And Now It Begins--Sort Of

Iowa is the first revealing, if confusing, test of the campaign.

I've never seen so many politicians in my life," said the bewildered newsstand lady in downtown Des Moines. Understandably, she could not begin to keep straight all the presidential candidates who were hurrying past. Her sentiments were shared by other lowans, whose votes have never been so energetically courted in the history of their state. To win or make a good showing in the Jan. 21 party caucuses--the first real test of the long presidential campaign--all the candidates of both parties are crisscrossing the frozen state, landing their small aircraft in near-blinding snowstorms, navigating icy roads fit only for hockey practice. They wolf down chilling chicken, cold "hot barbecue," undunkable doughnuts and crumbling cookies at countless gatherings in tiny towns and villages. They tout their talents at press conferences, talk shows, town meetings, union halls, Rotary Clubs and American Legion posts. Their faces beam forth from television and newspaper ads. Former Republican National Chairman Mary Louise Smith sums up the grim reality: "Iowa has become the new New Hampshire."

Jimmy Carter can be thanked --if that is the word--for Iowa's-- prominence. Nobody paid much attention to the state's early and unusual caucus system until Jimmy Who? decided to blitz the state in 1976 and thus get a jump on his opponents. The press, awakened to this event perhaps by Carter himself, proclaimed the Georgian's Iowa results a surprising victory, and a bandwagon started rolling. Actually, Carter did not win the Iowa caucuses four years ago at all: "Uncommitted" did. Carter got 29.1% of the delegates, Senator Birch Bayh 11.4%, former Senator Fred Harris 9%, Congressman Morris Udall 5.8%, and the remaining vote was scattered among also-rans. No matter. By the time of the National Convention in July, Carter uncommitteds had sorted themselves out and he had 25 of the state's 47 delegates.

This year's presidential hopefuls would like to pull a Carter in Iowa or, failing that, do well enough so that their campaigns are not derailed. Victory is as much a matter of perception as it is of votes. The television networks and the press will provide national coverage and instant analysis. In the maneuvering preceding the caucuses, all the candidates are playing down their chances, an obvious ploy designed to make whatever vote they get look as good as possible. Sums up G.O.P. Candidate George Bush, one of the top players: "The action begins in Iowa. It's where everything starts for everybody."

The system is probably the closest to the grass roots that the mind of man could devise. The 2,531 precinct caucuses that will be held in private homes, public halls, churches, fire stations and schoolrooms throughout the state are only the first step in a four-stage sequence that eventually selects Iowa's delegates to the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Independents can participate in either party's caucus.

The actual process is charmingly informal and can be frustratingly inconclusive. Voters at the Democratic caucuses indicate their choices by gathering in different parts of the room, including an area for "uncommitted." Any candidate who has 15% or more of the vote in the room is entitled to at least one delegate to the county convention, the next step in the sequence. Backers of a candidate who gets less than 15% are asked to transfer their support to another candidate or "uncommitted." As for the Republicans, they will take a straw poll at the caucuses as part of their process for selecting delegates for the next round. What is more, the delegates in sturdily independent Iowa can change their allegiances right up to the time that the final deciding vote is cast at the National Convention.

The secret to success in this complicated political game is organization. A voter has to be highly motivated to leave his home, brave the inevitable snowstorm and then spend hours wrangling with his neighbors. While nearly 30% of a party's registered voters turn out for primaries in other states, only 10% are expected to show up for the Iowa caucuses, about 50,000 Democrats and 45,000 Republicans. Says Ralph Brown, former executive director of the Iowa Republican Central Committee: "Going to the polls doesn't take much of a commitment. Going to a caucus does."

The Democrats will decide between Carter and Ted Kennedy. In August a poll showed that they favored Kennedy over Carter 49% to 26%. But a survey taken in early January indicated that 57% would vote for Carter, 24% for Kennedy. Still, the outcome could depend in large part on events abroad. Any improvement, in the status of the hostages in Iran, for example, would obviously help the President; a continued stalemate might hurt. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan automatically improved Carter's standing; in a crisis, Americans tend to rally to a President. Carter's decision to impose a grain embargo, on the other hand, cost him some of the support he had gained.

