Wisconsin Shakeout?

By David Paul Kuhn,
CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer

Dean campaigned hard Monday, amid turmoil within his increasingly attritional race. The chairman of Dean's nation-wide organization, Steven Grossman, left the campaign today.

"I'm enormously proud of what Howard Dean has achieved," Grossman told CBSNews.com, en route to his home in Boston. "If Dean does not win the Wisconsin primary, I'll reach out to John Kerry because he will be the presumptive nominee."

While campaigning in Wisconsin, Dean reiterated his determination to continue his candidacy regardless of the outcome in Wisconsin. Speaking to reporters, Dean said: "I haven't had any advisers urge me to step aside and I don't intend to."

"I believe Howard Dean should do what Howard Dean wants to do. He has brought a lot of new energy to the party," said Joe Lockhart, a Democratic consultant who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton. "He has fundamentally reoriented Democratic fundraising and the Democratic Party will need his people and they need his money, the about 600,000 to 800,000 new contributors that will all be needed as we go up against the $200 million Bush juggernaut."

The most recent Zogby/MSNBC/Reuters tracking poll shows Dean trailing Kerry by over 20 points in Wisconsin, 47 percent to 23. Sen. John Edwards is third at 20 percent.

Once thought to be a pivotal primary, Wisconsin's importance diminished in recent weeks as Kerry won contest after contest (he has won 14 of 16 so far). Last week's victories in the Southern states of Virginia and Tennessee over the two Southerners running, Edwards and former candidate Gen. Wesley Clark (who is now backing Kerry), seemingly cemented Kerry's nomination.

With a century-old tradition of being untraditional, Dean hoped Wisconsin would be his saving grace. The state elected progressive governor Robert M. LaFollette in 1905. More recently, anti-Vietnam War icon Eugene J. McCarthy's strong appeal in Wisconsin led to President Lyndon B. Johnson's last-minute withdrawal from the primary.

Perhaps the greatest Wisconsin surprise came in 1984, when Gary Hart defeated Vice President Walter F. Mondale of neighboring Minnesota. Mondale, though, still won the party's nomination.

"Wisconsin is still a maverick state in some ways," said Donald F. Kettl, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The state still enjoys voting for people like Russ Feingold but also for Ed Thompson, the libertarian brother of Tommy Thompson, who got 10 percent of the vote for governor two years ago. Wisconsin voters still have a taste for the out of the ordinary candidate."

Vice President Al Gore barely won the state in 2000, taking Wisconsin by about 5,000 votes. Still significantly independent, the state's voters generally split in thirds among Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

"I'll be watching how many independent voters show up, how they split among the candidates," Kettl said. "How they decide to vote for one of the Democratic candidates will itself be a kind of interesting indicator of how these candidates are doing with swing states in the general election."

Being an open primary, Independent voters can participate in Wisconsin. In other open primaries (New Hampshire, Missouri and South Carolina), Kerry has won the most Independents, although Edwards has consistently drawn a higher percentage of Independents than he has of Democrats.

"Wisconsin voters are keenly attuned to this electability issue and they are going for Kerry," Kettle explained. "We may very well see turnout of about 45,000, and that makes the Wisconsin primary an even better test of these bigger issues. There is a lot of local fuel under these fires that will affect turnout in the two places, Madison and Milwaukee, where there are more Democrats than anywhere else in the state."

Milwaukee has its first contested mayoral election in more than a decade. Madison residents will vote on whether or not to approve an Indian casino, a contentious topic in Wisconsin.

Barring a massive scandal, a Kerry win in Wisconsin will likely mark the launch of the two-man race between Kerry and Edwards; a race Edwards cannot win, by all estimations. Nevertheless, he will continue his candidacy for another prize, the vice-presidential nod, perhaps. Alternatively, Edwards may stay in the race to bring his national standing to an even higher stature, possibly with 2008 on his mind. Edwards versus Sen. Hillary Clinton if President George W. Bush wins a second term; certainly the primary contest of primary contests.

Of course, Edwards' motivation may be much simpler. "We've got a whole group of primaries coming up," he said at Sunday night's Democratic debate in Milwaukee. "I, for one, intend to fight with everything I've got for every one of those votes."

If you take him at his word (and candidates are relentlessly optimistic about their personal prospects), the North Carolina senator believes there should be a race until Super Tuesday, when ten contests from California to New York will have 1,151 delegates up for grabs, the most of the primary season.

"I am not one of these people who believe that John Edwards is running for vice president," Lockhart said. "I think he is running for president and the fact that he has run a terrific campaign, it is making a lot of people focus on how he would be a good number two on the ticket.

"But I can pretty much guarantee you that he doesn't sit up during the day and talk about whether he has gone up on the VP scale or down and I think it is a fool's errand to do; a) because you think it will deliver; b) it just doesn't work that way in politics," Lockhart continued. "At some point down the road he will consider it. I think anyone in politics would be a fool to not look at that opportunity."