In twin victories for Establishment front-runners, Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush swept Iowa’s caucuses Monday night, but each faces the prospect of a far more vigorous challenge in the upcoming New Hampshire primary.
Gore transformed himself from uninspiring understudy into a fiery populist, rallying a small but influential fold of faithful Democrats here. The vice president’s decisive victory, borne of a newfound vigor in the candidate and a reliance on old-line Democratic constituencies, forces challenger Bill Bradley into a near must-win situation next Tuesday.
With 98 percent of the voted counted, Gore led Bradley, 63 percent to 35 percent.
“The message from tonight is very, very simple and here it is,” said Gore. “We’ve just begun to fight–for revolutionary education, for universal health care that begins step by step with help for children. . . . We’ve just begun to fight. That is the message I’m taking to New Hampshire at dawn tomorrow morning.”
Bradley confidently said he was headed to New Hampshire, with “a little more humility but no less confidence that I can win and do the job.”
Bush, the Texas governor with the record campaign war chest and endorsements from hundreds of party elders, passed a first test sufficiently, winning about 41 percent of the vote. But he immediately comes up against more formidable competition from Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who campaigned only nominally in Iowa.
“Seven months ago, I came to Iowa on a plane dubbed `Great Expectations,’ ” Bush said in prepared remarks. “Tonight, Iowa has exceeded them. To the people of New Hampshire, I’m on my way. I want your votes and hope to earn your trust and confidence.”
Publisher Steve Forbes, who finished second with about 30 percent, goes to the next round contending that Bush and McCain are moderates and he is the rightful heir to conservative votes. Forbes will hear arguments from radio talk show host Alan Keyes, who finished a surprisingly strong third with 14 percent in a low-budget effort, likely vanquishing two others in the six-man field.
Keyes finished ahead of another social conservative activist, Gary Bauer, who finished fourth with 9. McCain finished fifth at 5 percent, followed by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah with 1 percent. Hatch is expected to drop out of the race, and possibly Bauer as well.
Gore’s image makeover–which included shedding his dark suits for casual clothes and launching into throaty, bombastic appeals to join his self-described “fight”–seemed transparent to pundits but proved potent with voters, at least those willing to brave the Iowa chill and stand in his corner. It was a remarkable rhetorical feat for a formal Ivy Leaguer running in a time of economic plenty.
The wound to Bradley’s campaign is obvious but not necessarily critical. He won enough votes to be credible, and can discount the Iowa results because the caucus process puts a premium on institutional support.
Bradley, a former U.S. senator from New Jersey, has the resources to continue his race well beyond next week. He is counting on a more combative strategy of his own–using surrogates to argue that he is not tainted by Clinton administration scandals and thus is more electable–and on the legendary contrariness of New Hampshire’s electorate.
New Hampshire could either validate Iowa’s verdict or render it meaningless. The guide of history suggests the latter. Only Jimmy Carter, in 1980, won both Iowa and New Hampshire in contested elections in either party.
Bradley faces the challenge of whether he, too, can re-engineer his campaign. His burden is to persuade the Democrats and Independents that Gore, effectively an incumbent, should be unseated.
The fuel for an insurgent campaign typically is anger or despair, neither of which is much in evidence among the electorate. And Bradley has labeled his a “different kind of campaign” that would not stoop to negative attacks.
Gore made no such vow, and by aggressively attacking Bradley he was able to knock Bradley from his high-minded perch and give core Democrats a reason to back the vice president.
Bradley correctly noted that the Iowa caucus system rewards “entrenched power.” But Gore threw that charge back at his opponent by talking about farmers, teachers and “hard workin’ people,” whom Gore said were anything but powerful figures.
Gore had the support of labor unions, including huge numbers of teachers and government workers who worked phone banks, and professional organizers with proven records of turning out the vote. He also had the support of the political organization of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), whose home was the site of two caucuses.
And, somehow, Gore erased from the memory of Iowa Democrats his sharp criticism of the state’s hallowed caucuses when he ran for president in 1988 and called them “ridiculous” and “madness.”
Bradley stumbled badly in an important debate some two weeks ago, failing to explain why he had voted against a disaster-relief bill that sent millions of dollars of aid to the state in 1993 after it was ravaged by floods. That disaster not only hurt the state’s iconic family farms, but also its largest city, Des Moines, which was without running water for more than three weeks.
He also spent two days before the final weekend of the Iowa campaign answering questions about atrial fibrillation, the chronic but easily treatable condition that causes his heart to beat irregularly.
In the Republican contest, Iowa lived up to its role as a winnower of the field, though arguably a GOP Straw Poll in August did even more.
With Bush’s victory widely expected, his more conservative challengers, notably Forbes, warned that the Texas governor had to leave Iowa with 51 percent of the vote to avoid the tag of being damaged heading into New Hampshire.
At the same time, Bush said he would be satisfied with 37 percent of the vote, the amount former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas received in a crowded field seeking the 1996 Republican nomination.
McCain tried to downplay the impact of the caucuses when he said earlier in the day from New Hampshire, “People of New Hampshire don’t pay a great deal of attention to what happens in Iowa.”
McCain’s limited presence in Iowa served to marginalize the importance of the contest, though the pressure was still on Bush to win.
Forbes’ second-place finish, also expected, gives him viability in New Hampshire, but it is uncertain whether a campaign message that he tilted toward social conservatives in Iowa will play well with economic conservative voters in New Hampshire.
In the final weeks of the campaign, the millionaire publisher traveled the state on bus tours and flooded broadcast airwaves with commercials that attacked Bush’s credentials as a tax-cutter and abortion rights opponent.
Visiting the state more than any of the other contenders, starting almost immediately after dropping his 1996 bid for the presidency, Forbes moved to broaden his campaign beyond the single issue of a 17 percent flat tax to embrace other issues: a constitutional amendment to ban abortion as well as a pledge that he would name a running mate and federal judges who passed an anti-abortion litmus test.
But Forbes might well have unexpected competition now for the votes of social conservatives in upcoming contests from Keyes, a radio talk show host and former State Department official. Keyes clearly benefited from a series of televised debates among the Republican contenders. His eloquent speaking style, promoting his moral, religious-based beliefs on leadership, stood out among his more stolid opponents.
Bauer, who served as president of the Family Research Council and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families political action committee, found his support from the religious right marginalized by Forbes and Keyes.
Hatch, elected to the U.S. Senate 24 years ago, had trouble acquiring a following in his low-key campaign aimed at trying to become a consensus candidate among disparate Republican groups.
The end of the GOP balloting, with secret straw polls taken at homes, meeting halls, schools, churches and libraries across Iowa, was guaranteed to bring a sense of normalcy back to a state that has been inundated with candidates, their television and radio commercials, telephone calls, opinion polls, mailed pamphlets and media followers for more than a year.
Bush was a late arrival to Iowa compared to most of his active rivals in the state, deciding in early summer to compete in the Republican Party’s benchmark straw poll at Iowa State University in Ames in August.
Bush handily won with 31.3 percent, ahead of Forbes’ 20.8 percent. But other well known-candidates, including former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Cabinet secretary Elizabeth Dole and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander were forced from the race because of a poor showing in the straw poll.