Though Carter is unwilling to leave the White House to barnstorm the state 1976-style, he is much better organized in Iowa than he was four years ago. His campaign has about 30 full-time paid operators and some degree of organization in each of the 99 counties. His Des Moines headquarters, which was a mere storefront in 1976, now occupies an entire floor of the same building. A phone bank is constantly buzzing with calls to supporters.

Carter has spent almost an hour every day for the past month phoning backers in Iowa, and invitations to White House functions have been pouring into the state. Says Floyd Gillotti, deputy auditor of Polk County, who wears a gold tie clip with the presidential seal and Carter's signature: "Who would have thought a son of an immigrant born on the southwest side of Des Moines would pick up the phone and have the White House calling?" Says Steven Schier, a political scientist who has written about the Iowa caucuses: "There's a lot of residual loyalty to Carter because Iowans are proud of the fact that they made him in 1976."

To fill in for the absent President, Vice President Walter Mondale, Rosalynn and Chip Carter, Muriel Humphrey and a variety of Cabinet officials have been visiting the state. Last week Rosalynn gave a series of speeches to try to offset the presumed unfavorable reaction to the grain embargo among Iowa's farmers. Dressed in knee-high boots to blunt the biting wind, Rosalynn would begin: "Jimmy sends his love and wishes he could be in Iowa." As for the grain embargo, she assured her audiences: "Jimmy is going to make absolutely sure the farmers aren't going to suffer. We want the Russians to suffer."

The turnouts for Rosalynn were middling and the reaction to the grain embargo at her meetings was mixed. Said Ron Pfiefer, a social worker in Council Bluffs: "It's more important that he's seen doing something than nothing." Randy Anson, a contractor, disagreed: "It's bound to hurt him. You take someone's bread away and he screams like a chicken with his wing torn off."

Making his fifth foray into Iowa last week, Ted Kennedy was trying to regain his credibility as a candidate after his early fumbles. Hopping around the state with his cavalcade of little planes capable of landing on short strips, he seemed more poised than in some of his earlier poor showings. And he drew crowds. In his speeches, Kennedy accused Carter of losing control at home and abroad: "People are wondering why we lurch from crisis to crisis. People are wondering why we are seeing our embassies burned, hostages being taken, Cuban troops in Africa, Soviet troops in Cuba, Soviet troops in Afghanistan." But the attack on Carter was somewhat out of character for Kennedy, since he has been one of the Senate's most outspoken doves on foreign and defense policies. While campaigning in Iowa, Mondale charged that Kennedy was motivated by the "politics of the moment," while the President had to decide "whether to do the political thing or the thing that best serves this nation. Carter put the country first."

Like the President, Kennedy is making full use of his family; 23 members of the clan have visited the state. Joan, who accompanied Ted for the first time on his campaign swing last week, was looking healthier and more relaxed than in previous months. The campaign rests to a large extent on the early draft-Kennedy movements that were started mainly by union members. Iowa's biggest union, the United Auto Workers, is supporting the Senator, though it backed Carter in 1976. Explains Sheet Metal Worker Stan Kolbe: "Carter has let us down." Still, the Kennedy forces feel they are out-organized by Carter. "It is a race against the clock," says Bob Miller, a top Kennedy aide in the state. "We are doing six months' work in two."

California Governor Jerry Brown trails far behind the front runners. He was badly hurt when the Des Moines debate with Carter and Kennedy was canceled because the President felt he could not get that visibly involved in domestic politics. Appearing in the same forum with his opponents would have given Brown exposure in a state where he is little known. But last week he flew through a snowstorm in his vintage 1942 DC-3 for a reception in Des Moines. It was a typical Brown crowd of the beautiful and the bizarre. "I don't know where some of these people come from," said one woman.

