ALBUQUERQUE — Staggering after two early losses and a campaign spending binge that has left him little money, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is embarking on the untested strategy of looking past Tuesday's round of primaries and caucuses in hopes of stopping Sen. John F. Kerry later in the election calendar, top campaign officials confirmed Friday.
Dean will try to win the Michigan primary and Washington caucuses a week from today and, in particular, set his sights on the 72 delegates at stake on Feb. 17 in liberal Wisconsin, said Roy Neel, the new chief executive of the campaign.
"Has such a strategy ever worked before?" Neel asked in an online memo to supporters Friday night. "No. It's never been tried."
In a best-case scenario for Dean, the delay will give the former Vermont governor time to replenish his campaign treasury and to win later primaries, making him the principal alternative to Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
But the gambit risks letting Kerry tighten his hold on the lead in the Democratic presidential race if he can win most, or all, of the states to be contested on Tuesday -- Missouri, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Delaware and North Dakota.
"Any time you get into this business of skipping over something, you run the risk of creating a whole new reality in the here and now while you're focused on the firewall you're building in some far-off primary," said Bill Carrick, a top Democratic strategist, who advised Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt before Gephardt dropped from the presidential race.
"If John Kerry wins all seven states" on Feb. 3, Carrick said, "then what's the rationale for Dean's candidacy?"
Carrick had the same lesson hammered home in recent weeks, when Gephardt attempted to ignore New Hampshire, with plans of focusing on the South Carolina primary. As it turned out, Gephardt was not around for either; his distant fourth-place finish in Iowa pushed him out of the race.
Dean has been forced into the new strategy in large part by his heavy spending in the first two contests. He raised $41 million last year, a record among Democratic presidential candidates, but spent most of it by the time the Iowa and New Hampshire contests were over.
That leaves Dean claiming just $3 million in his treasury. Campaign Chairman Steve Grossman conceded in a phone interview Friday that the spending in the first two states was "enormous, and you can emphasize 'enormous.' "
