Iowa: A Real Testing Ground for ’88 : Presidential Hopefuls to Face Close-up Scrutiny on Issues

This is how it begins for the men who would be President--small showdowns in corn rows and communities here. Will the candidates run out of answers before the Iowan runs out of questions?

Don’t bet against the Iowan.

It is not enough to control the first important votes in the 1988 presidential primary and caucus season, which begins here next February. The voter here wants every candidate tested close-up against the causes and concerns that move America’s so-called heartland. A growing number of outsiders with their own agendas are coming to Iowa to join in the process, hoping to share this state’s larger-than-life political influence.

Accent on Details

Before it’s all over, the men running for President can expect to be tested in encyclopedic detail in Iowa until their voices give out, or their pencils wear dull, until they trip, or drop . . . or at least until they tell everything they know. The Iowan is insistent about this.

Start with the “Iowa Test.” Iowa is famous for its standardized achievement tests for school pupils. Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, announced he is going to take an audacious next step and write a test for would-be presidents.

“Iowa has a long history of putting together fair and objective tests to evaluate how well students do, and I think we should have an Iowa test for presidential candidates . . . we could really help focus the attention of the candidates and the people . . . on farm policy, trade policy, on rural development and of course on the big issues, such as the federal deficit and foreign policy,” he said.

The written test is not quite ready but will be by fall, Branstad said recently.

Focus on Health Care

Lt. Gov. Jo Ann Zimmerman, a Democrat, is helping prepare a paper outlining an ideal U.S. health care policy. Then, the Democratic candidates will be asked to attend a seminar to test how much of the policy they can swallow.

“We may be setting the agenda for the rural United States (on health care), I don’t know about urban,” she said in an interview.

Iowa as much as any place in the United States is driven by rural concerns. But the National League of Cities, whose member cities include Los Angeles and New York, is also planning candidate forums in Des Moines next fall. There will be one for the Democrats and another for the Republicans with the idea of drawing aspirants out--and pinning them down--on matters of interest to urban America.

“Iowa is where the attention is being focused, and we want the candidates to turn back to the cities,” explained Laurel Padilla-Hanan of the league’s Washington office.

Group-sponsored forums and questionnaires, and their accompanying litmus tests, as they are called in political argot, have been part of the unfurling of the presidential primary process for some time. Debate forums on Midwest farming and peace/defense issues, for instance, have become a proud tradition in Iowa.

Heading for High Intensity

But nearly everyone agrees that the whole phenomenon is headed for unseen levels of intensity and refinement.

“We saw a 50% increase in these kinds of activities between 1980 and 1984. Now, there probably will be a redoubling again,” said John Law, a California-based political consultant and former director of the Iowa Democratic Party. “People see it as a way to get candidates to focus on their issues.”

Law, like many Iowans, delights in this system where even the heaviest and most shrewd national contenders have to stand up in living rooms and alongside pig sties, and be called to account, again and again, by ordinary Americans.

“It’s one place in the campaign where issues can be really explored. Nobody is going to get 15 questions in a row on health care policy in the California primary. They will here,” Law said.

With the growth of the phenomenon, critics outside the state contend that Iowa has become a breeding ground for dreaded single issue constituencies, forcing candidates to appease small uncompromising clusters of voters, not inspire the country at large.

“Forcing the candidates to jump through endless hoops doesn’t contribute to a rational process for electing a President. And it’s very hard for them to say ‘no’ to this daily grilling. We’d like to see less of it,” says Terry Michael, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee in Washington.

Early Caucus Voting

New Hampshire conducts the first U.S. presidential primary election in mid-February, 1988. But eight days before then, an interval set by Iowa law, politically minded Iowans will drive at 7 p.m. to their local churches and firehouses for one of 2,493 precinct caucuses held by the Democratic and Republican parties.

There they will declare their preference from among the candidates for President. Republicans vote by secret ballot; Democrats will divide into groups within public view.

Jimmy Carter and Iowa made each other famous that winter caucus night in 1980 when the President-to-be emerged victorious here. Now, without exception, every credible candidate has, or will establish, a presence. Already, the Grand Avenue downtown thoroughfare claims the densest concentration of presidential campaign headquarters of any place in the country.

Actually, caucuses in Iowa are nothing more than regularly scheduled group meetings of the political parties. Turnout is correspondingly low. Only one of every five registered Democrats and Republicans will attend the caucuses, roughly 100,000 in each party. The caucuses are the realm of the party worker, the political activist, the kind of citizen who is connected to causes, sometimes passionately so.

No wonder, then, that issue forums, questionnaires and litmus tests have proliferated, leading up to the February, 1988, caucuses.

Power of Star-PAC

Star-PAC, Iowa’s biggest and most active peace group, illustrates the process.

It is asking candidates of both parties to fill out a complicated and controversial five-part, 20-question survey. Then, each candidate is expected to meet with Star-PAC members for one evening in the upcoming months. This is to be followed in the autumn by public debates featuring the candidates jointly, one debate for Republicans and another for Democrats.

Focus on Peace Issue

The “peace” issue is powerful in Iowa. There are no military installations and no defense industry to speak of here. There are no defense jobs in the political equation. The state Capitol is still posted with civil defense signs: “What to do in case of enemy attack.”

