DES MOINES, IOWA — In his final pitch to Iowans before Tuesday’s caucuses, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney is taking the focus off his political and executive credentials, and asking voters to get to know him as a father, husband and patriot.
“I served in government four years. I like to say I didn’t inhale,” the former Massachusetts governor, wearing jeans and an open-collar shirt, told voters in Mason City. “I’m a businessman. I’m a dad.”
While his rivals hang their closing arguments on claims that they are the most consistent, committed conservative in the race, Romney is reciting verses of “America the Beautiful” and the Declaration of Independence to win over voters who spent months looking for a more conservative “anti-Romney” candidate behind whom they could coalesce.
Romney is giving his wife—whom he only refers to as “sweetheart” on the trail—more stage time to tell stories about raising his five sons and recalling how he “fell in love with America” during cross-country trips as a child.
“This is the man that stands by and does the right thing always,” said Ann Romney,who the campaign has tasked with softening her husband’s image. “You never know what decisions are going to be made in the White House so you really want to understand the character [of the candidate],” she said, reviving memories of the “3 a.m. White House phone call” ad from 2008 that then-candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton
ran against then-Sen. Barack Obama.
“How he’s been as a husband and as a father… to me, that’s what really matters,” she added.
Romney’s pivot from his experience to his character highlights his biggest vulnerability in Iowa—that he hasn’t spent much time here. Romney has focused most of his time and energy on New Hampshire, but with no single opponent catching on in the Hawkeye State, Romney is now trying to sweep the early contests and lock up the nomination as quickly as possible.
He’ll need about 30 percent of the caucus votes to win, historical records show, but his support in Iowa is polling at 20 percent to 25 percent.
To win Iowans’ trust, he’s attempting — often laboriously — to draw comparisons between his life and theirs. That’s not easy for Romney, who grew up the son of Michigan aristocrats and a Mormon who went on to make billions as the CEO of financial firm Bain Capital.
It doesn’t help that it was Iowa where Romney tried to bet Texas Gov. Rick Perry $10,000 on national television and where he uttered the now-infamous line, “Corporations are people.”
Many Iowans got to know Romney during his 2008 WhiteHouse bid and whether they embrace him as someone who is like them or not, the one true advantage Romney has is the perception that he is the one Republican who can take on Obama in 2012.
“I like Michele Bachmann and I also like Newt [Gingrich], but he’s got so much baggage,” saidGreg Thompson, a farmer and U.S. Post Office worker from Webster City, Iowa. “Obama, with his billion-dollar war chest, is going to blow him out of the water.
“I’m supporting Romney for one reason: Electability,” he added. “He can beat Obama.”
