Romney wins Iowa Republican straw poll

Romney wins Iowa Republican straw poll
By Edward Luce in Ames, Iowa
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: August 12 2007 15:43 | Last updated: August 13 2007 00:17


Pots of money aside, one factor above all helped bring victory to Mitt Romney in Saturday’s informal Iowa “straw poll” of Republican presidential candidates – a reputation for competence.

Without directly criticising George W. Bush, who was his classmate at Harvard Business School in the late 1960s, Mr Romney enthused enough Iowan Republicans with his ability “to get things done” at a moment when cynicism towards politicians is close to an all-time high.

“If there has ever been a time that we needed to see change in Washington, it is now,” Mr Romney told supporters after topping the field of 11 candidates with 31.9 per cent of the vote in Iowa’s very unscientific temperature-taking. “We need somebody in Washington who will get the job done, who will get Republicans and Democrats pulling together and actually deal with the problems we have.”

However, a slight shadow was cast over Mr Romney’s Iowa victory by the strong showing of Mike Huckabee, the boisterous former governor of Arkansas, who came second with 18.1 per cent of the vote in spite of having spent less than $200,000 on the straw poll compared with Mr Romney’s estimated $2m to $3m.

But Mr Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts who made his reputation when he took charge of the previously moribund 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, made light of this and of the fact that he had prevailed in a field that did not include his three biggest rivals – Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, John McCain, the Arizona senator, and Fred Thompson, the former senator and TV star.

Mr Giuliani, who still tops the national polls among Republican contenders, chose to keep his powder dry. Mr McCain, whose campaign is in serious trouble, could afford neither the expenditure nor the possibility of coming second. And Mr Thompson has yet to declare his candidacy officially. “I’m pleased as punch,” said Mr Romney. “The guys who decided not to run here – they would have played if they thought they could have won.”

Having accumulated a personal fortune of almost $300m at Bain Capital, a ­Boston-based venture capital firm, which launched Stap les, the discount stationery stationary chain store, and took a stake in Marriott Hotels in the 1980s, Mr Romney will have little difficulty capitalising on his initial success in Iowa. He will also be helped by having the best organised campaign in the Republican field – the closest counterpart to Hillary Clinton’s near-flawless machine.

At each of his set-piece interactions with voters, Mr Romney seeks to drive home his Washington outsider status and his ability to work with Democrats. Having pushed through a mandatory healthcare insurance bill in strongly liberal Massachusetts last year when he was governor, he also has the credentials to win over independent voters – much as Democratic governors of southern states are thought to have crossover appeal to moderate Republicans.

But the 60-year-old father of five, whose film-star looks recently netted him a ranking in People magazine’s “Most beautiful people in America”, still has daunting hurdles to cross. One of these is his lack of national name recognition. Strategists believe this can be overcome by the publicity and momentum a victory in the Iowa caucus in January would bring. He also leads the polls in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary the same month.

Bigger than that is the issue of Mr Romney’s Mormon faith, which many bible belt evangelicals still view as a cult outside the Christian family. Mr Romney is thought to be preparing a major speech reassuring evangelicals that his theology would not interfere with his presidency.

“It is one thing winning over the church-going conservatives of Iowa,” says John Green at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington. “It is quite another overcoming the doubts of the people in the bible belt.”