The upcoming straw poll of Iowa Republicans on August 19 was becoming a big deal. Conventional political wisdom had it that the Saturday night vote, six months before the Iowa caucuses that selected the delegates, would be a critical test of organizational strength. In fact, the straw poll was critical because it was basically the only test other than one in Florida coming in the fall. Under the bizarre rules, anyone who purchased or was given a $25 ticket to the event could vote—from in or out of state. Tom Synhorst had arranged for the campaign to buy about 3,000 tickets. He expected that about 90 percent, or 2,700 people, would actually show up and vote. He calculated this would put Dole comfortably in first place with something like 33 percent of the total vote—a win, but comfortably less than the 1988 caucus victory of 37 percent. A giant win with more than that would only build expectations for the real caucuses in February 1996.
Two months earlier, in June, Phil Gramm and his campaign strategist Charlie Black had realized they were stalled in the Republican race.
“The point is we’ve got to make news,” Black told Gramm. He proposed targeting the Iowa straw poll. “We don’t have to win, we’ve got to run a strong enough second.” Everyone knew Iowa was Dole’s state, so whoever finished second would be the news. “If we’ve got to spend a few extra bucks on mail,” Black continued, “or telephones or barbecue or whatever, we could do it.”
“Yeah,” Gramm said, “I think we could do that.”
“Let’s really raise the importance of this event in the press’ mind and in the political community’s minds,” Black said, “and then let’s go see if we can’t execute and pull a surprise.”
In early July, John Weaver, the Gramm campaign’s national field director and a 17-year veteran with Gramm, moved into the Courtyard Marriott on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa. He did not want anyone to notice he was living in Iowa. He set up his operation in a cubbyhole office at the Gramm headquarters. Weaver, 36, a tall, experienced organizer, had headed the successful George Bush for President organization in Texas for the 1988 race. Stealth and speed were important because if the Dole campaign learned what he was doing early enough, they could move to counter him. Weaver had 14 people working for him. Five mass mailings were sent out—one to Christian Coalition members, another to sportsmen (which meant gun owners). The elaborate flyers pictured Gramm with family, guns, dogs, Boy Scouts, actor Charlton Heston, policemen, the military and Ronald Reagan. Gramm personally approved all the copy. The cost was $200,000.
The Gramm phone banks completed some 40,000 phone calls at a cost of $23,000. Gramm personally approved the scripts. During the first ten days that Weaver was in Iowa, he spoke with Gramm twice a day.
About ten days before the straw poll, Synhorst and Reed started getting reports of trouble. Charlie Black was setting the bar as high as possible, proclaiming the event very, very important, with Gramm only shooting for a strong second-place finish. The Dole dream strategy was to win, have Pat Buchanan finish second, and Gramm third—positioning Buchanan as the leading conservative and perhaps extinguishing Gramm, or at least accelerating his decline.
Synhorst wrote a memo arguing that Dole, as the front-runner, was suffering from Reagan syndrome, meaning he was subject to attack from all the other candidates as Reagan had been as front-runner in 1980. The massing of criticism, Synhorst said, was beginning to hit home.
In the course of finding supporters, the Dole phone banks had identified 300 people in Iowa who said they supported Buchanan. So eager was the Dole campaign to promote Buchanan’s candidacy that they sent the names over to Buchanan’s operation.
After the fiasco of his speech at the Perot convention, Dole agreed to spend some time Saturday morning practicing his speech with the TelePrompTer. He and Elizabeth then flew out to Iowa.
“Something’s wrong,” Dole told Elizabeth, “it’s not happening out here.” Iowa was still not clicking.
Reed and Lacy flew in on a commercial flight to be on hand. In Ames, Iowa, more than 10,000 people were in the Coliseum. Reed and Lacy sauntered through like a couple of headquarters men at a kitchen appliance convention looking over the competition. Everything seemed fine. After a big Dole rally, they went to the holding room where the Doles were waiting before the speeches.
The five Republican candidates receiving the most support, money and attention were Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, Pat Buchanan, Pete Wilson and Lamar Alexander. The other five were Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, a serious-minded and respected senior foreign policy expert; Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a centrist, pro-choice on abortion and an advocate of tolerance in the party; Representative Robert Dornan of California; Morry Taylor, a wealthy wheel and tire executive; and Alan Keyes, a former State Department official who was probably the most powerful speaker in the group and a strong advocate of restoring traditional and family values to the country.
