Iowa GOP Gears Up for ’96 With Presidential Poll

DES MOINES —  The Iowa Republican Party’s 1996 presidential straw poll was something like a risque bachelor’s party: Everybody acted a little embarrassed to be there but deep down they were having a great time.

No one would admit to taking seriously a sounding of presidential preference 20 months before the 1996 nomination process begins with Iowa’s precinct caucuses. But the nearly 2,000 GOP partisans who packed a downtown convention center Friday night sounded eager for the opening bell as they whooped and cheered through speeches by seven prominent Republicans and then declared their choices from a list of 23 possible 1996 candidates.

“We’re in a hurry for 1996 to come,” said Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who seemed as impatient as a 5-year-old on Christmas Eve, “because we’re in a hurry for Bill Clinton to go.”

The delegates cast the most ballots for absent Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, whose political lieutenants had carefully marshaled support for him. Dole carried slightly more than 26% of the vote. But some in the hall immediately questioned whether his showing was strong enough; he won the last Republican caucus here in 1988 with 37%.

Behind Dole, with 15.2%, came Lamar Alexander, a former education secretary and Tennessee governor who already has begun building an organizational base in his state. In his speech, Alexander offered the evening’s catchiest slogan: “Cut their pay and send them home.” That was the distillation of his call to reduce Congress to a part-time citizen legislature that would serve only from January until “the time baseball season starts” in April, and then again from Labor Day until Thanksgiving.

Close behind Alexander came Gramm, who polled just under 15% and immediately demonstrated that he has been practicing something indispensable to any presidential candidate: explaining why he was the real winner even though he hadn’t collected the most votes. The answer: He polled more than half as many votes as Dole.

“This is the first of many battles in a long war,” Gramm said after the tally. “But we won this battle.”

After Gramm came former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp with almost 12%; Kemp made no speeches but still had the services of a campaign organization left over from 1988, when he ran fourth in the state caucuses.

Former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who addressed the gathering, and former Vice President Dan Quayle, who did not, were next in single digits, followed by Patrick J. Buchanan, who gave a rousing address, and former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, who did not attend but was bolstered by support from religious conservatives.

Three moderates who spoke--former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, and former Labor Secretary Lynn Martin--each polled less than 2%. About 1% expressed interest in former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell--who has not publicly expressed any interest in the race, much less declared himself a Republican.

Even allowing for the fact that the real Iowa vote was still 597 days away, the results may not have been a truly representative sample of local Republican opinion--only people who bought $25 tickets could cast a ballot.

The cost gave those eager to post a good showing--like Dole, Alexander and Gramm--an incentive to lean on their contacts to buy tickets, which benefited the state party. It was a swift reminder to the potential GOP class of 1996 that in Iowa they treat presidential politics as a cash crop--one that is harvested aggressively every four years.

“I called up the party chairman and said: ‘What is it with this blackmail dinner?’ ” said Dick Redman, a Des Moines developer and friend of Alexander. “And the chairman said: ‘Blackmail, hell, it’s extortion.’ ”

The seven speeches given throughout the evening offered a snapshot of the consensus GOP case against President Clinton--and a panoramic glimpse at the ideological range of options the party is likely to face two years from now.

The speakers piled on Clinton for promoting “socialized medicine,” weakening U.S. foreign policy (particularly by deferring too much power to the United Nations) and generally failing to deliver the moderate “new Democrat” agenda he promised in 1992. Cheney declared the Clinton Administration “perhaps the least competent . . . we’ve had in this century in terms of its conduct of foreign policy.”

More biting were the differences among the speakers about the GOP’s direction--particularly its course on social issues like abortion and homosexual rights. Almost all of them took pains to defend the political involvement of religious conservatives--whose influence in the GOP has come under intensifying criticism from Democratic leaders in the past few weeks. Most enthusiastic about defending the religious conservatives were the most conservative speakers, Gramm and Buchanan.

“It’s not the Christians who are going to be fed to the lions in November,” said Buchanan in the evening’s most vigorous and sharpened speech. “It’s the Democratic Party.”

While defending the religious right’s involvement, the representatives from the party’s moderate wing also cautioned them. Both Kean (who, alone among the speakers, stated flatly he was not considering a run for the presidency) and Specter (who appeared to be examining his options) said the GOP must embrace a “politics of inclusion” and reject extremist positions on social issues.

Specter won surprisingly enthusiastic applause when he admonished religious conservatives for demanding party purity on issues like opposition to abortion and declared “the power to divide is the power to destroy.” He also attracted the evening’s one round of catcalls when he affirmed his support for “the basic American principle of separation of church and state”--which some apparently took as a call for Christian activists to lower their political profile.

Religious conservatives affiliated with the Christian Coalition, a political organization founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, constituted about 25% of those who cast ballots Friday night, and about 40% of the overall delegates to this weekend’s state party convention, estimated Ralph Reed, the group’s national executive director.

Their numbers gave the baby-faced Reed a quietly confident swagger as he bustled through the hall. “We’re adopting a Maoist strategy,” Reed said, explaining the group’s attitude so far toward the 1996 field, “let a thousand flowers bloom.”

Above all, the evening demonstrated how eager Iowans are to regain their place at the head of the line in presidential politics. Four years ago, the Democrats ceded the state to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and did not mount serious campaigns here. But while conceding that Dole opens with a large advantage if he runs, likely candidates such as Gramm and Alexander already appear to be eyeing the kind of second-place Iowa finish that propelled Democrat Gary Hart to prominence in 1984.

Iowans shouldn’t have to wait too long for the candidates to return. Asked how soon he expected Republicans to begin announcing their candidacies, Gramm flipped through a mental calendar and fired back: “Jan. 2.” He meant Jan. 2, 1995.