Caucus Choices : Iowans Find Few Stars in Their Eyes

Jasper County Auditor and Election Commissioner Linda Gifford dropped Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt from consideration after meeting him. “He kind of twitches and his eyes kind of shift,” she said.

Rosemary Hartschen, a teacher, has crossed Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis from her list because “it wasn’t nice” when his former campaign manager distributed a videotape that helped push Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. out of the race.

Mary Lee Rusk, an advertising saleswoman, said she would not vote for the Rev. Jesse Jackson because he has no experience in government and “his color will make him vulnerable” in a general election.

And Lee M. Walker, an attorney, does not think Illinois Sen. Paul Simon is electable because he wears a bow tie. “Iowans don’t trust a man who wears a bow tie,” Walker said.

Opinions Matter

The opinions of these four Democrats might not matter anywhere outside this township. But here, in this presidential election season, their opinions matter very much. For they plan to stand up for a candidate in the Feb. 8 caucuses, a delegate-selection process where presidencies can be launched and would-be presidencies grounded.

The Iowa caucuses are considered important because they are the first major contest in the race for the nomination. The results provide one of the earliest yardsticks of a candidate’s voter-appeal, and the news media cover them heavily. Candidates who do well or better than expected suddenly may be perceived as winners and use the good showing to propel themselves in other states. By the same token, candidates who come in at the bottom may be perceived as losers, their candidacies taken less seriously by the media and contributors.

So the candidates cater to caucus-goers, wooing them with literature, telephone calls, birthday cards and even, perhaps, a personal visit. In turn, these Democrats tend to take their political responsibility seriously. Even now, with the caucuses a season away, many caucus-attendees here already have met the candidates and studied their positions. They are making lists of their favorites--eliminating candidates not only because of their views, but at times because of what they wear or the sound of their voice--and soaking up all the attention in the meantime.

Any registered Democrat can stand up for a candidate on caucus night. But unlike primary voting, where the selection is made in the privacy of a booth, caucus-goers must declare their choice before all to see. Sometimes, the negotiations and pressure of their fellow attendees are intense.

In the months before caucus night, the attendees mingle with would-be presidents, interrogate them or criticize them to their face. Shopping candidates in Iowa involves only a trip around the corner. The process is intimate.

Mothers line up their children next to a candidate and snap photographs. If that particular contender is elected, the pictures may be framed. They shake the candidates’ hands, tell them their personal troubles and, if their choice is elected, they may even be invited to the White House.

Newton, located 34 miles east of Des Moines, is a popular stomping ground for candidates. It is the judicial seat of Jasper County and home of Maytag. The town’s promoters call their community of 15,300 “The Home Laundry Appliance Center of the World.” More than 3,100 workers here produce every single Maytag washer and dryer in the nation, churning out more than 1 million home appliances every year. Most of these workers are members of the United Auto Workers, a powerful union in Iowa.

Town Prospered

Founded here in 1893 as a producer of farm implements, Maytag has made Newton prosperous. Townspeople take pride in producing a product whose repairmen are the loneliest in town. The few who dare criticize the company quickly snatch back their words and admonish the listener not to repeat them to their neighbors.

Newton has a distinctly Midwestern appearance. The town square is dominated by an imposing, old courthouse with a clock tower. Low, brick buildings surround it, including an F. W. Woolworth store with a red-and-white striped awning, a Sears catalogue outlet and a movie theater with a marquee.

The township, an unincorporated community, wraps around Newton’s northern boundaries. It contains the high-income Bittersweet Acres and the low-income Country Club Acres. Suburban tracts are sliced by fields of corn and soybeans and cattle-grazing pastures. There are 373 registered Democrats in the township, but fewer than one-third go to caucus.

Here are the opinions and experiences of 10 who plan to attend:

On a cold, windy night with a harvest moon, Linda Gifford was at home, nursing a cold. Shortly before 8 p.m., the telephone rang. She picked it up reluctantly.

It was a caller representing Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr., who wants to be President and wants Gifford’s endorsement.

“At this point, I’m not ready to make any commitment . . . “ she said wearily into the receiver. Gifford, Jasper County auditor and elections commissioner, sighed. “At this point, I have another candidate I’m looking at . . .. Well, have you got any position papers?

“Send any position papers you have to me. Personally, I think he is a little bit too conservative for me, but you send me his position papers.”

With those words, the 45-year-old grandmother put off that evening’s advances with the coyness of one long accustomed to suitors. She is used to sweet talk at election time, and maintains, straight-faced, that she is not dazzled by the courtship.

