Cross-posted at Iowa Independent.
Now that Republican presidential front-runners John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have said they’ll skip the Aug. 11 Iowa GOP Straw Poll, the party’s top fund-raising and early-testing event for the January Caucuses, the big question is what’s next?
Iowa GOP officials still expect the Straw Poll to be well-attended, particularly since folks like former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich plan on being there. The possibility of Fred Thompson entering the competition could energize uncommitted, and even new, activists to come out.
Depending on whom you ask, the decision by the Giuliani and McCain campaigns was either a good one or a bad one, for varying reasons.
Des Moines Register political columnist David Yepsen said on his blog:
“The Ames straw poll has become a shake-down of candidates that, for some, has replaced the caucuses themselves as a test of viability. Minor candidates are forced to spend valuable resources on doing well in the poll. That’s because in past cycles single digit candidates who fail to do well in it have sometimes been forced to drop out of the race because their fund-raising dries up.”
Polk County Republican Chairman Ted Sporer wrote on his blog:
“Of course, I too am baffled at the logic that would lead to the conclusion that the Ames Straw Poll would not have benefited their respective candidacies. Under what circumstances could speaking before the largest gathering of Republicans in the history of the party, not the Iowa Republican Party but the entire national Republican Party, before a global television audience in the first state to actually vote for nominees, not help a candidate?
The people who attend the Straw Poll not only almost all attend the caucuses but they are the precinct leaders who drive the caucuses. The 30-40 thousand attendees in Ames this August are going to have five months to ponder the Giuliani/McCain absences.”
Iowa GOP Executive Director Chuck Laudner told Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa:
“It’s a missed opportunity. I mean over a third of the Caucus-goers are going to be at that event and you’re not just speaking to those folks, you’re speaking to the entire country. It’s a national event and it’s the largest event, Republican, ever anywhere and to skip it means that they must not have felt…that their chances were good of win, place or show.”
Which one of these guys is right? It all depends on perspective, I guess.
Clearly, Sporer and Laudner have much more riding on the event than Yepsen. But that doesn’t mean that Yepsen isn’t right with his analysis.
First and foremost, the Straw Poll has historically been a fund-raiser for the Iowa GOP to pay for the implementation of the January Caucuses. But it has also become a legitimate spectacle in its own right, even emerging as a pre-caucus caucus to help “weed out” the candidates who can’t compete or those the party faithful can’t support. During the last several cycles, however, the Straw Poll has been more about money and organization than anything else. The campaigns with the most money buy up the most tickets and give them away to supporters and precinct leaders who will guarantee they will be at the event and will bring friends with them to vote for their particular candidate.
No longer is the Straw Poll a legitimate citizen showing of support. It has become a campaign media spectacle with the candidate who does the best getting the most free media.
The free media coverage, on the other hand, can help the smaller candidates as well. A forum of 30,000 to 40,000 Republicans is a big deal to small campaigns right now. Clearly, folks like Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee or former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (the so-called second- or third-tier candidates) could get a big assist just from being seen and heard at the Straw Poll.
The coverage and attendance at the event can be enough to help national front-runners like Giuliani and McCain make up the ground in Iowa that is currently lackingin the polls or even in their campaign organization. But that would have only been helpful or likely if the Straw Poll was really still a survey of actual support and about getting to know the candidates.
Instead, it has merely become a spectacle that the media feel is inextricably linked to the Iowa Caucuses. The event happens FIVE months before the actual Caucuses. And if Howard Dean’s implosion and John Kerry’s ascension on the Democratic side in 2004 show us anything, it is that even a few months difference can be critical in the campaign.
Does this spell the end for the Iowa Straw Poll? We’ll have to wait and see. If anything, it shows just how precarious Iowa’s position as first-in-the-nation is becoming. The Caucuses and the campaigns can’t keep being about the media spectacle and the horse race. They’ve got to be about ideas, leadership and plans. Iowans know how to effectively gauge candidates without all of the hype and spin, but we do like the attention that comes from the hype and spin.
Maybe it is time for the Iowa GOP to step up and say, “This isn’t how we want the Straw Poll to be.” It shouldn’t be about spectacle. Rather it should be about the campaigns and the constituents. No more hype, just substance.
Otherwise, this is just another hit for Iowa’s status as first. And Iowans don’t deserve to lose that privilege.
UPDATE: Maybe I was too fast to call for the Iowa GOP to do something. Maybe all it will take is for more candidates to give up on the Straw Poll and just treat the Caucuses as the real prize. Today, one of the lower-tiered candidates did just that. From Jim Gilmore’s campaign via Iowa Politics:
“Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore said today his campaign will not participate in the Aug. 11th Iowa straw poll. Gilmore said today the resources of his campaign will be better utilized if they are instead focused on the Iowa caucuses in January.
Gilmore has made a half dozen trips to Iowa in recent months, has a campaign staff member at work in the state and made the official announcement of his candidacy from Iowa GOP headquarters in Des Moines.
Gilmore said today “unfortunately, the results of the August Iowa straw poll are going to be determined solely by which candidate is willing to spend the most money and will have little to do with the candidate’s conservative appeal to Republican voters.”"
