Authors: Michael Kranish,Scott Helman
There was no doubt that Romney was data-driven, and his aides hyped that mind-set at every turn. Indeed, he loved numbers, and was convinced that a winning political strategy could be divined from them. That led him to become fascinated with the potential of “microtargeting.” The idea is to come up with reams of data about each voter, ranging from magazine subscriptions to club memberships. The information is entered into a database and cross-referenced with the names of potential voters, enabling a campaign to assemble a detailed portrait of nearly everyone who might vote in the caucuses. The data are then used by a campaign to send specially tailored messages to key voters.
But, some within the campaign wondered, to what end? Doug Gross, the Iowa chairman, lamented that “we had a lot of data but no information.” He saw little evidence that the strategy was helping build the coalitions needed to win the caucuses. Romney couldn’t see it, but his problem was “macro,” as one campaign adviser put it. He wasn’t catching fire with voters on the ground, not like Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, a man who shouldn’t have had a chance against the well-financed, staffed-to-the-rafters Romney campaign, but who had something Romney didn’t. And Huckabee didn’t plan to spend a penny on microtargeting.
S
till, in these early days Romney was more worried about McCain. On that front, the news seemed good: McCain’s campaign seemed on the verge of collapse. By July, McCain’s campaign estimated that it had blown through most of his $25 million campaign war chest. Most Romney advisers believed that their chief rival was finished. But one aide told Romney that the man who had survived five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam was still a threat.
“Wait, he’s not dead yet, let’s stomp on him some more,’ ” the aide urged Romney.
“No, no, we’re not going to spend money or time or effort,” Romney said, according to Myers.
That decision helped allow McCain to survive and fight another day. But McCain also held his fire. His media team of Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer had produced a potentially devastating ad that slammed Romney for flip-flopping, using the candidate’s own words against him. It showed Romney saying, “Abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” And then saying, “We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them.” It also showed Romney equivocating on his own hunting background, at one point saying that he had hunted “varmints” a couple of times. Finally, it reran Romney’s comment that he had been an independent during the time of the Reagan-Bush administration. The ad concluded by showing presidential candidate Romney saying, “This isn’t the time for us to shrink from conservative principles.”
“He’s right,” says the text in the ad, which concludes with a voice saying, “I’m John McCain, and I approved this message.” But the voice wasn’t McCain’s. It was that of a producer, awaiting McCain’s approval to complete the ad. McCain never authorized the ad and it did not run until months later in a leaked version on the Internet. The media team that had produced the ad, Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer, wound up jumping to Romney’s campaign and would serve as Romney’s chief advisers on strategy and media.
Meanwhile, a fierce argument was developing within the Romney campaign over whether to promote Romney’s antiabortion position in a new round of television ads. Castellanos had proposed running a strong “prolife” ad. But Romney’s South Carolina advisers dissented. It was several months after the South Carolina team had written its memo urging Romney to run as an economic Mr. Fix-it and not as a social conservative. Not only was the advice being ignored, but now an ad was being proposed that would underscore the social conservative message—and certainly draw new scrutiny to Romney’s flip-flop on abortion. In one of the most heated conference calls of the campaign, a South Carolina adviser argued that the ad and the underlying strategy would hurt Romney. Castellanos said he saw no choice at the time but to acknowledge that “we were bleeding on our right and bleeding on our left, the worst of both worlds. We had run [ads] about Mitt the economic guy. . . . We weren’t making Mitt some crazy right-wing figure.”
The campaign was splitting dangerously into factions, further heightening the states-versus-Boston tension that had been boiling for months. The new media team was on board—Stevens and Schriefer—and Castellanos suddenly felt his authority in question. He protested to Romney and members of the inner circle, according to several people with knowledge of the conversations, and was told that this was not a demotion but rather was an implementation of “the Bain way,” a reference to Romney’s management style at Bain Capital. Romney said he wanted as many smart minds as possible in the room, with ideas fought over and the best rising to the top. Castellanos considered resigning but, out of loyalty to Romney, agreed to stay. Thus began what a number of those involved in the campaign said was an internal war in which strategists from the competing teams fought constantly and debates were often left to fester. A stream of complaints came from state-level campaign officials, who said they were never sure who was in charge. Romney, the man at the center, seemed disinclined to intervene. He liked to hear all the arguments, utterly confident in his ability to razor through to the right outcome.