“If you don’t go (commit to a candidate) early, you get deluged with phone calls and they come to the office to see you . . . “ said Gifford, who also rattles off names of reporters from around the country who call her. “I thought with Biden I had it all put together and now I’m starting over again.”

Gifford had supported the Delaware senator until his withdrawal and now leans toward Simon. She is hesitating because she is not sure Simon can be elected. “Let’s face it, he’s not an all-American Colgate-type male,” she said.

Rosemary and Wray Hartschen live around the corner from Gifford, in a tract-style brown house that looks out over a corn field. Like most who live in the township, they do not have a numbered address. Finding their house requires one to take the right gravel roads and park at the fifth house from the red barn.

Rosemary Hartschen, 49, a substitute teacher, has met most of the candidates but enjoys “playing hard to get.” She likes Gore, Simon and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt. She likes Jackson too but doesn’t think he is electable. She wants a winner.

If any single event in this race stands out in her mind, it seems to be the hot July night when the air conditioning broke down and Tipper Gore visited. Sen. Gore needed a forum for his wife to promote him, and county Democratic Party officials asked Hartschen to host “a tea.” She provided her living room, cookies and, of course, tea.

“She was real friendly, real nice, outgoing,” said Hartschen of the woman she calls just “Tipper.” “She would make a nice First Lady.”

After the tea, Gore himself called the house looking for his wife, and he and Hartschen chatted. The candidate later sent her a thank-you note. Although she spoke warmly of “Tipper,” she insisted she was too experienced with politicking to be swayed by such intimate meetings.

“When we first started getting involved in politics, it was so exciting,” said Hartschen, who along with her husband serves on the Jasper County Democratic Central Committee. “Now, when we see so many of them so often, it’s no big deal. You don’t feel they’re big celebrities anymore. They’re just a politician.”

Wray Hartschen, 54, who wears a red cap and smokes unfiltered Pall Malls, is active in his union, the United Auto Workers. A Maytag employee for 35 years, he works on the dryer assembly line. Many United Auto Workers members are supporting Gephardt, and so is Wray Hartschen.

“We all go together . . . “ he says of his union’s political activity. “We want our share of the pie.”

Hartschen, like his union, approves of Gephardt’s protectionist trade leanings.

“The Japanese haven’t gotten into making washers and dryers yet but you can’t say they couldn’t,” he said, a look of anxiety passing over his face.

Workers for other candidates call, but he rejects their pleas. Usually polite, he said he once cut short a call from a “kid” working for Babbitt who told him the American car industry was in trouble because of its inferior products.

“That really blew me,” said Hartschen, who buys only American cars. “I told him I have 130,000 miles on a ’78 Pontiac, and he told me I was just lucky.”

On the other side of this township, in a little, middle-income community known as Lamb’s Grove, the union’s support of Gephardt is not a plus. At least, it is not helping the candidate in the Umbarger household.

Patricia and Jack Umbarger are avid caucus-goers, and they recall resentfully heavy-handed union tactics on previous caucus nights. Wray Hartschen “runs a fair caucus,” said Patricia Umbarger, 57, but other union members try to “shove a candidate down your throat” and “just kind of overrun you.”

The Umbargers spend three weeks every spring in Florida, play golf and have a built-in swimming pool in the backyard. She is tanned with light blonde hair, a homemaker whose children are grown. He is a sales manager for a telephone directory publishing company and manages local political campaigns on the side.

Both Umbargers follow the televised candidates’ debates. Jack Umbarger, 56, seated in a comfortable chair with their sleeping dachshund on his lap, said he has been impressed with Simon. His wife seems taken with Dukakis, and repeatedly quoted lines he has used in the debates. An early flirtation with Gore faded when the Southerner began jabbing at his opponents during the debates, trying to break out from the pack. In Patricia Umbarger’s mind, Gore was being “huffy.”

A campaign worker for Babbitt called Jack Umbarger to solicit his support. But Umbarger would not submit. He said he thinks Babbitt may not be electable. “He’s got that little facial tic.”

Mary Lee and Forrest Rusk awoke early one recent weekday morning to attend a breakfast with Dukakis and 30 local Democrats.

Seated at a table in the Terrace Lodge, a small Newton hotel, they awaited Dukakis with red-white-and-blue name tags on their lapels and serious, uncomfortable expressions on their faces.

