For Iowa caucuses, GOP volunteer Joni Scotter is highly sought after

Joni Scotter was ticked.

She’d been promised a photo with Minnesota’s visiting governor as reward for collecting more voter e-mails than any Republican volunteer in Iowa. She drove more than two hours to see him. But after Tim Pawlenty gave his speech at the Des Moines fairgrounds, with Scotter whooping it up in front, he left.

Before long, word of her disappointment reached Minnesota, and Pawlenty has been making amends ever since — which is not a bad move if, as seems evident, he’s running for president.

The 2012 campaign will surely touch on many big things, like taxes, war and the economy. But in Iowa, where the presidential balloting begins in about 13 months, the GOP contest is focused on something far more intimate: the courtship of a few highly prized activists whose efforts are vital to navigating the state’s sprawling caucus system.

These unpaid workers — maybe 20 or so on the Republican side — make volunteering a full-time vocation. They spend countless hours making phone calls, e-mailing, raising money, chauffeuring candidates, sweeping the trash and turning out the lights at campaign headquarters well after most others have gone to bed.

One of the most sought-after this election season is Scotter, 69, who gave up quilting and laid aside the autobiographies she loves reading for a blur of 18- and 19-hour campaign days that start with the e-mails she checks first thing — about 6:30 a.m., after feeding the cat — and end long after the party meetings she attends nearly every night.

“I’m addicted,” she said with a short burst of laughter. “There’s always another event, a meeting, a candidate coming through.”

Scotter has met just about every one of the Republican Party’s prospective White House hopefuls.

Indiana Rep. Mike Pence asked to friend her on Facebook. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich playfully scolded her for missing his stop at the Iowa State Fair. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney singled her out during his most recent visit, telling the crowd that he knew he was in Iowa as soon as he heard her trademark “woooooo.”

As for Pawlenty, he found Scotter in the audience on a later trip to Iowa and posed for her promised picture. His wife followed up with a handwritten note. A few weeks after that, Pawlenty called just to chat.

“They’re wonderful people,” Scotter said of the couple, though she remains uncommitted while the Republican field takes shape: “I want to be fair to them all.”

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Scotter was raised in a small South Dakota town, the oldest of four girls. Her parents were politically aware, but not politically active. Her father, a machinist, was a Democrat who wrote letters to newspaper editors decrying the military-industrial complex. Her stay-at-home mom was a staunch Republican who loved Richard Nixon and was never the same after he quit the presidency.

Scotter herself was more casual in her allegiances.

The first presidential ballot she cast, in 1968, had nothing to do with issues. She was working as a beautician and Christine Humphrey, the chatty mother of Democratic Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, was a client. Each week, during her shampoo and wave, Mrs. Humphrey went on about her devoted Hubert; Scotter figured that “any son who loved his mother that much had to be the best.”

She voted for Democrats George McGovern in 1972 and Walter F. Mondale in 1984, because they seemed destined to lose and she pitied them. She didn’t care for Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, however — one seemed inept, the other predatory — and voted for their Republican opponents.

Politics simply wasn’t a priority for Scotter, who married, raised two boys and moved about the Midwest as her husband served in the Air Force, then pursued a career as an agriculture economist. “To tell the truth, I never thought about Democrat or Republican,” she said. “I was voting for the person.”

Scotter related her story with unflagging good cheer, even the difficult parts about losing a baby girl and battling thyroid and breast cancer; it’s a buoyancy that candidates welcome to their campaign, as a way to keep others upbeat. Scotter once read that everyone has a theme song, and she claims two as her own: “Pick Yourself Up” and “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Over breakfast in a busy coffee shop, she sang a bit of each. People looked, but Scotter didn’t notice or seem to care.

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No one is going to back a candidate for president because of the volunteers they attract. But the support of someone like Scotter, with contacts in all 99 Iowa counties, can be a big help.

Organizing for the caucuses, which are held for just a few hours on a frigid winter night, is extremely labor-intensive. It’s not easy getting people to venture out when their breath turns to icicles; that’s where persistence and, perhaps more important, personal relationships come in.

