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 adviser, his wife attended a Dean fund-raiser 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.

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 note-taking and touching people,” said Graham’s wife, Adele, during the six-minute video produced by the state Democratic Party.

Graham himself, when asked about being a running mate, frequently offers the same boiler-plate response: He wants to help his party in any way he can, but the nominee will choose his running mate.

“The vice presidency is not an office you campaign for,” said Buddy Menn, Graham’s chief of staff and longtime friend.

Viewed as a centrist with southern appeal, Graham made the short lists of Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Al Gore in 2000 but was rejected in each case.