Kerry, late to Iowa, sees chance to stand out
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 8/18/2003
DES MOINES -- Senator John F. Kerry and his local campaign staff believe their work in Iowa's political fields -- like the corn in farm fields that stands ready for harvest -- is about to generate a bounty in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
It would be an achievement, given that at the start of the year, he had yet to visit the nation's first voting state as an official candidate. And some of his rivals have perceived advantages.
Among labor leaders once thought to be sure backers of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, some key players are throwing their support Kerry's way, in part because they believe the Massachusetts senator would be a stronger candidate in a race against President Bush. Those labor leaders include the heads of the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Building Trades, who supported Gephardt in his 1988 presidential campaign, and the Hawkeye Labor Council.
State political leaders, some of whom were given boosts in their own election campaigns last year by the financial largesse of Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, are steadily signing up with the Kerry team. Last week they included a state senator from the Central Iowa district that covers a coveted group of labor union members at the main Maytag appliance manufacturing plant.
And likely voters, some of whom have been wowed by the some 60 days that Howard Dean has spent campaigning in Iowa this year, remain open-minded about Kerry and Dean's other rivals. The first Iowa poll conducted by the Des Moines Register, published Aug. 3, showed Dean, the former governor of Vermont, leading with 23 percent of the vote, followed by Gephardt with 21 percent, and Kerry with 14 percent. A total of 20 percent of those surveyed said they were uncommitted or remained unsure of whom they would back.
Kerry was gratified on Friday, as he wrapped up his 27th day of campaigning this year in the state that kicks off the presidential election with its Jan. 19 caucuses.
"I haven't been here as much as these other guys -- God, almost 50 percent less," the senator said in Iowa City, before he got into his van to head to Cedar Rapids for the final appearance in his four-day, 1,000-mile tour of Iowa. "A lot of people are only still coming to the table. There's a lot of time here. I think it's early still and we're where we want to be."
Dean's first-place poll standing has surpassed early concern about Gephardt as the Kerry campaign's main worry in Iowa. Gephardt had been expected to win the state, given that he lives next door. Now the Kerry campaign's disaster scenario is to have Dean win in Iowa and then catapult from that to victory in New Hampshire, which will be the nation's first primary, on Jan. 27.
Such a one-two punch would surely raise questions about Kerry's viability, although his aides believe they could still overcome early losses with strong performances in later primary states, including South Carolina and Michigan. That may explain why Kerry has decided to make a Sept. 2 public announcement of his candidacy, a made-for-TV moment, not in his home state of Massachusetts, but in South Carolina. He will take his entourage, including a group of national and state political reporters, to Iowa, before returning east on Sept. 3 for a speech in New Hampshire and a rally in Boston.
David Yepsen, the Register's veteran political columnist, identified challenges for Kerry in an otherwise positive column last week.
"His base is being piecemealed," Yepsen wrote. "He's lost some of the urban liberals to Dean over the war. He's lost some of the populists to [Ohio Representative] Dennis Kucinich. Gephardt denies him some in the labor movement. Too many Democrats worry he'll be pegged as too liberal, as were [two of the last] Massachusetts Democratic presidential candidates, Edward Kennedy and Michael Dukakis."
A week's worth of conversations with Kerry and his aides makes it clear they believe they have answers for these concerns, especially Dean. In their eyes, he may have peaked too early. They also believe he remains vulnerable to scrutiny.
Just last week, Dean acknowledged he was considering opting out of the public financing system for the presidential election, as Bush did for the 2000 campaign, even though he had said emphatically earlier this year that he would campaign within the confines of the system. Dean has also drawn applause by accusing his rivals of being duped by administration claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though he said earlier this year that he, too, believed Iraq probably had the weapons.
Kerry's plan in the coming weeks, both locally and nationally, is to draw attention to his candidacy with his announcement tour, strong showings in five upcoming debates for the Democratic field, a series of policy speeches, and his first television ads in Iowa and New Hampshire. Both Dean and Edwards have advertised in Iowa.
On the stump, Kerry is also honing his message against Bush, trying to streamline his criticism and reach out to coveted independent voters and disaffected Republicans by urging them to drop their focus on party labels.
Saying the administration has the worst record of job creation since the Hoover administration, and the worst record of economic growth since the Truman administration, Kerry declared last week at the Iowa State Fair: "You can't have any political label in America and not understand that the quality of life in our country is being affected by the choices that are being made in Washington."
In addition, the senator plans to tout a stable of political endorsements, which in Iowa already include Representative Leonard Boswell, a Vietnam veteran like Kerry. Kerry is also hoping for support from Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, whose former chief of staff serves as Kerry's state campaign manager, and last week he met privately with one of his nomination rivals, Carol Moseley Braun, a former Illinois senator, when their stays overlapped at a Des Moines hotel.
Mosely Braun, a black and the only woman in the race, has shown poorly in recent state and national public opinion polls, and she is expected to announce a decision about continuing her candidacy in the coming weeks. An endorsement of Kerry could help him among blacks nationally, a group he has targeted during his early campaining.
"I really feel good about this right now," said John Norris, Kerry's Iowa campaign manager. "We're picking up some really key organizational figures around the state, tried and true people who understand how to organize for the caucuses."
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