Handicapping Iowa

It helps, too, that Carson’s campaign has been running radio ads on Iowa stations for several weeks. He’s also got plenty of goodwill from the evangelical base in the state as a prominent Christian author and speaker—several of the stops on his recent non-campaign book tour happened to be in Iowa. With Carson, at nearly 26 percent support, overtaking Donald Trump in the Real Clear Politics average of polls for Iowa, Republicans now talk about the real possibility he could win the caucuses here on February 1.

But would it even matter? Success in Iowa has been a mixed bag for Republicans hoping to make it to the White House. Of the last seven competitive presidential primaries, the winner in Iowa has gone on to win the nomination just three times: Gerald Ford in 1976, Bob Dole in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2000. In 2008, John McCain came in fourth in Iowa; Mitt Romney effectively tied but technically lost Iowa in 2012.

This year, nearly all the campaigns competing for Iowa talk less about winning the Hawkeye State and more about placing in the top three or four. Viewed this way, the caucuses are a sorting mechanism, determining which candidates have the mettle (or the obstinacy) to stay in the race for the long haul. One erstwhile leader in Iowa polling, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, has already dropped out of the race. Others, like Ohio governor John Kasich, seem to have all but written off the state to focus on New Hampshire.

For Carson, winning in Iowa is probably the only way to keep his campaign alive. But what about the rest of the campaigns with good shots at showing or placing in Iowa? With fewer than three months to go before the caucuses, there’s reason to think the race in Iowa is still wide open and unformed.

Donald Trump: Trump led in Iowa from early August till Carson passed him in late October, but stalling poll numbers here, which mirror his numbers nationally, suggest his appeal among the socially conservative set who go to the caucuses was mostly based on name ID.

Still, Iowa Republicans in the know say Trump is serious about organizing and will be a force come February 1. His state director, Chuck Laudner, is a veteran of Iowa campaigns who helped deliver victory to Rick Santorum in 2012 and once worked for the influential congressman Steve King. Laudner’s hire, says one Iowa politico, suggests Trump is taking microtargeting of possible caucusgoers seriously. If success comes down to turning your supporters out on a frigid Monday evening, Trump could do well.

Trump may be topping out around 22 percent support, but Santorum won with 25 percent last time, so that’s not a bad number to hit, as long as his floor’s not much lower. But the location of Trump’s floor is one of the great unanswered questions.

Ted Cruz: The Texas senator and emerging conservative favorite in the field has all the right pieces in place for an outright victory in Iowa. Cruz has around eight staff members in the state and he’s begun to lock up endorsements from lawmakers. Staff and endorsements are important, says one source close to the campaign, but the big focus is on organizing activists—from county GOP figures and homeschoolers to evangelical pastors and even some libertarian activists who supported Ron Paul in 2012.

An important element of Cruz’s organizing strategy is Vicki Crawford, a homeschool activist with a large network in Iowa. Crawford’s support for Cruz is a good omen, since she backed the 2008 caucus victor, Mike Huckabee. Another element is the pastors, and Cruz is about two-thirds of the way toward his goal of having 99 influential ministers (one for each of Iowa’s counties) supporting his campaign. Lock up both the homeschool and evangelical networks, and you’ve got a significant segment of the Republican bloc in your corner.

But while still at 12 percent support in Iowa, Cruz is keeping expectations low, with one source telling me they’d be “happy” with second place. To get there, though, Cruz will need Carson to fall, and that means Cruz may have to go negative on the soft-spoken doctor. So far, Cruz has played nice with his fellow candidates, aiming fire at the GOP establishment in Washington.

But as the Iowa campaign heats up, expect to see the campaign or a super-PAC friendly to Cruz highlight Carson’s blurry position on abortion and life issues. Chief among the targets may be Carson’s decision to appear in a 1992 TV ad that encouraged Maryland voters to support a pro-life referendum. The Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon later appeared at a press conference for the referendum’s opponents denouncing the ad. The Cruz campaign won’t say if it will argue that Carson’s pro-life credentials don’t stand up, only that his positions are “concerning.”

Marco Rubio: Commensurate with his rise in national polls, Rubio is seeing encouraging numbers in Iowa, tied with Cruz at around 12 percent. Judging by a recent meet-and-greet in Sioux City, it’s easy to see how Rubio’s natural political talent could serve him well here.

