After months of virtually ignoring Iowa and its first-in-the-nation caucuses, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney is starting to pay more attention to the Hawkeye State, including airing his first television ad barely a month before voting begins.
“I spent my life in the private sector,” Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, says in the 30-second spot that was scheduled to begin airing statewide Friday. “I’ve competed with companies around the world. I’ve learned something about how it is that economies grow.”
As Romney speaks, he’s shown greeting voters at the Iowa State Fair in August, one of his rare visits to the state this year.
“The right answer for America is to stop the growth of the federal government and to start the growth of the private sector,” he says.
Romney released the ad after months of keeping Iowa voters guessing about whether he was going to take the caucuses seriously enough to invest the time and money needed to finish strongly in the Jan. 3 voting, just a week before New Hampshire holds the nation’s first primary.
“I think this has always been our strategy: Don’t spend a lot of money here, don’t spend a lot of time here,” David Kochel, Romney’s top Iowa adviser, told The Washington Examiner. “But we’re now less than five weeks out. It’s time to make our pitch.”
Romney chose not to compete in Iowa’s straw poll in August and he has visited the state just five times this year.
Despite his absence, Romney remains near the top of statewide polls — largely thanks to residual support from his 2008 presidential campaign, in which he spent more than $10 million on advertising alone in the Hawkeye State.
But Romney’s investment didn’t pay off four years ago. He finished second, behind former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and his campaign never fully recovered.
As a result, Romney has a much leaner campaign organization in Iowa this time, with just five paid staffers and a strategy predicated on managing expectations, rather than scoring a first-place victory.
He has spent less than a 10th of what he spent in the state in 2007.
With this first ad buy, however, the campaign appears to be shifting to a more aggressive approach that places greater importance on winning the caucuses outright rather than just finishing near the top, political analysts said.
A heavier investment in Iowa won’t necessarily guarantee Romney a victory, however.
The state’s caucuses are dominated by social conservatives who are against abortion, gay rights and gun control, and they worry that Romney doesn’t hold the same values because he supported all those things at one time or another. He has also criticized federal subsidies for ethanol, to the dismay of Iowa’s influential farming community.
But Iowa’s social conservatives have so far been unable to build consensus behind a single candidate, opening the door for Romney to score big in the caucuses.
In addition to the ad buy, Romney is sending campaign surrogates to the state, including GOP darling Chris Christie and Romney’s son, Josh.
Christie, the New Jersey governor who decided against his own presidential run, will headline a campaign event for Romney on Dec. 7 in Polk County, Iowa’s most populous county, Kochel confirmed.
Romney plans to visit the state at least two more times in December for the next two GOP debates.
