Nearly 33 years ago in the tiny northwest Iowa town of Le Mars, a just-retired one-term governor of Georgia spoke at a testimonial dinner for the local county recorder. His pay was a free pizza, a movie pass and a coupon for a carwash.
Jimmy Carter went on from there to the presidency, catapulted into national attention by running first among better-known Democrats in the 1976 Iowa precinct caucuses.
Actually, Carter ran behind “Uncommitted” in the caucuses, with a mere 27.6 percent of the vote, but that was twice as much as any other Democrat. A few weeks later he won the New Hampshire primary, first in the nation, and was on his way.
Ever since, presidential candidates have dreamed the Jimmy Carter long-shot dream. This time, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut has a twist of his own, moving his family into Iowa and sending a young daughter to school here.
But the odds of replicating the Carter coup in today?s Iowa caucuses are much higher, thanks to a flood of campaign money washing over Iowa and the whole 2008 presidential campaign. Ever since 2000, when GOP candidate George W. Bush thumbed his nose at a federal subsidy available to those willing to accept limits on spending, presidential campaigns have become money races that have changed their whole character.
In the 1970s, a candidate was lucky to afford a small headquarters here in Des Moines and maybe a satellite in Davenport to the east and another in Sioux City to the northwest. According to the Des Moines Register, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has 31 field offices around the state with 145 paid employees.
Former Democratic Sen. John Edwards has 130 paid workers in 15 offices and has visited all 99 Iowa counties, with others close on his heels. Sen. Hillary Clinton has 117 staffers in 22 field offices and a whopping campaign bankroll on hand of $35 million, edging Obama?s $31.9 million. And so it goes.
The Republican candidates have not yet matched this Democratic proliferation of campaign outposts, but former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, with an expansive headquarters in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, has 67 staffers and leads in the Register?s Iowa Poll.
Most of the headquarters offices here already have the look and feel of election eve more than two months before the caucuses, to be held by the Republicans on Jan. 3 and the Democrats most likely on the same date. Some long shots are again doing the Jimmy Carter drill; Democratic Sen. Joe Biden has spent parts of 57 days in Iowa; Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo has logged in 51.
Organization has always been the name of the game in thecaucuses ? identifying supporters and getting them out to the caucus meetings in private homes, schools, church basements and the like on a usually frigid winter night. But with all that money ? for staff, television advertising and the usual paraphernalia of campaigning ? everything is greatly magnified.
It?s not surprising that the biggest-money candidates have impressive headquarters operations. But so do some of the others, such as Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who according to his managers has 78 organizers here and in 15 field offices and has raised $17 million, with $6 million on hand after an early and continuing presence on Iowa television.
One Republican with Jimmy Carter dreams who has created a buzz in Iowa, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, has no field offices yet but with a recent transfusion of Web site money plans to open three next month.
Edwards, who ran a surprising second to Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses and became Kerry?s running mate on the strength of his energetic campaigning, has continued to return to the state. He held a early lead in the Iowa polls and has managed to stay close to the current leader, Clinton, and about even with Obama.
But the high level of energy on display in most of the campaigns here, especially among the Democratic candidates, hints that the polls may not be a reliable barometer of what could prove to be the most intensely competitive Iowa caucuses yet in both parties.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
