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In Iowa, Campaigns Raise Armies of Staff to Get Out Vote    [

    Iraq War Taking Back Seat to Domestic Issues
    By Adam Nagourney
    The New York Times

    Thursday 03 January 2007

    Des Moines - The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are navigating a far different set of issues as they approach the Iowa caucuses on Thursday than when they first started campaigning here a year ago, and that is likely to change even more as the campaigns move to New Hampshire and across the country.

    Even though polls show that Iowa Democrats still consider the war in Iraq the top issue facing the country, the war is becoming a less defining issue among Democrats nationally, and it has moved to the back of the stage in the rush of campaign rallies, town hall meetings and speeches that are bringing the caucus competition to an end. Instead, candidates are being asked about, and are increasingly talking about, the mortgage crisis, rising gas costs, health care, immigration, the environment and taxes.

    The shift suggests that economic anxiety may be at least matching national security as a factor driving the 2008 presidential contest as the voting begins.

    The campaigns are moving to recalibrate what they are saying amid signs of this changing backdrop; gone are the days when debates and television advertisements were filled with references to Iraq.

    Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York recently produced a television advertisement that attacked the Bush administration for failing to deal with "America's housing crisis." Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Republican, has begun talking about expanding health care coverage, an issue of particular concern in New Hampshire.

    "People say that health care is a Democratic issue," he said. "Baloney."

    John Edwards of North Carolina has a ready answer when asked about immigration at rallies here - a subject that rarely if ever came up at Democratic gatherings a year ago. He drew cheers at a New Year's Day rally in Ames when he said that while he would support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, he would insist that none could become naturalized "until they learned to speak English."

    Part of the shift appears to stem from the reduction in violence in Iraq after President Bush's decision to send more troops there last year. Mrs. Clinton, who once faced intense opposition from her party's left over her vote to authorize the war, now is rarely pressed on it, though Democrats say it continues be a drag on her in this state. Senator John McCain, a strong proponent of increased troop levels, is off of the defensive and now positions himself as having been prescient about what would work to quell the violence.

    "You see much more concern about the economy," said Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton's chief strategist. "You see much more concern about health care. When we started it was principally concern about the war, and now it's a mix of war, the economy and health care."

    Alex Castellanos, a senior strategist for Mr. Romney, said much the same thing was happening on the Republican side and suggested that it may have contributed to the success of Mike Huckabee, the Republican former governor of Arkansas.

    "As concern in the economy grows, you've seen in both parties this populist strain of appealing to voters," Mr. Castellanos said.

    The shift in emphasis is also a reflection of the fact that New Hampshire is, politically, a very different place from Iowa, especially for Republicans. A central part of the Republican appeal here has been to social conservatives on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage; they have far less sway in New Hampshire.

    In that state, where the primary is held Jan. 8, Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and Mrs. Clinton have begun broadcasting advertisements that talk about cutting taxes and reducing government spending. Both those issues have historically proved to have great resonance with New Hampshire voters, and particularly with independents who are allowed to vote in either primary.

    This is not to suggest that Iraq is no longer a pressing issue for many voters. Senator Barack Obama points to his unwavering opposition to the war in a television advertisement being broadcast in the final hours here, and Mr. McCain is pointing to his early advocacy of increasing troop levels in Iraq as evidence that he had more national security credentials than Mr. Romney.

    What has changed, though, is that the war in Iraq is far from the only issue driving this election, the result of the decline in carnage there and daily reports that the nation's economy might be in trouble.

    "I still think the war is a real important issue," said David Axelrod, a senior strategist for Mr. Obama. "But the sense of economic insecurity has grown and pushed those other issues up on the list of concerns."

    That has become increasingly evident in what the candidates are hearing from voters. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama were pressed on Social Security, gaps in Medicare coverage, the economic threat to middle class from the alternative minimum tax and rising energy costs. All the candidates are hearing, at virtually every stop, questions about immigration and trade deals.

    And it was increasingly evident in what the candidates were choosing to say at a time when they were enjoying as big as a stage as they will during this caucus season. In his speeches, Mr. Obama is spending less time speaking about the war than he once did, instead talking about a "retirement system that is in tatters," and the loss of jobs to Mexico. Mr. McCain talked about Iraq and Pakistan, but moved to on to talk about education, health care and global warming.

    "There are a number of challenges facing us domestically," Mr. McCain said Wednesday in Londonderry, N.H.

    Mrs. Clinton is devoting a long portion of her closing speech to health care. Mr. Huckabee's closing stump speech is devoted to economic anxiety, as he criticizes Wall Street and hedge funds managers and says that the wealthy cannot understand the concerns of everyday people.

    And Mr. Edwards on Wednesday seized on the news that oil prices had reached $100 a barrel to reprise the populist message that long ago eclipsed the war as the central thrust of the campaign. "Today's report that the price of oil has reached $100 a barrel is just another example of how corporate greed is squeezing the middle class," he said.

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    Marc Santora contributed reporting from Londonderry, NH.

