WASHINGTON — One year after voters rejected his presidential candidacy in a campaign that sought to rewrite traditional rules of politics, Howard Dean is on the verge of taking the reins of the Democratic Party as it fights to regroup from a punishing year of defeat.

The former Vermont governor, a physician-turned-political firebrand, said Friday he has secured enough votes to be elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Though the move will not be ratified until the group votes in Washington next Saturday, rivals continued to drop out of the race, and Dean made plans to move into Democratic headquarters and begin plotting a strategy to rebuild the demoralized party.

"He has learned a lot from his experience running for president," said Linda Honold, the chairwoman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, who decided to support Dean over more than a half-dozen other candidates. "If he hadn't, that would have bothered me."

For Dean, the party chairmanship offers another chapter in an unlikely rise from small-state governor to leading presidential contender to fallen candidate. Along the way he became a Democratic phenomenon, gaining a devoted following through the Internet and in grass-roots political circles.

While Dean based his presidential candidacy on staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, his platform for Democratic leader comes with far less controversy. For weeks, advisers said, he has spent six to eight hours most days calling party officials in all 50 states to ask them for their support as he pledges to rebuild the party to win back the White House, Congress and a majority of gubernatorial seats across the country.

"He's got new energy," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who talks frequently with Dean and approved of his candidacy to lead the Democratic Party. "He understands that our party has to go South and go West. He understands that there is a real opportunity to take the kind of activism that was very evident in his last campaign to the Democratic chairmanship."

Several senior Democratic officials said Friday that Dean almost certainly had secured the votes needed to assume the chairmanship, an insider's position in Washington where raising money, recruiting candidates and setting the party's direction are bedrock.

A former mayor of Denver dropped his bid to challenge Dean last week, followed by a former congressman from Texas and then party strategist Donnie Fowler of South Carolina, who endorsed Dean on Friday night.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who also unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, said: "He wasn't my first choice. I felt we needed a bridge-builder at this point. But I will respect whatever decision the DNC makes. And if it's Howard, I'll go along."