Ellington

"He ain't ashamed of being a Democrat," Wayne Dowdy growled as he prepped the crowd for Howard Dean's entrance last Tuesday night. Neither was anyone else in the room, it seemed. The Clarion Hotel was packed—overpacked, in fact, with Democratic volunteers ordering pizza for the crowd overflow in the hallway outside Mississippi Democratic Elected Officials Appreciation Dinner. More than 800 Democrats celebrated as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee came to visit. Former Gov. William Winter introduced Dean as a "Sam Rayburn Democrat" and dismissed the "voodoo economics" of the Republicans as Howard Dean prepared to take the stage.

Before his speech, Dean had greeted Mississippians at a reception at the home of Dr. George Schimmel in Fondren (and later at a pre-dinner reception at the Clarion), patiently meeting and taking photographs with anyone who wanted to meet him.

When he got to the stage that night to deliver his keynote address, he said he had met enough people to proclaim, "There is nothing wrong with Mississippi Democrats." He then led the crowd in a short prayer for the soldiers fighting in Iraq.

Members of the multi-racial crowd waved their napkins or jumped to their feet in applause as Dean proclaimed, "We will not concede the South" and "The South will rise again—and when it does, it will have a 'D' after its name." Dean focused mostly on economics, saying more than once that it is "not a moral value to pass our debts on to our children." He called for health care that covers "every single American."

The economic practices of the Republicans, who have not balanced the budget since 1968, he said, do not benefit the country. But, he added, "Republicans are not bad. They just don't understand the balance." He called on the excited Mississippi Democrats to nurture capitalism, to elect Democrats at the top and in positions all over America.

Dean noted that Democratic values include a strong defense and a strong America. "We need more than just a strong military," he insisted, adding that this cannot be accomplished by cutting veterans' benefits.

He chastised the Religious Right for not heeding the biblical values of walking among the least and loving thy neighbor as thyself. "We're gonna reach out to Evangelical Christians," he said, relating a story of an Evangelical woman who supported his bid for the presidency because of his dedication to social justice.

"The way we're going to win," Dean finished, "is not to be Republican-light."

The Mississippi Republican Party seemed to take great notice of Dean's visit, making a flurry of statements predicting "the Great Dean Exodus from the Mississippi Democratic Party," and announcing that a Democratic stalwart, Sheriff Brandon Vance of Tippah County, had defected to the elephants. In a statement, state Republican Chairman Jim Herring focused on GOP wedge issues of abortion, gays and guns: "The differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are clear. The Republican National Committee has a pro-life plank in our platform, we support the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman and we believe in the Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms."

The exodus, however, was not in clear evidence last Tuesday night.

Don't miss Casey Parks' exclusive interview with Howard Dean, conducted the night before he appeared in Jackson. Casey was the only Mississippi journalist who interviewed Dean one-on-one.