Seven candidates vying for Democratic National Committee lead

SACRAMENTO - Seven candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee, including former presidential candidate Howard Dean, pledged Saturday to wrest power from Washington and return it to grass roots activists in all 50 states.

The candidates are competing for the votes of 447 members of the Democratic National Committee, who will choose the successor to outgoing DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe on Feb. 12. They participated Saturday in the third of four planned regional forums for DNC members.

Besides Dean, the contenders include former Reps. Tim Roemer and Martin Frost, party activist Donnie Fowler, New Democratic Network President Simon Rosenberg, former Ohio party chairman David Leland and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb.

The forum drew 65 voting DNC members but was dominated by hundreds of other activists, including a noisy contingent of so-called "Deaniacs" who supported the former Vermont governor's upstart 2004 presidential bid.

While Dean's presidential effort was largely defined by his fiery anti-war rhetoric, none was on display Saturday. Instead, he and the other candidates focused their remarks on bread-and-butter party-building matters, such as investing money and staff at the state level. All pledged to include in their strategy so-called "red states" where Democrats have won key state and local offices.

"If you give me your vote and make me your chair, I'll raise money, I'll come to your state and make sure your infrastructure is supported adequately ... in all 50 states, not just the swing states," Dean said. "But most of all I will stand up for the moral values that have been part of this party for a long, long time."

Frost and Roemer, former congressmen who between them have spent several decades in Washington, also expressed a commitment to local party control.

Frost decried "the consultant culture" in Washington and stressed his experience in Texas fighting the Republican tide orchestrated in part by Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser.

Rove's name was mentioned numerous times throughout the forum, with Dean at one point joking that Rove was to blame when the stage lights accidentally went dark.