Meet the Bradley Bunch: a Motel Full of Motivation

The New Jersey license plates are the first tip that the Best Suites Motel here is not the temporary home of business travelers or vacationing families. The next clue: a basketball under plexiglass signed by Bill Bradley on the front desk.

If it were on a college campus--and many of its occupants look like they could be--this brand-new, 95-room motel would be dedicated as Bradley Hall. Nearly every room holds a devotee of the insurgent Democrat who is running for president.

From as Far Away as London

From as far away as London, from Bradley’s birthplace of Crystal City, Mo., from his West Orange, N.J., headquarters, they have come to Iowa for a $59-a-night room near the interstate, the hearty “Taste of Iowa” breakfast and long days stuffing envelopes, knocking on doors and cold-calling Iowans to encourage them to turn out at Monday’s caucuses.

Political campaigns are all about idealism, and the Best Suites is brimming with it. Much of the crowd is young--college students for whom Bradley’s basketball career is just a bunch of grainy black-and-white pictures. But there also is a sizable older crowd--retired husbands and wives who, despite their age, are working on their first political campaign.

“What are you, nuts?” was Winnie Schmidt’s reaction when her husband, Duke, suggested they leave Salt Lake City for a chilly week in Iowa. Duke is one of several volunteers at the Best Suites who cast their first presidential vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

All presidential campaigns rely on volunteers, but Bradley’s unpaid Iowa team is the only one here that fills an entire motel. A rival’s spin doctor might say that’s a sign that Bradley has little support in Iowa and needs outsiders to do his legwork.

For Bradley’s “different kind of campaign,” the faraway support--from 42 states by their count--is viewed by his supporters as a sign of the former New Jersey senator’s wide appeal and their devotion.

“The people that I’ve seen here are an incredible cross-section of folks,” said Tom O’Neill while volunteers trickled into the motel’s complimentary cocktail hour Saturday evening. Now a lawyer in London, O’Neill worked for Bradley in the Senate and wishes he didn’t have to leave Iowa today.

On the register at the Best Suites: Lakers coach Phil Jackson’s wife and daughters; Don Roth, former treasurer and vice president of the World Bank; and Pete Mondale, brother of former vice president and presidential candidate Walter. Also wearing Bradley Buddy stickers and buttons are elected officials from Missouri and New Jersey, a retired ambassador, a former Washington Redskins lineman, high schoolers from Indiana and roommates of Bradley’s from Princeton.

By and large, the motel’s guests are a preppy group--more than a few spectacled guys who look like they left Wall Street for a weekend in Des Moines and brought their wool overcoats with them. Sometimes, when tawking with vohtahs and making cawls, they don’t quite fit in.

‘It’s Not Like New Jersey’

“I asked for a glass of warter, and they said, ‘Is that a new beer?’ ” said Mark Daniele, a lawyer from Newark, N.J., who knew he had accompanied Bradley to Maquoketa on Saturday but couldn’t pronounce it.

“The people in Iowa are very friendly,” Daniele said. “It’s not like New Jersey.”

Matt Padula, a human resources consultant from Atlanta, took off two days from work to deliver pamphlets in Urbandale with Hank from Iowa and Bill from California. Padula decided long ago that if Bill Bradley ever ran for president, he would help out.

“This is so American to be here doing this,” Padula said. “Three guys who don’t know each other. We’re out there with just a belief in common, walking the neighborhoods.”