Mandy Fletcher, the director of Romney’s Florida campaign, said she had originally been attracted to Romney because “he was the turnaround guy and the business guy.” But she also said that the delays and conflicts in the national campaign’s decision making demonstrated that “running the campaign is a very different kind of business. In the business world you have a lot of time, weeks if not months and, on some projects, years” to make and implement critical decisions. “In the campaign it may be an hour or minutes.”
Warren Tompkins, Romney’s senior adviser in South Carolina, came to the same conclusion: “The glaring deficiency in the whole operation was the lack of an overall strategist, no single person that at the end of the day raised his hand and said, ‘This is what we are going to do.’ Somebody has to run the railroad. The irony of it is all is here’s a man who sets up apparatus to make decisions, look at the bottom line, cut to the chase, and the campaign was everything but that.” But Myers insisted it was all part of the plan. “There is definitely a creative dynamic,” she said. Romney “wouldn’t have it any other way.”
R
omney’s strategy relied heavily on the idea that McCain and Giuliani would fight for the more moderate voters within the GOP primaries and caucuses, leaving Romney room to court the Right. The risk, however, was that he would be outflanked on his right by someone who came across as a more authentic conservative. The idea of a such a challenge from Mike Huckabee was barely on Romney’s radar screen at this point, so when McCain and Giuliani both decided to make only a minimal effort in Iowa, the Romney campaign believed that the state was Romney’s for the taking. That would turn out to be a huge miscalculation.
Iowa’s caucuses have long been dominated by evangelicals who backed long-shot candidates—candidates who shared their religious beliefs but had little chance of getting elected. In 1988, the conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson came in second place in the caucuses, ahead of George H. W. Bush. That prompted the Bush campaign to come up with a new slogan: “Iowa picks corn, New Hampshire picks presidents.” Bush did indeed win New Hampshire and went on to become the eventual nominee. That experience led some of Romney’s advisers to wonder whether it was worth trying to win Iowa. But Romney was committed and invested about $2 million in his effort to win the Iowa Republican Party’s “straw poll” in August 2007. It was, once again, a bid to make the religion issue go away. There was nothing scientific about the nonbinding poll; it measured organizational skill, not actual votes. Candidates were allowed to pay expenses for participants, so whoever had the most money and best campaign network was expected to win. For years, critics have called the event little more than an auction to the highest bidder—and no one was better positioned to be the high bidder than Romney. McCain and Giuliani stayed away.
Romney, however, went into the straw poll under fire from a pair of critics who were not on any ballot: conservative talk-radio hosts on the Des Moines station WHO. The 50,000-watt powerhouse, which had once employed a young announcer named Ronald Reagan and maintains a shrine to the late president, is one of the state’s most influential media outlets. The station employed a fiery host named Steve Deace, who was to talk radio in Iowa what Rush Limbaugh is to the national audience. With a velvet voice, a passionate belief in Christian conservative values, and strong opposition to abortion, the radio host used his
Deace in the Afternoon
show to advocate for Huckabee and pulverize Romney. “Given the nature of his ever-evolving positions on absolutely every issue,” Deace said on one program, “ . . . Governor Romney either ranks first or second behind [Democratic candidate] John Edwards on my ‘most despicable liar running for president’ power ratings. No Republican in my mind is phonier than Governor Romney.”
Addressing critics who accused him of being anti-Mormon, Deace responded, “I know some of you believe that I’m so anti-Romney on the basis of religious bigotry. Don’t get me wrong, I am, you know, pretty much a religious bigot. I don’t believe that traditional Mormon teaching and two thousand years of Christian doctrine and tradition are compatible. But I also don’t believe in a religious test for office. . . . The problem with Romney is not that he’s a Mormon, that’s not what bothers me.” What bothered him was that Romney’s “flip-flopping makes him the most dangerous candidate in the GOP field.” Deace’s repeated attacks led one of Romney’s top Iowa advisers, Brian Kennedy, to appear on the program just before the straw poll. After defending Romney’s change on abortion as heartfelt, Kennedy could put up with Deace’s barbs no longer. “You are waging a campaign both on and off the air to bring down Mitt Romney,” he said, reflecting a view widely held in the Romney campaign.
