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.
