Dean campaign says no to public funding

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Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean will abandon the public campaign-financing system and the spending limits that accompany it, he said yesterday, with the hope that his private money-raising prowess will help him capture the nomination and defeat President Bush.

His historic decision, which the former Vermont governor announced during a speech in his home state, sets the stage for a possible presidential race with candidates from both major parties for the first time forgoing the Watergate-era funding system.

Claiming that he supports the public-financing system, Mr. Dean said, "The unabashed actions of [Mr. Bush] to thwart our democratic process with a flood of special-interest money have forced us to abandon a broken system."

Mr. Dean is the first Democratic candidate to reject public campaign funding since its institution in the 1970s.

Mr. Bush has said he will also opt out of the public-financing system, as he did in the 2000 Republican primaries when he raised a record sum of more than $100 million.

The system, created after the Watergate scandal 30 years ago in an effort to reduce presidential candidates' dependence on big campaign donors, is financed by taxpayers who have the option on their income-tax returns of directing $3 to it.

Candidates who register to accept the public funding in the primaries can receive as much as $18.7 million in taxpayer money. However, they can spend only up to about $45 million.

A candidate who opts out of the system forfeits the public money but benefits because he no longer is restricted by how much money he can spend.

Mr. Dean may have been prompted in his decision by the flood of campaign contributions he's received over the Internet. In the latest three months of fundraising, through September, he surprised his rivals by garnering a record $14.8 million for the time period. In just over one week, he raised nearly $5 million through his Web site.