Dean turns Demos' focus to West, South

WASHINGTON — Former presidential candidate Howard Dean took over the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday and immediately turned his attention to improving the party's political fortunes in Southern and Western states dominated by the GOP and with anti-abortion religious conservatives.

"Today will be the beginning of the re-emergence of the Democratic Party," Dean told the 447-member DNC after a voice vote installed him as the party's new leader, capping a remarkable comeback from the crash of his White House bid.

Shortly after succeeding Terry McAuliffe as chief of the DNC, Dean told reporters he expects to spend much of his four-year term in the South and in the far West, where President Bush won convincing victories in his two White House campaigns.

"To the extent this job is on the road, I will be pretty much living in red states in the South and West for quite awhile," he said. "That's where we need a lot of work. I think that's where there are people who are most skeptical about the Democratic Party. And I think the way to get people not to be skeptical about you is to show up and talk and say what you believe."

While he insisted that he would leave policy debates with the president to the Democratic congressional leadership, Dean said the DNC under his leadership would reach out to religious conservatives who have voted against Democrats on the basis of their religious faith, particularly on the issue of abortion.

"Democrats aren't pro-abortion," he said. "Our belief is not that we are pro-abortion but we do believe that a woman has a right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she wants . . . whether a woman has the right to make up her own mind or somebody else should make it up for her."

Democrats are not for gay marriage, he added, but rather "the party that has always believed in equal rights under the law for all people."

Dean acknowledged the opposition of Catholic leaders to John Kerry's presidential candidacy last year because of the Massachusetts senator's support for abortion rights but insisted that not all Catholics shared those views.

"We have to remind Catholic Americans that the social mission of the Democratic Party is almost exactly the social mission of the Catholic Church," Dean said. "The idea that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven is not a plank of the GOP platform. So it seems to me that we have a right to have a claim on Catholic votes based on Catholic teachings."