Whither the ‘left-wing freak show’?

Every election year gives birth to some nasty composite of humanity thrown up as a vision of the future should you choose The Other Guy. The most savage one so far hit on Wednesday when a conservative political group began running a TV commercial in Iowa berating Howard Dean’s volunteers.

It’s a husband-and-wife ad, the kind that won notoriety in 1993 when the insurance industry’s “Harry and Louise” trashed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s national health-care plan. This time, a week and a half before Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucuses, an elderly husband in Iowa suggests to the camera that “Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ...”

His wife jumps in: “Body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.”

So could there actually be such a person?

I hit the phones and reached Pam Mueller, a recent college grad who’s working in Dean’s Falls Church, Va., office. She had no piercings but confessed to having an occasional latte, likes sushi, reads the New York Times, admits to the label of left-winger -- and owns a Volvo. (“Only because I won it,” she protested. “On ‘Jeopardy.’ ”)

She transferred me to an office mate, Don Beyer, a 53-year-old car dealer who sells Volvos. (“But I drive a Subaru.”) Unfortunately, Beyer doesn’t drink coffee, eats sushi only under pressure and calls himself a “Southern moderate.” (“My father was a founding member of NASCAR.”)

Thus began a string of largely unsatisfying conversations with Dean volunteers in Los Angeles, Iowa and Wisconsin. It wasn’t hard to get them to express support for raising taxes (although they insist Dean would merely roll back President Bush’s tax cut) or bigger government (for schools and infrastructure, some insisted). But too many lacked the qualities that make the anti-Dean ad so compelling. Either they weren’t Hollywood-loving (“I like independent films,” several insisted) or they weren’t pierced or they didn’t like sushi. “I like sashimi, I don’t like seaweed,” noted Diana Cotter (two of nine stereotypes), a retired teacher from Pasadena who paid her way to Iowa to work for Dean and had just seen the ad on TV. A Madison, Wis., coffee shop owner, Lindsey Lee (three of nine) proudly offered a line from regional song: “If you think sushi looks a lot like bait/ You’re hopelessly Midwestern.”

Desperate, I drove over to a Dean organizing meeting in Santa Monica. Bingo. Sue Moss, a Westside coordinator, proudly pleaded guilty to five stereotypes. If only she were pierced. Nick Dragon, a florist wearing an “Orwell Was Right” T-shirt, and his friend Gregory Wright, a self-described designer-writer-journalist, also confessed to five. If only they loved Hollywood or owned a Volvo or, in Wright’s case, drank lattes. (“I drink ordinary coffee,” Wright proclaimed. “Environmentally grown and fair-traded, by the way.”)

Fortunately, an advertising saleswoman named Kellie Sala was among the Santa Monica Dean workers and, despite her buttoned-down appearance, confessed to a pierced navel. She drank lattes! She read the New York Times! She fit the ad like a glove until we hit Hollywood (“I never go to movies”). And of course she did not own a Volvo. Seven of nine.

In all, based on an unscientific sample of a dozen Dean volunteers, the average volunteer conforms to 4.3 of the nine stereotypes laid down by the ad. (The sponsor is the Club for Growth, an advocate of tax cuts and other conservative causes. The ad can be viewed at www.clubforgrowth.org.)

The closest to perfection I got was a 28-year-old mother of two from Monrovia named Kimmy Cash who last year, bitter at the war in Iraq, started a website called punxfordean.org. It’s aimed at disaffected young people and, by Cash’s count, has enlisted 13,000 Dean volunteers nationwide and registered 6,000 new voters.

I nearly swooned as I ticked off the Club for Growth criteria and heard nothing from Cash but “Yes.... Yes.... Yep....” (Piercings: “I have four on my nose, one in my tongue, one in my nipple and three that used to be on my lip.” Hollywood-loving? “I’m from L.A.!” Left-wing? “Totally.”)

Cash fit eight stereotypes. Then came the car problem. “I wish,” she laughed when I popped the Volvo question. She drives a ’62 Ford Falcon. That’s life when your business is selling vintage merchandise on EBay.

Memo to Club for Growth: Buy this woman a Volvo and make her Public Enemy No. 1. Take it from me, you’ll never come this close again.