The 'extra' $258,000 from the recent Dean fundraising drive was for a 'top secret' project, and after a week it has been revealed:

You Are the First to Know

Beginning Monday, Howard Dean is going up on the air in Austin, Texas. In a television commercial recorded late this week, he will invite the people of Texas to join us in building the great grassroots campaign of the modern era-- whether by signing up online or using our new toll-free number: 1-866-Dean-4-USA

The people of Texas know George W. Bush better than anyone. Throughout this campaign, Howard Dean has been standing up to George W. Bush, and what better place to stand up against what George W. Bush has done to the economy and our nation than in Bush's home state of Texas.

When we've said we're building a grassroots campaign in all 50 states, we've meant all 50 states. You have enabled us to bring Howard Dean's message to Texas. Help spread the word to the rest of the country by forwarding this blog entry, and ask your friends in every state to join us.

We'll have the commercial on the web at the right time, sometime over the weekend. There will be more coming. But on Monday, Howard Dean goes up on the air in Texas.

This is not only gutsy, it's smart in several ways:

• It will get covered as a bold stroke by the media (and surely some will call it foolhardy, but at least they'll be talking about Dean, not the others). This coverage may be worth more than the ad itself.
• It attacks Bush, not the other D candidates, which may help allay some people's concerns about the tone of the race.
• It takes "Internet dollars" and leverages them "on the ground".
• Even if Texas is a 'safe red' state, there are a lot of people there who can contribute money. Showing that they're not written off is probably good for a lot of donors and a lot of general goodwill.
• It's a big symbolic flip-off to the President while he's vacationing in Crawford, which will make a whole lot of dissatisfied voters (Dem and Independent) cheer, even if they're not specifically for Dean.
• And because of all of the above, it leads by example.

I was hoping the 'surprise' would be something non-obvious but smart (we semi-called it by speculating on "an unusual ad buy", though obviously we lacked the details), and lo and behold, it is.

Like so many Dean tactics, it's the kind of thing that makes me wonder, "Why aren't the other guys doing anything like this?" And it reassures me that Dean's creative, nimble campaign is the one to put up against Rove-Cheney.