The fate of Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign rests with Iowa, where an upcoming straw poll will either catapult the Republican congresswoman into the top tier of contenders or cut the legs out from beneath her campaign before she even has a chance to compete, Republican strategists said. Though unofficial, the Aug. 23 straw poll is expected to draw the state’s most conservative Republicans and prominent GOP donors to Ames, and is considered an early test of a candidate’s strength in the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in February.
“Evangelicals and Tea Party conservatives are going to be the majority of the people who make up that vote, and she is the loudest voice and the sharpest candidate competing for those voters,” said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak.
Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota, founded the House Tea Party Caucus.
“I have absolutely no doubt if she finishes strong in the straw poll — if she places within the top two — that she can win Iowa,” Mackowiak said.
Winning the Iowa caucus isn’t essential to winning a party nomination, but it provides a significant shot in the arm to candidates heading into the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“It’s a heck of a springboard, and then she’s immediately a rock star and a threat to [Republican front-runner Mitt] Romney,” said GOP strategist Cheri Jacobus.
Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is skipping the Iowa poll and instead focusing on New Hampshire — making former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty Bachmann’s strongest competition in the Hawkeye State, according to recent polls.
Pawlenty has spent more time in Iowa, logging appearances at more than 50 events in the state compared with Bachmann’s total of 13 events since July 2010. Pawlenty also made an early television ad buy in Iowa, the first of the campaign.
But Bachmann has an advantage that Pawlenty can’t match: She was born in Iowa.
Bachmann is formally starting her campaign from the town where she was born, Waterloo, on Monday. She plans to make no small note of the fact that she lived in Iowa through the sixth grade.
“What I often tell people is everything I needed to know, I learned in Iowa, growing up in Iowa with those values,” Bachmann said. “And I think it’s very important with the background that I have and the roots that I have from extended family that we make that announcement there.”
Bachmann, a tax lawyer, has won her last three congressional races. And in 2010, she hauled in more money — roughly $13.5 million — than any other candidate for Congress.
But some voters are skeptical because Bachmann, unlike Romney and Pawlenty, has no experience running a statewide campaign, let alone a national organization, said Harold Hervey, chairman of Conservative Party USA. If Texas Gov. Rick Perry — a favorite among conservative Republicans — enters the race, Perry would “take a lot of her oxygen away,” he said.
“I don’t know if she has the gravitas to win the whole nomination,” Hervey said. “But she sure knows how to raise money.”