Tom Synhorst was very uneasy. Jesus, he said, he wasn’t sure all their 3,000 people had actually made it. Before the formal speeches, each of the ten candidates one at a time was introduced on stage. It resembled the beginning of a professional basketball game, with flashing lights and a hyperkinetic announcer. Dole was introduced first and he received decent applause. At the Buchanan introduction, a huge roar rose from the crowd, particularly from one section where his supporters were sitting. Gramm also received a thunderous roar. Alan Keyes, too, received a big roar from one section. Reed was more than confused. The Dole people were spread out. Synhorst explained that someone in the Dole campaign had decided not to spend an extra $100 to reserve a section of 100 seats on the floor for the Dole people. Reed noted that was the basic campaign course 101, and they had badly botched the symbolism. Gramm had managed to get 600 of the 1,000 floor seats right in front of the podium by buying the seats the other campaigns had rejected.
As Dole was standing off stage before the speeches, he turned to Synhorst. “What do you think?”
“Sounds like a lot of Gramm people out there,” Synhorst said.
“Sounds like a lot of Buchanan people out there,” added Elizabeth.
“Are we going to lose this thing?” Reed asked Synhorst incredulously.
“I’m not sure,” Synhorst said. “We may.”
“Oh, shit!” Reed said.
Former Vice President Dan Quayle was the master of ceremonies, and he introduced Dole saying that Dole had been in public office all his life.
Will was watching on C-SPAN television. She thought the introduction was harmful. Quayle could have complimented Dole on his Hollywood speech, drawn some connection to what Dole was trying to do on values, rather than remind everyone of Dole’s longevity. With the introductory music, Will’s heart was in her throat. The music was all wrong, Will felt, terrible, old-fashioned, here-comes-my-grandfather music.
Dole went to the podium. “Minutes up the highway from here are farms and towns like the ones I knew as a boy,” he said. He was looking out into the vast sea of people out front. He saw the Gramm section, the Buchanan section, even the sections of some of the other candidates. Dole noticed they all were sitting on their hands. Respectful but silent. “It’s terrible,” he thought. It was a little scary. He gave his speech and kept to the text, pumping his good arm and showing he was really into it. He was at a disadvantage without a vocal cheering section.
When Dole finally walked off the stage, he knew the results. He went to the holding room and found Reed.
“Where are all our people?” Dole asked sharply, darkly. “Why weren’t they all in place?”
“I heard the crowd roar out there,” Reed said, “and I just want you to know we may not win.”
“What’s going on?” Dole asked, restraining himself. His crack campaign team was coming to realize what was obvious.
“We’re going to stay here,” Reed said. “You go back to Des Moines and I’ call you when we know. We should know at ten o’clock.”
Dole and Elizabeth went back to the Des Moines Marriott. Ten o’clock came and went. Dole was pacing. He had a campaign team with lots of paper and words. “Where’s the beef?” he wondered.
Back in the hall, Synhorst was unnerved. It was so different to organize against people who prayed, the Christian right. They had an intensity, behaving and talking as if they were on a mission, as if they had to be here that night because it was a calling. Synhorst believed in Dole, but it was a political and secular belief which seemed weak in the face of the fervent support so many seemed to have for Buchanan and Gramm and Keyes.
Lacy immediately started giving out some pre-spin to several reporters. “A competitive situation,” Lacy said. “Could be a three-way race.”
When they finally started calling the vote totals, Synhorst uttered to himself, “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.” But then it turned—incredible and implausible.
About 11:30 P.M. Reed called Dole with the final results:
Dole 2,582 votes or 24 percent.
Gramm 2,582 votes or 24 percent.
An exact tie.
Dole’s immediate reaction was almost relief. He hadn’t lost. Reed went on with the results: Buchanan 1,922 votes or 18 percent. Lamar Alexander 1,156 votes or 11 percent.
“I told you we had some weak people,” Dole said, referring to the Iowa campaign team.
“You’re right,” Reed replied. “Let me get through tonight and I’m going to make some changes.”
“All right,” Dole said.
