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No one is a front-runner until Iowa voters say so

Caucuses in January can make or break Clinton's campaign.

By ADAM C. SMITH and MICHAEL VAN SICKLER, Times Staff Writers
Published November 14, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Getty Images] Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead in Iowa is slim. [Getty Images] Senator Barack Obama, Clinton's biggest threat at this point in the race, has opened 34 Iowa field offices to Clinton's 26. [Getty Images] Former Senator John Edwards speaks during the Jefferson Jackson dinner at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa. The dinner is an Iowa caucus tradition with more than 9,000 in attendance.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Can any Democrat beat Hillary Rodham Clinton? Absolutely.

And if it happens, the beginning of the end will surely occur amid the snow-covered cornfields and silo-dotted town centers of Iowa. Forget Sen. Clinton's more than 20 point lead in Florida and nationally. Iowa is what matters most in the Democratic race at this point, and Iowa is looking like a dogfight.

"Clinton doesn't answer questions," said Mary Blackman, an 85-year-old retired schoolteacher near Knoxville in rural, southern Iowa. "I think she thinks we're stupid."

In Des Moines on Saturday night among 9,000 Democrats gathered for a massive candidate cattle call, Tim Lapointe gushed about Clinton winning him over. But being a typically fickle Iowan, he remained happily uncommitted.

"I'm still on the fence," Lapointe said. "I really like the field of candidates, and I can see myself changing my mind. It's going to be a close race."

The polls mostly point to a three-person race - Clinton leading by anywhere from 2 to 10 points, followed by Barack Obama and then John Edwards. Polls are always suspect when it comes to the arcane ritual of caucusing in Iowa, whose influence is greater than ever in a year when more and more states have tried to diminish it by scheduling earlier elections.

Party activists and donors always are looking for a winner, and as the opening contest, Iowa is the first race to be won. For Clinton, long seen as the front-runner and comfortably ahead in every other early state election, a strong Iowa showing could send her on a glide path to the nomination.

Something less and she'll face a drawn-out primary fight.

"Whoever wins the Iowa caucuses will be on the front page of every newspaper in America the next morning, on every talk show and on every news channel. Millions of dollars worth of free media," noted Craig Smith, a Democratic consultant who directed Joe Lieberman's national campaign in 2004. "Also, party activists will flock to that person. You will see this immediately in poll numbers and in Internet contributions to the candidate."

Should Clinton fare poorly on Jan. 3, her aura of inevitability would be shattered just five days before voters in New Hampshire are expected to go to the polls. With other contests lined up soon after, it's easy to see how an early loss could turn momentum against Clinton.

That's what happened four years ago when pack-leading Howard Dean finished third in Iowa and winner John Kerry hardly looked back on his march to the nomination.

Obama at this point is the biggest threat to Clinton, who is somewhat new to caucus politics as her husband never faced a real race in Iowa. The Illinois senator has on his team some of the same advisers who helped John Kerry win Iowa four years ago and has opened 34 Iowa field offices to Clinton's 26.

"The metaphor is that Obama is a stallion, and you have to keep him in the stable," said Democratic pollster Tom Eldon. "If he gets out of the stable, if he finishes first or a strong second in Iowa, then she has to deal with him for a long, long time."

Whenever Obama's Florida chairman, Kirk Wagar, encounters a skeptic about his candidate's prospects, Wagar invokes Iowa. And Kerry.

"John Kerry was at 4 percent in the national polls before Iowa, and Al Sharpton was at 5 percent," said Wagar, a Miami lawyer and former Kerry supporter. "But we knew from October on that people in Iowa were hearing John's message."

States like Florida tried to snatch some of the attention lavished on Iowa by moving their primaries early, but the result has been to boost the importance of the thinly populated state. With such a compressed schedule for primary elections, candidates have almost no time to recover from a poor showing in the opening contest.

On Jan. 3, about 150,000 Iowans will cross tundralike conditions to spend hours meeting and declaring their choice for the Democratic nominee. Any candidate who fails to get 15 percent of the vote at nearly 1,800 caucus sites is out of contention, and his or her supporters then jump to another viable candidate, which means a consensus second-choice candidate can surge from behind.

All of which makes Iowa mighty unpredictable. At this point in 2003, polls showed a two-man race between Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean.

Not all the Republicans are campaigning full tilt in Iowa this year, but every major Democrat is. With eight weeks to go, hundreds of campaign staffers are scouring the sprawling farmland territories, knocking on doors, leaving fliers, throwing house parties.

More than 300 people attended an Edwards stop last week at a local community college in Sioux City. It's a three-hour drive from Des Moines and shares a border with Nebraska and South Dakota. Stockyards once dominated this blue-collar city, but most of those jobs have gone away. Indian casinos and call centers have sprouted in their place.

It was the sixth time Edwards had dropped by in the last two years, said Teresa Wolff, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Woodbury County. Obama held an event in Sioux City the same day, his third visit.

Wolff said Obama has drawn large crowds, which she partly credits to his eight campaign staffers stationed in Sioux City. She said Clinton and Edwards have six each, and they too have been successful in getting people to turn out, she said.

"It's really tight and close," Wolff said.

The fluidity of the race was apparent at Saturday night's annual Democratic Jefferson Jackson dinner in Des Moines. Clinton signs the size of boxcars walled off much of Veterans Memorial auditorium before the event started, overshadowing the few signs for Edwards and Dodd.

Four years ago, the dinner was credited with sparking the Kerry and Edwards campaigns. This week the buzz has been about how sharp Obama was.

His campaign stuffed more supporters in the balcony than the other candidates, including Clinton. Their chants of "Fired up, ready to go" rocked the auditorium throughout the night.

"We need to get rid of the influence that lobbyists have in Washington," said Shawn Wilson, a 31-year-old Wal-Mart employee from Knoxville who likes Obama's promise of change. "Hillary is too much part of the club, and I don't see her changing the status quo."

Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com or (727)893-8241 and Michael Van Sickler can be reached at mvansickler@sptimes.com or (813)226-3402.

Recent Iowa polls

Results of polls by Zogby International on Nov. 6 and American Research Group on Oct. 28.

Zogby ARG

Clinton28% 32

Obama25% 22

Edwards21% 15

Richardson9% 7

Biden3% 5

Dodd1% 2

Kucinich<1% 1

Gravel<1% ---

Not sure 12% 16

[Last modified November 13, 2007, 23:46:00]