Oh good, a top ten list to argue about

John Deeth’s latest blog post for the Des Moines Register reviews the ten worst campaigns waged in Iowa during the past 20 years. I didn’t observe all of those campaigns first-hand, but he makes a convincing case for including most of the candidates on his list.

Two campaigns don’t belong on Deeth’s list, in my opinion. He ranked Congressman Neal Smith’s 1994 effort as number seven. Maybe Smith was slow to realize that Greg Ganske was a threat, but one thing destroyed Smith in that race, and it wasn’t incompetence. Redistricting after the 1990 census took Story County and Jasper County out of Smith’s district, replacing them with a bunch of rural counties in southwest Iowa he had never represented. Smith brought incalculable millions to Iowa State University over the years, and union membership in the Newton area was very strong. If Story and Jasper had still been in IA-04, Smith would have easily survived even the Republican wave of 1994.

Number two on Deeth’s list is Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Iowa caucus campaign. As I discussed at length here, I feel that Barack Obama won the caucuses more than Clinton or John Edwards lost them. Remember, Clinton started out way behind in Iowa. Whatever mistakes her campaign made, and they made plenty, you have to give them credit for getting more than 70,000 Iowans to stand in her corner on a cold night in January. That included many thousands of people who had never attended a caucus before. In the summer of 2007, almost anyone would have agreed that 70,000 supporters would be enough to win here. The turnout for Clinton is even more impressive when you consider that she did worse on second choices than Obama or Edwards. She didn’t win Iowa, but this wasn’t one of the ten worst Iowa campaigns by a longshot.

I want to share one anecdote about Jim Ross Lightfoot’s gubernatorial campaign in 1998, which rightfully claimed the top spot on Deeth’s list. Lightfoot blew a huge lead over little-known Tom Vilsack in September and October. Here’s how stupid this guy was. According to several people who witnessed the event, Lightfoot advocated for school prayer at a candidate forum organized by Temple B’Nai Jeshurun in Des Moines. Not only that, Lightfoot told that room full of Jews that majority rule should determine the prayer. For instance, in a town that’s 90 percent Danish, why not let them say Lutheran prayers in school?

Terry Branstad showed horrible judgment by endorsing Lightfoot in the 1998 primary, when he could have supported his own highly capable Lieutenant Governor Joy Corning.

Go read Deeth’s post, then share your own thoughts about the worst Iowa campaigns in this thread.

Also, check Deeth’s own blog regularly this month for updates on Iowa candidate filings. March 19 is the deadline for state legislative and statewide candidates to submit nomination papers.

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desmoinesdem

  • It's too bad he didn't go back 30 years

    because I still think John Culver’s re-election campaign in 1980 was the worst I’ve ever seen. From my perspective he took his re-election for granted – after all, he had Harold Hughes’ seat.

    Grassley spent the entire spring and summer that year visiting all 99 counties doing his “ah shucks, I’m just a farmer like you” routine, and had Culver painted as an elitist Harvard educated DC insider, who wasn’t even born in Iowa. When Culver did start his campaign in earnest that fall, one of the first things Grassley asked in a debate was, “where you been, John?.” When he answered, “DC” it was over.  

    • thanks for that comment

      I remember that campaign vaguely but wasn’t following it closely. For some reason, I have more vivid memories of Roger Jepsen’s 1978 campaign against the supposedly unbeatable Dick Clark. Jepsen ran a Panama Canal commercial (“I voted to keep what’s rightfully ours”).

    • moved here in 1990

      So I missed the Culver Sr. years.

      By the way I can’t find the Totally Nude Dancing?!? ad anywhere It’s a risky Google search term, but I tried and failed, only finding, as I expected, ACTUAL Totally Nude Dancing.