There aren’t too many deviations in Iowa from his standard stump speech, with the references to his Cuban immigrant parents, the coming entitlement spending crisis he says he can fix, and the need to revive America’s standing in the world. “The decline of America is a choice, not an inevitability,” he says. Rubio uncorks a few winning lines for this Iowa crowd. “If you want to turn this country around, strengthen families,” Rubio says.

That gets big applause from the gathered, including families with kids. One man shouts out “amen” as Rubio keeps rolling. “I don’t care how many laws you pass, I don’t care how many government programs they create. None of that is going to matter if we don’t have strong families in this country.” He’s cut off by a woman near the front. “And God,” she reminds him.

Rubio stops midsentence, just for a moment, turning toward the woman in acknowledgment. “Family’s founded in our faith, because faith reinforces family,” he says, as if he expected her interruption all along. The performance looks effortless.

The mantra of the Rubio campaign team is that its best asset is its candidate. In Iowa, the candidate is just about the only asset. Compared with other campaigns, Rubio’s organizational footprint is light. He has just a handful of full-time paid staff members (the campaign won’t say how many), and around 12 local-level organizers and volunteers. National campaign manager Terry Sullivan says he’s confident that their strategy of digital organization is more efficient and reaches caucusgoers where they get their information: online.

But there may be pitfalls to that strategy. At his event in Sioux City, several college-aged students gather onstage patiently in order to get a group photo with Rubio. Afterward, they’re effusive in their praise for the candidate they call “our generation’s Kennedy.” The problem is these students are all enrolled at the University of South Dakota, 45 minutes up Interstate 29 and over the border. Only one of them is eligible to caucus in Iowa next year.

Jeb Bush: The bad national polling numbers, ineffective hits on his opponents, and poorly received debate performances are all troubling for the once-mighty Bush campaign. To make matters worse, the media had a field day with a data point from a recently leaked campaign memo, which set a goal of 18 percent support for Bush in the Iowa caucuses, a hair under 24,000 votes. But, the memo noted, the campaign had only been able to identify 1,281 committed Bush supporters. Yikes.

Things aren’t as bad as the media’s interpretation of the memo, says Tim Albrecht, an Iowa consultant working for Bush. The important factor isn’t how many committed caucusgoers the campaigns have in the fall, but how well a campaign is processing voter data to know who to target in the weeks and days before February 1. Albrecht says the Bush campaign has 10 staffers on the ground, many of whom are doing just that kind of important data work. The project for Bush is to win the 16 counties Romney did in 2012, and to do so means doing a better job organizing there than Rubio and New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

The bulk of Bush’s financial resources have been put toward investing in this critical work, not building up national poll numbers. “Jeb will consistently out-organize his poll numbers,” Albrecht says. The campaign better hope so, since his RCP average is currently 7 percent.

Chris Christie: Several candidates in single digits remain ahead of Christie in Iowa—Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, and John Kasich—and the New Jersey governor’s relegation to the “undercard” Fox Business debate puts the future of his candidacy in question. But if he can survive, Christie may have the most potential for growth in Iowa, and even a fourth-place finish there would do a lot for him.

There are a couple of reasons to think Christie could do decently in Iowa if Bush continues to drop and Rubio hits a snag. For one, Christie, former chair of the Republican Governors Association, is very close with Iowa’s governor-for-life, Terry Branstad. At a GOP rally in Orange City in late October, Christie reminded the crowd that he came out early and often to the Hawkeye State for Branstad’s 2010 bid for governor. Branstad isn’t likely to endorse a candidate before the caucuses, but it’s never a bad idea to remind Republicans of your closeness with the longest-serving (Republican) Iowa governor.

More important for the caucuses, Christie has the support of several members of the Branstad political operation. Not only are all three members of his Iowa staff veterans of Branstad’s 2014 reelection campaign, but Christie can name nearly 30 members of his “leadership team” with direct ties to Branstad’s organization, including the governor’s daughter-in-law and his former chief of staff.

A second reason is Christie’s skill as a campaigner. Christie has deservedly earned a reputation as a moderate northeastern governor, and while he’s never shied away from being pro-life, he sometimes brings it up, as he did in a recent New Hampshire appearance that’s gone viral online, as a way to talk about showing compassion for those suffering from drug addiction. But among the socially conservative crowd in Orange City, Iowa, he calls himself an “unabashed” pro-life candidate, emphasizing that Planned Parenthood has not received funding from New Jersey taxpayers since he took office in 2009.

It’s a good line, though not one that will rocket Christie to the top of the polls in Iowa. But in a crowded field where support is fluid, all it takes is a small spark to catch fire.

Michael Warren is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.