Howard Dean, born in 1948, American physician and politician who served as governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003. In 2002 Dean became a candidate for the 2004 Democratic Party presidential nomination, but he bowed out of the race in February 2004. In 2005 Dean became chairman of the Democratic National Committee, the party’s top post for election strategy and organizing.

Dean was born on Long Island in New York. He graduated from Yale University with a B.A. degree in 1971 and earned his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City in 1978. After medical school, Dean began practicing medicine in Vermont.

Dean’s political career began in 1982 when he was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives, where he served two terms. In 1986 he was elected lieutenant governor of Vermont, and he won reelection in 1988 and 1990. In 1991 Vermont’s governor, Richard Snelling, died of a heart attack, and Dean succeeded him. Dean was first elected governor in 1992 and served five two-year terms. He decided not to run for reelection in 2002.

As governor, Dean was considered a moderate in a liberal state. He focused on fiscal responsibility, including cutting taxes and balancing the budget. He also strengthened a program to extend health coverage to children and worked to protect Vermont’s environment. In 2000 Dean signed a bill that allowed same-sex couples to form civil unions, which carry all the rights and benefits of marriage. Vermont was the first U.S. state to pass such a bill.

In 2002 Dean announced that he was seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States in the 2004 election. As a presidential candidate, he was considered more liberal than most of the other Democratic candidates, speaking out against President George W. Bush’s military action in Iraq and proposal to cut taxes.

Heading into the first elections for delegates to the Democratic Party convention, Dean emerged as the frontrunner. Polls showed him leading in both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and Dean won the endorsements of two major trade unions and former Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. Moreover, Dean’s campaign brought new sophistication to the use of the Internet for fundraising and organizing, and he succeeded in raising the largest campaign chest of any of the candidates with more than $40 million in donations in 2003. The Dean campaign raised so much money that it decided to forego matching campaign contributions from the federal government because of a ceiling placed on campaigns receiving matching funds.

Going into the final week before the first contest, the Iowa caucus, Dean’s numbers in the polls began to fall while those of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts started to rise. In that mid-January caucus Dean finished third behind Kerry and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. In the New Hampshire primary the following week, Dean rebounded slightly and took second place but was still 13 percentage points behind Kerry, who then became the frontrunner. In mid-February Dean ended his candidacy after losing the Wisconsin primary. In the 17 primaries and caucuses that he entered, he failed to win a single one.

Many political observers, however, credited Dean with energizing the base of the Democratic Party with his opposition to the war in Iraq and his pointed attacks on the policies of President George W. Bush. They also credited him with finding new ways to organize politically on the Internet, convincing about 640,000 people to sign up for his campaign on his Web site and breaking records for Democratic Party fundraising. Dean’s organizational and fundraising skills led to his being selected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005. Dean vowed to rebuild the party in the so-called red states, the mostly Southern and Great Plains states that have largely voted Republican in the last two presidential elections.