  • Clinton Was One of Worst Campaigns

    I’ve got to agree about the Clinton 2008 caucus campaign – totally unfocused and inept from the beginning. At first they denigrated the Caucuses, then they sent token staff who had no experience and absolutely no control – everything they said or did came from the headquarters in New York. They were amazingly slow to connect with local activists, slow to get the word out on their events (if you can call them that.) As they started to get nervous about Iowa Clinton suddenly started throwing millions of dollars into Iowa, with new staff flying in and phone lines getting installed. By caucus night they were spending vast sums on food for each caucus location (and that was a mess too!)

    They simply didn’t understand Iowa or the Caucuses and it showed. Obama’s campaign was the direct opposite: they put great staffers into the state and gave them enormous control; told them to actually listen to the locals and respect their views and knowledge.  

    • no question, the Obama campaign was much better run

      but I still think the Clinton campaign turned out an impressive number of caucus-goers. In my own precinct there was a woman I’ve known for most of my life. Classic Democratic voter in general elections, not a primary voter or caucus-goer. Despite multiple contacts, I could not get her to show up for the 2004 caucuses or vote in the 2006 primary. There she was in the Clinton corner on January 3, 2008.

      Clinton had no strategy for the other caucus states, but she did have an Iowa strategy, and she got tens of thousands of people to caucus for her. She won a decent number of counties too.

      I never would have thought Obama could get 90,000 people to caucus for him. In retrospect, it’s surprising he didn’t beat Clinton and Edwards statewide by a larger margin.

    • At our caucus, it was the Obama people

      who brought in the tables of food and drink – and got told by the caucus chair they couldn’t use that to buy support. “You can’t have a donut unless you stand for Obama.” “Um, no. You can’t do that, so don’t say that.”

      However, the Obama supporters had the most energy there. As an example, they were collecting in their area before we started, and didn’t want to join the general group up in the gym bleachers for the reading of the rules and such. As soon as the preliminaries were complete, they almost ran back to their area.

      I say “they” because I stood for Edwards – sigh.

      • I feel your pain

        Really, I do. For a while I thought, well at least Edwards pushed Obama and Clinton to the left during the primaries. But that didn’t stop Obama from selling out on health care reform, financial regulatory reform, etc. So really, a waste of our time.

    • Hill's Bills

      Doesn’t Team Hillary STILL owe money to half the Hy-Vees in the state for those sammiches? (I was shameless; ate one and walked over to Obama Corner.)

    • Oh yeah!

      The Hillary campaign pretty much fumbled the ball in every way imaginable. But I still had a blast while I was with ’em!

      🙂

    • But she cleaned houise in Riverside

      I don’t know who ran the 5th precinct Clinton campaign here in Sioux City, but Clinton absolutely cleaned house. They had so many people show up that Edwards had a long ways to go to challenge her. I was stunned to see the Riverside pole results were reverse of the state.

      • her best county was Pottawattamie

        if memory serves. She won at least a couple dozen counties.

        The Clinton campaign made mistakes but turned out an impressive number of people–enough to win against almost anyone in a different year and more than half the total number of D caucus-goers in 2004.

  • Not a prayer

    “Lightfoot told that room full of Jews that majority rule should determine the prayer. For instance, in a town that’s 90 percent Danish, why not let them say Lutheran prayers in school?”

    Oy vey. Or do I mean uff da?

    • also

      Many older Iowa Jews remember having to say prayers in public schools during the 1930s and 1940s. When my dad’s family moved to Sioux City, it was still common for the Lord’s Prayer to be recited in schools. That was also true in a lot of small towns where many Jews in the Des Moines area grew up.

      Not as big a gaffe as the “Totally Nude Dancing!” ad or the “Iowa Needs Governor Lightfoot” yard signs, but still a sign of a politician who had no clue who his audience was.

      Jews tend to vote Democratic anyway, but I’ve seen other Republicans handle themselves well at the TBJ forum.

  • Good list

    Those Chris Reed stories made me laugh out loud again.  

    • what's also hilarious

      is that serious “conservatives” are endorsing him in the IA-02 primary after the campaign he ran in 2008.  

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