Iowans gather 'round for holiday politicking

DES MOINES -- At least Joanne Locke's cookies were baked.

"If I wasn't here, I'd be home writing my Christmas cards that are still sitting on my dining room table," the retired office worker said a few days ago as she waited for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to arrive at a foreign-policy forum.

The head-on collision of holiday festivities and high-stakes politics is extreme this year even for Iowa, where every four winters people pretty much expect to run into presidential hopefuls at the diner or even their neighbor's house. That's because the Iowa caucuses that launch the 2008 nomination season are on Jan. 3 — the earliest ever, and more than two weeks earlier than in 2004.

The challenge for candidates this year: making their closing arguments to Iowans without turning them off during the holiday season.

"People want to spend time with friends and family. They're hectic, frantic, trying to put up the tree, shovel out the driveway, get to the mall and make those final shopping decisions," says Steffen Schmidt, a political scientist at Iowa State University. "It's really a delicate proposition for candidates to try and interject themselves into this."

Many Iowans like the attention and are willing to put up with the inconveniences that surround the caucuses: strangers calling and knocking on their doors, candidates and their entourages tying up traffic, political ads all over TV.

Daniel Dittemore, 65, a retired state administrator from Ankeny, jokes that the caucuses are "a special burden that we Iowans have to bear every four years." The caucuses are "so bunched up against the holidays" that it's hard to focus on either without being distracted, he says, but "it's not a huge, screeching problem."

For others, however, the campaign seems invasive. They're ready for it to end. "The commercials are wearing me out," says Steve Harris, 48, a cable TV installer from Lamoni. "It's just ruthless."

By late this afternoon, Iowa will temporarily become a political dead zone as campaigns shutter their offices, take down their TV ads, halt their phone operations and stop knocking on doors. Apart from a few moonlighters, candidates, volunteers and aides will be with family and friends.

But business as usual will resume Wednesday and continue through New Year's to caucus night, when neighbors assemble at community meetings to cast their public votes.

"There's no choice," Obama strategist David Axelrod says. "We've got a week to close the deal with people and we're in a tight, competitive situation here. Everybody will have a nice holiday meal, and then it's back on the hustings."

That goes for everyone trying to emerge from this first contest with a claim on momentum heading into the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary.

Democrats Obama, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina senator John Edwards are in a three-way battle to win Iowa. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd are trying to knock someone out of the top three positions.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee are vying for first place on the GOP side, and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson is aiming for a breakthrough showing.

Invasion of the vote-seekers

So what's it like to be in Iowa these days?

"It snowed last weekend. I looked outside and Bill Richardson was shoveling my driveway," columnist John Carlson wrote last week in The Des Moines Register. "Hillary Clinton and her mom stopped by with a dozen little Santa-shaped cookies. Mitt Romney made my car payment. John and Elizabeth Edwards brought us a side of beef."

OK, he was kidding.

But so much else is true, and nearly as improbable, when it comes to candidates, the caucuses and daily life.

If you happened to be picking up a quart of milk at a certain Hy-Vee supermarket here last week, you would have stumbled upon a trifecta: Clinton, former president Bill Clinton and basketball legend Magic Johnson. They said they just wanted to say hi and encourage shoppers to caucus.

If you happened to be in the Jaarsma Bakery in Pella, a Dutch television crew might have asked you about your state's quaint political tradition. The crew spent several days last week shadowingcaucusgoers of Dutch descent from the town, founded in 1847 by Dutch settlers. Cathy Haustein, 53, a chemistry professor at Central Collegein Pella, left her seasonal tasks undone as the visitors followed her to the bakery and to an Obama event. "Our Christmas tree isn't decorated or up," she said.

If you don't run into candidates in person, they'll often find you.

Republican Dan Nicholson of Dubuque gets a dozen calls a day from campaigns. Nicholson, 69, a retired plant supervisor and former city council member, says about half are automated recordings and half are from people. He's just glad they're calling his home phone: "Once they get the cellphone numbers, it'll be really intrusive. They'll follow you anywhere."

How common are campaign calls this season? The Pew Research Center found this month that eight in 10 likely caucusgoers in Iowa have received automated, prerecorded "robocalls" about politics. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats and nearly half of Republicans have received personal calls.

