Kerry Again Able to Come Through at Crunch Time

John F. Kerry sat in a 10th-floor suite at the Hotel Fort Des Moines on Monday night, surrounded by his family, grinning. Howard Dean had called to offer congratulations. He’d called Dick Gephardt himself. He and John Edwards had played phone tag but finally connected.

The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus results were in, and he was the winner.

“How does it feel? It feels like comeback Kerry. I like it,” he told the small group of reporters who had followed him on his journey from frontrunner to laggard and back again.

Or as he put it in his victory speech after descending to the hotel’s ballroom: “Not long ago this campaign was written off.” No more.

Kerry had begun the race head and shoulders above his competition -- literally and figuratively. Tall, patrician, with a resume that wouldn’t quit, he spent the first half of 2003 as the Democratic frontrunner.

But the last poll that had him ahead nationally came out in July. By then, Dean was coming on strong, tapping into Democrats’ anger about the war in Iraq and castigating his competitors from Washington for their votes in favor of the resolution that sanctioned combat.

Kerry began his long, slow slide, fueled in part by internal rancor and competing strategists on his campaign staff. Then came the autumn implosion. The Sunday before Veterans Day, Kerry fired his campaign manager, Jim Jordan. On Veterans Day, chief spokesman Robert Gibbs and deputy finance director Carl Chidlow quit in protest.

He brought in Mary Beth Cahill, chief of staff for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, as campaign manager and Stephanie Cutter as spokeswoman. He headed into a three-state tour -- Iowa, Arizona and New Hampshire--unable to shake the story of his staff upheaval.

“John Kerry made a decision to change the direction of his campaign in November,” said senior advisor Michael Meehan. “There wasn’t a lot of time left .... Then there were tough nights in December, we were firing away, making news and not getting any coverage.”

These days Kerry spokeswoman Cutter is reluctant to discuss the difficult November. “It didn’t slow us down,” Cutter said Monday. “A couple days after the staff shake-up, John Kerry was back on the stump giving one of the best speeches of his campaign at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner here in Iowa on the Saturday after Veterans Day. It was a real high point for him.”

The campaign switched into high gear after the new year, focusing almost entirely on Iowa, where a good showing was critical. He was down in the polls, trailing behind Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire. But as he described it earlier in the week, “we’ve always had a strategy that goes progressively ... and that’s what we’re doing.”

And so Kerry spent almost all of January in Iowa -- 15 days compared with three in New Hampshire. Most recently, he landed here on Jan. 9 and never left, getting by on four hours of sleep many nights, staying at campaign events until he’d answered every question from undecided voters.

When did Kerry finally start to click? “Apparently four days ago,” Meehan said Monday. “I remember sitting watching the pundits on Saturday, Jan. 11, and John Kerry’s name wasn’t mentioned. It was a two-person race, Dean and Gephardt.”

Late spurts have often proved winning -- in Iowa and for Kerry. Historically, 42% of caucus-goers here don’t make up their minds until the last 10 days. Historically, John Kerry is best at crunch time.

“Timing is everything, and they were sort of in the right place at the right time,” said Jeff Link, a Democratic strategist and Dean partisan. “When people really started to focus on their decision, Kerry was at his most aggressive and most real of any point in the campaign.”

It also didn’t hurt that Dean was under attack and beginning to stumble. Television footage of him disparaging the caucuses had surfaced. The enduring image of the final Iowa debate was the Rev. Al Sharpton badgering Dean for failing to appoint minorities to his Cabinet in Vermont.

“At a time when people were unsure about where they were going to land or what they were going to do, that’s when [the Kerry campaign] started making their strongest appeal,” Link said.

Kerry’s fortunes had begun to swing upward. The day he landed in Davenport along the Mississippi River, Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller endorsed him. Three days later, Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack signed on. Agriculture Secretary Patty Judge followed.

Sure, Dean had high-profile national figures on his side, like Vice President Al Gore and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley. But in Iowa, Meehan said, Iowans matter. Those three Iowa endorsements -- along with the backing of 27 state legislators -- “helped us enormously with undecided Iowans,” Meehan said.

What also helped was message -- it was largely positive and generally consistent, on the stump and in a series of television ads that were launched in the last week. The key point was that Kerry was the only candidate who can take on President Bush on the crucial issue of national security.

The last three days of the campaign, the Vietnam veteran appeared with James Rassmann, the Special Forces soldier he rescued under fire. The Republican Rassmann told audiences that Kerry saved his life, and is the one man who can keep America safe too.

Just hours before the caucuses began, Kerry drove the point home one last time. “We need to win,” Kerry said, “and we will not win unless we have a nominee who has the ability to stand up to George Bush and Karl Rove and company and make our nation confident that we Democrats know how to make this country secure.”

And what now?

The win gives Kerry a “terrific boost” going into New Hampshire, a state where he is trailing badly, said Peverill Squire, professor of political science at the University of Iowa. “That will cause a lot of people in New Hampshire to reassess their current views. For Kerry coming out of here in first place would certainly give him a good shot at pulling out an upset there too.”

Perhaps of equal importance is the effect a win will have on all-important fundraising. Kerry mortgaged his Boston home so he could loan money to this campaign and opted out of receiving federal funds so that he wouldn’t have to live within spending limits.

Even as Kerry began to rise in the Iowa polls last week, campaign donations began pouring in, his staff said.

“Last week we had a 40% increase in our fundraising compared to an average week in December as a result of his pulling ahead in the race,” spokeswoman Cutter said Monday morning.

Accused of acting like the presumptive nominee earlier in his campaign, Kerry made clear he will not rest again.

“I’m just going to work state for state as hard as you saw me work here,” he told reporters in his hotel suite. “I’m going to New Hampshire. I’ve told everybody there I’m a fighter. I’m here to win.”