Vote for ‘No Preference’ Edges Out Rep. Dornan

There aren’t too many ways to explain a last place finish in the Iowa caucuses and still be a candidate.

Unless the candidate is Orange County Congressman Robert K. Dornan, whose campaign blames the Christian Coalition for creating the impression he had dropped out of the GOP presidential race, resulting in a poor showing in Iowa Monday.

“Without having the money to be able to campaign in Iowa, without having the time because of work here in Congress, there was one voter guide that was circulated that was important for us. And we weren’t in it,” said Theresa Cobban, Dornan’s daughter and campaign manager. “For whatever little campaign we had, we had the rug pulled out from under us.”

Just how big a stomping did Dornan’s all-but-officially-dead campaign endure in Iowa?

“No preference” received 297 more votes than Dornan, who received only 131 votes. Unofficially, that’s 0% of the votes cast--a 10th place finish.

The Christian Coalition drew Dornan’s ire because it apparently did not consider him and Illinois businessman Morry Taylor to be serious candidates and left them off the 3 million voter guides distributed to conservatives across the country, including Iowa.

After discovering the omission late last week, Dornan telephoned the Rev. Pat Robertson, the coalition’s founder, and director Ralph Reed to demand that they right the wrong. Cobban said the group agreed to reprint the voter guides and have them in New Hampshire by Thursday.

Coalition officials declined to comment on the issue, but Cobban said Dornan’s campaign received a faxed copy of a version that lists Dornan, who has a 100% congressional voting record on Christian Coalition issues.

Dornan’s showing does not surprise political pundits, who never took his candidacy seriously because he had no money and barely produced a blip on the political polling screen. The Garden Grove Republican relied largely on C-Span-televised candidate forums to carry his conservative, pro-family message.

Karla Underwood, the GOP chairwoman in Iowa’s Linn County, where Dornan earned his second-highest vote total--12 votes--said Dornan was not considered a serious candidate because he did not court voters through a grass-roots organization, as is expected. (Dornan’s highest vote total was 18 votes in Hardin County.)

“With this being so serious, folks are not going to throw a vote away,” Underwood said.

The Dornan campaign may not exist, but it does have a spin.

“The 131 votes he received, we ought to be thankful for. The way we look at it, it was as though he was a write-in candidate,” Cobban said. “We’re not going to look back. We’re moving on to New Hampshire.”