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)