GO Dean
"The party has really lacked energy in the past couple years," he said, "and Dean brings that energy." (Rep. Paul Davis)
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on Thursday began a two-day visit to the GOP stronghold of Kansas, hoping to erase the notion that his party has surrendered so-called "red states" to Republicans.
Dean, the former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential candidate, who has been traveling the country this week in his maiden tour as DNC chief, is scheduled to speak at Washburn University in Topeka, then travel to Lawrence, where he'll speak at an evening rally Friday.
He is also scheduled to attend a fund-raiser in Lawrence, which sponsors hope will raise as much as $40,000 for the state party. On Tuesday, Dean will go to Mississippi, also a Republican stronghold, to keynote a fund-raiser for the state Democratic Party. Earlier this week, he spoke in New York.
Dean is likely to face a mixed reception in Kansas, which at 43 percent trails only Nebraska and Utah in the percentage of population registered as Republicans.
The state hasn't gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, and President Bush beat John Kerry among Kansans in November by 25 percentage points. That, Dean said, is precisely why he's traveling there. "I don't think Democrats are ever going to be a national party unless we bring our message to every state, and that includes Kansas," he told the Kansas City Star.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/24/dean.dnc/