Dean denounced the 2003 invasion of Iraq and called on Democrats to oppose the Bush administration . Dean showed fundraising ability, and was a pioneer of political fundraising via the Internet ; however, he lost the nomination to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Dean formed the organization Democracy for America and later was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in February 2005. As chairman of the party, Dean created and employed the 50 State Strategy that attempted to make Democrats competitive in normally conservative states often dismissed in the past as "solid red". The success of the strategy became apparent after the 2006 midterm elections, where Democrats took back the House and picked up seats in the Senate from normally Republican states such as Missouri and Montana. In the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama used the 50 state strategy as the backbone of his candidacy. Dean was born in East Hampton, New York , to Howard Brush Dean, Jr. and Andrée Belden (née Maitland), an art appraiser. [ 12 ] He is the oldest of their four children, all boys. [ 12 ] Howard's father worked at the stock brokerage firm of Dean Witter . The family was quite wealthy, Republican, and belonged to the exclusive Maidstone Golf Club in East Hampton . As a child he spent much of his time growing up in East Hampton; the family built a house on Hook Pond [ 13 ] there in the mid-1950s. There the boys– Howard, Charlie , Jim