Race Is Up to Iowans Now

On the eve of their first crucial test, top Democratic presidential hopefuls pursued twin tracks Sunday, struggling to break from a four-man pack while striving to manage expectations for tonight’s Iowa caucuses.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean flew to Plains, Ga., to stand beside former President Carter, who offered praise but no formal endorsement. Dean then returned to Iowa to be greeted by a rare companion on the campaign trail: his wife, Judy.

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri rallied union supporters and stumped alongside musician Chuck Berry, while Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts campaigned with the Green Beret he rescued under fire in Vietnam. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina flew across this Midwest state, pressing his core theme that America is a nation divided by class and race.

By the end of the day, the four candidates had delivered 17 speeches in 11 cities, from Sioux City in the west to Davenport in the east.

Even as they sent several thousand supporters to knock on doors and call undecided voters, the candidates were pouring unprecedented sums into television advertising, according to an analysis conducted for The Times. In just seven days last week, Dean spent $530,000 on television in Iowa -- a huge amount in such a low-population state.

On Sunday, the race was roiled by an Iowa Poll showing the four closely bunched in a surprising order: Kerry on top with 26%, followed by Edwards at 23%, Dean at 20% and Gephardt at 18%. The eight-point spread is within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

For months, Dean and Gephardt were seen as the two main competitors here, with Kerry and Edwards perceived as distant also-rans.

But the dynamic abruptly shifted this last week, as Iowans appeared to step back and give the field a final, more careful once-over.

“Sen. Kerry’s message makes people feel secure. Sen. Edwards’ message makes them feel hopeful and optimistic,” Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat who is neutral in the contest, said on CNN. “Meanwhile, Rep. Gephardt and Gov. Dean were engaged in a very fierce battle with ads, basically going after each other, and that may have turned people off.”

The poll, conducted by the Des Moines Register, was at best an educated guess at what might happen tonight, when more than 100,000 Iowans are expected to gather in church basements, high school gymnasiums, American Legion halls and other public settings to begin the process of picking the Democrat who will face President Bush in November.

Still, the survey was like a big rock dropped into a small pond, sending ripples across Iowa and political circles well beyond.

Expectations are key to the Iowa caucuses, which have traditionally begun the sorting process between true contenders and also-rans. Facing that fact, the candidates and their proxies worked Sunday to ensure that, whatever the outcome, their hopes live on past Iowa.

For Kerry, that meant tamping down his prospects -- a switch for a candidate who, not long ago, was fighting to convince political insiders his campaign was still alive. Introducing Kerry on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” the host described the senator as “the new frontrunner in Iowa.”

“Oh, don’t do that to me,” Kerry replied. “ ... That’s for Iowa voters to decide. The race ends Monday night, and not today.”

The breakneck pace of the campaign finally began taking a toll on Kerry. Appearing at a rally at a Waterloo elementary school, his voice broke and crackled, his face was haggard, he abbreviated his stump speech and he took no questions. He handed off the mike for more testimonials than usual, including kind words from fellow Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and James Rassmann, whom Kerry had pulled from the Bay Hap River in 1969 during an ambush in the Vietnam War.

Kerry explained his short appearance this way: “I’m not going to talk very long today,” he said. “Because you all have heard what we’re trying to do, what this race is about.”

Later, though, he summoned the strength to take a poke at Edwards.

During a question-and-answer session in Newton, a woman asked Kerry why he, and not his fellow senator, should be the nominee. While praising Edwards, Kerry said, “I believe the nominee of our party has to be somebody who has the experience necessary to stand up to the onslaught that will come from the Republicans.

“If they run his race on national security and you have a nominee who has been in the Senate [one term], and that is the full extent of public life -- no international experience, no military experience -- you can imagine what the advertising is going to be next year,” said the 60-year-old Kerry.

“When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, I don’t know if John Edwards was out of diapers then.”

In response, Edwards, 50, issued a terse statement: “I have tremendous respect for Sen. Kerry’s service to our country in Vietnam. The truth is, in 1969 my family spent a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay for me to go to college, as so many Iowa families do every day.”

For the most part, however, Sunday was not a day for plowing new ground, rhetorically or substantively.

