DES MOINES, Iowa — Republican presidential contenders Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann are attracting most of businessman Herman Cain’s former Iowa supporters, according to Steve Grubbs, Cain’s top Iowa adviser.
Cain lost roughly 25 percent of his Iowa supporters in the month of November, after several women alleged Cain sexually harassed them and another said she had a 13-year affair with him, said Grubbs, who hasn’t decided whether to endorse a candidate.
Roughly eight in 10 of those who left the Cain train decided to back Gingrich’s campaign, whereas another 13 percent flocked to Bachmann, according to Grubbs’ internal polling data. The rest divided nearly evenly among the remaining candidates, he said.
But Bachmann campaign aides said there’s no way Gingrich is gaining such a large percentage of Cain’s backers.
“Many of Mr. Cain’s supporters are Tea Party supporters, and it doesn’t make sense that they would support someone with Mr. Gingrich’s record of influence-peddling in Washington,” said Alice Stewart, spokeswoman for Bachmann. “I mean, he’s practically the grandfather of Obamacare and the individual mandate.”
Gingrich has taken heat for once supporting the widely unpopular individual mandate, which requires taxpayers to purchase health insurance under the health care law that congress passed in 2010.
A large percentage of Cain’s former supporters are overlooking Gingrich’s imperfections because they see him as the most formidable candidate to beat President Obama, said Judd Saul, spokesman for the Black Hawk County Republicans.
“The hefty percentage of Cain’s supporters are going to Gingrich — I’d say about 40 percent,” Saul said. “The rest are divided between Santorum and Rick Perry. A lot of them are going for [Texas Rep.] Ron Paul too.”
Saul said he hasn’t seen much movement toward Bachmann in Black Hawk County.
“I see people defecting from Bachmann,” he said. “There is no steam in her ground game in Iowa. They say they have a good ground game but I don’t see it at all.”
He said Iowa’s Christian evangelical leaders have been pushing former Cain supporters to coalesce around former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who is one of the most socially conservative candidates in the race.
Santorum’s support ranks in the low single digits in recent state polls, while Perry’s support is only slightly higher, in the low double digits.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Iowa field staff has been aggressively going after Cain’s former supporters, according to Bob Haus, one of Perry’s top Iowa advisers.
“Overall I feel good that we’re attracting more than our fair share of Cain supporters,” Haus said, though he wouldn’t provide exact numbers.
“I was at the campaign office yesterday, and over the course of three hours, we signed up five people [who were former Cain supporters] to be precinct leaders around the state,” he said.
The only candidate who isn’t benefitting from Cain’s exit from the race is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, according to half a dozen political activists in Iowa.
“I generally don’t think that Romney is a good fit for most Cain supporters,” Grubbs said.
A Des Moines Register poll found that a small percentage of Cain’s supporters selected Romney as their second-choice candidate.
