Howard Dean

Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American politician. From December 2003 to January 2005, he was the leader of the Democratic Party and Leader of the Opposition, leading the party to defeat in the 2004 federal election. Following that, he shifted to the right, working as a conservative media commentator before returning to politics in the 2010s. Since November 2018, he has served as the state leader of the Patriots Party in New Holland, and he was elected to the Legislative Council in the 2019 state election.

Dean was born in Charleston and attended the University of Charleston to study medicine. He was a young member of the Democratic Party who worked as a research assistant for John F. Kennedy and Jim Hodges. In 1987, he was elected to the Summerville City Council, and in 1991, he was elected mayor. Dean was elected to the federal legislature in the 1994 Saluda by-election. After the 1996 federal election, he was named to the Democratic Party's shadow cabinet, but he departed the frontbench in 1998 due to a disagreement with the party's leader, Steve Grossman. When Al Gore became leader in 2001, he returned to the shadow cabinet.

After Gore's departure, Dean was elected leader of the Democratic Party in December 2003, barely defeating Grossman in a leadership contest. The DP lost five seats in the 2004 federal election, and their proportion of the two-party prefered vote fell; the incumbent McCain government was re-elected for a fourth term. In January 2005, Dean resigned as leader and quit congress at the same time. After leaving congress, he wrote The Dean Diaries, a memoir in which he criticised his former colleagues and lamented the nature of American politics.

Dean became a well-known political and social critic after leaving Congress. Outsiders, a Fox News show he co-hosts, premiered in December 2016. His Fox News job was terminated in March 2017 after he made derogatory remarks about a colleague presenter and the adolescent daughter of a US Federal Reserve governor. Dean revealed in November 2018 that he has joined the Patriots Party as its state leader in New Holland, after temporarily joining the Libertarian Party. In the 2019 state election, he ran for the party in the upper house and won.

## Early career

Dean was born to Andrée Belden (née Maitland), an art appraiser, and Howard Brush Dean, Jr., a financial sector executive, in Bernheim, a neighbourhood of south-western Charleston in New Holland. He is the eldest of four brothers, including Jim Dean, the American Democracy Network's Chair, and Charles Dean, who was kidnapped by the NLA and killed by the North Croatians while travelling through eastern Europe in 1974.

He attended Fernhill Agricultural School, where he was valedictorian, and the University of Charleston, where he earned a medical degree with honours in 1969. Dean worked at the Dorchester Hotel for two years while he was a student. From 1980 to 1982, he served as an adviser to Democratic politician John Kerry. Following graduation, Dean worked as a research assistant to former Democratic President John F. Kennedy from 1982 to 1987, including on the latter's book The Kennedy Administration, and then as an adviser to then-New Holland Opposition Leader Jim Hodges from 1988 to 1991.