Democratic Contest Narrows : Iowa Leaves GOP Race in Turmoil

The first serious skirmish of the 1988 presidential campaign here in Iowa has thrown the hitherto orderly contest for the GOP nomination into turmoil and increased the chances of it becoming a prolonged and divisive struggle.

The big questions are whether Vice President George Bush can recover from his humiliating third-place finish, whether the winner, Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, can take over Bush’s front-runner role and whether former television evangelist Pat Robertson, who finished a surprising second, can match his Iowa success in a broad-based primary.

On the other hand, as candidates in both parties girded for next Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary in New Hampshire, the results of Monday night’s vote here seem to have put the Democratic competition into sharper focus.

Two-Man Contest

A strong possibility is emerging that the primary will turn into mainly a one-on-one contest between the Iowa victor, Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

Dukakis finished third here but has long held a commanding lead in polls in New Hampshire.

But the most dramatic change was in the Republican contest, which has long been defined by the commanding lead Bush held in the polls, almost everywhere in the country except here in Iowa.

It had been expected that Bush might lose in this state to Dole. But most observers expected that the margin would be no greater than 5 to 10 points and that Bush would quickly recover in New Hampshire, where polls have shown him to be well ahead of Dole.

But Bush lost to Dole by a 2-1 margin, and even more embarrassing, trailed behind Robertson, contravening all prior conventional wisdom.

“Iowa destroyed the assumption of inevitability around which the Bush candidacy has been built,” said David Keene, senior political consultant to Dole.

“Today the whole world has changed politically for Republicans,” he added.

Bush’s strategists sought to alibi their defeat by blaming the result in large part on the relative unpopularity of President Reagan’s policies here. “If you liked Ronald Reagan you supported Bush, and if you didn’t you supported Dole,” said Rich Bond, Bush’s national political director. “And there were twice as many of them as there were of us.”

Dislike Reagan Performance

And this contention was borne out in part by findings of a Times exit poll of caucus-goers that showed that one-third of Dole’s supporters disapproved of Reagan’s job performance, but only one-tenth of Bush’s did.

But polling by the Dole campaign suggested more fundamental problems with Bush’s candidacy that did not bode well for his political future. When voters were asked which candidate could make a difference as President, according to Dole pollster Richard B. Wirthlin, Dole held a 25% advantage over Bush. And on the question of which would make a stronger leader, Dole edged Bush by 30%.

Bush was holding on to the hope that history would repeat itself--that, like Reagan in 1980, he would follow an Iowa loss with a New Hampshire victory. Ironically, it was Bush who was the Iowa victor that year.

“I remember 1980 and that’s ringing very clearly in my mind right how,” Bush said Tuesday as he stood at the front door of a computer firm in Nashua, N.H., shaking hands in the frigid dawn.

Bush lost New Hampshire after winning in Iowa in that campaign year because after gaining public attention he had been unable to develop an effective message to attract support. And it was by no means clear Tuesday that the vice president and his advisers had found any more effective way to address the voters of New Hampshire than he had used in Iowa.

His most notable innovation on his first post-Iowa day of campaigning was to tell New Hampshire voters: “I’m one of you,” a rephrasing of the “He’s one of us” slogan that had helped carry Iowa for Midwesterner Dole.

Actually, it was Dole, the Iowa victor, who was in the position that most resembled Bush’s in 1980. Like Bush in that year, Dole has won a victory in Iowa that has thrust him into the spotlight. “He now has the attention of the country and the party,” his adviser Keene said.

But as Keene acknowledged, Dole needs to find a broader framework for his positions if he is to gain support in New Hampshire, where he cannot lean, as he did so heavily in Iowa, on his common geographical roots with the electorate.

Dole will now get the sort of intensive scrutiny from the press and public that he has not yet received. It remains to be seen how he will respond to it.

Even more questions hover over the future of the third major player in the GOP campaign, Robertson.

In jubilation over his second-place finish Monday night, Robertson proclaimed himself to be “the conservative candidate.”

But advisers to New York Rep. Jack Kemp, who got 11% of the vote in Iowa and finished fourth, scoffed at the notion. They argued that Robertson could not match his performance in a caucus state, such as Iowa, where his organizational strength is a great asset, in a primary state, such as New Hampshire.

Even Robertson seemed uncertain of what he could accomplish in the Granite State. “New Hampshire is tough,” he said. “I don’t have a good organization there. I would be happy to come out in third place there.”

Instead, Robertson claimed to have his eyes on the South. “I’m throwing down the gauntlet in South Carolina,” he said of the state that picks its delegates on March 5, just three days before the March 8 Super Tuesday primary involving 14 Southern states. And in that vote, Robertson told reporters that he expects to win every Deep South state, holding out the possibility of additional victories in Maryland and Missouri.

On the Democratic side, the Iowa battle was more closely fought, with only 5 points separating the winner, Gephardt, from the second-place finisher, Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, with Dukakis 4 points behind in third place. Because of the closeness of the spread, some observers thought the results might turn out to be a wash. But others said they held greater political significance.

“It’s good news for Gephardt,” said Rep. Dave R. Nagle (D-Iowa), a former state party chairman. “For Simon it has to be disappointing.” As Nagle and others pointed out, both Gephardt and Simon were counting on victories in Iowa to gain momentum in New Hampshire, where both have trailed Dukakis from neighboring Massachusetts by considerable margins.

Now only Gephardt is in a position to gain what professionals call “the bounce” from the Iowa results, and even Simon’s aides conceded that Gephardt would pick up some ground. “I fully expect Gephardt will move at least even or ahead of Simon in the next poll,” Simon pollster Paul Maslin said Tuesday.

And Gephardt aides, along with some independent analysts, believe that the campaign in New Hampshire will be cast mainly as a Gephardt-Dukakis struggle.

“The dynamic that will drive the New Hampshire campaign is the Boston media,” which dominate much of New Hampshire, predicted Ed Reilly, Gephardt’s pollster and a veteran of the Boston political wars. “And they are going to present it as a contest between the winner of Iowa and the governor of their state.”

Dukakis’ aides have reasons of their own for focusing on Gephardt, according to New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Grandmaison, who is neutral in the campaign. He suggested that the Dukakis camp may feel that Gephardt is vulnerable on such positions as his tough stand on trade and his advocacy of an oil import fee, which are considered far less acceptable in New England than in Iowa.

Gephardt’s aides are well aware that as the Iowa winner their candidate is likely to draw fire from the opposition on such issues and also to get criticism for alleged inconsistency between his campaign positions and his past record as a House member.

“We’re going to get the hell kicked out of us in the next week,” said Reilly, who nevertheless maintained that Gephardt will stand his ground.

While Gephardt and Dukakis duel, Simon will certainly seek to assert himself in an effort to achieve at least the second-place finish that most analysts say is necessary for his candidacy to survive beyond the New Hampshire vote.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. are under less pressure to make a strong showing in New Hampshire because both are considered to have their greatest potential in the South.

As for the two other remaining Democratic candidates, former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt and former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, both are given little chance in New Hampshire in view of their weak showings in Iowa, where Babbitt got 9% and Hart only 1%.

Staff writers Cathleen Decker and Bob Secter contributed to this story.