McCain’s ‘Hail Mary’ pass in Iowa

Is Iowa next?

With last week’s announcement that Sen. John McCain is essentially conceding Michigan and its 17 electoral votes to Barack Obama by pulling his presidential campaign out of the state, many are wondering if the Republican nominee will abandon the Hawkeye State soon.

Sen. John McCain speaks in Cedar Rapids last month (photo by John Deeth).

Despite the fact that the previous two presidential elections were decided by razor-thin margins in Iowa, recent polls have shown Obama with anywhere from a nine to 16 point lead here. He also has a sizable advantage on the ground, with more than 40 offices around the state, compared with just eight for McCain. Add to that the growing voter registration gap, which favors the Democrats, and Iowa begins to look less and less like a swing state.

During a conference call with reporters following the Michigan move, the McCain campaign said it would focus on Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico. Iowa didn’t make the list.

So is Iowa still a battleground?

McCain’s campaign in Iowa remains confident that the Hawkeye State is still competitive, and they think negative messages about Obama are the key to the state’s seven electoral votes.

“Sen. Obama purchased his home with the help of a convicted felon and started his political career in the living room of a known terrorist,” said Wendy Riemann, Midwest regional communications director for McCain, on Monday.  “These are not qualities that resonate with Iowa voters, and as a result they’ll be casting their vote for John McCain.”

After weeks of being on the defensive due to his perceived lack of strength on economic issues, the McCain campaign is trying to shift focus towards Obama’s past, especially his fairly thin ties to Bill Ayers, a former Vietnam-era radical who advocated violence against the government, who is now a college professor in Chicago.

Obama has responded to the Ayers attack, which initially emerged during the Democratic primary a year ago, with a Web site that quotes press reports that call it “phony” and “exaggerated.”

With voting in Iowa already under way and Election Day less than a month from now, most agree the race is about to get ugly, and Iowa could be ground zero for the negative ads to start flying.

Candidates are leery of walking away from Iowa because of how cheap it is to maintain a campaign here, said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University.

“You get a bigger bang for your buck in Des Moines compared to Detroit,” he said, citing the fact that Detroit is the 11th largest market in the nation, compared to Des Moines which stands at 71st. “So even if they are beginning to doubt whether they can be successful in Iowa, it doesn’t cost them much to give it one more try.”

At this stage of the campaign, nothing is more precious than a candidate’s time. McCain has made two recent trips to Iowa, but his most recent campaign stop in Des Moines was mocked by Mike Murphy, a former chief advisers to McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, who wrote that McCain should cede the state to Obama.

Sen. John McCain visits the Iowa State Fair in August (photo by Dien Judge).

Bush won Iowa in 2004 because of his strength among evangelical Christian voters, Goldford said, a group that has been suspicious of McCain in the past. Two-thirds of those voters supported former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee during the January caucuses. In fact, McCain came in a distant third in Iowa, behind Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

But Tim Hagle, an associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa and adviser to the school’s campus Republicans, said the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the ticket went a long way to ease the conservative base’s concerns over McCain’s stance on issues like global warming, immigration and campaign finance.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of volunteers since she was added to the ticket,” Hagle said.  “She has really fired up the base.”

Steve Grubbs, a Republican strategist who ran the Iowa campaigns of Bob Dole in 1996 and Steve Forbes in the 2000 caucuses, said that, despite the polls, he still believes the race in Iowa is dead even and that the Hawkeye state will see more McCain visits before Election Day.

Riemann added McCain has promised Iowans he will return to the state before Nov. 4, and she is confident he will fulfill that pledge. The Quad-City Times is reporting that McCain may visit Davenport this Saturday, although it is still not confirmed.

But Hagle concedes that the McCain campaign doesn’t seem to be focusing on Iowa nearly as much as Bush did in 2004, when he won the state by only 10,000 votes.

“Four years ago, Bush or a surrogate was in Iowa nearly every other day through the summer and up until the election,” he said. “We just aren’t seeing that kind of attention this time.”

If the McCain campaign, which has a finite amount of money to spend after accepting public financing, thinks it may be losing states with more importance than Iowa, it will pull out and shift resources where they are most needed, Goldford said.

“If McCain is losing Florida or Ohio, Iowa suddenly just isn’t important,” he said. “They’re going to spend their limited resources where it will be the most useful. Right now, I guess they think Iowa is important. That could change.”