Dean parlays attacks into funding

Howard Dean raised roughly $1 million last week after using his opponents’ attacks as fodder to rally support.

“We have an incredible active grass-roots support and they can’t stand the negative campaigning that others are engaging in,” Dean spokesman Jay Carson said. “The more they attack us, the more [supporters] want to fight back, and one of the ways they fight back is by giving us money.”

Mr. Dean, the Democratic front-runner who has a slight lead in Iowa five days before caucuses there, has taken repeated fire from rival Democratic candidates. The conservative Club for Growth began running an ad in Iowa last week that accuses Mr. Dean of being liberal and out of the mainstream because of his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts.

The Dean campaign responded with a fund-raising appeal from campaign manager Joe Trippi last week, telling supporters opponents were trying to stop them. And in a Web site appeal posted Monday, Mr. Trippi used attacks on Mr. Dean to rally support, and called the other Democratic candidates as Washington insiders who supported Mr. Bush.

“The establishment candidates — instead of talking to voters about why they supported the war or voted for President Bush’s reckless tax cuts — are spending their time trying to distort what it is we’re fighting for,” he said. “Make no mistake — these attacks are meant to keep Iowans from going to their caucus for Howard Dean. They’re designed to keep you from taking action to help us win.”

Later yesterday, the Dean campaign announced that former President Jimmy Carter will offer support to Mr. Dean, but not an endorsement. The former Vermont governor will leave Iowa to attend services and Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., where Mr. Carter worships and sometimes teaches Sunday school.

“This event is not expected to be an endorsement event,” the written statement said.

In Iowa, Mr. Dean has a slight lead over Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, 28 percent to 23 percent, according to an MSNBC/Reuters/Zogby poll conducted Jan. 10-12. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts is in third with 17 percent and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has 14 percent. Wesley Clark, the retired general, is second in New Hampshire with 20 percent, compared with Mr. Dean’s 34 percent there, according to an American Research Group poll taken Jan. 10-12.

Mr. Dean — who said Monday that he’s “going after everybody because I’m tired of being the pincushion” — also struck back against his rivals with a new Iowa TV ad about the war with Iraq.

“Where did the Washington Democrats stand on the war?,” asks the ad, which began running yesterday. “Dick Gephardt wrote the resolution to authorize the war. John Kerry and John Edwards both voted for the war.”

Mr. Dean yesterday again asked Iowans “to remember who stood up to the president a year ago” against the war.

But others said Mr. Dean is lashing out because his support is slipping.

“The candidate who’s panicking here and the candidate who’s going negative on television is Howard Dean,” said Gephardt campaign manager Steve Murphy, noting internal polls in Iowa show his candidate and Mr. Dean in a “continued dead heat.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Gephardt gave a foreign policy speech in New York yesterday in which he pledged “to build a better global community” and defended his war-resolution support, blaming the Bush administration for later bungling the war.

• This story is based in part on wire service reports.