It wasn’t long ago that Chris Wilcox held a small blue baseball bat plastered with stickers for presidential hopeful Howard Dean.

Dean, a former Vermont governor, was scheduled to arrive at the August rally in Bangor any minute, and Wilcox was eager for the Democratic frontrunner to sign the bat – symbolic he said of Dean’s attitude toward cleaning out Washington, D.C.

Ten months later at this weekend’s Maine Democratic State Convention, Wilcox put the bat in his truck to stay – at least for a while.

“It will be back out there sometime,” said Wilcox, a state delegate for Dean, who suspended his campaign to support presumptive nominee John Kerry. “I think America will see Howard Dean again.”

It wasn’t a desire to thwart Kerry’s inevitable nomination that drew hundreds of Dean supporters to the Portland convention. The same went for supporters of Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who began his Saturday speech by telling the crowd he would support the Massachusetts senator.

Instead, Dean and Kucinich delegates were looking for something simple – a chance to change the debate by bringing the party’s moderate nominee to the left.

“We want to hold John Kerry’s feet to the fire,” said Scott Ruffner, who will go to the Democratic National Convention this summer as one of six Kucinich delegates from Maine.

Pamela Page, a 36-year old veterinarian from Palermo, said she too wanted Kerry to embrace some of Kucinich’s views – particularly his unqualified opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

If not, Page offered a warning to the Democratic Party she joined just a few months ago.

“If [Kerry] listens, I would vote for him,” Page said. “If he doesn’t strengthen his stance on certain things, I might just vote for [Ralph] Nader again.”

Page’s sentiments, although rare at the convention, nevertheless burn the eardrums of Democrats, still stinging from the role they believe Nader had in handing the 2000 election to Bush.

Kerry campaign spokesman Jessie Derris, when asked about the need to court the party’s left wing, said Kerry’s views appealed to more than just Democrats.

“John Kerry’s message resonates with a lot of Americans,” Derris said. “The weekend was all about unity and all about Democrats getting behind a candidate everyone can believe in and knows can beat President Bush in November.”

Some Kerry supporters on Saturday expressed dismay at the lack of overt enthusiasm for their candidate when compared to that for Kucinich, whose fiery speech, most agreed, was a high point of the weekend convention.

“Kucinich is the story here,” said one Kerry delegate. “There’s probably a message here for John Kerry.”