ANALYSIS:FORMER US senator Rick Santorum's campaign in Iowa conducted no polls or focus groups, employed no speechwriter and had no security presence until a few days ago. "We don't have a bunch of guys with earpieces running around doing nothing," he would boast.
He had a skeletal advertising budget – “You can’t buy Iowa,” he would say, deriding his better-financed rivals. His campaign disclosure forms included itemised receipts from the likes of Target (“food beverage” expense, $16.48), Wal-Mart (“event supplies/container”, $4.47) and Priceline.com (“airfare”, $670.84).
But Santorum made a muscular showing in the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday night, losing to former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts by only eight votes out of the 120,000 cast, with Romney picking up 30,015 votes and Santorum 30,007.
Santorum drew on his own persistence, a faltering field of former front-runners and a savvy strategy devised by a team of seasoned political operatives.
He celebrated late on Tuesday night by recalling how he had campaigned in all 99 Iowa counties. “Thank you so much Iowa,” he told the crowd at a rally in Johnston, Iowa. “By standing up and not compromising, by standing up and being bold and leading, leading with that burden and responsibility, you have to be first, you have taken the first step in taking back this country.” To accomplish his feat in the first nominating contest of the 2012 election campaign, he turned to longtime aides from his past Senate runs in Pennsylvania. He also deployed veterans from the Iowa campaigns of the 2008 caucuses winner, Mike Huckabee, and runner-up, Romney, and he zigzagged Iowa with one of its top political strategists in a 2006 Dodge Ram pickup, driving some 138,000 miles
“Santorum had a very small, dedicated and super-smart team that did not over manage his assets,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party. “He put in the time and allowed his network to take shape organically.”
Santorum also relied on his own instincts, honed during his years in the US Congress during the 1990s and 2000s, when he worked closely with the White House political adviser Karl Rove on issues relating to electoral and legislative successes of the Bush presidency.
His team included his longtime aide John Brabender; J Hogan Gidley, who advised Huckabee in 2008; and Jill Latham, the daughter of the former Iowa congressman Tom Latham and a veteran of Romney’s 2008 campaign, who ran the state field operation for Santorum.
Now, as the campaign moves beyond the longshot-friendly borders of Iowa, Santorum’s campaign can no longer count on the candidate’s pluck and retail political prowess to make up for its lingering handicaps. He is seriously outgunned by the national fundraising and organisational operations of his chief rivals, Romney and Ron Paul, and he will face much heavier scrutiny from the news media and attacks from opponents. And while he has visited New Hampshire repeatedly (more than 30 times) as well as South Carolina (25 visits), his campaign still has a relatively tiny staff and is only now developing its advertising strategy.
By spending a lot of time in Iowa, aides said, Santorum gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of the state’s political flavour. In lieu of scripted presentations and market-tested messages, Santorum’s preparation on the stump rarely amounted to more than having Chuck Laudner, a top aide to House of Representatives member Steve King of Iowa, literally in the driver’s seat briefing the candidate on the issues he would confront at his next appearance.
“In a sense, his focus group was what he saw in front of him at all of his events,” Brabender said.
About eight months ago, the campaign decided to switch from a stump speech to a town-meeting format at Santorum’s events. “He saw that when people asked questions, he was able to connect better,” Brabender said.
That also allowed the campaign to gauge what was effective with Iowa voters and what their concerns were. Santorum learned, for instance, that many parents who home-schooled their children were eager to share their experiences with the former senator, who with his wife, Karen, home-schooled some of their seven children.
It showed him that his fierce opposition to late-term abortions in the Senate remained a resonant issue today with Iowans.
He also emphasised his leading role in the welfare overhaul of the 1990s and his current hard line against the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran after hearing the audience response. “One of the things we could tell about the crowds was that noone really thought he had a chance, so that kept the numbers down for a while,” Laudner said.
Santorum would become openly frustrated when it seemed that every other Republican candidate would enjoy a surge except him.
“When’s my bump coming?” he asked Laudner early last month.
Laudner replied that when he started to move a little bit, the effect would snowball; if he got to about 10 per cent in the polls, “the one would be replaced by a two very quickly,” Laudner said.
In the many solitary months of his campaign here, Santorum became deft at turning his lack of time in the spotlight into an asset. It was a way to show Iowans that he cared what they thought, not what the national media thought. “The pundits don’t come to these events, you do,” he said last week at a sports bar in Marshalltown, filled with college football fans, Santorum supporters and reporters. “Let’s let Iowans decide who is electable.”
At a jammed Pizza Ranch restaurant in Boone on Monday, Santorum stood with his hands on his hips, under a “livery stable” sign, and shook his head over the sudden crush of more than 100 members of the national media watching him now. “I know there are more media here than there are folks,” he said, suggesting that members of the media are not “folks.” He then opened the packed room to questions. “I’d like to hear from Iowans first,” he said. – (New York Times)