“It’s a very retail process,” said Eric Woolson, a veteran GOP strategist. “Having someone you know and trust call up and say, ‘Hey, this is someone you should support,’ is probably going to have a bigger impact on people than all those TV commercials.”

Just about 120,000 Republicans are expected to caucus, and Scotter seems determined to meet and befriend every single one.

At a December meeting of the Linn County GOP she was a compact cyclone: smiling, hugging and photographing each of the 40-plus people in attendance — a small gift, she explained, to pass out later. “You look awesome!” she assured a man in a purple dress shirt, ignoring his scowl.

For years, the Iowa Republican Party has been split between social and economic conservatives, but Scotter has avoided the rift, building bridges to candidates and partisans on both sides. Asked her particular brand of Republicanism, her response was telling: “I’m a worker.”

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Lamar Alexander changed Scotter’s life.

In early 1996, she received a postcard inviting her to a women’s Republican lunch in Cedar Rapids. The speaker was Honey Alexander, wife of the former Tennessee governor and presidential hopeful.

Scotter’s sons were grown, leaving her plenty of spare time. Her interest in lunch was purely social, but Scotter liked what Alexander said about her husband. So she volunteered and worked “like a bat out of heck,” making phone calls, hanging yard signs, knocking on doors, handing out campaign literature, baking cookies — peanut butter with four kinds of chocolate chips — and cheerleading at rallies.

Alexander finished third in Iowa and lost the Republican nomination. But by then Scotter was addicted; she loved the camaraderie of campaigning, the sense of dealing with big and important issues, and the feeling of being in the know.

“When you’re making phone calls, when you’re going door-to-door, you can really, really feel the way an election’s going,” she said, and as a volunteer she has no compunction sharing that information with her candidate. “You’re not working for a paycheck, so you can say, ‘We’re losing our butts,’ and have no problem doing that.”

Somewhere along the way, Scotter became a die-hard Republican, sold on the gospel of lower taxes and less government. She signed on with one candidate and then another, gaining confidence with each campaign and growing more politically savvy. In 2000, when Alexander ran a second time, she dispensed with sentimentality and supported former Vice President Dan Quayle until he quit the race, then backed George W. Bush. “I didn’t think Lamar could win,” Scotter said.

Her views mix fiscal conservatism and social moderation. She opposes the death penalty and abortion, but wouldn’t outlaw the procedure. “Whatever anybody has to do they gotta do and I will not judge them,” she said.

She struggles with the question of same-sex marriage, which she opposes. But she also believes gay couples should have many of the privileges, like visiting a hospitalized loved one, that married couples enjoy. “I am so scared for gay people, because there’s so much anger in this country,” she said.

Naturally, issues are important as Scotter picks a presidential candidate. Whomever she supports must pledge to repeal President Obama’s healthcare plan, slash the federal deficit and rein in Social Security and Medicare.

But just as important, Scotter will rely on her gut; does a candidate seem honest, caring and willing to listen? Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, is unquestionably a good man, Scotter said, but acts so important “he moves past people.” Gingrich is more attuned to what others say. Romney “is a really good listener.”

She backed him in 2008, but won’t commit again, despite overtures from his camp. “It’s early,” Scotter said, and someone else might “sweep me off my feet.”

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In April, Scotter will celebrate 50 years of marriage. She met her husband at a dance soon after turning 18 and was married less than a year later.

Richard Scotter, a fellow Republican, encourages his wife’s passion for politics, to a point. Their home in suburban Cedar Rapids is decorated with quilts and some of the compensation from years of campaign effort: photos with Marilyn Quayle and Rudolph W. Giuliani, handwritten notes from Bush and Karl Rove. (A 16-foot “Bush-Quayle” banner stays under the bed because, Scotter’s husband insists, it’s too big to hang. But she has been known to lug it around to show off.)

Richard, now retired, is building a small plane, a two-seat Zodiac, and Joni can hardly wait. Then, she said happily, she can cover even more ground, promoting the Republican cause and chasing would-be presidents across Iowa, instead of the other way around.

mark.barabak@latimes.com