Dole did not sleep well that night. He was wondering why they hadn’t been on top of this rather simple situation. The questions kept coming all night. What do I need to do better? Is it the candidate? Is it the message? Is it the organization? Did we spend enough money? Did we have the right people on the ground? Do we have the right leadership?
Back in Ames, Reed went to the press room and tried to beat back the wolves. They were out and it was tough. “We’ve said consistently that straw polls are meaningless,” Reed told reporters. “We knew we had nothing to win. We treated it mainly as a way to test our organization. Other campaigns, especially Senator Gramm’s, decided to really shoot their load here, with a lot of money.”
In Gramm’s holding room, the atmosphere was very upbeat, almost jovial before the vote totals were announced. When his staff had the totals, they raced to tell Gramm.
“Shit,” Gramm exploded, realizing it could have been sweeter, “why couldn’t I have gotten one more vote somewhere?”
“Phil,” Charlie Black insisted, “you won.” A tie was a clear Gramm victory. “We’re going to get a huge ripple effect,” Black continued in his soft southern drawl, which now had a conspicuous edge of excitement to it, “and it’s going to bring people out of the woodwork. We’ll do the same things and our money will be 50 percent better. And we’ll have a lot of volunteers come out, they’ll be a lot of people who were sort of for you but thought you couldn’t win that’ll now be willing to come on board.
You’ll get a lot more coverage.” Dole was not inevitable. The Dole bandwagon strategy was on ice.
Gramm went out to the cameras and had a field day, declaring, “If we can beat Bob Dole in Iowa, we can beat him anywhere in America.”
Reed and Lacy canceled their 7 A.M flight back home for the next morning.
Lacy had been so confident that Iowa would be a quick in-and-out that he had planned to wake up just in time, not even shave, and get on the plane. He had only brought hiking boots and shorts for the return trip.
Reed’s first instinct was to blame Synhorst, the Iowa magician of 1988. Synhorst was spending much of his time in Washington and trying to manage the Iowa campaign by phone. He was in charge of Iowa but he wasn’t there. It wasn’t Reed’s job to do bed checks every night to make sure those in charge were sleeping in their states. Clearly Synhorst had dropped the ball, playing senior member of the team on hand in Washington but not Iowa. Even Synhorst’s own parents, devout Dole supporters, had not come to vote, apparently figuring that it was an assured victory.
“What the hell happened and why?” Reed asked Synhorst.
Synhorst said that he would make an assessment and tell him more in 48 hours, by Tuesday at noon. “If it will help the candidate’s confidence,” Synhorst said, “I’ll move back there.”
Reed wanted a detailed analysis, not just of what had happened in the straw vote but of what was going on in Iowa overall.
On Sunday morning after watching television and reading all the news accounts, Reed, Lacy and Synhorst went up to Dole’s room. Lacy felt like a fool, the only one in shorts after Dole’s presidential campaign had just taken its first dive.
Nelson Warfield was outside Dole’s room waiting to go in. In his six months with the campaign, Warfield had never seen Dole really snarl and go wild, but this time he expected a blowup.
Mike Glassner let them all into the suite.
Dole was sitting at the end of a long glass-top table. Some 1970s reflective plastic furniture filled the room. A big accompanying 1970s-style flower arrangement was plopped down in the middle of the table.
“Here come the pall bearers,” Dole joked. The humor cut some of the ice. Dole was tight, clearly not happy, clearly not cool. But he was not yet bouncing off the walls.
Elizabeth looked composed as always, but they all knew her exterior belied her inner intensity. The vote result seemed to have more of a personal impact on her, judging from her demeanor. She displayed none of her welcoming, upbeat Southern belle optimism.
They took their seats at the table, and Glassner removed the flower arrangment so everyone could see each other.
Reed didn’t want to give Dole a chance to ask, so he started with three points. “This is not a reflection on you as a candidate,” Reed said. “You gave a great speech. You’re running a good campaign. The campaign let you down. Our people in Iowa failed and this is what our enemies are looking for.” This was the setback that everyone was waiting for. “It’s how we respond and how we react to this in the next 48 or 72 hours.”
