DES MOINES, Iowa — In the race for Iowa, Republican presidential candidates are largely shifting from persuading people to support them to mobilizing them to actually come out and vote for them in Tuesday’s caucuses.
None of the candidates has the extensive get-out-the-vote network that helped former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee win in 2008. But Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have strengthened the organizations they had in place for their failed bids four years ago.
The cash-strapped others, including Rick Santorum, have more modest efforts and are mostly relying on momentum to carry their supporters to the caucuses on what could be a chilly night.
“This isn’t the Huckabee year,” said Susan Geddes, a socially conservative Iowa activist and top staffer on that Republican’s campaign.
With the race fluid, all the campaigns are working to ensure their backers vote at the caucuses, where a turnout of 120,000 would break the record set in 2008. Volunteer armies are knocking on doors and making phone calls to get Iowans to the community meetings.
The candidates, themselves, are making final appeals as they canvass the state. “If you can get out here in this cold and this wind and a little bit of rain coming down, then you can sure get out on Tuesday night and you can sure find a few people to bring with you,” Romney told a crowd on a dreary Friday morning in West Des Moines.
Hours later in Waterloo, Rick Perry implored: “I need you to brave the weather. I need you to come out and support us. If you have my back on Tuesday, January the 3rd, then I will have your back in Washington for the next four years.”
It’s about this time every four years that scores of Christian home-school activists, pastors and other cultural conservatives fan out across the state to corral people to caucus on behalf of their chosen candidate. This year, that coalition is dividing its support among many candidates, including Santorum, Perry, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann. None of them has had the time or money necessary to build strong operations.
That leaves the two Republicans, Romney and Paul, who are leading in polls but aren’t favorites of devout social conservatives, as the candidates in the best position to get their backers to the caucuses in the traditional way — by relying on their grassroots supporters and precinct captains.
Santorum, meanwhile, could end up being the surprise.
The former Pennsylvania senator scoured Iowa for the past two years, testing the notion that building personal bonds with voters is the key to victory Tuesday. He’s begun to emerge in recent days as the preferred social conservative and, if evangelical backers and home-school activists spontaneously coalesce behind him in the coming days, strategists say he could win.
