Will One Side Hog Parking Spots? : In Iowa Campaign, Little Things Can Mean a Lot

Out here amid the grass roots, those who lead the nation in selecting a Republican presidential nominee suspect villainy.

Could it be, they brood, the campaign of former religion broadcaster Pat Robertson will deliberately set out to hog precious parking spaces at Miller Junior High? And in the aching cold of caucus night Feb. 8, will backers of other candidates shrug their shoulders and drive home without casting a ballot?

All over Marshalltown, the inflaming little rumor is heard and passed along.

This is the sound of wrenches torquing down the nuts and bolts of democracy. This is the kind of squeak you hear after the candidates and their moving armies finish addressing war and peace and $1-trillion budgets and thunder down two-lane blacktops to the next town.

Iowa’s famous kickoff nominating caucuses are now just three weeks away. And after literally years of preliminaries, the precinct-by-precinct campaign for President has come alive at consuming pitch.

One such precinct is marked off here in Marshalltown, in the center of this proud, icy cold and, as anyone will tell you, oh-so-important state. They call it Five/One--Fifth Ward, First Precinct--a collection of pastel clapboards and occasional corn fields in the southeast corner of town. It is one of a dozen precincts in 25,000-population Marshalltown, and one of 2,487 statewide.

Soon after 7 p.m. on Monday Feb. 8, with the ears of the world listening, Five/One and the other electoral wellsprings will bubble forth with tallies of the preferences of maybe 120,000 of the most courted men and women in the history of American campaigns.

No actual nominating delegates will be selected. Just the recording of preferences of heartland citizens, shaping the race for the presidency.

An Epic Process

To help others penetrate this epic process, Republicans in Five/One have cooperated over the months in a series of dispatches in The Times charting the unfolding of the GOP campaign from the coffee shops, churches, saloons and living rooms--and ultimately headed down one darkened street to a schoolroom at Miller Junior High.

Today, with two-week-old ice still sheeted thickly over the sidewalks and frigid winds racing down from the Arctic making one’s skull sting, Marshalltown talks of possible parking scandal.

“What I’ve heard is that Robertson’s people are telling supporters to come alone to the caucus--one to a car--to take up more parking spaces,” says Barbara Thiesen, the businesslike secretary of the Marshall County GOP.

“Is it true? I don’t know,” she continues. “But it shows you that while the candidates are trying to think about the big things, there are people down the line working on the little things.”

Other Marshalltown Republicans, organizers for the presumed front-runners, Vice President George Bush and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, cogitate about the rumor.

Politics of Parking

Parking is limited at the junior high, where all 12 Marshalltown precincts will hold their caucuses. If Robertson crusaders gobble up the choice spots early, and if the weather is lousy, and if supporters for Bush and Dole and Rep. Jack Kemp of New York decide to stay warm rather than hike five blocks. . . .

Well, there you go. The politics of parking.

The Rev. Kerry Jech, a key Robertson organizer in Five/One and a minister widely respected in the community, says he is unaware of any such Robertson strategy. But he adds: “Hmm. Look at me: In 1980, I left because I couldn’t get within a mile of the caucuses. . . . But that would be kind of dirty, wouldn’t it?”

Maybe it is not true and never was. Maybe it is. Robertson’s organizers, after all, have made a strategy of surprise and secrecy. Maybe it is a fiction of the Bush or Dole or Kemp campaigns, to play on fears of a Robertson upset and increase turnout of more Establishment-minded voters.

Blue Suits, Polished Satchels

Whichever, the story illustrates that in the mighty campaigns for President, for all the blue suits and polished satchels and 600-m.p.h jets, there are times when such mundane matters as parking spaces are the greatest concern of all.

One recent night in the basement of the Main Street Methodist Church, Dole’s Marshall County brain trust gathers.

A chart 7 feet long lines one wall. Each precinct is listed and the leaders of each precinct. Little squares on the chart set forth goals--the number of Dole voters the campaign estimates it needs to win each precinct, the number of telephone callers needed to turn them out, the number of drivers needed to get the elderly or lazy to the school. And so forth.

The dialogue is unadorned, practical and personal.

“I cannot tell you how important it is to get your drivers lined up,” explains Sharon Crosser, who oversees the Dole organization in several adjacent counties. “My mom is 73 years old and lives in Butler County. If she sees just one fleck of snow she won’t go out. But if someone would call her and say, ‘Jenny, you need a ride?’ She’d jump in that car and go.”

Looking Presidential

Over at Marshalltown City Center, which is about the size of a Burger King, a similar Bush meeting takes on the tone of a revival. Brian Johnson, high school social studies teacher, is not a Republican but an independent. This election, he has been won over by Bush. He comes before the crowd to describe his conversion and his reaction to a recent candidate debate televised from Des Moines.

“For the first time, George Bush looked more presidential, sounded more presidential,” Johnson says.

A flutter runs through the Bush faithful. Polls show the vice president static and ungaining for months. But here before them is living evidence to the contrary.

In the end, one presumes Iowa Republicans will elect their nominee the old-fashioned way--sizing his timber, wrestling with themselves and what they have seen and heard and, most important, acting on what they feel.

But here in the neighborhoods, where the storied Iowa political activists can sketch the boundaries of their precincts from memory, it remains a challenge to try to wrest some advantage by attention to organizational minutiae.

Offer a Prize

In 1980, Jerry Fletcher helped carry Marshall County for Ronald Reagan over Bush. Now Fletcher, retired and living in nearby LeGrand, is advising the Bush operation how he did it.

Offer a prize, he says. Promise the most successful precinct organizers a dinner with Bush himself. Everyone will work twice as hard.

Put a sign on the coffee pot at the schoolhouse: Courtesy of George Bush.