 

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    In Iowa, Campaigns Raise Armies of Staff to Get Out Vote
    By Matt Stearns
    McClatchy Newspapers

    Wednesday 02 January 2008

    Creston, Iowa - After all the scripted appearances by presidential candidates and despite the millions of dollars they've spent on glossy TV ads, the battle for Iowa's voters Thursday night will be decided in towns such as this one.

    There's not much to Creston - a worn rail-depot town in south-central Iowa, population 7,400 and headed south - yet Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have offices here.

    Think of an Iowa caucus campaign as an iceberg: The most visible part - the candidate - is just a small part of an enormous entity. In Iowa's hinterlands, the best-funded campaigns have assembled massive teams. Workers in dozens of field offices oversee volunteers, make calls, knock on doors, pore over voter lists, recruit precinct captains, train supporters in the complex caucus rules and follow up with voters who attend campaign appearances.

    "All the top campaigns have had hundreds, if not thousands, of mock-caucus training sessions with their precinct captains to teach supporters how to do the process," said John Lapp, who ran former Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt's 2004 Iowa campaign.

    With a tight race and an energized base, Thursday's Democratic caucuses could be the best-attended ever. But that still means that little more than 150,000 people will turn out in a state of about 3 million. With such a small pool of voters, identifying potential supporters and ensuring that they get to their precinct caucuses is the name of the game.

    Monica McCarthy, the chairwoman of the Union County Democratic Party - the county of which Creston's the seat - said she'd never seen this level of intensity.

    Hillary Clinton's campaign, for example, has organized more than 5,000 volunteer drivers statewide and arranged rides for more than 4,900 caucus-goers. It's bought salt for every field office and distributed more than 600 snow shovels so that every precinct can be salted to make it easier for folks to turn out, according to Teresa Vilmain, the campaign's chief organizer in Iowa.

    Field offices are the key to doing such work well because they're an efficient place to organize and because "a real person is what voters respond to," said Cary Covington, a University of Iowa political scientist. "Especially someone they see in their community."

    Illinois Sen. Obama has 37 field offices and more than 200 paid staffers. New York Sen. Clinton has 36 field offices and about 400 paid staffers. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has 25 field offices and 175 paid staffers.

    By comparison, Edwards finished a strong second in Iowa in 2004 with 15 field offices and about 100 staffers.

    In Obama's three-room storefront office in Creston, across the street from Pete's Quality Pre-Owned Furniture, Nyssa Aragon and Holly Licht, ebullient 22-year-old recent college graduates - Barnard and Oklahoma State, respectively - manage a six-county area.

    Two blocks away at Clinton's six-room headquarters, five staffers run 11 counties. Both offices are decorated in "campaign classic," which is to say they're utter messes: stained carpeting, low ceilings, bad light and boxes strewn everywhere.

    "Our job is organizing people who want to get involved but don't know how," Aragon said.

    Both Creston offices opened in the fall. Staffers, all of them from out of state, learned the area by attending local meetings and parades. They set to work categorizing as many voters as possible: as ones, twos, threes, fours or fives. Ones are gold: Voters who sign cards committing to caucus for your candidate. Twos lean toward your candidate, threes are undecided, fours are leaning toward other candidates and fives are committed to other candidates. The goals are to amass ones, turn twos and threes into ones and make sure that you aren't surprised come caucus night.

    "Quality control is a huge issue," Lapp said. That means going back to voters multiple times to see whether they've changed their minds, and making sure that your ones and twos get out on Thursday night.

    Obama workers knocked on 90,000 doors around Iowa the weekend before the caucuses, campaign manager David Plouffe said. On Monday, more than 1,000 Edwards volunteers and workers canvassed neighborhoods in 48 locations around the state, and 51 phone banks made calls to every county in the state.

    The process can wear on even the most committed voters.

    Kim Hopkins, 43, a lifelong Iowa resident and graphic designer from Des Moines, said the phone calls from campaigns had gotten so bad that she was having her children answer the phone. A Democrat committed to caucusing for Obama, she gets calls daily from all the other Democrats' campaigns. She said she got probably a dozen or more calls a day, every day.

    "I'm excited about the caucuses and proud to be an Iowan, so I'm trying to keep a positive attitude about it," Hopkins said. "But it's just constant. You can't answer your phone. It was the topic of a New Year's party last night. Everyone's tired of it!"

    Edwards is relying on regular caucus-goers. That's helped his campaign find precinct captains in 95 percent of the state's caucus sites.

    Clinton and Obama are counting on Iowans who've never caucused before, so they're focused on ensuring that nothing keeps their supporters from attending, even to the point of arranging baby-sitting.

    They've also tried to demystify the process. A few weeks ago, the Clinton campaign began distributing a video called "Caucusing Is Easy" and urging supporters to "bring a buddy" to caucus.

    Their targeting of new caucus-goers makes field offices all the more important for Clinton and Obama.

    "Those people need a lot of hand-holding, a lot of encouragement that it's worthwhile and they shouldn't be intimidated by the process," Covington said. "They're trying to expand the pie rather than increase their share of the pie."

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    Jim Morrill of The Charlotte Observer and Margaret Talev contributed to this report from Iowa.