Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told a Tallahassee
audience today that southerners have to
quit basing their votes on "race, guns, God and gays." (This is what will
cause him to lose overwhelmingly in the panhandle where Tallahassee
is. That part of FL finds each one of the things he talks about of
supreme importance. He's toast in the
south)
Dean, making his first campaign foray into North Florida, spoke at
a
rally in Jacksonville then addressed more than 500 people at a
luncheon of the Capital Tiger Bay Club.
He said Sen. Bob Graham, who announced on Monday that he won't run for
re-election, is on his "short list" for vice president - if he wins the
Democratic nomination to face President Bush next November.
The former Vermont governor, who is a physician, also criticized Gov.
Jeb Bush for rushing through a law that allowed Bush to override the
courts and restore feeding to a Tampa woman, Terri Schiavo, who has been
in a "persistent vegetative state" since 1990.
Dean said he hopes to reassemble a coalition of
conservative
southern voters like President Franklin Roosevelt had in
the "solid
South" 70 years ago. Although his opposition to the war in
Iraq and his criticism of the Bush tax cuts do not score well in polls in
the South, Dean said he hopes working families will support his call for
improving education and health care.
