WASHINGTON — When Howard Dean was chosen to head their party, Democrats looked forward to the benefits of his bristling energy and zest for political combat.
But at a private meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill, a number of worried Senate Democrats warned Dean that he had been going overboard and needed to choose his words more carefully.
The former Vermont governor and unsuccessful presidential candidate recently referred to the GOP as "pretty much a white, Christian party" and declared that a lot of Republicans have "never made an honest living in their lives."
Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) said that at the Capitol Hill meeting, "there couldn't be any doubt that there was some concern, even by Dean himself," about how his comments had been received.
The meeting had been scheduled to discuss party strategy before Dean's controversial comments.
Also Thursday, two Democrats seen as rising stars -- Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee and Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner -- made a point of distancing themselves from Dean's remarks.
Ford, who plans a Senate run next year, said on the Don Imus radio show that if Dean could not "temper his comments, it may get to the point where the party may need to look elsewhere for leadership, because he does not speak for me."
Ford later told The Times that Dean was "leading us in a direction that makes it difficult to win.... His leadership right now is not serving any of us very well."
Warner, who has been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said Dean was using "not the kind of tone that I would use, not the kind of tone a lot of the Democratic governors in mostly Republican states are using to get elected or to govern." Warner made his comments at a luncheon at The Times' Washington bureau.
After the meeting on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats expressed continuing support for Dean, who was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in February.
"Every single one of us has stuck our foot in our mouths at one point in our public careers, and we've paid for it the next day," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said that although she didn't agree with Dean's recent comments, she considered him an effective party chairman.
"That is why the Republicans are so relentlessly going after him," she said.
