Dean visits city church, rally

President Bush is spending $87 billion in the wrong place, Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean said Sunday in Columbia.

Instead of using that money to rebuild Iraq, Dean told the congregation of Community CME Church that $87 billion would pay for health care at home.

“Why can’t we have what every other industrialized nation has on the face of the Earth,” Dean said. “Why can’t we have health insurance for every man, woman and child in America?”

In speeches before the Community congregation, and later at a downtown rally of supporters, Dean accused Republicans of trying to divide the country along racial lines, and blistered President Bush’s foreign policy in Iraq and his lack of attention to the needs of America’s less fortunate.

It was Dean’s first visit to Columbia since May 3 and just his second to the state since then. But despite his absence from the state, a new poll released Friday showed Dean taking the lead in the race for the Feb. 3 South Carolina primary.

The primary, the first by a Southern state, is considered important in choosing the eventual nominee.

If he wins the nomination, Dean said he will return to campaign in South Carolina for the general election despite the fact that 57 percent of S.C. voters supported Bush in 2000.

Dean said the Democratic Party can’t abandon the South.

“It’s a big mistake, and we’re not going to do it,” the former governor of Vermont said. “Even in those states that it’s going to be very hard for us, we want to build the Democratic Party in the South.”

The S.C. primary “is a tossup,” Dean said at the Clarion Town House hotel on Gervais Street after a rally before more than 400 enthusiastic, but overwhelmingly white, supporters. “We’re going to work very hard here.”

His campaign announced last week that Dean will return to the state’s airwaves today as he launches a new television commercial. Dean will remain on the air through the primary.

Also Sunday, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., announced he was endorsing Dean for president. Jackson, an S.C. native and son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, traveled with Dean on Sunday. Jackson urged South Carolinians to “strike a blow” for jobs, education and health care by voting for Dean.

“South Carolina, vote your hopes, not your fears. The rest of the nation is depending on you,” Jackson said.

Audrey Snead of Columbia said Dean’s speech to the African-American church was effective. While she hasn’t picked a candidate to support, “I do have my druthers,” she said. She said Dean’s choice of speaking at the small church showed he cares about ordinary people.

“That makes a big difference in my community,” Snead said.

Ruby James, also of Columbia, said Dean’s speech at the church addressed issues that matter. And while she, too, has not decided for whom to vote on Feb. 3, “of course I’ll consider Dean.”

Later, at the rally at the Town House hotel, Dean spoke of the need to unite all Americans behind a common banner of elevating everyone, not just the fortunate few.

He said Bush’s tax cuts gave an extra $26,000 to the richest 1 percent of the nation, while most Americans received just more than $300.

That’s particularly important in South Carolina, he said.

“Let’s think about what South Carolina has suffered under this president,” Dean said. “Tell me about the $70 million your Republican Legislature and Republican governor cut out of the South Carolina public school system.”

Without Bush’s tax cut, states would have more money for basic services, he said.

In the crowd at the Town House was Anthony Wallace, 27, of Kershaw. Wallace wore a white jacket with Confederate flag emblems on the shoulders.

Wearing a hat that said “Southern Heritage,” Wallace said he “wanted to see what Howard Dean’s political view was on the Confederate battle flag. I’ve been calling him ‘Dixie Dean.’”

Dean apologized in November after he told an Iowa newspaper that “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.’’

That statement was part of why Wallace was at the Town House on Sunday, just half a dozen blocks from the State House, where the Confederate flag flies atop a 30-foot pole.

Sunday after the rally, Dean said what “I was talking about was that whites and blacks need to vote together in this country, and that’s what we’ve been saying, that’s what I meant. I said it clumsily, I apologized for it, and I don’t ever plan to say that again.”

Staff writer Joseph S. Stroud contributed to this report. Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658 or asheinin@thestate.com.