Dole Wins Caucuses in Iowa, With Buchanan Close Behind

Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas won Iowa’s precinct caucuses, the first major test in the Republican drive to regain the White House, with conservative television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan closely following Monday night.

Based on nearly complete returns and a survey of voters entering the state’s 2,142 caucus sites, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander appeared set for third place, with millionaire magazine publisher Steve Forbes and Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas fighting for fourth.

With 90% of the vote counted, Dole had 27%, Buchanan 23%, Alexander 18%, Forbes 10% and Gramm 9%.

The results were a sharp repudiation of Forbes, who spent more than $4 million here, as well as Gramm, who was once considered the principal threat to Dole in this state but whose support plummeted after his surprising defeat last week at the hands of Buchanan in caucuses in Louisiana--a state that only those two contested.

Rounding out the field were former State Department official Alan Keyes, the first African American to seek the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Rep. Robert K. Dornan of Garden Grove, Calif., and Illinois businessman Morry Taylor.

With 90% counted, Lugar had 4%, Keyes 7%, Dornan 0% and Taylor 1%.

Far more was at stake in this contest than Iowa’s meager 25 delegates--little more than 1% of the total of the 1,990 delegates who will congregate at the party’s nominating convention in San Diego in August. Indeed, the votes at Monday’s caucuses are only the first step in the state’s complicated delegate-selection process, so that the eventual Iowa delegate lineup could depart notably from Monday’s results.

The real prize here is that most precious of political commodities, momentum, the contagious aura generated by success, which the candidates who do well hope to use to fuel their efforts in the next critical test, the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday, and then on into the crowded weeks of March, in which 27 states will hold primaries and caucuses.

As he stumped in Des Moines Monday, Dole joked about the subjective interpretations put on election results. “I’d like to leave for the locker room at halftime with a lead--with a big lead, with a convincing lead,” Dole said, then added, “or at least a win.”

In the final hours of campaigning, the rival candidates played out the parts in this real-life political drama they had scripted for themselves.

As behooves the front-runner, Dole sought to appear above the intra-party squabbling and to call attention instead to this fall’s battle against President Clinton, who visited the state over the weekend and who has no serious opposition for the Democratic nomination.

“President Clinton said in his State of the Union speech, the era of big government was over,” Dole told a group of office workers in Des Moines. “And tonight will be the beginning of the end of the era of President Clinton.”

Dole emphasized his usual themes of experience and leadership, and poked fun at Forbes, blaming him for the negative tone of much of the campaign with his self-financed negative television and radio ads.

“We call him the Green candidate--he has a lot of it,” Dole said. “I don’t think Mother Teresa can withstand the assault I’ve had in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

For his part, Forbes in a series of election morning radio broadcasts aimed at city commuters and farm workers driving long distances to jobs, mixed arguments for the flat tax with complaints that he had become the target of class-war attacks from his rivals.

“They’ve attacked me personally using the kind of language you expect from liberal Democrats,” he said on a WHO radio talk show.

Forbes’ phone-bank operation made more than 20,000 calls Monday to prod supporters to attend their neighborhood caucus gatherings--2,142 of which will be held in schools, firehouses and public buildings across the state. And despite persistent doubts about Forbes’ grass-roots support, campaign manager Bill Dal Col said Forbes’ paid organization swelled Monday with the addition of more than 1,600 volunteers.

Buchanan, meanwhile, cheered by polling evidence that his candidacy is on the upswing, spent the hours before the vote doing back-to-back radio interviews, 26 in all, urging Iowans to head to the caucuses and pushing his message of conservative values and economic nationalism.

Buchanan sought to rebut arguments that he is too divisive a figure to unite the party and defeat Clinton in the fall. Indeed, he argued, he is more electable than his rivals because he, alone among the contenders, could get the votes of Ross Perot backers.

“There is only one candidate who stood with them [Perot supporters] on NAFTA, who stood with them on GATT and who stands with them on campaign finance reform,” he said, referring to Perot’s strong opposition to the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 revision of the worldwide General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Alexander, for his part, hoped to take advantage of the negative reaction to attack ads, asking Iowans to signal their disdain for such campaigning by casting a vote for him. “The reason we’ve been moving up is because of a positive campaign about new leadership,” he said as he stumped Monday. “Iowans are going to vote no for negative advertising and yes for Alexander,” he said.

Another wild card in the campaign here has been the influence of conservative Christians, who have been increasingly powerful in this state.

In the closing hours of the campaign, Dole made the case for active participation in the political process by groups who claim to represent Christian conservatives, whom Forbes had accused of distorting his record.

“They go to church, they raise their families, they’re God-fearing people,” Dole said of the Christian Coalition. “I’m glad they’re members of the Republican Party.”

Nevertheless the potential influence of social conservatives remained a cause for concern among those who regard their views on moral issues as too inflexible.

This attitude was reflected in an election day editorial in the Des Moines Register, the state’s largest newspaper, which warned that the disproportionate significance of the caucuses provides “radical minorities” with “a unique opportunity” for wielding political clout.

“Count on the disciplined radicals to show up tonight, more than willing to speak for Iowa--which they will, unless rank-and-file Iowa shows up to speak for itself,” the editorial declared.