Deace could hardly deny it. And although he was little known outside Iowa, his power to sway voters was considered within the state to be one of the most important factors in Republican presidential politics. Huckabee’s 2008 Iowa campaign manager, Eric Woolson, said that Deace had played a pivotal role in Huckabee’s surge. “If you look at concentric circles of who listens to him most in this central Iowa area, where most folks listen to him, the numbers where you would expect Governor Romney to do well were suppressed and Governor Huckabee was up,” Woolson said. “It was basically three hours of advertisement against Governor Romney and for Governor Huckabee.” Deace said later, “I don’t believe that I am the reason Mike Huckabee won . . . but I might be a big reason why Mitt Romney lost.”
Romney did not appear on Deace’s show, but he did go on another WHO program,
Mickelson in the Morning
, hoping for a friendlier venue. But host Jan Mickelson pounced on the governor as soon as Romney slid on his headphones and pulled the microphone close. Mickelson used most of the interview to accuse Romney of breaking with Mormon doctrine by backing abortion rights when he ran for governor. During a commercial break in the show, Mickelson said he wanted to pursue the matter off the air. Romney, apparently not realizing that the conversation was being videotaped, tore into Mickelson.
“I don’t like coming on the air and having you go after my church and me—” he said.
“I’m not going after—I agree with your church!” Mickelson said, referring to the doctrine against abortion.
“That’s right. I’m not running as a Mormon, and I get a little tired of coming on a show like yours and having it all about Mormon,” the angry Romney said.
As Mickelson persisted, Romney interjected, “So what should I do? Tell me what I should do! I should not have been prochoice. And therefore I’m just finished right there. ‘Well, you’re prochoice, therefore you’ve distanced yourself from your faith, therefore you’re finished.’ Well, that’s not what my church says. There are leaders of my church that are prochoice! You’re wrong! That’s your problem.”
Shortly afterward, someone posted a video of the supposedly off-air comments in an online forum. The video became an Iowa sensation. Deace had made the case against Romney, and now Mickelson had delivered what some considered a closing argument. The encounter was ballyhooed by some evangelicals as proof of Romney’s lack of commitment on the abortion issue. Mickelson later said, “I thought this guy was the next great thing. Nobody was more surprised than I was.” He said he called a Romney aide and said, “That was terrible, Romney didn’t understand where I was coming from. . . . Let’s fix it.” Romney, however, did not appear on Mickelson’s program again.
In Mickelson’s view, Romney’s performance on his show, combined with the daily pounding by his fellow host Deace, “cost Romney central Iowa.” But some Iowans had been impressed: the supposedly cold, robotic candidate had showed passion, defended his faith, and taken on an Iowa icon. The private Romney, perhaps a more real one than most people had seen, could hold his own.
R
omney won the straw poll with 31 percent, trumpeting it as “really the big kickoff for my campaign” and reinforcing the idea that he expected to win the caucus. He paid little heed to the man who came in second with 18 percent and who’d spent about one-tenth what Romney had. In the best tradition of political spin, Mike Huckabee called his runner-up finish “an amazing victory.” In a dig at Romney, he told his supporters, “I can’t buy you.”
Despite Romney’s bravado, some of his top advisers were alarmed. Several gathered in a hallway and shared their concern about the heavy bet on Iowa. It was the beginning of what became a months-long debate about whether the candidate should pull out most of his resources from Iowa and signal that he wasn’t trying to win the caucuses. The debate, described by a number of participants, came as a result of concern about the rise of Huckabee and the collapse of the campaign of another Christian conservative, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. With Brownback pulling out of the race, Huckabee would have a fairly clear field in his bid for evangelical support. So although some of Romney’s aides were celebrating the victory, others could see dark days ahead. Why not declare victory now, make a more modest effort in Iowa, and put aside millions of dollars to devote to other states such as Florida?