Some Iowans Feeling a Letdown as GOP Rivals Stir Up Torpor

For anyone with an eye for politics, this has been Shangri-La. Here, you could meet the men who gaveled the Congress and dined with Gorbachev, who built an empire from the pulpit and formed a movement from the ghettos--men flying in the turbulent, rarefied jet stream of presidential politics. But men who still have time for you every day.

Here is the place, indeed, where one could come to know the next President of the United States.

No need to read about some distant abstractions. Just walk up and tell each candidate your concerns about America. Or listen to theirs. Collect their hand-signed Christmas cards or have your children photographed with each of them. Throw a dinner party and count on one of them to drop by.

Political Yellow Brick Road

For the last year or two, the Yellow Brick Road of American presidential politics has led here to Marshalltown and communities like it across Iowa.

So, when Barbara Thiesen, office manager for central Iowa’s Marshalltown Aviation, ponders events and the caucus vote coming up Monday night, out pops a surprising admission.

It’s been a letdown.

“Somehow, I’d really hoped to be more involved,” the 35-year-old Republican said with a shrug. “But nobody really fired me up.”

Across the state, it seems, the legendary Iowa political activist is reconciled to a measure of unwonted discontent.

High Turnout Predicted

The Iowa caucuses occur Monday. There are predictions of record high voter turnout. Colonies of baggy-suited political reporters have tunneled into the very foundations of the state. Thousands of political operatives are on a final, sleepless binge of effort. All this attests to the significance of events to come.

But the responding emotional electricity of many voters, certainly many Republicans, has been mere sparks and flickers, hardly thunderbolts to split the sky.

“Glum,” says Pat McVay about the mood in her circle of friends.

McVay and Thiesen are among activist Republicans in Marshalltown whose political views have been explored the last five months in periodic stories in The Times. They reside in one of Iowa’s 2,487 precincts--the southeast patch of Marshalltown known as Five/One--the 5th Ward/1st Precinct.

It is a place where churches vastly outnumber bars, a community big enough to have a smut book shop but small enough so that there really is a town square on Main Street. It is probably as good a place as any to explore the legend of the Iowa caucuses.

Passions Unstirred

So what is the mood of Marshalltown Republicans in the final days of this campaign? Why are political passions unstirred?

“I’m just not impressed,” said Thiesen, a single mother and volunteer secretary of the Marshall County GOP.

Such talk is difficult. Activists have a romanticized view of themselves, and this is not it. For the first time, some of the Republicans in Five/One have asked to go off the record to express their unexpected torpor.

Thiesen, undecided about whom to support until just now, has finally cast herself with Vice President George Bush. He acts more presidential than his chief rival, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, and seems to have the best chance of winning against the Democrats, Thiesen said. But she speaks as though she is a dieter choosing between a stalk of celery and an unsalted cracker.

“There is not a whole lot of difference to me, Bush over Dole. And, again, I’m not very impressed. But, if these are the ones running, I’ll support Bush.”

McVay, a substitute teacher and operator of a preschool, is another Five/One Republican who has waited until the end of the campaign to make her choice. Along with her husband, Don, a professor of mathematics at Marshalltown Community College, McVay is “leaning strongly” to dark horse contender Jack Kemp, the New York congressman.

But she adds that the campaign finish “lacks excitement, that’s for sure.”

Expects Tax Increase

“I foresee a tax increase with either Bush or Dole, and that’s not very pleasant for any of us,” she said.

Over at the Dole campaign, county Chairman George Taylor discloses a goal: Headquarters wants 65 Dole voters at the Monday night caucus in Precinct Five/One. Of that, Taylor said, almost 40 are now lined up. There is just one weekend to find the rest.

One of the Dole co-captains for the precinct is Don Diamond, a lanky 61-year-old Main Street insuranceman. He dutifully attends most of the organizing meetings that occur with great frequency here in Iowa, and he makes a stab at keeping up with the paper work that rains down on the grass roots.

“We’ve really got to throw some punches now,” he said. But, almost in the same breath, Diamond hints of complacency.

He said that he will give the Dole campaign only so much of his time in trying to meet the Five/One quota and wonders whether it is not unrealistically high. “I’m just not that excited to be out calling every night.”

He supports Dole for the same reason Thiesen picked Bush. He thinks Dole has the best chance of beating the Democrats in November.

Can Back Any Nominee

No matter whether Dole or Bush is their first choice, Thiesen and Diamond are like Iowa Republicans everywhere. They could comfortably support whichever man becomes the party nominee. Perhaps this agreeability explains the lowered levels of adrenaline in the camps of the front-runners.

Even the campaign of former religious broadcaster Pat Robertson seems to have engendered less thunder than might have been expected.

Marshalltown is thought to be a stronghold for Robertson, and one of the reasons is the Rev. Kerry Jech, a popular 33-year-old fundamentalist minister and former county GOP chairman. Jech believes strongly in Robertson’s commitment to the “moral agenda” and is pledged to try and help him win the county.

However, when working the precinct the other day, Jech was less insistent than, say, a brush salesman. He handed out a packet of literature containing brochures, flyers, a tabloid mock newspaper, photocopied magazine articles and a tape cassette of Robertson explaining “What I would do as President.”

No Fire or Brimstone

“I’d like you to look at this. And I hope you’ll make the right choice,” Jech said and then took his leave. No hard sell. Not even a hint of sermonizing. No fire, no brimstone. Robertson’s campaign is often likened to a crusade. But not this day, not in this precinct.

“Oh, we’re excited,” Jech counters with straight face.

Perhaps, though, the hard sell is the wrong sell in this slice of small-town America.

It is hard to forget the scene outside a restaurant one day recently when retiree Virgil Schmidt explained why he was wearing a Bush button.

“Well, I shook his hand eight years ago,” he said.

The listener waited expectantly. And?

Schmidt was blank. There was no and. A handshake sealed the deal then, and that was it.