Iowa Campaign Coming Down to the Razor Wire

With three days left and four candidates in strong contention to win, the Democratic race in Iowa is proving the closest, most exciting presidential contest anyone here can remember. The meanest, too.

The cliff-hanging finish has energized the candidates and their supporters and pleased Iowa’s civic leaders, who always seem a bit self-conscious with all those eyes of the world watching. They forecast a record turnout Monday night, possibly topping 125,000 participants, or more than double the number who took part in the Democratic caucuses four year ago.

But the acrid tone -- on the saturated TV airwaves, in the scathing candidate sound bites and the poison-penned campaign mailers -- is also setting a less welcome record.

“Nasty and venomous,” were two of the words used by Dennis Goldford, head of the political science department at Des Moines’ Drake University. “We don’t do that here.”

The climate showed a few signs of improving Friday, with strategists for Rep. Dick Gephardt saying they planned to cease their negative television advertising against Howard Dean after learning the former Vermont governor would do likewise.

“I think that’s what people want at the end, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Dean told reporters Friday as his bus caravan motored north from Newton to Marshalltown in the central part of the state.

The atmospherics are more than academic or a bother to the squeamish who would rather everyone just got along. By “going negative,” the political term of art, the candidates risk a backlash from voters that could end up hurting them -- and spelling the difference between a momentum-boosting first- or second-place finish here and a campaign-crippling fourth.

It’s not just that Iowans tend to frown on the rough stuff. The state has seen its share of bruising campaigns between Democrats and Republicans. But the calculations are different in a stacked-up contest where there is scarcely any light between the four main contestants. An attack may hurt its intended target but could also harm the candidate who launches an angry exchange.

“When you have two people shouting at each other, you decide which you hate the least,” said Bruce Nesmith, a campaign analyst at Coe College in Cedar Rapids. “But in a multi-candidate field with two people shouting at each other, the person who often benefits is the person standing above the fray.”

In this instance, that appears to be Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who has shunned negative campaigning throughout the race and now is benefiting from a surge in support.

Seizing on the incivility issue, he condemned his rivals’ use of negative ads, suggesting Friday that they were a distraction at a time when the nation faces deep problems.

“When politicians spend their time attacking and criticizing and talking about each other, they’re not listening to the American people,” Edwards said, drawing enthusiastic applause from an overflow crowd of more than 400 at the Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids.

This week, Don Caslavka and his wife, Shirley, fairly leaped from their front-row seats at an Edwards rally in Des Moines, clapping wildly when Edwards’ home-state governor, Michael F. Easley, introduced the candidate with a salute to Edwards’ high-road approach.

“I’ve never seen this level of negativity,” said Caslavka, a participant in every Iowa caucus, save one, since they gained national significance in 1972. One of Edwards’ attractions, along with his trial-lawyer eloquence, is his constructive tone, Caslavka said.

“I could show you three mailers I just got from Gephardt,” he griped. “Four pages, all attacking Dean.”

Iowa is a place that prides itself on good manners and a conscientious citizenry. The state has among the highest literacy and voting rates in the country. And the sort of political stunts that might elicit a wink and a sly smile elsewhere run the risk here of erupting into full-blown scandal.

Two years ago, the state’s editorial pages condemned Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Greg Ganske when it was revealed that one of his ads featured an elderly actress, not a real voter, condemning Sen. Tom Harkin’s position on Social Security.

“A new low,” the Iowa City Press-Citizen declared. “Not even an Iowa actress,” harrumphed the Dubuque Telegraph Herald.

(Harkin was embarrassed later when an aide was caught sneaking a small recording device into a Ganske campaign meeting. The senator apologized, won reelection and has lately counseled Dean, whom he endorsed, to lighten up on the attacks.)

The dynamics of a caucus, though, are much different from a general election campaign. The candidate’s tactics in the closing days -- nice or nasty -- reflect the different needs of the four main contenders.

Dean and Gephardt have long been seen as the two main competitors in Iowa, and they remain the favorites to finish first or second because of their superior organizations. Momentum, which has shifted lately to Edwards and Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, is less important than the ability to ensure that supporters show up to participate in the caucuses, an arduous process that can take hours.

From a strategist’s viewpoint, the negative attacks -- Dean assailing his opponents for backing the war in Iraq, Gephardt attacking Dean on Social Security and Medicare, for example -- work because they appeal to their core supporters. “Hold on, excite your base and get them out,” is how one Gephardt strategist described the effort.

Edwards and Kerry are aiming more at the large pool of undecided Iowa Democrats -- as well as those shaky in their allegiances -- who presumably have looked over Dean and Gephardt and found them wanting.

Those are the voters, analysts say, who are most likely to be attracted to a positive message. So Kerry, who has blistered Dean in a series of speeches questioning everything from his temperament to political judgment, has largely shifted in the last few days to a more upbeat posture that mirrors Edward’s sunny stance.

“We think our message is a positive and a winning message, and it’s not necessary to expend the resources trying to tear someone else down,” said John Norris, manager of Kerry’s Iowa campaign.

Besides, Norris went on, there are more personal reasons to stay out of the muck. Candidates come and go, but their supporters stay behind. Many of those in the close quarters of Iowa politics have long memories.

“These are friends and neighbors,” said Norris, a 20-year campaign veteran and onetime candidate for Congress. “No one wants to create animosity among these folks.”