Dean team hustles to win Iowa support
Volunteers pour in to aid former Vermont governor
Democrats set to decide tight race in 4-way showdown
TIM HARPER
DES MOINES, Iowa—If the first test of support among Democrats vying to take on U.S. President George W. Bush in November comes down to political strength on the ground, Howard Dean will need the likes of newly arrived conscripts Harry and Jayne Keller.
Amid the luggage propped against the wall, the boxes and FedEx pouches stacked in the middle of the room serving as pillows for exhausted volunteers, and the copy paper strewn on the floor, the Kellers sat working the phones on behalf of the former Vermont governor.
A couple in their 60s, married 38 years, they don't fit the mould of the young, university activist "Deaniacs" who have poured into the candidate's "Storm Centre" headquarters in the Iowa capital, but then again, no one shows quite the commitment.
The couple drove from their home in Hermosa Beach, Calif., more than 3,000 kilometres, with a couple of quick hours of shut-eye in Amarillo, Texas, before showing up for duty as Democrats as Iowa prepares to decide a very tight race at a series of caucus meetings Monday evening.
"They sent me out to a suburb named ... well, I can't remember the name and we knocked on some doors," Harry Keller said during a break last night.
"The response was good. But, man, it's cold."
Dean is slipping in Iowa — if polls are to be believed here.
He has fallen behind the newest Comeback Kid in the making, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, and is bunched with Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt and North Carolina Senator John Edwards.
Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, and Al Sharpton, a New York activist for African American causes are also on the ballot in Iowa, but are not factors. Two other candidates, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, have given Iowa a pass and are campaigning flat out in New Hampshire, site of the first Democratic primary, Jan. 27.
This four-way showdown Monday is being called the closest race in Iowa — the first-in-the-nation test every four years — since 1988, possibly the tightest since the primary process gained popularity in 1972.
"This is all down to the last 72 hours, this is who gets their vote out," said Dean.
In this arcane caucus process, it is all about getting your supporters out to a series of meetings Monday and Dean and Gephardt have the best organization on the ground.
Most experts believe the fluid poll numbers should be gauged against the grassroots muscle of the two men.
In many ways, says University of Iowa professor Basil Talbott, the two campaigns are worlds apart.
`This is all down to the last 72 hours, this is who gets their vote out.'
Howard Dean, presidential hopeful
"The Dean organization is made up of new, young Internet-based activists who came together at meet-ups and other methods being used for the first time," he said. "It's very much a movement. Gephardt has an old-fashioned, hierarchical political organization of which the unions are the backbone."
The union backers wear their labour jackets with their locals emblazoned on their sleeves, prowling apartment blocks and suburban areas in this state, using the same means that brought Gephardt victory here in 1988.
The "Deaniacs" are younger, wear their orange Dean toques and raingear bearing the slogan "The Perfect Storm" to fend off the wet Iowa winter evenings and they work the phone and laptop, over and over and over.
Kerry is much thinner on the ground here, but he has benefited from a concerted bruising he and the other candidates have given Dean over the past month as they raised questions about the electability of the man who energized the Democratic base with his strident opposition to the Bush war in Iraq.
Besides organization, Iowa is also about expectation and in an ironic twist, the Kerry campaign was trying to minimize tracking polls that show him gaining strength each day.
Should he be anointed the "buzz candidate" going into Monday's vote — then fails to deliver — he will be badly hurt.
If the polls are correct, however, Kerry heads into New Hampshire with a new life, and likely lots more money, which always flows to a winner.
"I think I'm the real outsider here," Kerry said yesterday, acknowledging he doesn't have the on-ground strength of Dean and Gephardt.
The other big loser, of course, could be Dean, who has ditched his suit-and-tie uniform in favour of casual sweaters on the trail this week, seemingly uncertain whether to return to the former angry outsider Dean or the high-road presidential Dean.
He pulled an attack ad off the air yesterday and Gephardt followed suit, indicating both camps understand that undecided voters are tired of Democrats pounding each other in this state.
If Dean is sagging, his troops aren't.
Campaign manager Joe Trippi said another 2,000 volunteers arrived in Iowa yesterday, swelling the out-of-state Dean team beyond 3,500.
More than 150 volunteers arrived from Texas yesterday and were handed their orange toques and marching orders.
Ed Ishmael, a 43-year-old real estate lawyer from Dallas, flew in yesterday morning and worked the phones all day.
"I tell them I know first hand what it's like to live under George Bush and we want to send him right back," said Ishmael, recalling the president as Texas governor during the 1990s. "It was pretty appalling."
He said he threw his lot in with Dean a year ago in the run-up to war. "Bush didn't justify his march to Iraq and the Democrats in Washington weren't forcing him to justify that march," he said. "Howard Dean was the only man holding Bush to account." |
