DNC Chair to Step Down in January

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean will vacate his seat when his term expires in January, following a tumultuous campaign for the party's ticket and then the White House, The Huffington Post reported Monday. Dean, who was an early front-runner in the 2004 presidential race, became chairman in 2005. Prior to that he was a physician and governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003.

Starting with the midterm election in 2006, he orchestrated the "50-State Strategy" by investing in each state to win congressional seats and lay the groundwork for President-elect Barack Obama's campaign. States not carried by a Democratic presidential candidate in decades, including North Carolina, Virginia, and Indiana, went blue on Election Day.

Obama will select a successor for Dean. An aide told the Post that Obama may choose Missouri senator Claire McCaskill.

"My sense is that the Obama folks are pretty insular and don't want somebody else building the party and haven't even decided what building the party means for them," the aide said. "I bet they go with a split chair again ... McCaskill at chair, and somebody like Steve Hildebrand [Obama's deputy campaign manager] at operational chair."

Although Vermont began offering marriage-like civil unions to same-sex couples -- as a result of a court order -- while Dean was governor, he has had some run-ins with gays. Dean, appearing on the evangelical Christian TV show The700 Club in May 2006, said the party's platform stated that marriage was between a man and a woman, the Washington Blade reported. The 2004 Democratic Platform, however, stated that marriage is a state issue, and the party took no stance on whether only heterosexual couples could marry. Dean later clarified his words in a statement.

"I misstated the Democratic Party's platform, which does not say that marriage should be limited to a man and a woman, but says the party is committed to full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and leaves the issue to the states to decide," Dean said.

The 2008 platform, often hailed as being the most gay-inclusive of either major party, opposes the federal Defense of Marriage Act, urges the repeal on the military's ban on gay and lesbian service members, and discusses establishing a domestic HIV/AIDS strategy.

Dean has also been involved in a lawsuit by the party's former LGBT outreach director, Donald Hitchcock, who was fired by Dean. The suit claims that party officials discriminated against him and his partner, Democratic activist Paul Yandura, who criticized the DNC for not being proactive on gay issues. (Michelle Garcia, The Advocate)