Dressed in a meticulously tailored three-piece suit with a muffler tossed around his neck as though he were a Princeton undergraduate, Brown presented himself as an alternative to discontented voters. He said that if people do not want to vote for him, they should at least stay uncommitted. Though he has little organization in Iowa, he is supported by some political zealots, and they tend to go to caucuses. Local politicians estimate that Brown might pick up from 5% to 10% of the vote.

Among Republicans, Ronald Reagan is still the front runner, and he looked presidential indeed as he swept into a rally last week in Davenport. The high school band even struck up Hail to the Chief. Yet an ironic commentary was unintentionally offered by a banner stretching across the balcony. It read: WELCOME, DUTCH [Reagan's nickname when he was a sportscaster in Iowa] THERE'S NO DEBATE, REAGAN IS NUMBER ONE.

But there was a debate, and Reagan failed to show while the other six G.O.P. candidates put on an impressive performance. "Republicans were tickled to death with the debate," says Howard Baker, one of the participants. "It made the party as a whole look good." Reagan was all the more conspicuous by his absence. That absence, proclaimed the Quad City Times, was "a cowardly attempt to maintain a lead in the polls."

If that was Reagan's strategy, it had clearly backfired--at least for the moment. In December a poll by the Des Moines Register-Tribune showed Reagan the choice of 50% of the G.O.P. voters. George Bush was favored by 14%, John Connally by 12% and Howard Baker by 11%. Last week's survey indicated that Reagan's support had been cut to 26%. Some 58% said they felt that his absence from the session had hurt him. Bush rose to 17%, Baker to 18%, and Connally got 10%.

During and after the debate, Reagan was derided by Connally, who cracked: "I guess I don't know much about Reagan's positions because you can't get much on the three-by-five cards that he has used for decades to make speech notes." Reagan shot back later: "[Connally] must have been living under a rock." Reagan, 68, brushed aside questions about his age. One retort: "I'm really not that old. They mixed up the babies at the hospital."

Bush has spent so much time in Iowa that some people think he lives there. He has logged a total of 27 days in the state, compared with Carter's 17 in the 1976 campaign. Bush has the best organization of the Republicans: 18 full-time and 80 part-time workers have pinpointed the Republican voters likely to attend the caucuses and have given them kits instructing them where to go and how to vote. Bush also has more endorsements than any of his rivals, and there are indications that he has strength in the state's more populated areas.

Combining an ease of manner with a touch of the patrician Yankee and an impressive intellectual grasp, Bush does not excite his audiences; he reassures them. Emphasizing his considerable foreign affairs experience (CIA director, Ambassador to the U.N. and China), he criticizes Carter for overemphasizing human rights and calls instead for a policy based on strategic interests. Says he: "I sense that people are frustrated about foreign affairs. It is not a frantic cry but more of a muted feeling about how to restore respect for the U.S." He admits that the caucuses will be a "first test of whether organization can overcome lack of name identification. I have to do well in Iowa to get forward momentum to go into New Hampshire and then down South."

Baker and Connally also have been following a catch-up strategy. Lacking the organization of the top two, they are conducting a lavish media blitz aimed at bringing out as big a caucus vote as possible. "The more people who turn out, the more it helps me," says Baker. But that is a strategy better calculated to work in a primary than in a caucus. Connally and Baker are both also trying to shake as many hands as possible, but they are several thousand behind Bush. As Dick Redman, Baker's Iowa campaign chairman, puts it: "In Iowa, folks who haven't spent 15 minutes with a candidate feel jilted."

Back in the pack, Robert Dole, Phil Crane and John Anderson may draw more votes than expected because of their performances in the debate. Anderson stood out by forthrightly telling people things they do not want to hear: the grain embargo was justified, gas should be taxed 50-c- a gal. Yet Anderson has hardly bothered to campaign in Iowa. "The caucuses don't mean anything," he says. "It is New Hampshire that counts." And that is where he spent last week. But all the other presidential hopefuls would not trade snowbound Iowa for a South Seas paradise until the votes are counted on Jan. 21.

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