It was important, Reed continued, not to compound the problem. “You’ve got to go on national TV here this morning,” Reed reminded them. Dole was due to appear on CBS’s Face the Nation. Earlier in the week they had all argued that he shouldn’t do a show that week, expose himself to questions the day after. But Dole had said yes to the show and now he had to go. “You’ve got to go out, put on a smile and we’ll schlep this thing off.”
Dole was listening, not saying much.
Lacy tried to reinforce the point. “It’s not about the message or about you,” Lacy said. “It’s about organization, an organizational breakdown.” He said they would reassess the organization and not let it happen again.
“I’ll find out what happened,” Reed interjected. “I’ll have an announcement by the middle of the week.” They would make changes in the Iowa organization. Reed looked at Synhorst. “Tom, we’re going to make the changes as necessary.”
Dole had a series of questions for Synhorst that showed he thought it should have been different. Why weren’t the people organized on the floor? How many of his supporters had come from out of state? Where was it we fell short? He asked about a specific county.
“We’ve always been strong there, haven’t we?” Elizabeth asked, underlining the seriousness.
Synhorst again promised to make his assessment.
“Well, it’s over, we lost,” Dole finally said. He had revised his personal assessment from the night before. A tie with Gramm was a defeat. “Spin it all you want,” he said, “it was a good night for Phil Gramm. It was a bad night for us.”
All Reed could do was move through this. He returned to the upcoming television appearance. Dole could not show any anger. “This is exactly what our opponents are looking for and everyone’s going to be watching how we handle this.” The way Dole accepted the result was far, far more important than the result itself, Reed said. The interpretation given to the press would be important. The future would be important.
Dole was thinking to himself, “I have to restrain myself!” He finally said to Reed, “You’re right.” Dole had his emotions tamped down. Okay. “Where we going next?”
It was over to the local CBS station. When Dole arrived, about 20 reporters were there. The station had let them into the studio itself—something never done. As Dole took his seat to look into the camera, all the reporters were milling about, watching for any sign of blood. Nelson Warfield went berserk complaining to the station management. Reed muttered about the stupid station and all the “cornseed heads.”
On the air, Dole tried to joke. “I even saw a few people from Iowa there last night.” Then somewhat reversing his position of a week earlier when he had been a moderate for The New York Times, he said, “I’m a good mainstream conservative, always have been probably as conservative as the others in the race.”
What happened in the Iowa straw poll?
“There was some complacency,” Dole said, adding that he was ahead in the polls. “I think you’ll see in the next few weeks a number of very important endorsements coming our way which indicate that we’re the preeminent favorite right now.”
Dole told reporters later, “In my view, this is one pebble on the beach. There will be lots of beaches to cross.”
Later Dole rode out to the airport with Synhorst. As he got out of the van, Dole turned to his young aide.
“Don’t give up,” Dole said. “We got a lot of work to do. I’m counting on you. You’re the best there is, so let’s not look back, let’s look ahead.”
From Dole that was almost a full hug and a kiss.
Dole went to the Iowa state fair, and then flew to Arizona for his next appearance. It was a quiet plane ride.
Flying back from Iowa, Scott Reed decided that he was personally going to take the blame. The most important thing was that he retain Dole’s confidence, that he and Dole not have a split. Stepping up and pouring all the responsibility on his own head was the only way to keep the relationship with Dole. A defensive posture of blaming others would not work. More important than these external politics were the internal politics with Dole that would last for months, if not more than a year.
Gingrich didn’t hold his tongue after Iowa. “I thought the Iowa results were the sign of a remarkably open race,” the Speaker told reporters several days later. The lack of a clear winner would allow him to take his time deciding whether to run or not. “Iowa did nothing to discourage me from running.”
“Fucking Newt!” Reed exploded, after hearing about the Speaker’s remarks. “What a jerky thing to say. Totally undisciplined.” Reed knew it would set him back with Dole, who expected Reed to have Gingrich under control through Reed’s close friend Joe Gaylord, Gingrich’s top political adviser.
When Reed talked to Dole next, Dole was furious about Gingrich’s comment and, as expected, in part blamed Reed.
“Why does he talk like that?” Dole asked.
Reed tried to explain that Gingrich had no sense of discipline and just rolled out there and said whatever the hell popped into his head.
