Iowa in August: bright blue sky, beautifully green farm fields, warm but (unlike some past Iowa straw poll years) not oppressively hot. On landing in Des Moines late this afternoon it seemed a good idea to make the rounds of some of the presidential candidates’ Iowa headquarters. The level of activity there is not necessarily a good index of how the candidates are doing, since Iowa is still an early-to-bed and early-to-rise state in which you don’t expect to find much political activity after 7pm, when I set out. As I mentioned in my Wednesday Examiner column, written before I set out, the campaigns this year are headquartered not in downtown Des Moines or on Ingersoll or Grand Avenues near the affluent neighborhood on the hills above the Racoon River, but out in the suburbs, amid shopping centers and near freeway interchanges. Iowa for all its farm heritage and 99 counties is increasingly a metropolitan state, and four years ago one-third of the votes in the Iowa precinct caucuses were cast in the eight counties including and around Des Moines. Some observations:
My first stop was Michele Bachmann’s headquarters, in a roadside mall centered around a Panera Bread with a Groucho’s and an Isla Cozumel. The receptionists have orders (as they do in many campaigns in recent years) to keep reporters out of the back rooms, but aide Doug Sachtleben showed me around and I chatted with deputy campaign manager Dave Polansky. There was a warren of rooms, with a couple of dozen volunteers busy making calls and two little boys rolling toy cars down a handicapped ramp. On one wall was a list of 40-some “pastor endorsements”—not up to date, I was told. “We’re looking good,” Sachtleben said, “there’s definitely a groundswell.” What’s striking here is that I was told the operation only began in the middle of June, after Bachmann’s well received performance in the New Hampshire debate.
Across the parking lot and a small street was the Herman Cain headquarters. No sign of anyone there at 7:30pm. A sign said there was a grand opening on July 11, less than a month ago. If there is a lively Cain organization, it is elsewhere.
Tim Pawlenty is the candidate with the most to lose in Iowa—and, if he exceeds the current low expectations, perhaps with the most to gain. No one was at the front desk a little before 8pm; a volunteer in a cubicle was cold-calling names and asking them to come to a Wednesday rally in Ames. Caitlin Dunn, Pawlenty’s assistant press secretary, was there from his Minneapolis headquarters. Pawlenty’s strategy for the straw poll, it has been reported, is to concentrate on getting people who live not too far away for Ames to drive in and vote; presumably the Wednesday rally (which I plan to attend) is a dress rehearsal. There are volunteers in the headquarters, but in the pretty large space they’re not very dense on the ground.
When I get to Rick Santorum’s headquarters a mile away it’s getting past 8pm—and in Iowa you don’t want to cold-call voters much later than that. The headquarters is mostly vacant but state coordinator Cody Brown, apparently (and quite reasonably) headed out to dinner, is eager to tell me that Santorum is the hardest working candidate in the race. He’s made 22 trips to Iowa, including a three-week family tour (and he has a large family); his kids have been in the office making phone calls while he has been campaigning in Manchester (and visiting the Field of Dreams in nearby Dyersville) and visiting the John Wayne Museum. Santorum is, Brown points our accurately, the only candidate who has taken a leadership role on fiscal issues at the national level, the only one who managed a bill that eliminated a federal entitlement (the welfare reform act of 1996, on which he took on the formidable task of debating the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan), the only candidate with actual experience on foreign policy (he was early and persistent in opposing the nuclear weapons ambitions of Iran’s Mahmoud Achmadinejad). Santorum is out in the far reaches of eastern Iowa campaigning; I hope to catch up with him when he takes his turn in the Des Moines Register’s soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Friday. Afterwards he’s got a lunch at the Cattlemen’s Beef Headquarters at the fair. So much for the vegetarian vote.
