DENVER—Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean says he is now convinced that Denver can raise the $45 million needed to pull off his party’s 2008 convention, easing concerns generated when the mid-sized city was picked a year ago to host the event.
Denver fell short of a $7 million fundraising deadline last spring but met a December deadline of $15 million.
“That was a really big deal,” Dean said Friday. “That was what convinced me finally that this was going to be fine.”
Dean picked Denver over New York for the August convention despite worries that the city of 550,000 people could raise enough money. Boston lagged behind its fundraising goals before the 2004 convention.
The Denver 2008 Host Committee has extinguished that worry, Dean said.
“For the insiders in Washington, they get that Denver knows how to do this,” he said. “I think a lot of people in Washington were waiting with baited breath to find out if this was going to happen, and nobody thought it was going to happen.”
Denver now must raise a total of $28 million by March 17.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting of the party’s executive committee, the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate said he expects a tight primary campaign among Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama after the “Super Tuesday” vote on Feb. 5.
“I don’t believe that it will be over by Feb. 5 by any stretch of the imagination,” he said.
Dean said he hopes a candidate will emerge by the middle of March so the party can turn its attention to the Republicans.
So far, Dean said, the Democratic campaign has largely focused on “legitimate difference of opinion.”
“The truth is it’s not that ferocious yet, and I hope it doesn’t get ferocious,” he said. “But it was much worse four years ago, and it is much, much worse on the Republican side. I don’t believe you’ve seen any of the kind of attack ads between the front runners—our front runners—of the kind you’ve seen on the Republican side.”
And he spoke optimistically of ending Republican dominance in the South.
“I would say that our best shots are Florida and Arkansas and Virginia, of course. Virginia is going to be a battleground,” he said. “North Carolina is one that I would not give up on at all, but I would say those are the most likely.”
