In April, Richard Hoefer attended his first Dean Meetup at Kelly's Mission Rock, a restaurant overlooking the San Francisco Bay, and he was immediately "blown away" by the candidate. Fewer than 150 people attended that night, and Dean was widely considered a long shot, but when he saw a videotape of Dean speaking, Hoefer says he thought, My God, that's him! At the time, Hoefer says, he'd been disappointed in most other Democrats -- but Dean's willingness to attack Bush attracted him. "I knew then that I was going to bring every single talent that I have to get this guy elected," he says.

Not long after that, Hoefer decided to start a collective of creative people devoted to Dean -- he called it the Dean Media Team, and he says he wanted the plan to work like a decentralized advertising firm, with professionals from all over the country volunteering their services to create, shoot, edit and otherwise help on video ad campaigns touting Howard Dean. The plan was ambitious, and a few months passed before "a critical mass" of people signed up to help. But by the late summer, things seemed to come together, and the DMT began to work on its first campaign.

The group's first project isn't especially original -- they created a series of 30-second spots based on Apple Computer's "switch" ad campaign, in which real people tell short, quirky stories about how frustrated they are with their Windows computers and why they decided, instead, to use Macs. Kevin Murray, a Dean supporter who is a professional editor of corporate videos in San Francisco, thought it would be a good idea to make the same kind of ads for the former Vermont governor -- real people giving their real thoughts on Howard Dean.

"There's a surprising and very elegant crossover from Apple's campaign to Dean," Murray says. Apple is an underdog in the computer industry, a firm that's constantly fighting a well-financed opponent that seems to rule the world, which is not unlike Howard Dean's fight. "And for me it feels very pure, because of course Apple is just selling computers," while Dean, Murray says, is selling a new vision for America.

At the August Meetup in San Francisco, held at the Unitarian Universalist Church, Murray polled the crowd for Dean fans willing to participate in his ads. He set up a white backdrop in a side room, and there he filmed several supporters as they spilled their guts about Dean. It didn't take him long to edit the films down to 30-second spots, and he and others in the DMT added music and graphics; they also set up a companion Web site, Switch2Dean.com, to distribute the films and to collect stories from others who'd switched.

Everyone associated with the Switch2Dean ads insists that this campaign is just a proof of concept, a small project intended to show that creative people, working together, can do a pretty good job of promoting Dean. But the ads are still rather remarkable. They're smart, funny and authentic -- the kind of thing you never see in real political ads. The people in them are obviously in love with Howard Dean, and because they're real, their adoration is not easy to dismiss: If you're not a Dean supporter and you see one of these ads, there's a good chance they'd prompt you to find out more about him.

But who, besides people with broadband access to the Web, will see them? "Of course we would love to get them on TV," Bart Myers says. "If that's something that Dean for America is interested in, we are not going to limit their distribution at all." (Myers notes, though, that because of campaign finance restrictions, the campaign has to be very careful about encouraging his effort; the Dean Media Team has received no support from Dean for America.) But if the Switch2Dean videos don't get on TV, Myers says there are other ways to get the ads out to Dean supporters. He encourages people who do have fast Internet connections and DVD burners to download the videos and make copies for everyone they know.

But how will people who don't have DVD players access them? Members of the DMT intend to hold Dean meetings at community centers, and they encourage other supporters to show their videos at the monthly Meetups.

If all of this sounds a bit complicated, that's because it is. It's always difficult, members of the DMT say, to get to the least-connected people in society, and it's far from certain that anyone on the lonely side of the digital divide will get to see the work produced by the group. But many in the DMT appear willing to do the work anyway. During the past few months, Hoefer has spent time traveling through San Francisco talking to homeless people about what they want from their government, and he intends to cut his film into a short piece aimed at getting homeless people to support Dean. J. DeLoach, who runs Scenic Verve, a film production company in San Francisco that produces "documentary films on progressive subjects," is working on a series of videos in which she'll profile members of various minority communities who are supporting Howard Dean -- "the Latino community, the African-American community, the queer community."

And the DMT's video are certainly not the only way that Dean supporters intend to appeal to minorities. Steve Chaffin, the Ohio coordinator, says that almost every day, people send him new ideas for ways to expand the campaign beyond the Web. Chaffin recently received an e-mail from a supporter who suggested that Dean fans should purchase toothpaste, shampoo and other necessities that can't be bought on food stamps, and then give away those items at local charity centers. The Dean supporters will tell the poor that "We feel we can heal America with Dr. Dean's programs," Chaffin said.

Will any of these plans to recruit minorities work? And, if they don't, will Howard Dean suffer? Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the proprietor of the popular lefty blog Daily Kos and a consultant to the Dean campaign's Web efforts, says that even if Dean is failing to appeal to minorities now, they will come to him if he wins the nomination. Meanwhile, Moulitsas says, polls show that Dean is currently attracting a crowd that the Democratic Party has had trouble with in recent elections -- white males. This is partly because of Dean's use of the Web, Moulitsas says, but mainly because "he's a very aggressive candidate in his speaking style, and the anger. Nobody wants a president that's a wimp, and Dean sounds tough, he sounds like he's ready to kick some ass, and I think that really fires men up."

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a Dean supporter who lives in Sitka, Alaska, a city of 9,000 people that sits on an island off the state's southeastern coast and is accessible only by boat and airplane, agrees with this notion. Kreiss-Tomkins, a white male, has heard almost everything he knows about Howard Dean through the Internet. "And I definitely think Dean appeals to the typical Internet geek," he says -- and he knows, because he is himself something of an example.

Kreiss-Tomkins maintains a database of the more than 500 online discussion groups focused on Dean, and manages a private online discussion of the leaders of all these groups. He has emerged as a key grass-roots organizer for Dean. He says he was motivated to work for Dean because "I believe our country is in a dire state. The economy is in the dumps, we're attacking countries, I believe healthcare needs to be improved, the environment is horrible horrible horrible."

But Kreiss-Tomkins keeps his love for Dean mostly secret from his friends, and he won't be voting for Dean anytime soon. That's because he's 14 years old -- a high-school freshman who, when not busying himself with politics, spends much of his time practicing oboe, cello, acoustic bass and piano. "My social image is quite a bit different," he says. But Dean's campaign allows him to contribute a lot of effort from the privacy of his own room. "Online you can work out for him to your heart's content," he says.

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