And for the benefit of the town’s religious-minded voters, Fletcher urges, add more of a God-bless-America flavor to the vice president’s final campaign stop in Marshalltown, now scheduled for the Sunday before the caucuses. Make sure Bush utters the word God .

A Portentous Place

Religion overall holds a portentous place in this 1988 Republican primary campaign because of the novel and polarizing candidacy of Robertson.

Because of him, political conversations do not begin the way they used to with the ice-breaker question: Who will win? Rather, Republicans are apt to wonder first: What of Robertson? Can he win?

Two important political leaders in Marshalltown now sense that the religious broadcaster and one-time evangelist can indeed.

Jech, a Robertson precinct leader in Five/One and former county GOP chairman, predicts the following Marshall County finish: Robertson 33%, Bush 27%, Dole 25%, Kemp 10% and former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV 5%.

Below Zero and Barefoot

Sanny Thompson, the Bush coordinator for the county, calls up 26 years of experience in Marshalltown politics and foretells a Robertson victory. “It could be 38 degrees below zero and his people would come out barefoot. If I had to bet, I’d say yes, he’s going to win the county.”

Strangely, almost no evidence supports such predictions. Repeated, extensive and sophisticated polling of Iowans has failed to detect any Robertson groundswell.

In the political taverns and conference rooms 50 miles away in headquarters Des Moines, the phenomenon is called “Robertson’s invisible army.” But some knowledgeable strategists, backed by polls and their own instincts, are beginning to whisper the hope that the army is invisible because it does not exist.

The choices seem to be but three: Either there is some amazing and heretofore unknown glitch in the science of polling. Or the invisible army is really no larger than the single digits it now registers. Or Robertson’s foot soldiers are misleading the pollsters.

A Conventional Contest

Between Bush and Dole, the contest is more conventional. Credit the vice president with an experienced organization, the Senate minority leader with an exuberant one.

At this moment there is agreement that the most compelling theme is Dole’s emphasis on his Midwestern heritage--that he and Midwesterners are simpatico, that he is willing to reach down and rub his fingers through a clot of buttery topsoil as if to prove it. And this seems to account as much as anything for his 15-point lead in the polls.

“This Dole pitch, that he’s one of us--it’s really working,” says Bush coordinator Thompson, a fit, early middle-age housewife with a sense of style that sets her apart from many in this small town.

For Thompson the gloomy polls mean giving up her exercise class, her bridge group, her charity work and the other pleasures of a comfortable early-retirement life style, in exchange for a sour stomach, drawn face and enough tension in her voice to make one wonder if all her children and dogs had run away from home.

A Matter of Gumption

And push, push, push. It’s more than just selling Bush, but also a matter of the gumption to ask personal favors. Such as: “Would you please cut your vacation short and come back and vote for George Bush?”

By reputation, Thompson is the premier GOP organizer in Marshall County. But in her angst , she says: “I’m afraid we were better organized last time.”

That would have been in 1980 when Bush last contested Iowa’s presidential caucuses. Bush was then the underdog, and Iowans like underdogs. Bush was then against Reagan, not with him, and Iowans have always had more than their share of reservations about Reagan.

For an entirely different style of George Bush Iowa-neighborhood politics, come down the street and meet Jo Jackson. She runs a resort marina in the summer and devotes her winters to politics. And devotes is the correct word. Here is a woman who met her husband on a blind date driving voters to the polls for Dwight D. Eisenhower. Here is a woman who knows voters in Five/One off the top of her head but has to stop and think for an instant how many children she has reared.

‘A Little Pillow Talk’

Stout and round-faced, she is a woman who acts as if she can make up most of the vice president’s 15-point gap in the polls all by herself, marching into the grocery market, into the drugstore and post office and blurting: “Hey, how about a vote?”

She says she will even tell a wife who supports Bush to lobby a husband who does not “with a little pillow talk.”

“I don’t know how many people I can influence,” she concedes. “But I do know a lot of people will stop and listen to what I have to say.”

By contrast, Dole’s campaign in Marshall County is directed by a political newcomer, George Taylor, a retired banker and relaxed outdoorsman with arresting, greasepaint-like eyebrows, a fishing-reel tie tack and the reassuring manner of someone who has spent a lifetime handling your money.

Buttons and Stickers

Plastered with Dole buttons and stickers, Taylor eases through Marshalltown, asking his friends at the Methodist church and elsewhere to give Dole a look.

The high-flying political pros of Los Angeles might find it absurd, or maybe quaint, but when Taylor holds a Dole-for-President leadership strategy meeting he does not call caterers. He ties on an apron and cooks chili. And then he asks everyone to pitch in $1 to cover the cost.

This is, after all, Iowa--and that is what Iowans keep telling themselves.

“I’m attracted to Dole because he’s a guy who had to do it on his own. . . . You know, the closer you are to the soil, if you’ve tilled the ground, you have a different outlook than someone, say, from Boston. And he’s not that many generations from the soil. That’s the way I put it,” Taylor says.

A Few May Be Teetering

Over in Five/One, the house-by-house foraging for Dole supporters is the work of the likes of Don Diamond, Main Street insurance man.

Diamond is as reserved as counterpart Jo Jackson is brash.

“Most here are going to make their own decisions. I’m not the kind to just pick up the phone and call anyone. . . . But there are a few who might be teetering. I’m hoping I can get somewhere around 20 in my precinct who wouldn’t ordinarily go to a caucus,” he says.

So, in Marshalltown, just how close is it between Bush and Dole?

Over at the Rose Garden Coffee Shop, just off the town square, a dozen men gather to chew over that very question.

“I’ll tell you,” says Steve Ames, a house painter and teacher, “if it turns out Bush had a girlfriend in Hawaii, Dole will win it. It’s that close.”