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Slugfest to the caucuses

GOP hopefuls in Iowa in bruising battle

By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 27, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.
Updated December 27, 2007 at 12:39 p.m.

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The Republican field: From left, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney onstage before the start of the Dec. 12 Des Moines Register sponsored debate.

Photo by Photos by Chris Schneider / The Rocky

The Republican field: From left, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney onstage before the start of the Dec. 12 Des Moines Register sponsored debate.

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First in a series

The underdog stood alone inside a deserted banquet room, absent his power tie, no entourage in sight.

It was way back on April 14, in the bowels of the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wasn't wearing the aw-shucks, dimpled grin that he usually carries like a calling card.

So a reporter peeked through the doorway and asked him about the frustration that had started leaking out of him at some campaign stops.

He's a former Baptist minister. So why didn't Huckabee seem to be picking up much momentum from the evangelical Christians who would seem like such a natural base?

Huckabee said he didn't know. After all, he said of evangelicals, "I'm not going to them. I'm coming from them . . . "

What about national religious leaders?

Huckabee said he had reached out to them, but he was frustrated that some of the biggest names were staying on the sidelines.

He said they had once spoken so loudly against former President Bill Clinton's marital infidelity, but now they were staying silent about unnamed Republicans who had marital issues of their own - presumably including the thrice-married former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani.

"I'm just saying, there was this overwhelming chorus of voices during this time that said morality matters," Huckabee said of the Clinton years.

This was a more stone-faced and serious Huckabee than the shucking and joshing one the country had come to know.

The stakes were high that night in April, a couple hours before the Iowa Republican Party's annual Abraham Lincoln Unity Dinner, the biggest event of the spring.

As the upstairs ballroom began filling with people, Huckabee was downstairs, checking out the cramped stage where he and his band, "Capitol Offense," planned to jam during the after-party.

The "weight-loss man" was hardly a rock star in the presidential contest. If folks knew him at all, it was for his shedding more than 100 pounds before he got onto the road to the White House.

All spring, Huckabee had languished in the bottom tier of the polls, stuck in low single-digits with the likes of Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. He trailed, among others, former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

All the basement dwellers wanted breakthroughs that night, which was considered the unofficial kickoff of the march to the caucuses.

It didn't come that night - even after Huckabee pulled a Clinton impersonator on stage to warm up the crowd.

It didn't happen over the summer, when he was being asked when he might drop out.

But finally, it happened.

It took all year and the alignment of many stars, but Huckabee finally got a rush of religious conservatives to his camp. In November, his poll numbers doubled in a matter of weeks.

Now, the once-lonely longshot is the man to watch going into Iowa's Republican precinct caucuses next Thursday.

Whether he stuns the longtime Iowa favorite, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, or proves to be a flash in the pan, Huckabee is sure to be one of the lead stories of the night.

Few could have guessed it when the long march to the caucuses began.

Stir over Giuliani

The Lincoln dinner brought out all the big guns. There were warm-up events all over town. But none brought out the media circus like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's quick stop at the landmark Noah's Ark restaurant - a windowless Italian food joint where Tony Soprano might feel at home.

Giuliani brought a posse of New York staffers in pin-striped suits. He made small talk with the lunchtime crowd, weaving his way through a labyrinth of tables and booths.

Thanks to his role on Sept. 11, 2001, he didn't need an introduction anywhere in America. But he gave himself one.

"I'm running for president because I think the country needs somebody who keeps us on offense in the war on terror," Giuliani said at the restaurant.

As the battle for Iowa began, all the buzz was about Giuliani and his leading rival, Sen. John McCain - the independent-minded maverick who gave President Bush a run in 2000, only to smack into a brick wall in Bush's Bible Belt bastion, South Carolina.

This time would be different, McCain said.

He literally embraced some of the Southern religious leaders he had once decried as "agents of intolerance." McCain pledged to put up a full-fledged fight in Iowa this time, not relying on independent-minded New Hampshire as his only springboard.

And then there was the fresh face on the block: Romney, whose business background, personal wealth and Prince Charming looks made him a formidable foe from day one.

Together, Giuliani, McCain and Romney commanded nearly two- thirds of the vote in the Iowa polls last spring.

But on that Saturday night in April, when Iowa Republicans put nine would-be nominees through their paces, one of the also-rans sounded an alarm.

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, as perhaps the only highlight of his short-lived campaign, brought new meaning to "unity" at the Lincoln Unity Dinner by lumping the three presumed front-runners into one slur.

"Rudy McRomney is not a conservative, and he knows he is not a conservative," Gilmore said, drawing a smattering of hisses and boos from partisans at the banquet tables.

