Jim Dean, the chair of Democracy for America (DFA), was in Tampa this weekend, assisting in his group's campaign academy training at Dickinson Elementary School. These sessions are where DFA members train prospective Democratic political candidates, consultants, campaign workers and other assorted political junkies on the tools to run and win campaigns.
DFA was created by Dean's brother, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, in the aftermath of his 2004 run for president.
"This was pre-Obama," Jim Dean says of the evolution of the group. "They knew they had this community that had been very supportive of him, and he wanted to make sure that got leveraged into something that was much bigger than his campaign and much more active in politics."
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2011.