Iowa caucuses: At last, opening night for GOP race

DAVID ESPO, THOMAS BEAUMONT

Asso­ci­ated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Repub­li­cans ren­dered the first ver­dict in the 2012 race for the White House on Tues­day in Iowa cau­cuses from Adel to Zear­ing, open­ing night for the cam­paign to pick a chal­lenger to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama in the fall.

For­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia Sen. Rick San­to­rum shared the straw poll bal­lot with for­mer House Speaker Newt Gin­grich, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Min­nesota Rep. Michele Bach­mann in a cau­cus race as jum­bled as any in the 40 years since Iowa gained the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign lead-off position.

The win­ner was in line for brag­ging rights — and per­haps much more — as the Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing cam­paign makes the turn to pri­maries in New Hamp­shire on Jan. 10, then South Car­olina and Florida before the end of Jan­u­ary. For some of the also-rans, his­tory sug­gested the first event of the year might also be their last.

As the cau­cuses began, an entrance sur­vey of early arrivers sug­gested that Rom­ney, Paul and San­to­rum were in the top tier of vote getters.

About a third of early arrivers said they most wanted a can­di­date who could defeat Obama, while about a quar­ter said their top pri­or­ity was selec­tion of a true con­ser­v­a­tive. Slightly more than one in five of those who com­pleted the sur­vey ques­tion­naire said the most impor­tant fac­tor for them was back­ing a can­di­date with strong moral character.

The econ­omy and the fed­eral bud­get deficit were top issues for cau­cus atten­dees, more impor­tant than abor­tion or health care.

The sur­vey by Edi­son Media Research for The Asso­ci­ated Press and tele­vi­sion net­works was based on inter­views with more than 600 peo­ple arriv­ing at nearly 40 precinct cau­cuses across the state.

Obama was unop­posed for the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion. Even so, his re-election cam­paign set up eight offices across Iowa, made hun­dreds of thou­sands of calls to vot­ers and arranged a video con­fer­ence with cau­cus night supporters.

“This time out is going to be in some ways more impor­tant than the first time,” the pres­i­dent told Democ­rats across the state. “Change is never easy.”

The Iowa cau­cuses’ out­sized impor­tance was under­scored by the esti­mated $13 mil­lion in tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing by the can­di­dates and so-called super PACs as well as thou­sands of cam­paign stops designed to sway 100,000 or so voters.

Iron­i­cally, the weak econ­omy that has made Obama appear vul­ner­a­ble nation­ally was muted as an issue here. Despite areas of eco­nomic dis­tress, the farm econ­omy is strong. Iowa’s unem­ploy­ment in Novem­ber was 5.7 per­cent, sixth low­est in the coun­try and well below the national read­ing of 8.6 percent.

Despite its impor­tance as the lead-off state, Iowa has a decid­edly uneven record when it comes to pre­dict­ing national win­ners. It sent Obama on his way in 2008, but even­tual Repub­li­can nom­i­nee John McCain fin­ished a dis­tant fourth here to for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Even before Tues­day night’s results were known, this year’s Repub­li­can hope­fuls were turn­ing their atten­tion to the next con­tests. Romney’s cam­paign pur­chased time to run tele­vi­sion ads in Florida, where bal­lot­ing is three weeks dis­tant. Aides said the Gin­grich cam­paign had pur­chased a full-page news­pa­per ad in New Hamp­shire for Wednes­day morn­ing call­ing Rom­ney a “Timid Mass­a­chu­setts Moderate.”

Rom­ney, who fin­ished sec­ond in Iowa in 2008 despite a costly effort, ini­tially cam­paigned cau­tiously this time around.

But he barn­stormed exten­sively across the state in the race’s final days in pur­suit of a first-place fin­ish, run­ning as a con­ser­v­a­tive busi­ness­man with the skills to fix the econ­omy and as the chal­lenger with the best chance to defeat Obama.

San­to­rum, Gin­grich, Perry and Bach­mann argued that Rom­ney wasn’t nearly con­ser­v­a­tive enough on the econ­omy and social issues such as abor­tion. They vied for months to emerge as the alter­na­tive to the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts governor.

Paul’s libertarian-leaning views set him apart, and he hoped that might be enough to claim vic­tory in a six-way race where no one broke away from the pack.

Unlike in a pri­mary, in which vot­ing occurs over hours, the 809 Iowa cau­cuses were meet­ings in which Repub­li­cans gath­ered for an evening of pol­i­tics. Each pres­i­den­tial can­di­date was enti­tled to have a sup­porter deliver a speech on his or her behalf before straw bal­lots were taken.

Under party rules, cau­cus results have no con­trol over the allo­ca­tion of Iowa’s 25 del­e­gates to the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion. The Asso­ci­ated Press uses the cau­cus out­come to cal­cu­late the num­ber each can­di­date would win if his sup­port remained unchanged in the pre-convention months.

The race in Iowa came to be defined by its unpre­dictabil­ity as the months rolled by and nation­ally tele­vised can­di­date debates piled up.

Bach­mann gained early momen­tum on the strength of a vic­tory in a sum­mer­time straw poll and a feisty debate performance.

But she quickly fal­tered when Perry joined the race and over­shad­owed her as the 10-year gov­er­nor of Texas with deep-pocketed sup­port­ers and an unbro­ken record of elec­toral suc­cess at home.

Perry’s rise lasted only as long as a cou­ple of debates — includ­ing one where he mem­o­rably was unable to recall the third of three fed­eral agen­cies he wanted to abolish.

Next up was Her­man Cain, a black for­mer busi­ness­man who improb­a­bly shot to the top of the polls in a party that draws its sup­port chiefly from white vot­ers. He sus­pended his can­di­dacy a few weeks later, after a woman said she and he had car­ried on a long-term extra-marital affair.

Gin­grich rode the next surge in the polls, a remark­able come­back for a man whose cam­paign had imploded ear­lier in 2011 when most of his aides quit in frus­tra­tion. But his rise lasted only until a super PAC that sup­ports Rom­ney began attack­ing him on television.

Enter Paul, and San­to­rum, both cam­paign­ing widely across the state and hop­ing to have the last say.

Democ­rats watched care­fully in a state that has swung between the two par­ties in recent pres­i­den­tial elections.

It was Iowa that launched Obama on the way to the White House four years ago when he won a con­vinc­ing vic­tory in the caucuses.

The state’s lead-off spot has been a fix­ture for decades. Democ­rats moved the cau­cuses up to early Jan­u­ary in 1972, and Repub­li­cans fol­lowed suit four years later.

Posted by AP News on Jan 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.