THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602100347
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
Iowa holds its presidential caucuses Monday. That night, and again on Tuesday, you will hear who won and lost, who fell behind and who leaped ahead.
There are real issues being discussed in Iowa. You often won't hear about them from the media.
Reporters will breathlessly announce the results and their analysis, as if a great prophet had come down to personally choose among Republican candidates. Did Forbes score an upset? How big did Dole win? Was it big enough? What will the candidates need to do now ``going into New Hampshire,'' the primary next week?
Make no mistake, there is significance to this. When grown men such as Steve Forbes spend millions of dollars to influence the outcome of an event, at the very least it matters to them.
Still, this is Iowa. It's 97 percent white. More than half its population lives in the countryside. That is, it's less diverse and more rural than Virginia or the nation.
What should the rest of us, the 250 million other Americans not running for president, make of it?
Iowa is unlike Virginia and most other parts of the country, but for now it's the first full campaign event. So many Iowans personally meet the men running for president. They talk about jobs and farming and some other things that matter to them. And on Monday, they'll knock some of them out of the race.
``What do Northern Virginia or Virginia Beach have in common with the rural communities of Iowa?'' said Mark J. Rozell, a political scientist with the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. ``Very little. And yet those communities in Iowa will have a disproportionate influence on what choices Virginians will get to make.''
Like it or not, Iowa residents do have tremendous influence on the presidential race because they weed out candidates. Perhaps it's fitting that a farm state separates the wheat from the chaff.
``Iowa will have an effect on Virginia,'' said John McGlennon, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. ``What's important about Iowa is not who wins Iowa but who places in the last several ranks. It's a way of cutting down from eight or nine candidates to a more manageable field.''
In fact, who wins Monday may not indicate much:
Since 1972, when Iowa became the earliest caucus or primary held in the nation, its caucuses have only once picked the man who went on to win a contested nomination and the presidency - Jimmy Carter, the first to take Iowa seriously in 1976. No one has replicated that feat.
When you think about the choices Iowans make, remember that presidential politics there is in a time warp, closer to the whistle-stop campaigns of 40 or 50 years ago.
Iowans meet the candidates face to face. When they declare a preference in the caucuses, they've taken stock of these guys in person.
``It's retail politics at its best, where candidates go to the downtown grocery stores, the shopping malls, and literally into voters' living rooms, which is extraordinary in this media age,'' Rozell said. ``That's important information. Sincerity and credibility come across so much more genuinely than in 15-second or 30-second sound bites.''
Iowa voters have time to discuss the issues with candidates.
There is not much political landscape dividing the Republican candidates, but they are talking about taxes, welfare, abortion, immigration and other national concerns.
Many of them are talking about farm bills and agriculture prices, which only a handful of Virginians or Hampton Roads residents are interested in. Sen. Bob Dole pushed hard this week to get an important farm bill through Congress because he knew Iowa farmers would ask about it.
Are there only contrasts, then? Do Virginia and Iowa have nothing in common?
Virginia's GOP is similar to Iowa's in one respect. A University of Iowa study estimates that Christian conservatives make up 35 percent to 40 percent of the participants in the Iowa GOP caucuses. Rozell said he found exactly the same level of participation when he and a colleague surveyed Virginia Republican conventions in 1993 and 1994.
Finally, there's the traditional measure of self-interest, money. If Iowans ``vote their pocketbook,'' as the saying goes, it may not be that different from your pocketbook.
While Iowa is unlike Virginia and the nation in many ways, it is experiencing some of the same anxiety about jobs and wages. Iowa has rebounded from a long agricultural recession in the 1980s, but it has been deeply changed.
Between 1983 and 1993, Iowa's small towns lost more than 500 local grocery stores, 34 percent of what had been there; 43 percent of their menswear stores; and 300 hardware stores, or about one third. Those businesses have not come back.
Corporations cut their work forces and restructured in Iowa, like everywhere else, bringing anxiety and insecurity.
Ken Stone, an economics professor at Iowa State University, brings the story home: ``When I came here in 1976, I started out at $21,500, and I thought I was doing pretty well. But people told me that 18-year-olds out of high school were going to work for John Deere and making more than that.''
Now, Stone said, Deere has cut its payroll, and so have the big meat processing plants. That same 18-year-old probably will move to the city to find a good-paying job, and many older people who don't want to move work two jobs at lower wages.
``So there is that angst about why things are different now,'' Stone said.
One Virginian suggests you might not want to listen to the news reports Monday night. Robert Denton, head of the department of communications studies at Virginia Tech, said Virginians shouldn't pay attention to the results at all.
``What's useful from a citizen's standpoint is not the actual results, but it's getting to watch and hear these candidates,'' Denton said. ``What issues are emerging? What is the discussion? I wouldn't be quite as focused on the results.'' ILLUSTRATION: JOHN EARLE/The Virginian-Pilot
KEYWORDS: IOWA CAUCUS REPUBLICAN PARTY by CNB