Candidates Have Their Eyes on an Iowa Surprise

DES MOINES —  As they flood the airwaves and paper Iowa with political mailers, the Democrats campaigning for president here are waging two distinct battles -- Howard Dean to win, and the rest trying to slow the front-runner before he becomes unstoppable.

Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri could succeed most easily by grabbing first place in the Jan. 19 caucuses, the leadoff vote of the 2004 election. He is Dean’s strongest challenger in Iowa.

If Gephardt fails, Sens. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina hope that by simply beating expectations they can produce an election-night surprise -- and garner momentum and publicity that would establish one of them as the clear-cut alternative to the former Vermont governor.

The result is a contest unfolding here with increasing intensity: a Dean-Gephardt duel for the top slot, but also a stiff competition between Kerry and Edwards for a strong third-place showing, or better.

“It’s a dogfight,” said Dave Nagle, a former Iowa congressman and a veteran of more than 30 years in state politics. He and others say the race is hardly settled, even after the boost Dean got this week from Al Gore’s endorsement.

“Gore could swing a few votes at the margin,” Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, said of the former vice president. “But I don’t see him swinging large blocs of support. If he had that kind of power, he wouldn’t be a kingmaker -- he’d be president now.”

Recent polls have shown Dean is the front-runner in Iowa, as in New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first primary on Jan. 27. Still, the Iowa surveys show a large chunk of undecided Democrats.

And there is the history of the Iowa contest to consider; Gephardt was at 6% in the polls in December 1987, the first time he ran for president, but surged to 28% and won the caucuses just a few weeks later.

“The three rules of Iowa are organize, organize and get hot at the end,” said Nagle, who presided over his first caucuses in 1972. “There’s still plenty of time for someone to get hot.”

Tripping up Dean in Iowa may be all the more critical for opponents because his lead in New Hampshire, the next contest, has grown formidable in recent weeks, according to polls. A caucus victory “would be a very convincing sign he’s going to be very, very hard to stop,” said Charles Cook, a leading Washington campaign analyst.

Underscoring the high stakes in Iowa, candidates have diverted staff members from elsewhere and shipped some of their top strategists to Des Moines. Kerry has imported Michael Whouley, a personal friend and mastermind of Gore’s 2000 Iowa caucus victory. Dean has dispatched two of his leading hands, strategist Mike Ford and communications director Tricia Enright, from his Burlington, Vt., headquarters.

The candidates have boosted their advertising to near-saturation levels and beefed up their schedules of personal appearances as well, attracting some of the biggest crowds caucus veterans have ever seen.

On the airwaves, a recent University of Wisconsin study found, close to half of the roughly $8.2 million spent so far this year on presidential campaign advertising had been allotted to Iowa. The candidates have spent twice as much money and aired nearly three times as many ads here as in New Hampshire -- nearly 4,500 commercials in Des Moines alone. Four years ago, the candidates in both the Democratic and Republican contests had aired fewer than 900 ads in Des Moines at this point.

The Iowa battle in itself defies some expectations. Sen. John McCain of Arizona skipped the caucuses in the 2000 Republican presidential race and still beat George W. Bush in New Hampshire. That caused many election analysts to predict Iowa would be all but irrelevant this time around.

In fact, two Democratic candidates hope to replicate McCain’s strategy. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark have pulled out of Iowa, staking their chances on New Hampshire and the races that quickly follow.

That leaves seven candidates vying for support from the 100,000 or so Iowa Democrats expected to trek to firehouses, school auditoriums and church basements on caucus night.

Three of them -- Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and the Rev. Al Sharpton -- comprise the bottom tier of hopefuls. The rest -- Dean, Edwards, Gephardt and Kerry -- have each hired dozens of Iowa staffers, and all save Gephardt have already spent in the neighborhood of $1 million on television advertising. Gephardt has run about $750,000 in Iowa ads.

Spending has risen even more dramatically in the last month, after Dean and Kerry turned down taxpayer financing of their campaigns, freeing them from state expenditure limits. Kerry boosted his TV advertising by roughly 25%, to about $225,000 a week, according to his campaign. Dean more than doubled his spending, to about $550,000 over 10 days.

Such a TV blitz is enormous for Iowa, where a solid week of advertising costs about $150,000; in California, a comparable amount of Dean advertising would cost roughly $6 million, about three times what leading candidates were spending at the height of the gubernatorial recall election.

“All of the candidates are running ads at a level that Arnold Schwarzenegger can only imagine,” said Bill Carrick, a Los Angeles-based advisor to Gephardt.

The biggest prize in Iowa, obviously, remains first place. Gephardt almost certainly has to finish on top to continue his campaign -- even his own strategists concede as much. And while a close second place would not necessarily hurt Dean, he could take a huge step toward locking up the Democratic nomination by winning Iowa, then New Hampshire.

Edwards and Kerry hope to break out by dint of an unexpectedly strong performance. “It’s like a football game, where you throw out the score and all that matters is [beating] the point spread,” said Bruce Nesmith, a professor of political science at Coe College in Cedar Rapids.

At the least, most analysts agree, that means finishing no worse than third in Iowa.

“The condensed calendar makes it even more vital to win, place or show,” said Michael Meehan, a Kerry strategist, referring to the rapid-fire nomination contests that follow the first two. “You can’t continue to roll and play across the country unless you come out of Iowa with a surprise.”

If Iowa represents a test of survival for Kerry, whose campaign has struggled the last several weeks, it offers an opportunity for Edwards. A surprise performance could help not just in New Hampshire, but also in South Carolina, where Edwards -- who was born there -- faces a must-win situation on Feb. 3.

The Iowa caucuses are a departure for anyone used to casting ballots inside curtained voting booths. Participants have to state their preferences out loud, and often must defend their choices in the face of questioning from backers of rival candidates. If a presidential hopeful fails to meet a minimal threshold of backing, supporters have to pick someone else. The caucuses can take hours, and are just the first step in a long process that yields Iowa’s delegation to the national nominating convention in July.

Perhaps because of the complexity, the results have been subject to some elastic interpretations. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was decreed the winner of the Democratic caucuses even though he finished behind “undecided.”

More improbably, Gary Hart received a huge boost from the 1984 caucuses, even though he finished a distant second to Walter F. Mondale, with 16.5% support to Mondale’s 49%. That is because Hart, then a Colorado senator, did better than anticipated against Mondale, a former vice president. “There was no way we could exceed expectations,” said Bob Beckel, Mondale’s national campaign manager.

Hart used his showing and the publicity that followed to roar past Mondale in the New Hampshire primary and make a strong run for the nomination, though he eventually fell short.

The trick now for candidates is to build support while tamping down expectations -- thus leaving enough room for a caucus-night surprise. As the vote approaches, it also helps them to try to raise the bar for others.

Jim Margolis, a Kerry strategist, suggested that anything short of “an exceedingly large” margin would have to call into question the strength of Dean’s candidacy. But Jeani Murray, Dean’s Iowa campaign chief, countered that “one more delegate than the other guy” would constitute a win for her candidate. On the other hand, she insisted anything short of “Mondalesque numbers” should be construed as a setback for Gephardt, given his 1988 victory.

Other more neutral observers see things differently. A year ago, when Dean was a mere speck in polls, most analysts suggested Gephardt had to win big to claim victory in Iowa. But expectations have changed; first place would constitute a Gephardt win, whatever the margin, most agree.

At least for now. “We could get some new polls out in the first couple days of the New Year,” said campaign analyst Stuart Rothenberg, one of the Washington pundits who help set candidate benchmarks. “That could change expectations all over again.”