the last 40 years. ... And our biggest mistake was not coming to the South," Dean told supporters.

Wearing a tie depicting all 50 states to go with his 50-state strategy, Dean said the Democratic Party's values are more in line with Southern thinking than some people think. That's particularly true for evangelical Christians, which Dean said the party is targeting. Polling shows that the top issues for evangelicals under 35 are poverty, climate change and the conflict in Darfur - all issues that are right in the party's wheelhouse, Dean said.

About 50 people turned out for the rally, which was sandwiched between similar visits to Savannah and Atlanta, and is part of a state-to-state bus tour for the former governor of Vermont.

The Macon crowd could have been much larger, but the Democratic Party of Georgia's state committee meeting was going on at the same time. More than 200 party insiders packed a convention hall less than 100 yards away from Dean's rally as he spoke.

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http://www.macon.com/198/story/415409.html