The Iowa Effect

DAVID BURNETT/CONTACT FOR TIME
John Kerry at a campaign stop in an Arkeny airport hangar

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All this means that even before the first ballot has been cast, Iowa has given each of the top four Democratic contenders a chance to learn a lot about their own strengths and weaknesses. And each in his own way has been humbled by the fact that no matter how ready you think you are to run for President, nothing can prepare you for that first encounter with the icy Iowa wind. Here's how Iowa has remade or unmade each of the other main contenders:

Dick Gephardt's Last Call
It may have come as a revelation to Dean, but Gephardt could have told him Iowans like a fresh face and a voice that expresses their frustration. In 1988 Gephardt was that face and that voice. This time, the former House Democratic leader is trying to convince Iowa that experience counts for something too.

What may matter even more is the personal connection he has with Iowans such as the 78-year-old man who sat in a wheelchair off to the side at a Gephardt rally last week in a machine shed on Robert and Joyce Ausberger's Greene County farm. John Ferrari Sr. proudly held a 16-year-old poster with a picture of a younger Gephardt and his old slogan, "It's Your Fight Too!" Ferrari was there for Gephardt because Gephardt had been there for him when he was losing his farm back in 1988. His son John Jr. explained that he had gone to see all the other candidates. "They're good, but I always went back to Dick Gephardt, because he was common. When I look at a candidate, I look at where he came from. He was raised poor. Unless you have ever been poor, you don't know what it is."

These are the people Gephardt is going to need, but he acknowledges that he will need a lot of other folks too. Younger ones, for example. "A lot of people who were for me in '88 aren't here anymore," he says.

He has also lost part of the base he once had, as some Democrats, desperate to find a winner against Bush, have written him off as too old, too shopworn, too battle-scarred from more than a quarter-century in Washington. Despite being labor's most steadfast and influential ally in Congress, Gephardt did not get the AFL-CIO endorsement (its leadership decided to stay on the sidelines until the primaries are over), and its two largest unions those of government workers and service workers bolted for Dean's camp. But Gephardt has almost all the industrial unions behind him, and that will count a lot next Monday. If he repeats his old victory in Iowa, he says, he will not repeat the mistake he made the first time. He has kept enough cash to keep going after Iowa into South Carolina, his home state of Missouri and North Dakota on Feb. 3, and heavily industrial Michigan four days later. But even a second-place finish in Iowa could mean Gephardt is through.

John Kerry's Second Chance
You don't find many Iowans who relate to Kerry as one of them. In his pressed Ralph Lauren khakis and the $75 haircuts he favors, the Massachusetts Senator looks at home in a rural setting about as much as Paris Hilton does. But the man who passed up the pork chops for a strawberry smoothie at the state fair last summer is not making jokes anymore about the "hog-lot aromatic experience" of campaigning in Iowa. Kerry is trailing Dean badly in New Hampshire a neighboring state for both of them that will hold its primary the week after Iowa and is desperate for a stronger-than-expected finish in Iowa. He'll need it if he's to have any hope of regaining the front-runner status Washington insiders once bestowed on him. "I'm going to come out of Iowa and show you folks this is a campaign worth listening to," he told a group of New Hampshire businesspeople last week.

Kerry has taken out loans to put $6.5 million of his fortune into his campaign and has moved much of it into Iowa along with such savvy operatives as Michael Whouley, who ran Al Gore's ground game. He has fired his campaign manager, installed some Teddy Kennedy hands at the top and on Saturday brought out Kennedy (who finished second in the 1980 Iowa caucuses, challenging Jimmy Carter) to campaign with him in Davenport, Dubuque and Cedar Rapids. Kerry's speeches have become shorter and more passionate. For Kerry, Iowa seemed to ignite the fire in his belly while getting him to jettison the drowsy Senate-speak he was using only a few months ago. Public polls have moved a bit, and the internal numbers "have the right feel," an aide says. Some of his gains are probably coming from Dean's share of the vote. Paradoxically, Dean has an interest in seeing that Kerry doesn't do too badly in Iowa. If Kerry craters, that might boost retired general Wesley Clark (who, with Senator Joseph Lieberman, opted to skip Iowa) to second in New Hampshire, which could catapult him into position as Dean's principal rival.