Iowa straw vote shows GOP race still wide open

Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won with 31.5 percent of the vote, but in a low-turnout contest the national frontrunners skipped. [Editor's note: The original version of this web sub-headline mischaracterized the nature of the straw poll.]

from the August 13, 2007 edition

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But some political experts said that because he was running without his main rivals, he would have to crack 40 or 50 percent to show a major realignment in the race.

In 1999, George W. Bush won 31.3 percent of the straw poll – nearly Romney's share this time – but with then-major candidates Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Dole in the running and a significantly higher voter turnout.

"I think Romney has to be disappointed … given the enormous effort and money he poured into the state and his not facing any major competition," said Jeffrey M. Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University in Massachusetts. "I think there's clearly a concern on the part of the Christian right in Iowa that he's not one of them."

Even so, Romney has already made an issue of his rivals' absence from the straw poll, a fact not lost on the conservative voters who tend to turn out for the poll and caucuses.

"I don't think Iowans take all that kindly to being left out," Douglas Brown, a small-business owner and Brownback supporter from Alleman, Iowa, said Saturday. "It sends us a message that we're not all that important, and I think there is a consequence."

Mr. Huckabee, who was jubilant over the results, played the role of underdog in a speech before the vote, casting himself as the true religious conservative overshadowed by better-funded rivals.

"I can't buy you," Huckabee said, taking a jab at Romney, who had reportedly paid a consultant $200,000 to coordinate logistics for the event and whose tents featured a rock-climbing wall and children's play area. "I can't even rent you."

His supporters were hoping the contest would give Huckabee enough momentum to vault out of the low single-digits in national polls.

"If he could bump up into the top tier, I'd be really happy," Fran Christian, a schoolteacher from Story City, Iowa, said as she took refuge from the 90-degree F. heat in shade beside the Huckabee campaign tent. "That's what I'm here for."

•Staff photographer Andy Nelson contributed reporting from Ames, Iowa.

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SOURCE: Des Moines Register/Rich Clabaugh – STAFF