The Ames Straw Poll isn’t going away, but it might matter a lot less than it did four years ago.
The Republican Party of Iowa state central committee is poised to vote on Saturday to again stage the controversial event this year, according to interviews with a half-dozen of its members. It will almost certainly take place August 8, although the party still needs to reserve space on the campus of Iowa State University.
Fox News will not sponsor a candidate debate in Ames on the eve of the straw poll, as it did four years ago — the result of a crackdown by the Republican National Committee on the number of primary debates.
Beyond that, how different the carnival-like event feels ultimately depends on which GOP presidential hopefuls decide to compete. Operatives on the fledgling campaigns agree it will be one of the toughest decisions they need to make.
Unlike in “Field of Dreams,” the classic baseball movie set in the Hawkeye State, building it does not necessarily mean that candidates will come.
In 2011, then-Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won, narrowly defeating then-Texas Rep. Ron Paul. It was the high-water mark of her campaign, forcing former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to drop out after a disappointing third-place finish. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who wound up winning the January caucuses, finished fourth — and Mitt Romney, who lost by only a handful of votes, skipped it altogether. Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that he would get into the race the same day as the straw poll, and his visit to the state the next day stomped on Bachmann’s win.
Ultimately, Bachmann’s campaign gained little momentum from the straw poll: She finished sixth in the caucuses, with just 5 percent of the vote.
“The fact that Bachmann won the thing and then immediately fell apart diminishes the influence of the straw poll,” said Craig Robinson, the former state GOP political director who helped organize the 2007 event. Robinson now runs the influential website TheIowaRepublican.com.
The state party is moving forward with the straw poll despite public opposition from Terry Branstad, the powerful, six-term Republican governor. He said after the 2012 election it had outlived its usefulness and warned that it risked scaring candidates away from Iowa altogether. This drew a public rebuke from the then-chairman of the state party, A.J. Spiker, who lives near the event site in Ames.
Branstad’s political advisers say that the governor always supported staging a candidate-focused event, but did not want a straw poll, which is what generates all the media coverage.
But Branstad has resigned himself to the fact that the straw poll is too popular with activists to do away with.
A spokesman said the governor supports whatever the central committee decides, but both supporters and critics of the festivities agree that his past public comments will give ample cover to candidates from the establishment wing of the GOP to not compete.
“He’s given a green light for any candidate to not participate or to just come and have a good time,” said a senior adviser to a likely 2016 Republican candidate who is trying to decide how much time and money to spend organizing for the event, if any.
No matter what, lots of national reporters will cover Ames. But if only second-tier candidates choose to spend heavily on busing in and entertaining supporters, then the outcome of the straw poll will be far less important.
It’s one thing to show up and see what happens. But the candidates who are serious about trying to win rent the best space from the state party. And some even go beyond that: In 2011, Bachmann and Pawlenty ran television ads to try persuading people to vote for them in the straw poll.
Romney went all-in to win the 2007 event. But Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s stronger-than-expected, second-place showing led to press coverage that presented him as the real winner. So in 2011, Romney came for the debate ahead of time but skipped the Ames straw poll.
The mainstream media downplayed Paul’s second-place showing four years ago; the libertarian-leaning congressman had bussed in large numbers of supporters.
“I can’t imagine anyone going all-in like Paul, Bachmann and Pawlenty did,” said a veteran of Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign.
That’s what they say now. But Ames cries out like a siren song — especially for candidates who haven’t yet gained traction.
But going all-in at Ames carries significant risks. People who play to win and lose find that three things dry up immediately afterward: fundraising, media attention and activist interest.
Operatives talk about “the curse of third place.” The last three third-place finishers in Ames did not make it out of the caucuses: Elizabeth Dole in 1999, Sam Brownback in 2007 and Pawlenty in 2011.
But the winnowing element that makes Ames so scary for the potential Pawlentys of this cycle is one of the reasons so many Iowans love the straw poll.
Loras Shulte, a member of the central committee who strongly supports a straw poll, chaired Pat Buchanan’s Iowa campaign in 1996 and Gary Bauer’s 2000 campaign.
“People ask me who I think is gonna run, and I say it’s almost easier to tell you who I think is not gonna run,” Shulte said. “I think there are a dozen to 15 really strong candidates.”
“Iowa has, for better or worse, always kind of been the winnower of the field,” he added. “I think we’ve done a reasonable job at that. We don’t necessarily tell people who will be the next president, but we have had an impact on who probably won’t be.”
Another veteran Iowa strategist, who hails from the establishment wing of the party but is not yet affiliated with a candidate, predicted that this year’s straw poll will pit all the outsider candidates against each other — people like neurosurgeon Ben Carson or former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
“It’s going to become a battle of the underdogs to become the top dog in the second tier,” he said. “You only make news if you lose [and you’re from the establishment wing]. If you win, you drive up your expectations.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is much less likely to make the kind of investment at winning Ames that his father did four years ago, according to people familiar with his thinking. People already take him seriously, and he wants to conserve his resources for turning out supporters in the caucuses.
It’s a much more complicated calculus for Huckabee and Santorum. As past winners of the caucuses, poor performances in the straw poll will be covered as nothing but rejection and evidence that they have lost their pull with Iowans.
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