It didn't help Gilmore. He'd drop out in a matter of months. But in a few syllables, it captured the suspicion that lingered throughout the yearlong battle for Iowa: There was room for a fourth person - a more traditional conservative - in the Republican Party's top tier.

It would be someone who didn't support abortion and gay rights, as Giuliani had; someone who hadn't compromised with Democrats on issues like immigration and campaign finance reform (unpopular with religious and conservative organizations), as McCain had; perhaps someone who hadn't only recently converted to the anti-abortion cause, as Romney had.

The fourth man

The question dominated the Republican fight all year.

Who would be that fourth man?

Brownback of Kansas, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, Tancredo of Colorado, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, Thompson of neighboring Wisconsin, Gilmore and Huckabee formed a chorus, each saying, Look at me!

Try as they might, however, none was able to break through and become that "fourth man." Through the summer, undecided voters kept that seat vacant.

Looking for a star

Out in Hollywood, there was another plain-talking actor (just like Reagan!) waiting to ride into the race and save it from Rudy McRomney.

That, in a nutshell, was the wait-and-see storyline once former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, still playing the stone-faced prosecutor on the television drama Law & Order, floated a trial balloon that he might enter the contest.

His face was known nationwide - mostly for tough-guy roles on the big and small screens. As many observed, with his grizzled character actor's face, he flat-out "looks" like a president.

And the big lines on his political resume added to the legend. A lawyer, he had a role (a controversial one, it turns out) in investigating Watergate. A protege of former Sen. Majority Leader Howard Baker, he had a U.S. Senate record - but not for so long as to be considered a Washington fixture. And, pleasing social conservatives, he helped President Bush shepherd conservative John Roberts through the thorny U.S. Senate confirmation process to become chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some candidates spend two or more years hopping from one small-town diner to the next, testing the message and picking up supporters one at a time. Fred Thompson chose a novel strategy: He made people wait.

And his delay in entering the race only made his mystique - and the expectations - grow.

Presumed front-runner

Meanwhile, in Iowa, it became the summer of Mitt.

Though still less widely known than Giuliani and McCain nationally, his face had been a fixture on Iowa television all spring.

Combining nonstop TV advertising with dozens of visits by the candidate and his surrogates - including Coloradans Sen. Wayne Allard and former Rep. Bob Beauprez - Romney became the presumed front-runner in the Hawkeye State.

By July, Romney's polls and organizational strength appeared so formidable in Iowa that Giuliani and McCain announced they would skip the nonbinding but closely-watched Iowa Straw Poll in August.

McCain, suffering from severe money problems, made a quick trip to Pella to reassure folks that he still planned to compete. But a man in a chicken costume (fresh from his appearance at Giuliani's office) paraded around the park to taunt him for "Bawking" at the straw poll.

By the end of the weekend, the words "Dead man walking" had appeared under McCain's face during his hourlong profile on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Giuliani's Iowa travels included only brief pop-in visits.

High-stakes battle

By late summer, Romney held such a commanding lead in the Iowa polls that it changed how candidates, voters and the media viewed the festival-like straw poll in Ames.

At the state GOP's biggest fundraiser, presidential candidates are encouraged to flex their muscle by buying up huge blocks of $35 tickets, plying would-be supporters with free food and entertainment, and then getting people to vote for them in the nonbinding contest.

With Giuliani, McCain and Thompson, the top-tier candidate-in-waiting, staying away, everyone assumed Romney would win. But that created a fierce, high-stakes battle among those hoping to break into the top tier.

At times, it seemed peculiar for one candidate who was polling under 5 percent to attack another - all the while ignoring the more famous front-runners. But the person who finished second to Romney in Ames could claim a springboard.

Out of nowhere, a phony masked "convict" in an orange jumpsuit started chasing Huckabee around the campaign trail.

He reminded folks of Huckabee's role in supporting the parole of convicted rapist Wayne DuMond, who was released by a parole board and went on to be convicted of sexual assault and murder in Missouri.

Though Huckabee still was in the bottom of the polls, he was attacked on the air in ads from the tax-hating group Club for Growth, which ripped his record raising taxes in Arkansas. His cash-strapped campaign had no spare money for response ads.

But his campaign was focusing behind the scenes, cultivating close ties with a group advocating a national sales tax, which backers call the "Fair Tax."

When reporters flooded into Iowa in the days before the straw poll, Huckabee did get some attention. But it was mostly for his humor, for his unconventional mixing of the family values message and economic populism, his folksy way of putting things, or for his efforts to portray himself as above the open warfare starting to take place in the top tier between Romney and Giuliani.

