E-Mail This Article to a Friend DC PRIMARY Dean fails to win the African-American vote BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

Washington, DC, added another piece of bad news to Howard Dean’s tough week with its "advisory" Democratic primary Tuesday. While Dean won, he manage to garner only 43 percent of the vote, edging out Al Sharpton by just nine points. As the only major candidate on the ballot, Dean was widely expected to get at least 60 percent of the vote. A poll taken in late November showed Dean leading with 45 percent to Sharpton’s 11 percent.

The early primary, meant to draw attention to DC residents’ lack of congressional representation, does not affect the District’s 39 delegates, who will be chosen in a February caucus. Four of the major candidates — Congressman Dick Gephardt, Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, and Retired General Wesley Clark — removed their names from the ballot in deference to the "first in the nation" status held by the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. (See "DC Takes Center Stage," News and Features, October 24, 2003, and "Candidates Opt Out of DC," This Just In, December 26, 2003.)

The day before the primary, Sharpton tried to downplay expectations, as did his staff. "The governor is supposed to beat us four-to-one, so if it’s two-to-one that’s the story," said Joe Ruffin, Sharpton’s DC campaign manager.

Sharpton spent $125,000 in DC, according to Ruffin, a sum that included radio and print advertising and distribution of 55,000 pieces of literature. "Sharpton’s butt was on the line — he’s got to show that he can get black voters in a Southern city to vote for him," says Mark David Richards, a DC-based political consultant who supports Dean. The nation’s capital is 59 percent black.

Sharpton himself spent the last week campaigning there, and even made sure to drop DC-representation rhetoric into recent Iowa debates that were televised back in Washington.

In the most recent debate, Sharpton took Dean to task for not having racial minorities in his Vermont cabinet. That revelation was all over DC’s WTFW talk radio, said Richards. He added that two nights ago, Confederate-flag stickers appeared on all the Howard Dean signs on U Street, an unsubtle allusion to Dean’s earlier remarks about reaching out to Southern white voters who have Confederate flags in their pick-up trucks.

Dean’s national campaign, after initially participating openly in the DC primary, distanced itself recently to keep from offending voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. A local volunteer organization, DC for Dean, raised money and campaigned for him independently of the national organization. Dean’s Web site purged all mention of the event (and the November poll, which had been posted), and the candidate himself, who stayed cocooned in Vermont Tuesday, did not attend the primary.

But with polls in Iowa showing razor-thin margins there, the other campaigns used the DC primary to revive the issue of Dean’s attitude toward Iowa’s caucus Monday evening on MSNBC’s Hardball.

Steve Murphy, Dick Gephardt’s campaign manager, said that Dean’s participation in the DC primary "undermines the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary."

Michael Meehan, senior adviser to Kerry’s campaign, quickly chimed in: "It shows [Dean’s] lack of courtesy for the Iowa process."

Steve McMahon, a Dean campaign consultant, tried to backpedal. "We’re not competing there [in Washington]. We haven’t run a single ad. We haven’t put a field program out there. We aren’t doing direct mail. We’re not doing anything."

But his poor showing in DC now brings into question Dean’s ability to carry crucial African-American voters in the Southern primaries.

Among the other DC-primary candidates, former ambassador Carol Moseley Braun finished third with 12 percent, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich took fourth with eight percent. Voter turnout appeared light — estimates were around 16 percent of 257,000 registered Democrats — but higher than usual for DC’s primaries, which often take place after the presidential nominee has been presumptively selected.