Friendly with Dean, Clark, Graham may be angling for No. 2 spot.

Byline: Peter Wallsten

MIAMI _ Edged out three times in the past to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Florida Sen. Bob Graham appears to be positioning himself into contention if Howard Dean tops the ticket.

In the past three weeks alone, Graham's eldest daughter joined the Dean campaign payroll as a senior advisor, his wife attended a Dean fundraiser in Miami, and Graham himself went out of his way to defend the former Vermont governor's foreign policy agenda against a barrage of attacks from his rivals for the White House.

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Graham, who endured months of negative publicity about his own weak presidential campaign, appears to be angling to shed those bad vibes.

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At two separate Democratic functions, a video has been shown honoring Graham and putting a positive spin on his quirky penchant to scrawl detailed notes in pocket notebooks _ the very habit that some believe eliminated him from VP contention in 2000.

"Those little notebooks that he carries, he writes down the people he meets, their needs and what their issues are and gets back to them. That's 25 years of …