Reed began bad-mouthing Gingrich in private, spreading a little of his own poison. An article in Vanity Fair magazine by Gail Sheehy had just come out. Reed told his political friends that it was devastating to Gingrich, particularly the quote from Gingrich’s wife, Marianne. “I don’t want him to be president and I don’t think he should be,” she had said. The article disclosed some of Gingrich’s past affairs and claimed he preferred oral sex with women so he could claim he had not slept with them. Reed even took to repeating the Jay Leno joke about Gingrich and his wife going to vacation in New Hampshire to stay at a “Desk and Breakfast”—a reference to the allegation that Gingrich had had sex on his desk.
In Synhorst’s review of the Iowa straw poll, he found that about 750 of Dole’s votes or 30 percent had come from out of state. That was good, what they had planned. The real snafu had occurred in the central Iowa counties where less than half those planning to come had attended. Even the faraway Iowa counties had bused in their share. Synhorst was pretty sure that the state organization was solid, better than in 1988.
But, he explained to Reed and Lacy, Gramm and Buchanan had developed clear, vivid messages with images that were taking hold with Iowans.
“Rein in the government, etc.,” Synhorst said, referring to Dole’s basic message, “doesn’t fucking do it. You can delude yourself into thinking it’s organization, but it’s message.”
“Does that mean that the message is wrong?” Lacy asked. “Or does that mean that we haven’t been executing the message when we’re in Iowa?”
For Synhorst it was both—the content and the execution. “I understand you’ve got to say it’s organization to the outside world,” Synhorst added.
Synhorst came up with four organizational recommendations that could be announced as the response to Iowa.
Reed had to cover the message problem with a visible organizational shake-up. He called Darrell Kearney, a longtime conservative activist he had worked with in the 1988 Kemp organization in Iowa. “There’s got to be somebody in the morning giving all these kids direction,” Reed said. Kearney finally agreed to take a leave from his own business and become the full-time, on-the-ground, hands-on manager in Iowa.
Reed reported the change to Dole.
“Been telling you we need to get an adult out there for a long time,” Dole said.
Later in the month, John Moran, the Dole finance chief, called Scott Reed.
“We got a check for $1,000 from the Log Cabin Republicans,” he reported. Log Cabin Republicans is a nationwide political action committee (PAC) that advocates gay rights.
“Don’t deposit it,” Reed said, “and I’ll deal with it when I get back.”
Within the hour, Moran was back on the phone. “Well, it was deposited back in June and it was on our last FEC report,” Moran said. The Log Cabin group also had a letter showing that Moran had solicited the contribution to Dole.
“Great,” Reed said. “Don’t do anything.”
Reed felt that the Log Cabin Republicans had set up the campaign. He chastised Moran for being so stupid to solicit the group. For four years Reed had watched the Log Cabin group position themselves to make news. He didn’t want to just roll over and take it. In the wake of the Iowa straw poll, the contribution could not have come at a worse time. Gay rights were anathema to the Christian right, the key to Iowa.
Reed conferred with Lacy, who didn’t agree that the Log Cabin group had set them up. They probably saw it as a chance to get some mainstream credibility, and after all, they were being courted and solicited by John Moran, Lacy said. “We can say that we disagree with these folks and we’re going to give the money back,” Lacy said, “or we can say, doesn’t matter what these folks think, what matters is what Bob Dole thinks.”
Of course, both knew that the question of “what Bob Dole thinks” was a big problem. In public and private discussions all his life, Dole had made it pretty clear he was against any discrimination. He had even waffled on gays in the military, saying earlier in the year that “I haven’t made a judgment on that.” He had later issued a tepid statement saying he opposed gays in the military.
Lacy said that keeping the $1,000 would present a problem down the road. “This is something that would make great Gramm fodder in the South and in the Christian community, not only is Dole for gays in the military, he’s also taken gay PAC money.” Lacy and Reed tried to project into the future. Right before and during the primary period the next year—February and March—Gramm could try to make it a big issue. They could picture the Gramm direct mail and radio and even television advertising allegedly outlining Dole’s thoughts on gays. Gramm had done this shamelessly in his first Senate race in 1984 by attacking his opponent, Democrat Lloyd Doggett, for taking money raised by gays at a fund-raiser that Doggett did not even know about. Gramm had exploited the issue repeatedly, and many had attributed his victory to it.
