First Door on the Left

I’ll be leaving town in the morning, driving up north. At this point, I am not sure how long I will be gone. Could be one week, could be three. Nor am I sure what kind of cyber contact I’ll have, so posting here will be kind of scarce, if at all.

Things you need to do while I’m away are:
1) Donate to Dean for America (click on the bat graphic in the left column)
2) Sign up for Dean for America (also in left column)
3) Sign up for and attend the next Dean for America meet-up (yep, to your left)
4) Take care of each other!

See you when I get home (if not before).

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — By day, Jennifer Powers is a grant-writer for a school for the deaf, a Gen Xer who in past elections was like millions of others who vote but don’t pay much attention to politics – and certainly don’t lift a finger to help any particular candidate.

THAT CHANGED for Powers a few months ago, when the 32-year-old Philadelphian, driven by a newfound passion, switched her voter registration from independent to Democrat and became an unpaid operative for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in Pennsylvania. Today, Powers sits on a Philly4Dean steering committee she helped set up, overseeing grass-roots volunteers who she helped recruit, and communicates online with a database of 2,000 prospective Dean supporters that she helped build.

She said she does this 30 to 40 hours a week after her day job and with only online direction from the Dean campaign — and she is not alone.

Thousands of Dean supporters — many of whom profess never to have been active before — have taken to the streets on their own initiative to pass out Dean fliers at urban fairs and farmer’s markets, donate blood and clean up beaches in his name, and raise millions of dollars for the former Vermont governor at house parties.

Although few of these volunteers have ever spoken to anyone from the national headquarters, Dean, once among the least known of the Democratic presidential field, now appears to many to be among the best organized as he leads the pack in fundraising and surges ahead in polls.

Click on headline to read the full article.

Judith Steinberg Dean is her own person, thank you very much.

She manages a bustling medical practice in Burlington, Vt., that she simply can’t abandon to play the waving wife while her husband, Howard Dean, runs for president. Interviews, likewise, are rare, and brief — tortured almost.

Steinberg Dean, admittedly, enjoys getting prodded by reporters as much as the average person enjoys getting prodded by doctors. As she said a couple of months back, “I’m just too busy.”

Still. There are ways for busy, shy doctor spouses of presidential candidates to help out now and again. The other day, Steinberg Dean, in one of her first public actions of the campaign, pitched in her way: She wrote a letter.

Specifically, she wrote a two-page fundraising pitch to “target donors” in which she explains her absence from the campaign trail and gives her take on why her husband became such a great governor of Vermont. The letter was first reported by ABC News.

Both explanations are about being doctors. “As a doctor and a partner in a medical practice,” she writes in her pitch, “I have a responsibility to my patients. That’s why my time ‘on the campaign trail’ is limited; when people are sick they want and need to see a physician.”

As for why her husband makes such a good politician?

Why, he is a doctor, and thus has the empathy and compassion and ability to make important decisions. “Howard is an excellent physician,” she wrote, “and we make a great team. I think Howard was a better governor because of his experiences as a doctor.”

The Dean campaign said the target donors in question are past donors large and small.

A spokesman, Sue Allen, said Steinberg Dean will continue to contribute to the campaign “in her own way.”