Outside a courthouse in Boone, where there were almost as many reporters as supporters gathered under a tree, he got laughs with his old line about being "a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody over it."

Reporters scribbled when he said he didn't want the Republican Party to be a "wholly-owned subsidiary" of Wall Street corporations. He said conservatism really does need to be compassionate.

He urged people to bring their friends to the straw poll - unless they didn't support him. In that case, he said with a smile, "You tell them the straw poll has been moved to February. Do whatever you gotta do."

Smaller crowds

When the straw poll finally arrived on Aug. 10, the sun beat down on Ames unfiltered by clouds. The 100-degree temperatures became the Republicans' rationale for the disappointing turnout.

It didn't help that Giuliani, McCain and Thompson stayed away. But the low turnout also mirrored what had been observed for months: smaller crowds for Republican events in general, which some analysts blamed on malaise over an unpopular president and the frustrating war in Iraq.

Candidates pulled out all stops to bring people to the popularity contest. Romney hired a fleet of buses and set up a mini-carnival outside the basketball arena where candidates made speeches. Brownback had a family-friendly, Christian revival inside a giant (and much-hyped) air-conditioned tent. Tancredo, who has since dropped out, had a talent show featuring performers decked out in Mexican sombreros.

Huckabee hadn't paid for any buses, as other candidates had. But the Fair Tax group gave hundreds of his supporters rides from the furthest reaches of the state. And that afternoon, Huckabee jumped on stage with his band again and jammed - at one point teaming up with the Elvis Presley impersonator hired by rival Rep. Duncan Hunter.

While bouncing from one candidate picnic to the next, Iowans cast symbolic ballots, dipping their thumbs in purple ink afterwards like voters in Iraq.

That night, as the grounds cleared out, there was a bit of drama when the vote count was delayed. Finally, the results were announced.

Romney first, with 31.5 percent of the vote, followed by Huckabee (18.1 percent), then Brownback (15.3 percent) and Tancredo (13.7 percent).

Although Huckabee trailed Romney by 1,929 votes and had topped Brownback by only 395, it didn't matter. In the expectations game, Romney's win was a yawn. This had always been a fight for second.

Minutes after the announcement, the folksy preacher rushed into the press zone and repeated his longstanding prophecy about eventually becoming a front-runner.

"I think maybe even you guys will believe it now," Huckabee declared.

Brownback's days, however, were numbered. Despite being a close third, he was seen as having lost the battle for Christian conservatives.

Romney, who survived what would have been an embarrassing defeat to any of the second-tier candidates, went back to sparring with his biggest national rival, Giuliani.

As for Huckabee, his campaign organizers expected a huge surge in fundraising and poll support. But that didn't happen.

The white knight hadn't yet ridden into the Republican contest.

Starting on wrong foot

On the September morning when former Sen. Fred Thompson finally announced his candidacy in Des Moines, a woman fainted in the back of the crowd.

Her head landed on the floor in front of a media pen jammed, elbow-to-elbow with dozens of reporters, photographers and television crews.

Thompson had skipped those lonely months on the campaign trail when candidates can pop into diners, practice their messages and get to know average voters without the media mobs getting in the way.

After his announcement speech on a glitzy stage flanked by giant television screens, Thompson waded into the crowd and was quickly mobbed by a swarm of photographers. His staff quickly ushered him off to his next stop.

Asked what she thought of his speech, Cyndi Cox, of Des Moines, said she liked almost all of what he said. But she scolded Thompson's handlers for preventing the handshake she and most Iowans have come to expect from candidates.

"I think that puts him on the wrong foot for Iowans," she said.

And it was downhill from there.

On Thompson's next visit to the state, Des Moines reporters bashed him - heavily - for rushing away from an Iowa Christian Alliance event and jumping into an SUV without giving them the quick press conference that had been promised.

The next day in Newton, he had a testy exchange with reporters who pressed him on his nuanced answers on family values issues, such as a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Afterward, at a restaurant in Marshalltown, he was caught on camera in an awkward moment - ending his remarks to silence and having to ask the audience for a round of applause.

It was a sign of things to come when influential evangelical Christian leader James Dobson of Colorado-based Focus on the Family sent a private e-mail (which was leaked to The Associated Press) saying Thompson had "no passion, no zeal" and "can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail."

Now that the more socially conservative wing of the party had gotten a glance at the man who was supposed to save them, they looked back to rest of the field.

The stage was set for a surge.

Hits double-digits

The crowd went wild as the grinning little man with the close-cropped hair picked up his bass guitar on the same stage where Buddy Holly had played his last gig in 1959.

