By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A08

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., Dec. 11 -- The race for chairman of the Democratic National Committee opened here Saturday with prospective candidates asserting that Democrats will continue to lose elections until they develop a message that resonates across the country, rebuild broken state parties and quit conceding territory to the Republicans.

The broad consensus offered by eight possible candidates for party chairman belied the divisions that exist within the party after the defeat of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by President Bush last month and the difficulty of turning those conclusions into action.

In the weeks since Bush's victory, elected officials, strategists and party thinkers have offered a conflicting array of ideas on how to mount a comeback. They include everything from reasserting a defiant progressive platform to offering a more muscular foreign policy to learning to speak the language of faith and values.

In so many words, the speakers at Saturday's forum, hosted by the Association of State Democratic Chairs, said all of those ideas and more will be necessary to rebuild the party after a defeat that left the GOP in control of the White House, both houses of Congress and a majority of governorships.

"There are too many Americans who see our party as nothing more than a coalition of disparate voices," said Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas. "But they don't understand our basic principles, and that's our fault."

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and may become a candidate again in 2008, said Democrats need a grass-roots revival rather than a top-down approach.

"We're going to build this message . . . from the ground up," he said, adding, "We have a better message, and our principles and moral values are closer to the American people than Republicans are, and now we've got to go out and run on that."

Whether any new party chairman can provide everything that Democrats say they need to restore themselves to power is questionable, but because the selection of a new party leader represents the first collective action after that defeat, the February election has taken on greater significance than it might ordinarily assume.

Democrats appear to be looking for a chairman who can simultaneously be the face and voice of the party, serve as a tactician who can shape up the party machinery, and maintain the prodigious fundraising success of outgoing Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe.

The ultimate decision will be made by the 447 members of the national committee, an insider's election in which personal relationships and the ability to pick up support of major constituencies including organized labor, African Americans and Latinos or state party chairmen could be decisive.

But with the direction of the party at stake, others outside the DNC circle have started to voice their opinions, most prominently the political action committee of MoveOn.org, which has urged its members to make their views known -- to the irritation of many in the DNC.

While many have expressed interest in the job, only a few have declared themselves actual candidates. With no clear favorite emerging before Saturday's forum, there was even talk among some DNC members about trying to persuade McAuliffe to continue as chairman. But Carol Khare of South Carolina said after Saturday's session, "I feel better about our choices than I did coming down here."

Dean's possible candidacy faces opposition among Democrats who see his style and rhetoric as too far to the left to refurbish the party's image and because he has been outspoken in criticizing the party. Dean said Saturday he wants the job only if the party wants him. "If I think they want me, I'm running," he said, adding that "this is not a hostile takeover."

Eight prospective candidates spoke at Saturday's forum. In addition to Dean and Kirk, the others were: former Denver mayor Wellington Webb; Rep. Martin Frost (D-Tex.), who lost his bid for reelection; former Clinton White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes; former Michigan governor James J. Blanchard; Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network; and party strategist Donnie Fowler, the son of former DNC chairman Don Fowler.

Fowler, at 37 the youngest of the participants, vowed not to concede any region or group to the Republicans but said that will require changes in the way Democrats do business. "We are a party that has become afraid to talk about our heart and soul," he said.

The Kerry campaign's focus on just a dozen or so states in the presidential race has left state party leaders frustrated, and the prospective candidates for DNC chairman played back that feeling in their remarks, saying the party must develop a 50-state strategy for winning campaigns at every level.

"How are we ever going to regain control of Congress if we're not competitive in the South and the farm belt and in the Rocky Mountain states?" Blanchard asked, adding, "We cannot have our national party . . . be a holding company for presidential campaigns. It doesn't work that way."

Webb showed that in the brief time he has been running for DNC chairman, he has listened closely to state party leaders' concerns, citing the concerns of DNC members from Bush states such as West Virginia and Utah and Nebraska. "As we go forward," he said, "we need to talk about how we expand our base."

Frost stressed his experience running the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and said he would be a fighter against Republicans such as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who engineered the redistricting plan that cost Frost his seat. Rosenberg said the party needs a 21st century retooling designed to restore the luster of the Democrat brand. "We have to embrace and define our values, not run away from them," he said.

Ickes said after four years spent rebuilding the national party machinery, Democrats now must devote the next four years to state parties, beginning with a communications strategy to counter a Republican operation that many Democrats view now with envy. "I see the next four years as being the years of the state parties," he said.

After five-minute opening statements, the candidates were questioned in private by the state party leaders. Many questions focused on money -- how much the contenders might be willing to commit to the states -- but others reflected the political challenges ahead.

The state leaders wanted to know how Democrats compete for rural voters, what they say to religious voters, how they become viable in the South and how they prevent Bush and the Republicans from making further inroads among African American and Latino voters.

At some point before the election in February, the field of candidates will begin to crystallize but perhaps not until early next year, with much jockeying and debate to come.