Dean victorious in D.C. primary

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean won the District’s nonbinding Democratic presidential primary last night in an election that was supposed to draw attention to the city but was marked by average turnout for a presidential primary.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, seen as Mr. Dean’s biggest challenge, conceded the contest just before 11 p.m. He told supporters at his postelection party at Republic Gardens restaurant on U Street that Mr. Dean had too much institutional strength.

“We knew he had the [D.C.] Council, and we knew he had the unions,” Mr. Sharpton said, even as he proclaimed that his campaign had made good strides. “We were able to go up 30 points in the polls in two months.”

With 124 of 142 precincts reporting, Mr. Dean had 42 percent of the vote and Mr. Sharpton had 35 percent. Among the other major candidates on the ballot, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois had 12 percent and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio garnered 8 percent.

“For someone who never held political office to get a third of the vote in the nation’s capital is a huge story,” Mr. Sharpton said.

Donald S. Beyer Jr., national treasurer of the Dean campaign, said his candidate was “very pleased to win the D.C. primary.”

“Al Sharpton spent a good deal of time here, and got a very good vote total. Now we are hoping we can replicate our success here in Iowa, New Hampshire and Virginia,” said Mr. Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor, at the Lucky Bar in Northwest.

The results are not binding. D.C. Democrats officially will choose their nominee at caucuses on Feb. 14 and will pick delegates to the national convention in Boston at a March 6 caucus. But city leaders wanted the primary as much to highlight the District’s lack of voting representation in Congress as to help choose a nominee.

“This nation will have to deal with statehood rights of D.C. as an issue,” Mr. Sharpton said last night at his party.

He also suggested that civil disobedience protests may take place in the February caucuses. He warned other candidates: “Bring your jail suits with you.”

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C. Democrat, said the primary had accomplished its mission.

“I declare it a success. I woke up this morning and all the newscasts said that D.C. was having a primary,” she said after voting at St. Monica’s Episcopal Church in Southeast.

“It’s not so much for the turnout, but for the importance of getting the message for D.C. statehood out,” Mrs. Norton said.

Last night, turnout was running at about 8 percent of eligible voters. That’s in line with the past two presidential primaries. In 2000, 8.8 percent of voters turned out for the May primary, and in 1996, 8.4 percent of voters turned out.

Five of the nine major candidates competing for the Democratic presidential nomination did not appear on the ballot yesterday. Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina, plus Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Wesley Clark asked to be left off the ballot.

Mr. Sharpton put the most effort into campaigning in the city, holding rallies and meeting voters. He also has mentioned his support for D.C. statehood during campaign appearances and debates nationwide.

Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Kucinich ran radio advertisements in the past week. But Mr. Sharpton, a New York activist and Pentecostal minister, was the only candidate to campaign in the city on primary day.

“Normally, I wouldn’t have voted for him,” said Barbara Houston, a retired federal worker who voted at LaSalle Elementary School. “But since the votes didn’t count, I figured, why not? I wanted to show him I loved him for being here.”

“Next time, I think I’m going to have to take a look at some of the other candidates.”

Mr. Dean neither participated in the only debate in the city, a radio forum last week on WTOP, nor personally campaigned in the District in the last days before the primary. But his campaign team worked vigorously to counteract any headway Mr. Sharpton made.

Susan Meehan, a Dean supporter, said the primary will make voters nationwide aware that the District does not have a vote in Congress no matter which candidate won the primary.

“It will resonate nationally,” Mrs. Meehan said at Foundry Methodist Church in the 1500 block of 16th Street NW. “We don’t have representation, but we came out in freezing cold to get it.”

There was one potential irregularity during the voting. Mr. Sharpton was seen inside the Anacostia Senior High School speaking with a teacher and took a picture with student Fredericka Freeman, 18, after she voted for the first time.

“You’re not supposed to be within 50 feet of a polling site. If he was, he violated our rules,” said Benjamin F. Wilson, chairman of the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics.

Mr. Wilson said that if Mr. Sharpton was credentialed to be a poll watcher, he could have gone inside the voting place lawfully.

“I don’t believe he had those credentials,” Mr. Wilson said. “I consider this a serious allegation. If we find evidence to support that, we will investigate.”

Meanwhile, volunteers for Mr. Kucinich were handing out leaflets at the Judiciary Square Metro Station, urging people to vote.

But few probably heard Mr. Kucinich’s volunteers, because supporters for candidate Lyndon LaRouche, packed into a cargo truck cab and parked about 50 yards away, were shouting their message into a megaphone that could be heard for four blocks.

The D.C. Council passed a bill in the spring changing the city’s 2004 primary date from the first Saturday in May to the second Tuesday in January, putting it before New Hampshire’s primary and the Iowa caucuses, the traditional start of the nomination process.

But the Democratic National Committee objected to breaking that tradition. By rule, the DNC would have been forced to disqualify half of the city’s 28 delegates to the national nominating convention in Boston.

Facing the embarrassment of having to lock out a heavily black delegation, the DNC worked out the compromise of having a nonbinding primary as well as binding caucuses.

• Arlo Wagner and Jim McElhatton contributed to this report.