Effort to Sharpen Message, Image : Gephardt Striving to Keep Bid Alive After Slip in Iowa

When Rep. Richard A. Gephardt sought support for his Democratic presidential candidacy in this battered northern Iowa industrial town a few days ago, there seemed to be new fire in his eye and new passion in his voice.

“This guy is better when his back is against the wall,” said a senior adviser to the Missouri congressman, who has been criticized in the past for failing to put enough feeling into his pitch. “He gets more intense and feels freer to reveal more of himself.”

If Gephardt’s adrenaline seems to be flowing faster these days, it is none too soon. Three or four months ago, the candidate with the red hair and the boyish good looks seemed to be riding the crest of the Democratic wave. Now he is struggling just to stay afloat.

Loss of Momentum

No one is writing off Gephardt yet. But his foes point to a loss of momentum, signaled by his slippage in the polls here--a decline Gephardt must somehow overcome because many feel that anything less than a first-place finish in Iowa’s Feb. 8 caucuses could force the 46-year-old six-term lawmaker out of the race.

“He’s not dead, but he’s got a long way to come back,” said Lowell Junkins, former Iowa chairman for the ill-fated campaign of Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. Junkins now backs the current front-runner in the Iowa polls, Illinois Sen. Paul Simon.

Gephardt professes not to pay much attention to poll results. “This campaign is about ideas; it’s about beliefs; it’s about what you want to do with the country, and the polls are fairly irrelevant,” he insisted recently as he drove through the Iowa night on his way to yet another campaign stop.

And the candidate rejects the notion advanced by critics that, in order to survive, he will have to shift positions--particularly his controversial stand on trade, which many have labeled protectionist.

“This campaign is what it is. It’s not going to change,” Gephardt insisted.

But if he does not need to change his stands on issues, Gephardt’s advisers have been telling him that he has to find a better way of getting his beliefs and his personality across to voters by making the one more consistent with the other.

What they are looking for is a solution to a fundamental paradox that has dogged Gephardt’s candidacy from the beginning: His major policy proposals--retaliation against unfair trade practices, production controls on farm crops, an oil import fee--seem like drastic changes in long-established policies. But Gephardt himself, with his Eagle Scout appearance and his role in the congressional leadership as chairman of the House Democratic caucus, seems like the very model of an Establishment politician.

Need to Establish Identity

“One of our problems is establishing just who Dick Gephardt really is,” said Joe Trippi, his deputy campaign manager.

“I think he has to re-articulate the message and drive it home harder,” said Joanne Symons, a consultant who has worked closely with the campaign since it began.

One obstacle is that the ideas Gephardt advocates are complex. “This is not a campaign you can put easily on a bumper sticker,” the candidate conceded.

Another impediment is that Gephardt is, as one aide said, “a very private person” who sometimes strikes voters as remote.

“I think he is going to have to be more personally revealing,” campaign manager Bill Carrick acknowledged.

And besides Gephardt’s need to tell voters more about himself, his aides think that he needs to establish a closer connection between his candidacy and the voters’ lives.

“He has to show how his policies affect people,” Trippi said. He contends that Gephardt has to try harder, for example, to demonstrate how his agricultural programs are keyed to the needs of farmers and how his trade proposals are designed to save jobs that workers would otherwise lose to foreign competition.

‘Better Ways to Explain’

Gephardt concedes the need to sharpen his message. “We constantly look for better ways to explain what I believe, so that people understand it,” he said.

To figure out how to do this, his advisers have been looking back at the early days of his campaign, recalling what he did right and analyzing what went wrong.

At first the Gephardt campaign game plan seemed to be a masterpiece, ingeniously drawing on the lessons of the past and Gephardt’s own personal strengths, notably his tenacity and relentless energy.

Mindful that Jimmy Carter, at a time when he was an obscure Georgia figure, had won a stunning victory in the Iowa precinct caucuses in 1976 largely by dint of an early start, the equally obscure Gephardt started promoting his candidacy even earlier in the quadrennial calendar than Carter had.

In the two years before he announced his candidacy, Gephardt visited the state 24 times. And by the time he officially declared his intention to run in February, 1987--before any of his Democratic rivals--he was able to release a list of 80 party activists backing his candidacy, most of them personally recruited by Gephardt.

