Impersonal campaign methods threaten to become robotized versions of boots-on-the-snow in the upcoming Iowa’s Republican caucuses. This year pits the traditional retail politics model against new methods, which need not rely on the local touch.
The indefatigable Rick Santorum has worked the hardest, by many accounts. A New York Times story this past fall described Santorum spending an hour at a family’s dinner table — the son wasn’t even old enough to vote — where other candidates might have spared only a few precious minutes.
The latest front-runner in Iowa, Ron Paul, built up arguably the finest campaign infrastructure there, also buoyed by eclectic interest groups and scads of young “movement” voters. (He also has money but that is secondary thus far to his success.)
They should win under the traditional formula — particularly because there is no regional favorite son competing there.
On the other hand, Newt Gingrich shot to the top of the Iowa polls earlier this month, albeit fleetingly. He did not have staff or money, nor had he spend much time there.
Should he capture the state based upon his debate performances and a national wave of cable TV and social media surrogates, it could spell the end of the old model of how to run a campaign in Iowa.
Mitt Romney, too, has spent little time on the ground in Iowa. He initially decided not to compete there, focusing instead upon New Hampshire’s primary.
Recently, a pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore our Future, pumped $3 million into negative advertising against Gingrich, accelerating Gingrich’s decline. Romney’s strategy of outside money and aloofness is similarly damning to the old model.
If the goal is a more democratic electoral process, it stands to reason that the traditional Santorum/Paul approach is the better choice.
The argument for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status was that its small size allowed voters to kick the candidates’ tires. Iowans famously expected to meet each candidate up to a dozen times.
Larger state campaigns must rely on television commercials and other mass communication techniques, where lesser-known, lesser-funded candidates don’t stand a chance.
This led presidential historian Theodore H. White to write in 1973 that the primary is “the underdog’s classic route to power in America.” The Iowa caucuses have often obliged.
Jimmy Carter, a little-known former one-term governor of Georgia, won in Iowa in 1976 and ousted a sitting president later that year. Richard Gephardt won the 1988 Iowa Democratic caucuses after camping out there and spending years building his organization (his Missouri proximity also helped).
Perhaps the retail politics “underdog” scenario has been long doomed. In the Smithsonian Institute’s 1992 “Hail to the Candidate,” author Keith Melder lamented that direct voter interaction had succumbed to campaigns’ Madison Avenue “media wizards,” who viewed the electorate as “members of the audience.”
And Gephardt’s 1988 victory in Iowa was no match for Michael Dukakis’ money (not to mention his Massachusetts media market) in the New Hampshire primary, which followed soon after.
While pundits may find other reasons to describe why a particular candidate prevails on Jan. 3, we could be witnessing a case study for de-emphasizing retail politics in future Iowa caucuses.
Adam Silbert, an attorney, served as a deputy field organizer for the 2008 Obama campaign in Pennsylvania.