A typical issue from the Star-PAC list: I think that reducing military spending and increasing expenditures in the civilian sector would help the overall U.S. economy.

Candidates can answer with one of the following: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree or undecided. They are discouraged from trying to respond with long-winded essay type answers.

“Our job is not to let them be too squishy,” said Judy Anderson, coordinator of Star-PAC. “They’d much rather write a paragraph or two answer using their own words. But we want to know how they really stand.”

‘Cattle Shows’

Organized labor, the United Auto Workers and the Iowa Labor Federation also will employ questionnaires as well as “cattle shows,” in which candidates are paraded before group meetings. The AFL-CIO additionally is asking candidates to do one-minute targeted video presentations to be shown at union halls here and elsewhere in the nation. In Iowa, labor voters claim to account for 20% to 25% of the vote in the Democratic caucuses.

The state’s powerful teacher union, the Iowa State Education Assn., has changed strategy this election and will endorse no candidates in either party, according to President Ken Tilp. Instead, it wants candidates to join in televised educational forums, or, at the least, fill out comprehensive questionnaires.

“Our emphasis will be: You decide,” Tilp said of the group’s 30,000 members. Teachers are said to amount of about 10% of the voters in both Republican and Democratic caucuses here.

The Iowans will tell you they are representative of the country at large (except they are 97% white and more than half can get to work in less than 14 minutes) and that they are better educated than most Americans (actually, they are below New Hampshire, California and the national average in percent of college graduates).

It is hard to argue, though, with how skillfully and seriously the activists here utilize the buildup to the caucuses.

Just the matter of how to ask a candidate a question, for instance, has become a matter for serious study.

Questions Called Key

The Christian Right, some peace activists and others recognize you do not need a forum or a questionnaire to influence the debate here. You need only ask questions at the public forums and appearances sponsored by others.

A group called Beyond War has begun workshops to give its members the self-confidence to stand up to would-be presidents. The members are taught where to stand in a crowd to be recognized, how to refine their questions so as to make them hard to duck and how to work in tandem with others in the audience to push for answers.

“There are a lot of candidates who tend to look at issues in terms of how many times they were asked questions about it on their last trip to Iowa,” explained Mike Lux, director of the state’s Citizen Action Network. “I hear a lot of campaigns say things like: ‘Hey, we’ve got to issue a policy statement on such-and-such because we’re getting a lot of questions about it.’ ”

Evangelical Christians have mastered the questioning process in Iowa and are represented at many of the GOP candidate events.

“We will encourage our people from the pulpit to ask questions and see what the candidates stand for--to go to the caucuses and to the rallies,” said Chuck Underwood, a director of the 1st Federated Church, the largest of its kind in the state.

Numbers Cause Tensions

Underwood estimates that conservative Christians will account for at least half of the GOP caucus voters next February. State GOP Chairman Mike Mahaffey guessed lower, 20% to 25%. No matter, it is enough to cause tensions in the Iowa GOP.

“In 1986 (the off-election year), some of our fellowship went (to the caucuses) for the first time. And suddenly, they found themselves in the majority, the very first time they participated,” Underwood said.

Sometimes, however, the special interests of the Iowan in presidential politics goes too far even for the people here. Donald Avenson, the Democratic Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, told a reporter earlier this year that he would withhold his endorsement until he received campaign funds from the Democratic contenders.

“I want them all to raise $50,000 apiece for my House candidates. I’d be crazy not to,” Avenson said. He now claims he was exaggerating.

But the ordinary Iowan like Martin C. Kramer of Algona expressed embarrassment. “Silly me, I thought it took good ideas, leadership, good moral character and some kind of political experience to be considered as a presidential candidate,” Kramer complained. “What a slap in the face for the democratic process.”

Intimate Process

For all the demands and influence of groups and their single-issue crusades, it is easy to marvel at a process that remains so intimate here while growing so remote elsewhere.

Throughout the state there are people to attest to the fact that the Iowan is more than a name on a roster for a cause.

“I look ‘em over,” said John Chrystal, a banker, about the field of candidates. “And then I ask, do I like ‘em? Does my heart like ‘em? After that, they can fail the (litmus) tests for all I care.”

Right now, Chrystal said his heart likes the Rev. Jesse Jackson. His preference for the most radical of the Democratic candidates is unexpected considering that Chrystal spoke from his comfortable high-rise office building in Des Moines, where he is chief executive officer and board chairman of Iowa’s second-largest bank, Bankers Trust, and past president of the Iowa Bankers’ Assn.

Jackson won Chrystal over by taking up the cause of the Iowa family farmer. “Jackson is an angry man. But I don’t know, is the country ready for an angry President?” Chrystal asked. The Taukes, Republicans from Dubuque, already made their choices. Rep. Tom Tauke signed on as state co-chair for Vice President George Bush. Beverly Tauke, his wife, is the Iowa media coordinator for Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

‘Comfort Zone’

“There is a comfort zone in that we both respect the other candidate,” Beverly said.

Times researcher Doug Conner contributed to this story.