Edwards continued talking about race, class and the divide he sees between the affluent and the rest of America -- a divide, he suggested, that has grown under Bush.

“This is not an African American issue or an Hispanic issue; this is an American issue,” he told a boisterous crowd jam-packed in a conference room at the African American History Museum in Cedar Rapids.

“This is about American values and what kind of country you and I want .... We can change it -- you and me together -- we can change it.”

Earlier, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Edwards sought to dispel the notion that he was just a regional candidate with little appeal outside his native South. Before his Iowa surge, he was counting on South Carolina’s Feb. 3 primary to boost his lagging candidacy.

“I’m running a national campaign,” Edwards insisted, “and I’ve been running a national campaign from the beginning. We’re not just ready for New Hampshire” -- which holds the nation’s lead-off primary Jan. 27 -- “but for South Carolina, Oklahoma and all the subsequent states.”

Gephardt joined his campaign rivals Sunday on the political chat show circuit.

Faced with the discouraging Iowa Poll, Gephardt pointed out the difficulty of surveying caucus attendees. “These numbers always bounce around,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There’s a lot of people who haven’t made up their mind completely, and this thing is very fluid.”

Gephardt declined to repeat earlier statements that he needed to win Iowa to carry on his campaign. “Well, there’s a million scenarios that you can come up with,” he said. “We all face the same test. We’ve got to do well.”

Speaking later with reporters, Gephardt appeared serene -- even with his decades-long political career on the line.

“I’m having fun,” he said, a bottle of spring water in hand. “I think our folks are charged up, motivated and ready to go.”

Asked how he was surviving the punishing pace, he said he slept about five hours a night and subsisted on “three mushy, soggy sandwiches a day.”

Dean, meantime, took a rather lengthy detour from the Iowa trail, flying to Plains, Ga. Former President Carter made it clear that he was not endorsing any candidate in the Democratic fight. Nevertheless, he welcomed Dean warmly, hosting him for a breakfast of homemade scones at his home in the Georgian countryside. Afterward, Carter, his wife, Rosalynn, and Dean attended services at the church where the former president frequently teaches Sunday school.

During a joint appearance later on Main Street, Carter called Dean’s visit “a wonderful blessing.” He noted that Dean’s foray into politics came when Dean volunteered in Vermont on Carter’s 1980 presidential reelection bid. The former president also praised Dean’s opposition to the war in Iraq and his blunt manner.

“I am particularly grateful at the courageous and outspoken posture and position that Gov. Dean has taken from the very beginning,” Carter said, as he and Dean stood on a small stage set up in front of the Carter family’s old peanut warehouse. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year and a half strongly opposing the completely unnecessary and unjust war in Iraq.”

Despite his kind words, Carter told reporters he had also spoken by phone with Kerry as well as presidential hopeful Wesley K. Clark. “I’m not endorsing any candidate,” Carter said. “It’s kind of nice for a has-been politician to have these candidates call on you, to be remembered.”

For his part, Dean said his visit with Carter was “a dream.”

Though gone from Iowa for much of the day, Dean was hardly invisible. His image beamed nearly constantly, it seemed, from TVs across the state, part of an advertising blitz that has shattered records for a presidential contest. His final barrage pushed Dean’s spending in the state to $3.3 million -- by all indications a record.

Dean can spend so much largely because he has opted out of the public campaign finance system, which imposes caps on how much candidates can spend in each contest.

Kerry, who has also opted out of the system, spent $458,000 on TV in Iowa last week, pushing his total to $2.73 million, according to TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which analyzes ad spending for The Times.

Kerry’s spending last week was nearly double that of the week before.

Gephardt matched Kerry, spending $461,000 in the week before the vote -- also a significant increase from the roughly $294,000 he had spent the first week of January. The final push put Gephardt’s total at $2.34 million.

Edwards lagged significantly in his television investment: He spent $282,000 last week, raising his total to $1.7 million overall.

*

Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Ronald Brownstein, James Gerstenzang, Maria L. La Ganga and Scott Martelle in Iowa, and Matea Gold in Plains, Ga., contributed to this report.