Further, Lacy said that taking the $1,000 could make gay rights an issue and have the effect of inviting gay-bashing within the party and the primaries.
“I think we ought to give it back,” Reed finally said.
Both agreed it would be best not to consult Dole in advance. The candidate should not be involved in such small decisions, Lacy was sure. If there was criticism, better they, the staff, take the hit. Asking Dole would put him in a difficult position. They had to protect him. And if they asked, he might want to do the wrong thing politically.
So Reed had the $1,000 returned.
The story was starting to leak out and it was becoming a press problem. Reed talked to Dole.
“Why did we do it?” Dole asked. He wanted to know why they had sent it back.
Reed explained. “We’re going to take some lumps on it,” Reed said, “but rather now than in February or January.” A big blowup on the issue right before the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire would be worse, and a blowup was going to happen at some point, he said. He used to read about letters the Log Cabin Republicans had sent him in the newspaper before he received them. “That’s how these guys operate.”
Dole couldn’t believe he hadn’t been consulted, but he did not protest immediately.
Reed had spent an hour with Richard L. Berke, the chief political reporter of The New York Times, hoping to get him going on a front-page story on Dole’s upcoming speeches on the economy and values. But Berke was on to the returned $1,000 contribution.
Sunday’s New York Times front-page story was headlined “Dole, in a New Bow to Right, Returns Gay Group’s Money.” The verbs in the story conveyed the situation—Dole was “scrambling” and “intensifying” his drive to court the conservatives, after a “humbling” tie with Gramm in Iowa, while he had to “cajole and compromise” to get legislation through the Republican Senate.
Not Reed, Lacy or anyone else in the campaign was able to come up with a public explanation for returning the $1,000 that washed. They couldn’t claim that they were trying to protect gays from gay-bashing by others. And to announce that Dole didn’t want to be open to distorted or outrageous charges during the primary season would make Dole look vulnerable and weak.
Nelson Warfield’s mother had died, and he was at the funeral home taking phone calls and trying to come up with a rationale for returning the money. It was one of the most painful times of his life. His final answer was dubious and reflected the strain: “It’s our policy that we won’t accept contributions from groups that have a specific political agenda that’s fundamentally at odds with Senator Dole’s record and his views.” Warfield acknowledged it was the first time the principle had been applied.
Richard Tafel, the head of the Log Cabin Republicans, hit the talk show circuit. “We’ve had lots of calls from pro-choice Republicans or moderate Republicans who’ve said, ‘Hey, I was supporting Dole because I was afraid of Gramm. But if he is Gramm, what’s the point of supporting him?’”
A Boston Globe editorial noted, “Dole has not returned campaign contributions to Time Warner even though he deplores the ‘nightmares of depravity’ in the entertainment industry.” The Atlanta Constitution asked, “Will the real Dole please stand up?”
Dole was really unhappy now. In a meeting with Reed and Lacy several days later, he complained bitterly about the decision to return the $1,000.
“Who’s making these decisions?” Dole asked again, knowing full well that it had been Reed.
“It was my decision,” Reed replied.
“Why did we do that, I don’t understand that,” Dole asked.
Reed explained the political rationale again, adding, “I still think it was the right thing to do.”
“Senator,” Lacy piped in, “I fully concur. Scott and I discussed it thoroughly, and I still think it was the right thing to do.”
“I don’t like to defend this,” Dole said. The clear implication was that it was a mistake, but he didn’t suggest the campaign publicly change its position.
It’s forgotten, forget about it, Reed and Lacy urged. Both felt confident they had avoided big trouble down the road. Lacy was sure that they would see attacks that would curl their hair, that would drive Dole and them absolutely crazy. At least one future problem area seemingly had been foreclosed, and Dole had been insulated.
Dole was concealing his fears. He decided that he would buy into his aides’ plot with a straight face, though he didn’t like it. He held his tongue. He had promised everyone he would not manage his own campaign. Yet he was the candidate. He was really hanging out there. Reed’s and Lacy’s names were not in the editorials.
Dole sought out Jo-Anne Coe, his longtime fund-raising manager who had been with him for 28 years.
“Jo-Anne,” Dole asked, “why did we do this?”
“They just thought it was the best thing to do,” she replied.