Trade Stand Won Attention

To help make up for his lack of fame and his relative lack of stature as a member of the House of Representatives competing against senators and governors, Gephardt latched onto the trade issue, then much in the news. His get-tough stand won press attention and the support of some labor unions.

Thus, when front-runner Gary Hart was forced to drop out of the Democratic race last May because of charges of womanizing, Gephardt was well positioned to move up in Iowa. Indeed, the first polls after Hart’s departure showed Gephardt in the lead.

But it was a case of too fast too soon. As Gephardt acknowledged, a campaign is “all kinds of things; it’s the human being; it’s the issues; it’s the motivation; it’s the emotion; it’s all kinds of reactions that people have that finally make them want to vote.” Gephardt was unable to combine all those elements into something that would sweep his opponents from the field.

Meanwhile, two other Democratic contenders began to make their presences felt in the state: Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, with his theme of economic opportunity, built on the prosperity in his own state, and Simon combined the familiarity of coming from a neighboring state with a claim to genuineness derived from his earnest manner and frumpish appearance.

Lead in Surveys Fades

The polling lead Gephardt took in the spring and held through the summer began to fade with the autumn surveys, which put him in third place behind Simon and Dukakis.

Still, many activists here contend that it is a mistake to take the polls too seriously now, with nearly two months to go before the Feb. 8 caucuses, because so few voters are firmly committed to any candidate.

“I would say 90% to 95% of the people I talk to are undecided,” said Ken Leahy, a party activist, Gephardt supporter and United Auto Workers member in Waterloo.

“I don’t think anyone is taking charge in Iowa. It’s a horse race,” said Ronald Hurd, a public housing administrator who came to hear Gephardt speak in the town of Madrid, near Des Moines.

With his new revved-up delivery, Gephardt seems to have at least a fighting chance of winning over the undecided.

“I’m impressed,” said Myrna Smith after hearing Gephardt speak in Perry, Iowa, at the senior citizens center where she is the activities director. “I like his plain talk. Straightforward talk is probably one of his finest qualities. I’d say I’m leaning to him now, and I had been uncommitted before.”

And last week Gephardt got a boost in the state when Iowa Lt. Gov. Joann Zimmerman, who had been a Biden backer, announced her support for Gephardt.

Crowds Were Small

At the moment though, Gephardt’s problem in Iowa seems simply to be waning interest in his candidacy among the activists likely to attend caucuses next February. In a two-day swing through the state at the start of the month, Gephardt drew tiny crowds, even in places such as Waterloo, where labor has given him strong backing.

By contrast, Simon drew very large crowds to events in even smaller towns the week before.

Campaign manager Carrick blames Gephardt’s current doldrums in part on the fact that, unlike Dukakis and Simon, Gephardt has yet to mount a television advertising campaign in the state. By husbanding his resources, Carrick asserts, Gephardt will be able to spend more money on commercials than either of his chief rivals next year, when voters presumably will be paying more attention.

Gephardt press spokesman Mark Johnson said that, although the campaign has borrowed $400,000 against federal matching funds due next year, it will get about $2 million in such funds. This will permit Gephardt to spend the maximum allowed by federal law in Iowa--an estimated $750,000--Johnson said.

New Hampshire Organization

The next big test after Iowa is New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first presidential primary on Feb. 16. Gephardt also trails in the polls in that New England state, far behind Dukakis from next-door Massachusetts. But New Hampshire Democratic Chairman Joseph Grandmaison, a neutral in the contest, calls Gephardt’s campaign “the most skillfully organized in the state.”

Grandmaison cites the success of Gephardt’s state coordinator, Mark Longabaugh, in coming in second only to Dukakis in lining up delegates committed to his candidate at last month’s state party convention.

Longabaugh says voters are attracted to Gephardt’s “youth and his energy” but concedes that a more explicit appeal has yet to be developed.

Democratic officials in several Southern states say Gephardt is also well organized in their states, with strong backing from influential congressional leaders in the region.

But the question is whether Gephardt can survive to compete in New Hampshire and the South unless he comes in first here in Iowa. “I have no idea,” Gephardt replied when asked if he would pull out of the race if he fails to finish first in this state. “I just don’t know.

“I think I’m going to do well here. I really think we’re going to do great, and we’re going to do great in New Hampshire, and in the South, and I’m going to be the nominee.”