The Rusks are unsure which candidate they will stand up for on caucus night. Mary Lee, 62, likes Simon, but again, it’s that bow tie. “We all want somebody who looks like a movie star and speaks like an orator,” she said apologetically. Her husband, also 62, offers that Simon “seems sincere on TV.”

Still, there is Dukakis, whom they like, too.

Their biggest concern is health care for the elderly. Mary Lee’s 92-year-old father has spent most of his $50,000 life savings to live at a rest home. Forrest’s mother is 94, and her health is of concern too.

“It’s just terrible what it costs to take care of older people,” said Mary Lee Rusk, who sells advertising for local radio stations.

Dukakis arrived with an entourage that included the Massachusetts secretary of state, who is a woman. Mary Lee Rusk was impressed. “That’s neat, to have a lady secretary of state.”

The governor went to the podium and gave his standard stump speech. He also added a little something for his Newton audience.

“I’ve been talking about Newton, Iowa, all over this country, about Maytag . . . you should be very proud of it,” the candidate said.

Mary Lee Rusk smiled, took notes and laughed at Dukakis’ jokes. Her husband, with his hands folded in front of him, listened impassively. During a question-and-answer session, neither raised a hand. When Dukakis finished, Forrest Rusk rushed off to his insurance business, and his wife lingered behind.

When Dukakis approached to shake her hand, she told him of her concerns about health care for the aged. He directed her to an aide, a young, attractive woman with an anxious smile who had been hovering nearby.

Mary Lee Rusk told the aide all about her father, and the young woman listened intently. Afterward, she took down Rusk’s address and promised to send her Dukakis’ postion paper on health care for the elderly.

Mary Lee Rusk beamed.

“I’m impressed. I thought he was very impressive.” She shrugged, still smiling. “Of course I’m a salesperson and we’re easily sold.”

Karen Silverberg, 52, just back from a from a board meeting of the Mid-Iowa Planned Parenthood chapter, was seated in the tiny, dimly lighted downtown office of First Step, a nonprofit group that provides a variety of charitable services, including loaning rental deposits to the poor. She is a coordinator there.

Silverberg, a “newspaper junkie,” follows politics closely but still forgets momentarily all the Democratic candidates. She has to count them on her fingers to make sure she has left no one out.

“When you have this many candidates, you really try to look for something to eliminate some of them,” said the mother of two grown children and wife of a Republican Maytag manager.

So far, she has eliminated Gore, whom she repeatedly called “the youngest.” She believes he is just trying to get name recognition for a future run.

Dukakis and Simon are high on her list. Her interest in Simon stems partly from her daughter’s college friend who was an intern for the Illinois senator and liked him.

Gephardt makes her “leery” because he once supported a constitutional amendment to make abortion illegal, even though he now supports the current law, which is pro-choice. Still, she is impressed that feminists she knows in Gephardt’s home state of Missouri support him.

Lee M. Walker, 37, is not easily sold. Extroverted and opinionated, he enjoys being courted by the candidates and does not plan to make up his mind until he thinks he has a winner. Walker, who goes by “Ken” (it comes from his middle-name, McKinney) is a a rather prominent figure in town, an attorney who gets invited regularly to candidates’ breakfasts. He and his family live in a large home in the exclusive Bittersweet Acres.

Walker was born in Georgia and likes Gore, the only Southerner in the race. He also likes Gephardt because he “kind of comes across as the guy next door.”

He particularly likes another candidate whose name at this moment he cannot recall. This candidate is good on “lawyer-type issues,” opposing efforts to limit jury awards in product liability cases. Walker, seated in his paneled law office in a two-story, brick building in downtown Newton, picked up the telephone to call his partner. He wanted to ask him the name of “that Arizona governor.”

Ah yes. Bruce Babbitt.

“I’ve seen them all come through here, and quite frankly, after a while they all sort of run together,” Walker admitted.

He gave $25 to Babbitt because Babbitt was “the only one who asked me for money.”

He is convinced that Dukakis and Simon probably cannot be elected, Simon because of the bow tie, and Dukakis because of his voice. To Walker’s ears, Dukakis “comes across as an Easterner” and has an “accent.”

“It’s kind of nasal sounding,” he said.

Jackson won’t make it either because he is black, Walker said.

Walker’s wife, Randa, 37, a schoolteacher who was seated across from her husband, squirmed. “It’s got to happen sometime,” she interjected.

She strongly supports Jackson. “We’ve had a white male in the office for I don’t know how long, and he’s screwed it up every time,” she said. “Jesse gets more involved with the people when he comes to Iowa.

“He goes to the farms and milks the cows.”