BURLINGTON, Vt. A few months ago, an Internet whiz named Matthew Gross was working on a political Web site in Utah when he came across information about Howard Dean, the then-obscure former governor of Vermont who was making noises about running for president.

The 31-year-old Gross quit his job, got into his car and drove across the country to the Dean national campaign headquarters here. Unannounced, he popped his head into the office of the campaign manager, Joe Trippi, mentioned the Utah Web site familiar to Trippi and was hired on the spot.

Thus was born the Dean for America Weblog — "blog" to the Internet initiate — that today provides what Gross calls a daily "running commentary" on the campaign for the currently 207,000 Internet users signed on to support Dean. Internet readers can respond in instant feedback, he says, "giving us a sort of continuing focus group" on how Dean’s ideas and comments are playing with voters. Dean himself on occasion sits down at a headquarters computer and answers questions raised by bloggers from around the country.

"There’s a whole community out there, an Internet community," the candidate says. "They don’t live in one place, they live online."

That community has also given rise to responses from Dean backers to unfavorable reporting on the candidate, through an Internet effort dubbed the Dean Defense Forces. It has overtones of Big Brother watching the news media that, on balance, have been rather kind to the long shot from Vermont.

Gross and other Internet-savvy recruits were instrumental, along with two Internet organizing tools, MoveOn.org and Meetup.com, in raising $7.5 million from 83,000 contributors in the last calendar quarter. Their success jolted the eight other Democratic presidential campaigns and has them scrambling to ride the new political gravy train or compete in more traditional ways.

Trippi, the campaign manager, says beyond the obvious money-raising aspect of the Internet operation is the broad pool of grass-roots workers it is bringing to the Dean effort. Already, for example, volunteers are at work finding Democrats to run as delegates to the national party convention in districts all over the country.

He recalls that in 1984, candidate Gary Hart, running a similar long-shot campaign, made a breakthrough by finishing second in the Iowa caucuses and won the New Hampshire primary. But Hart had neither the money nor the delegate slates ready to run in many later states to capitalize on that early success.

Trippi also notes that of the 83,000 contributors already giving to Dean, most via the Internet, fewer than 900 have "maxed out" — or given the $2,000 permitted under federal law. That means that of those who have already given, 82,000-plus can be solicited again. The average Dean donation is about $66, all of it matchable by the Federal Election Commission, which gives dollar-for-dollar up on contributions of $250 or less.

Trippi says counting these matching funds, available to qualifying candidates after Jan. 1, the Dean campaign has more money potentially than any other Democratic candidate, with more to come as the contributor lists grow. Candidates who pull in $2,000 checks, by contrast, will have only the first $250 matched.

The growth of the Dean voter lists, largely through the Internet, has been impressive. Starting with only 432 signed-on supporters in January, Trippi says, the number reached 10,000 at the end of March, 22,000 by the end of April, to 207,000 now. With a strong dose of optimism, he projects the numbers to reach 450,000 by Sept. 30 and 900,000 by the end of this year.

Further musing about the potential of such numbers, the campaign manager calculates that if 2 million voters were to give $100 apiece to Dean, it would amount to $200 million — as much or more than the Bush campaign is targeting. That might be pipe-dreaming, but the mere calculation reflects how heady the impact of the Internet has been so far on those who have seen this particular tomorrow in national politics and swear it works.