ANALYSIS
Some Iowa Republican officials and former state party chairmen see a Donald Trump win, possibly by a far greater percentage the the final polls gave him.
“Trump will outperform his polling for the same reason that Mike Huckabee in the 2008 and Rick Santorum did in the 2012 Iowa GOP caucuses and Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic caucuses Iowa caucuses,” said a former Iowa GOP chairman who asked not to be identified because he remaining neutral in the presidential caucuses.
“Huckabee, Santorum and Obama turned out new people beyond the previous caucus lists,” said the ex-chairman.
Most Iowan politicos agree that a story almost as big as a wide-margin Trump trounce of Ted Cruz or a Cruz crush of the mighty-mouthed mogul from New York would be Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s fending off challengers to come in third. That would head him out to New Hampshire with, as pollster John Zogby put it, “media, money and momentum” as the establishment’s only if barely viable alternative to Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump.
The only objective datum supporting a Trump triumph is the final poll by Des Moines Register, unbeloved as it is by conservatives and Republicans in the state. Released Sunday, the poll gave Mr. Trump a five percentage point lead over Mr. Cruz, scion of a bible-preaching Cuban emigrée.
The Register poll has been on the money for every GOP and Democratic presidential caucus except for the 2012 caucuses when it had Mitt Romney winning with 24 percent of the vote. Mr. Romney got his 24.5 percent, but Mr. Santorum bested him with 24.6 percent and 43 more votes. He like Mike Huckabee in 2008 got out more evangelicals than the poll predicted.
But Mr. Trump, with 19 percent, is trailing Mr. Cruz who has 33 percent of the evangelical vote in the final poll.
But Trump claimed he’s leading with evangelicals. And the chairman of county GOP smack in the middle of Iowa’s bible swatch says what out for a Trump landslide.
“Watch the results from socially conservative areas such as Sioux County and if Donald Trump is anywhere close to leading there, he will sweep the state,” said Sioux County GOP Chairman Mark Lundberg.
“Cruz needs to do well with the Evangelical vote in Sioux County and other conservative areas,” Mr. Lundberg said. “But with so many conservatives splitting the field, that will help Trump. As candidates drop out, he won’t pick up many of their partisans because he is the second choice of very few supporters of other candidates.
Mr. Lundberg said it would be “very interesting if we had the viability voting similar to the Democrats as I think that would help everyone else but Trump.”
Instead of voting once as in GOP caucuses, Democrats keep voting, weeding out the low percentage candidates in favor more viable high-percentage vote receivers.
Mr. Trump has another potential edge. He’s big with the 21st century version of what in the 1980s were called “Reagan Democrats.”
Mr. Trump, to prevail Monday night, will have to have persuaded a large number of first-time caucus goers who are more like those Reagan Democrats in outlook – that is, more focused on economic and security issues than on abortion, same-sex marriage and the right of a baker or judge to abstain in accordance with religious belief from baking a cake or performing a marriage ceremony for homosexual couples.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Rubio all say, or said going into the Iowa voting, that the legality of same-sex marriage should be a state’s right to decide. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul stopped just short of a full-fledged libertarian view when he said he’s not sure marriage is the government’s business in the first place.
The former chairman noted that Mr. Trump’s “crowds got continually bigger” heading into the caucuses.
In the Register poll, Mr. Trump’s percentage rose and Mr. Cruz’s fell from a previous poll, a usually accurate harbinger.
County GOP chairmen know and respect the caucus expertise of Chuck Laudner, the 2007-8 Iowa GOP executive director and the strategist who takes credit for Rick Santorum 43-vote margin win over Mitt Romney in the 2012 Iowa Caucuses. Mr. Laudner, 50, has been managing Mr. Trump’s Iowa campaign.
“He had people working the long long attendance lines at Trump evens and otherwise reminding them of the ease of establishing their proper identification and attending their caucusMonday night,” noted the former state party chairman. “Chuck is getting out the word that attending caucuses is a lot easier than the press makes out.”
An Iowa operative for a Trump rival confided that people in his state “like Trump and they feel good about being associated with the power and the successful flow of his crusade against old power.”
The former state GOP chairman said that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “has a small, loyal and dwindling support in the state. They are horrified at Trump and Cruz.” He added that Bush admirers also like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and “maybe” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Mr. Trump, according to the Register poll, already has in his corner a plurality of establishment — or what the Register calls “mainstream” — voters.
“Thirty-eight percent of likely GOP caucus goers identify themselves as primarily mainstream, rather than tea party or evangelical conservative, and Trump does better than any other candidate with 34 percent of their support,” the Register’s Jennifer Jacobs wrote about the poll. “Rubio is next at 21 percent. Cruz gets only 10 percent of these voters.”
What may have hurt Mr. Cruz in the end was a mailing by his campaign organization – not his super PAC — to voters on government-looking stationery warning them their past poor voting history was being watched and they should go to the caucuses and get family and friend to go. The letter’s recipient were given letter grades, including F for failure. Their neighbors’ names and letter grades were included.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate threw a fit over the letter. “Today I was shown a piece of literature from the Cruz for President campaign that misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law,” Mr. Pate said.
Another potential problem for Mr. Cruz is that his ground game may not be all it’s been cracked up to be, according to a the former Iowa GOP chairman.
“Cruz has a fair ground game also but it’s tied heavily to regular conservative caucus goers and [Iowa religious conservative leader Bob] Vander Plaats,” he said. Mr. Vander Plaats has endorsed Mr. Cruz.
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Mr. Trump. But Mr. Falwell is a Virginian, no an Iowan.
“The real deal is whether Trump’s new people turn out Monday the way they have at his evens,” the former state chairman said. “He had more people at his recent events in Ames, Council Bluff sand Orange City, than the entire previous caucus turnout in those counties. Even in Cedar Rapids he had nearly the entire Linn county equivalent (caucus turn out) at his event.”
A Trump win by more than few percentage points over Mr. Cruz probably ensures Trump wins New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, running the table on the four February contest, and possibly a fatal setback for Mr. Cruz. Mr. Trump has a 25-point lead over Mr. Cruz in the latest New Hampshire poll.
A Cruz Iowa win would not be seen as an upset but as a sign he might be able to go the distance – the last four GOP primaries are scheduled for June 7. Although Iowa GOP officials and campaign advisers generally see Mr. Rubio as the likely third-place finisher, they consider Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, after a good debate performance and being joined on the stump by his popular father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, as possibly – not likely but possibly — trading places with Mr. Rubio for third. That might be enough to keep Mr. Paul in for several more contests – “until he decides that he’s got to put his remaining resources into that Senate reelection campaign of his that people tend to forget about,” said the former state GOP chairman.
• Ralph Z. Hallow can be reached at rhallow@gmail.com.
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