Howard Dean pulled into Austin – literally – earlier today to kick-off the Netroots Nation convention. Dean arrived in an Obama-blue “Register for Change” tour bus due to trek further through the South tomorrow, following Dean’s keynote address to Netroots Nation tonight.
It’s part of the Obama campaign’s strategy of putting once-solidly Republican states in play, a theme all the afternoon’s speakers hit on. Taking the podium at Brush Square park, across from the Austin Convention Center, Texas Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie said “this year Texas Democrats are feeling a renewed sense of pride.” Richie was especially optimistic about Obama’s down-ballot coattails adding more Dems to the state legislature. While conceding Texas has a ways to go, “the view from the frontlines looks pretty promising.”
The spouse of one of those frontline soldiers – senatorial candidate Rick Noriega’s wife Melissa Noriega, a Houston City Council member in her own right – introduced the afternoon’s main attraction, saying Dems aligned with the netroots “because Governor Dean showed us the way.” Lauding Richie, Dean said “you should be proud of your Democratic Party of Texas because they are on the case,” turning the state “bluer and bluer.” He highlighted some other netroots candidates there, Charlie Brown, running to unseat Rep. John Doolite in California, and Larry Larocca, gunning for Sen. Larry Craig’s seat (in Congress, not the men’s room). But Dean stopped short of naming too many other attendees – alluding to media-scrutiny of his 2004 presidential speeches, he cracked, “hell, I’m not supposed to give these lists anymore.”
Still, registration and turn-out was the message. “We’re not down here to waste our money,” he said of his southern odyssey, carrying him next to Louisiana and Mississippi. “We can win in North Carolina. And we will win Virginia.” It’s the culmination of Dem efforts to compete in areas they once wrote-off. Or as Dean put it, “the south will rise again – this time, with a D after it.”
This article appears in July 11 • 2008.