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake was buzzing that Friday night in late October. A new poll was out from Rasmussen Research. It showed Huckabee had hit double-digits for the first time nationally, pulling just ahead of Romney.

A member of the band named for Romney's hometown - Boston - joined Huckabee on stage as the governor's band did some G-rated classic rock numbers that set the family crowd dancing.

"We want to show that conservatives, Republicans, Christian believers can have as much fun as anybody else in the whole world," Huckabee told his fans.

But the fun was just beginning.

With his Christian rival, Brownback, now out of the race, Huckabee was fresh off his 51 percent showing in a "values voters" survey. His Web site was being flooded with new campaign contributions. He raised more in a few weeks than he had to that point all year.

Suddenly, from Oct. 3 to Nov. 28, Huckabee surged from 12 percent to 29 percent in the Des Moines Register's poll of likely Republican caucus-goers, finally ripping the front-runner title away from Romney.

Finally, the national media started treating Huckabee like a "rock star" - and that meant a hotter spotlight.

Salon.com reported on the "dark side" of his Arkansas record with a scathing report about a "thin-skinned" and "petty" politician with a trail of controversies and alleged ethics violations.

Fiscal conservatives ripped him for raising some taxes back in Arkansas. Critics questioned his interest in foreign policy questions - especially when he admitted he knew nothing about a huge story that had dominated the news: a new intelligence report suggesting Iran had scrapped its nuclear weapons program.

Romney accused Huckabee's supporters of using nasty, behind-the-scenes tactics.

It didn't fit the narrative about a folksy populist going up against the big, national establishment.

Sign of life

As the days ticked down to the long-awaited precinct caucuses, tougher stories emerged.

Huckabee portrayed the new round of attacks as a sign of life, noting that hunters don't take shots at dead deer carcasses.

Now, whatever effect Huckabee might or might not have on the national stage, his showing on a cold night in January is certain to be one of the leading story lines - as a victor or a flop.

That's something few might have guessed last spring, when at times he sounded like a man seeking an exit strategy.

As he told reporters at one stop in April: "If it comes to the point where nobody wants to contribute, and people are falling away rather than coming on board, then you know, I've got to face that reality."

For the moment, that seems like someone else's song.

Handicapping GOP in Iowa

* Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas: Praying his "surge" of evangelical support doesn't disappear after Christmas.

* Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts: Hoping the polls flip-flop back to when he was the Iowa front-runner.

* Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee: Acting like he still has a chance to surprise folks in Iowa.

* Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York: Iowa has been too cold, so he's shuttling to Florida for the winter.

* Sen. John McCain of Arizona: Hurt by immigration stand in Iowa; seeking amnesty in New Hampshire.

* Rep. Ron Paul of Texas: His "revolution" could surprise; then again, it's not an online vote.

First in a series

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, who normally covers Washington for the Rocky, moved to Iowa in April to follow the presidential campaign at its most grass-roots level. Today, he launches a three-part series recounting his months in the Hawkeye State and examining the field of candidates heading into Iowa's all-important caucus voting next Thursday, Jan. 3.

Today:

It started as Rudy McRomney, a nickname for Republican powerhouses Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Then Fred Thompson jumped in. And then, Mike Huckabee gained traction. The drama in the GOP campaign filled the months.

Friday:

Against some high-level advice, Sen. Hillary Clinton put all her chips on the Iowa caucus. Now, she's engaged in a fierce battle for the top spot with Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. The stakes could not be higher - and the winner will be crowned in Denver next August.

Saturday:

Why Iowa? And is this any way to pick a president? After spending more than eight months traveling across the state, watching candidates conducting very personal, one-on-one campaigns, Sprengelmeyer finds the answer in the everyday folks who become president-makers once every four years.

Comments

  • December 27, 2007

    3:25 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    JohnSWren writes:

    What about the February 5 Colorado Caucus?

    To learn more, join us January 4 for the Denver Grassroots Rally. For information and to RSVP, see http://cocacop.meetup.com/2

  • December 29, 2007

    12:25 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Brittanicus writes:

    In the years to come, more costly in the War in Iraq. Even now the federal, state and county treasuries are bleeding badly from propping-up the hires of illegal employers.

    Only Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson and Ron Paul have the right credentials, to stop the disasterous period of red ink. Alas, we cannot trust any Democrats to stop the illegal alien invasion, because their pandering for votes during the occupation of our nation. Even McCain destroyed his chances when he joined up with ultra-liberal Ted Kennedy to pass a mammoth immigration bill. We would have had millions of illegal aliens in our Social Security system, who never paid into it.

    What they don't tell you, CAN HURT ECONOMICALLY!