Dean Answers With a New Money Man

The Democratic National Committee has a new money man.

Carl D. Chidlow, who is currently the finance director for Grassroots Democrats -- a state focused fundraising group -- will take over the DNC's vacant fundraising post at the start of next month, according to party officials and contributors.

The DNC finance director position has been vacant since Lindsay Lewis stepped down in September. The hiring of Chidlow is DNC Chairman Howard Dean's answer to critics who suggest he has struggled to court affluent contributors -- the traditional backbone of the DNC's fundraising.

Before his work with Grassroots Democrats, Chidlow served as deputy finance director for Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry's (D) presidential campaign, a post in which he was in charge of the care and feeding of deep-pocketed donors. Chidlow quit the Kerry campaign in November 2003 after the firing of campaign manager Jim Jordan. He worked for Senate campaigns in South Dakota and Washington in the interim.

Alan Solomont, a former DNC finance chairman and influential fundraiser within the party, said he -- as well as a number of other major contributors -- got to know Chidlow during the 2o04 presidential campaign, and those relationships will pay dividends for the DNC in the coming months.

"All politics is local and all fundraising is personal," Solomont said. "It does involve a certain amount of trust and familiarity."

Dean, too, has re-dedicated himself to meeting and greeting affluent Democrats over the past several months.

In November, influential Florida lawyer Mitchell Berger hosted a breakfast for Dean in Fort Lauderdale. The following month DNC finance chairwoman Maureen White held a dinner at the New York home she shares with her husband -- financier Steve Rattner -- that raked in $250,000 for the DNC and, more importantly, gave Dean face time with a handful of fundraising heavy hitters within the party.

Dean has also huddled individually with prominent Democratic donors on both coasts of late, a group that includes actor-director Rob Reiner, New York venture capitalist Alan Patricof and investor Bernard Bergreen. Solomont recounted that Dean has tracked him down by phone in France, Israel and the Caribbean over the past year.

It remains to be seen whether Dean's efforts pay off in a financial windfall for the committee over the next 10 months. Dean allies note that he has already put the committee on strong financial footing. The DNC raised $51 million in 2005, a 20 percent increase from 2003.

Dean's committee ended last year with $5.5 million in the bank, a burn rate still seen as unacceptable to some establishment Democrats. Karen Finney, communications director for the DNC, pointed out that the committee gave $7 million to gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey -- both wins -- and now have field organizers on the ground in all 50 states, a major focus of Dean's tenure.

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