Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American physician, author, consultant, and retired politician who served as the 79th governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2005 to 2009.

[a] Dean served as chairman of the National Governors Association from 1994 to 1995; during his term, Vermont paid off much of its public debt and had a balanced budget 11 times, lowering income taxes twice.

Dean had a disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucus, and his campaign suffered after negative reactions in the media to a hoarse "Yeah" that he shouted after enumerating states that he hoped to win and ending up losing the nomination to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.

As chairman of the party, Dean created and employed the fifty-state strategy that attempted to make Democrats competitive in normally conservative states often dismissed in the past as "solid red".

[20] One of Dean's roommates was Ralph Dawson, the son of a sheet metal worker in Charleston, South Carolina, and today a New York City labor lawyer.

There were lots of well-meaning people at Yale who wanted you to understand that they understood your plight; you'd get into a conversation and they would yield too soon, so we didn't get the full benefit of the exchange.

During his tenure as governor, the state paid off much of its debt, balanced its budget eleven times, raised its bond rating, and lowered income taxes twice.

Shortly before leaving office, he had some of his Vermont papers sealed for at least the next decade, a time frame longer than most outgoing governors use, stating that he was protecting the privacy of many gay supporters who sent him personal letters about the issue.

Many people, including Democratic Senator and failed 2004 presidential candidate Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who left the party after losing his primary for re-election in 2006, accused Dean of hypocrisy.

His campaign slowly gained steam, and by autumn of 2003, Dean had become the apparent frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, performing strongly in most polls and outpacing his rivals in fundraising.

[34]) Following Dean's presidential campaign, some Deaniacs remained engaged in the political process through Democracy for America and similar locally oriented organizations.

Dean began his campaign by emphasizing health care[2] and fiscal responsibility, and championing grassroots fundraising as a way to fight lobby groups.

By challenging the war in Iraq at a time when mainstream Democratic leaders were either neutral or cautiously supportive, Dean positioned himself to appeal to his party's activist base.

Dean adopted a coffee shop strategy to visit grassroot activists in all 99 Iowa counties, but he lacked the campaign infrastructure to get voters to the polls that his opponents had.

One of these suggestions led to one of the campaign's biggest accomplishments– an image of Dean eating a turkey sandwich encouraged supporters to donate $250,000 in three days to match a big-donor dinner by Vice President Dick Cheney.

[35] In November 2003, after a much-publicized online vote among his followers, Dean became the first Democrat to forgo federal matching funds (and the spending limits that go with them) since the system was established in 1974.

In a sign that the Dean campaign was starting to think beyond the primaries, they began in late 2003 to speak of a "$100 revolution" in which two million Americans would give $100 in order to compete with Bush.

Political commentators have stated that the fundraising of Barack Obama, with its emphasis on small donors and the internet, refined and built upon the model that Dean's campaign pioneered.

[37] In the following weeks Dean was endorsed by former U.S. senators Bill Bradley and Carol Moseley Braun, unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates from the 2000 and 2004 primaries, respectively.

[44] In particular, this quote from the speech was aired repeatedly in the days following the caucus: Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York.

As late as one week before the first votes were cast in Iowa's caucuses, Dean had enjoyed a 30% lead in New Hampshire opinion polls;[citation needed] accordingly, this loss represented another major setback to his campaign.

The New York Observer attributed Barack Obama's success in the 2008 presidential election to his perfection of the internet organizing model that Dean pioneered.

[53] On October 11, 2007, it was reported that Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney were in early talks about making a "political thriller" based on Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, tentatively titled Farragut North.

Dean traveled extensively throughout the country with the plan, including places like Utah, Mississippi, and Texas, states in which Republicans had dominated the political landscape.

Many establishment Democrats were at least initially dubious about the strategy's worth—political consultant and former Bill Clinton advisor, Paul Begala, suggested that Dean's plan was "just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose.

While it is likely this is also attributable to the shortcomings of the Republican Party in their dealings with the Iraq War and the scandals that occurred shortly before the election, Dean's emphasis on connecting with socially conservative, economic moderates in Republican-dominated states appears to have made some impact.

And while former Clinton strategist James Carville criticized Dean's efforts, saying more seats could have been won with the traditional plan of piling money solely into close races, the results and the strategy were met with tremendous approval by the party's executive committee in its December 2006 meeting.

Supporters of Dean were angry that he was not given a position in the new Obama administration and not invited to the press conference at which Tim Kaine was introduced as his successor as Democratic National Committee chairman.

"[67][66] When asked about not being selected for a position in the Obama administration, Dean responded, "Obviously, it would have been great, but it's not happening and the president has the right to name his own Cabinet, so I'm not going to work in the government it looks like."

[72] After leaving office Dean emerged as a major supporter of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK), calling for it to be delisted as a terrorist group by the United States, which occurred on September 21, 2012.