Democrat Dean seeks to challenge Bush on Iraq

25 August 2003, 18:00 PM

AFP, Seattle

Cheering supporters packed a Seattle park to hear former Vermont governor Howard Dean, an opponent of the US war in Iraq, who is emerging as a frontrunner in the field of candidates seeking to challenge President George W. Bush in the 2004 election.

"People are sleepless in Seattle wondering whether they'll have health care, keep their jobs or if their kid will be the next to die in Iraq," Dean said Sunday at Seattle's Westlake Park where some 2,000 supporters turned out to hear the candidate seeking to win the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidential election.

Dean is following Bush in the economically-depressed US northwestern states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington to address economic and environmental woes and press his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war.

The president has been vacationing on his ranch in Texas but has made several trips to western states to raise funds for his presidential campaign and tout his environmental initiatives.

Up to 500 drum-banging demonstrators expressed their disapproval of Bush when he visited Seattle Friday.

Dean says he will repeal tax cuts proposed by Bush and use the funds to build infrastructure, fund a health care system and help with jobs and education.

The family doctor from the small, politically insignificant East Coast state has political traction on the left-leaning West Coast. In Seattle, a majority of citizens told pollsters they were against the Iraq war from the onset.

The Dean campaign is gaining steam not only on the liberal West Coast, but nationally. A recent national CNN/USA Today/Gallop poll showed him leading in the important early primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and polling well in voter-rich California.

Bush is looking less than invincible amid mounting discontent with the ongoing violence in Iraq and the sluggish domestic economy. Asked in a Newsweek survey if Bush should be re-elected to a second term, 48 percent said no, and 44 percent said yes.

US political observers sat up and began taking Dean seriously after he raised 7.6 million dollars in April, May and June, mostly in small donations to his website -- by far the most ever raised online by a politician.

It was not only a pioneering use of the Internet, but an impressive show of strength by a motivated grassroots movement that no other candidate enjoys.