If at first: why Washington political operatives will be voting for Howard Dean.

• Author: Larson, Christina
• Position: 10 Miles Square

Spend a few days tramping around the site of the first Democratic primary contest of the election '04 season, and you'll find it's not shaping up quite the way one might expect. The local press isn't sponsoring any pre-primary debates. Front yards aren't thick with campaign signs. And instead of flocking here to press the flesh with voters, most of the major Democratic presidential aspirants are doing nothing to turn out the vote in this state--which is not actually a state, at least not yet.

Indeed, when the polls open in Washington, D.C., on January 13, the only national Democratic candidates on the ballot will be Carol Moseley Braun, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Howard Dean. This is a rather disconcerting fact for the legions of D.C.-based political operatives who won't be able to vote for the favorite candidates of the Democratic establishment, such as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), whom many inside the Beltway have been supporting and advising over the past year.

It's also frustrating to Jack Evans, a D.C. City Councilmember who represents the Georgetown neighborhood where Kerry, Lieberman, and Edwards all own homes. Like so many of the District's elected officials, Evans--a fiftyish, tow-headed lawyer dubbed "the Boy Blonde" by the local alternative newspaper--is forever looking for ways to bring attention to D.C.'s ongoing quest for voting representation in Congress. And last spring, from his office on Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and the White House, Evans began to act on a moment of inspiration.

Reading through the Democratic National Committee's delegate-selection rules, Evans found a loophole in the language that, in effect, ensures that the first caucus and the first primary of each election year are held in Iowa and New Hampshire. These rules prohibit any other state from moving its presidential primary before the first Tuesday in February. But the District of Columbia, Evans reasoned, isn't a state. So he drafted a bill, passed last spring by the city. council, which moved D.C.'s primary to January 13, six days before the Iowa caucuses and two weeks before New Hampshire's primary. By bring the candidates to campaign in Washington, Evans hoped he could "showcase D.C.'s lack of voting representation in Congress."

But his machinations have not played out quite as planned. Last September, New Hampshire's Democratic state party chair, Kathleen Sullivan, eager...