Some people here see an upside to the politics-holiday fusion. "It adds to the festivity. You can feel the buzz in the air, the excitement," says Michael Herrick, 60, a retired chef from Pella.

Londa Crigger, 30, of West Des Moines, mother of a 4-year-old girl, doesn't even mind the crush of political ads. "It's better than seeing toy commercials," she says.

Hawking the holidays

The mix of politics and holidays is summed up within a few square yards at Jordan Creek Town Center mall in West Des Moines. A political memorabilia cart, heralded by a full-size Hillary Clinton cutout, sits beside Santa, golden reindeer, a twinkling tree and a line of kids with wish lists.

"I'm thrilled about being next to Santa. We're easy to find," says cart manager John Olsen, 38, who's wearing stars, stripes, candidate buttons and an Uncle Sam hat.

In his brisk sales of T-shirts, mugs, buttons and bumper stickers, all featuring current candidates, he detects the political pulse of Iowa. There's been a run on Obama shirts, and Olsen says he could be selling Huckabee shirts if he had any: "He came out of nowhere."

Candidates themselves have used holiday gimmicks to raise money and get attention.

• Dodd today concludes a "12 Days of Results" tour about his Senate record and presidential plans.

•Obama's campaign sold Christmas tree ornaments with his logo, a red-white-and-blue "O" designed to evoke a sunrise.

•An "UltiMitt" Holiday package offered Romney mugs and family pictures.

•A pitch called "Fred's 12 Days of Christmas" asked donors to add Thompson to their holiday gift lists.

•Clinton aides threw a "Holiday Soiree" here Sunday for the media and staff from rival campaigns.

Mixed, merry messages

The Christmas-caucus effect has been vivid on TV. For a while, somber and occasionally slashing candidate ads were crammed between festive or sentimental pitches for snowflake sweaters on sale and making this "a December to remember" by buying a Lexus.

Now the candidate ads are sounding more like the sale ads.

The tone shift started with Huckabee. After taking some on-air blows from Romney on his immigration and crime records, he fought back with Christmas.

"Are you about worn out of all the television commercials you've been seeing, mostly about politics?" Huckabee asks as he sits beside a sparkly tree — in the background a white cross he says was an accidental image created by a bookcase. "I don't blame you. At this time of year, sometimes it's nice to pull aside from all of that and just remember that what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ and being with our family and our friends."

A wave of holiday ads followed: Clinton playfully wrapping presents for America ("where did I put universal pre-K?"), Obama "approving" a message of "Merry Christmas" and "happy holidays" from his two daughters, Edwards promising the poor that "in the season of miracles, of faith and love … you will never be forgotten again."

Romney tested the boundaries of the "Iowa nice" electorate by running what his campaign calls a "contrast ad" against Huckabee that ran through Friday. For the holidays, he added a new spot featuring a man whose teenage daughter disappeared in New York for three days. His voice breaking, he describes how Romney, his business partner, moved heaven and earth to help find her.

Nicholson, the undecided Dubuque Republican, says Romney was wise to change course. "Attack ads do not work in Iowa. They make people mad," he says. He likes the holiday ads: "They're softer. They show more humanity."

Republican Rudy Giuliani, who is focusing more on later contests, has a spot in which he says he wishes for secure borders, lower taxes and for all the presidential candidates to "just get along" — at which point Santa enters the frame with a ho-ho-ho. "Can't have everything," Giuliani says with a chuckle.

Republican John McCain's seasonal ad recounts a poignant Christmas moment during his captivity as a Vietnam prisoner of war. Like Giuliani, he is not running his ad on Iowa TV and is spending most of his time in other states.

At the other end of the candidate geography spectrum is Dodd, who has moved his family here for the caucus campaign and even enrolled his oldest daughter in kindergarten. He'll take his staff ice-skating on Christmas Day, then head back to the family's rented house for food and drink.

All that happens after the traditional Christmas-morning opening of gifts from Santa — assuming the big guy finds the kids. Prompted by their worried 6-year-old, the Dodds put a sign on their Connecticut house that says "Dear Santa, We will be in Iowa for Christmas this year! Love, Grace and Christina." On their house in Des Moines, another sign says "We're Here, Santa! Love, Grace and Christina."