Dean sings the blues

On an evening that felt like summer, the Country Club of Culpeper felt very blue.

More than 100 local Democrats and numerous media outlets turned out to hear from Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, at a high-energy fundraiser in support of the Culpeper County Democratic Committee.

“It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to come into the reddest of the red states to speak to the troops,” said Culpeper attorney Richard Dulaney, who roomed with Dean at Yale in the 1960s and worked on his 2004 campaign for president.

Dulaney said Dean inspired him to get back into politics and made him proud to be Democrat.

“Now we don’t have to walk down the streets hiding our faces,” he said of how the local committee has grown in recent years. “We can now see who we all are,” Dulaney said, laughing and looking around.

Local Dems in attendance Thursday night included former state delegate Butch Davies, a Culpeper attorney, attorney Sam Walker, who serves on the Culpeper Electoral Board, Nancy Cannon of Cannon Properties and Culpeper developer Greg Yates and his wife, Liz.

Fresh tulips decorated tables in the dining room and a poster of a red-white-and-blue donkey hung on the wall behind the podium. Two ladies wore straw hats decorated with Howard Dean bumper stickers and there were signs propped up in the lobby supporting both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama.

Dean, former governor of Vermont and one-time presidential candidate, looked fit in a blue suit and tie and spoke with conviction about changing government at all levels.

“I don’t do small venues like this very often so this is real fun for me,” Dean told the mostly middle-aged crowd. “But this is the guts of grassroots politics. If we can’t win here, then we can’t win at all.”

Before his 30-mintute talk, 7th District Congressional candidate Anita Hartke, chairwoman of the Culpeper County Democratic Committee, spoke with confidence about her chances of unseating four-term incumbent Congressman Eric Cantor, R-Richmond, who has represented Culpeper in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2000.

“I think we’re going to have a Democratic president, a Democratic senator and, with that, I’ll be the Congress(woman) for the 7th District,” she said. “He has a lot of money, true, but I have the people that need to be represented, that need to know that they matter.”

Dean, 59, encouraged Hartke, a real-estate agent from Amissville, in that regard, telling her that he started his political career as the chairman of his county’s Democratic dommittee.

“So, Anita, when you run for Congress I bet you do all right,” he said, though adding, “This is not an endorsement,” since the filing deadline to seek the Democratic nomination isn’t until today.
Dean also reminisced about his days working on the 1980 Jimmy Carter campaign when the former president ran against Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination.

“The people who brought me into politics were a generation ahead of me and the people with Kennedy were the young folks — so I drank all night with the Kennedy people and voted all night with the Carter people,” Dean said to thunderous laughter.

In addition to loud laughter, Thursday’s event was punctuated with palpable enthusiasm about what could be.

“This is quite a time for Democrats, the best thing that has happened in probably 34 years,” he said of the two candidates fighting for the nomination. “When was the last time Virginia mattered in terms of selecting the presidential nominee?”

It’s going to matter this year, Dean said.

“Virginia will be in play. This is a target state.”

The DNC chair spoke for about five minutes about what he viewed as the shortcomings of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a U.S. Senator from Arizona. Dean challenged McCain on the war and a record he said is “wishy-washy.”

“He has said we ought to stay in Iraq for as long as 100 years,” he said, shifting gears and explaining why he was a little late arriving in Culpeper — traffic.

“For a tiny fraction of what we spend every day in Iraq, we could fix every piece of that traffic in northern Virginia.”

As for McCain’s record in Congress, Dean said, he’s changed his views on the Bush tax cuts, immigration reform and the gun show loophole. McCain as president would mean more of the same, he said.

“We do not need a third Bush term,” Dean said, advocating for a spirit of unity among all Americans. “There are going to be differences between us, but they are very small compared to the things that bring us all together.”

The DNC chairman also challenged the audience to get involved with what he called a “neighborhood volunteer program” — knocking on 25 neighbors’ doors three times before the November election to campaign for Democrats, obviously, but also to build bridges with fellow Americans.

Dean left around 7:30 p.m., after more words from Hartke’s brother and a gift from her mother, rushing outside with his old friend Dulaney before dinner was served.

Around him on the green, curious golfers looked on, perhaps wondering what all the fuss was about.

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or .