Campaign Journal

By Michael Duffy/Des Moines

For Richard Gephardt, the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines was a fine forum to show his strength. His campaign had invested heavily in Iowa, hoping that next February's caucuses would catapult him ahead of the pack, but recently he was passed in the polls there by Paul Simon and Michael Dukakis. So his well-honed organization planned to pack the hall and win a straw ballot at the Nov. 7 dinner, just as Jimmy Carter's supporters did twelve years ago. The problem: the Democratic Party has banned all such contests.

To get around the rule, officials in Gephardt's Iowa organization secretly enlisted a small-town newspaper publisher to serve as a front man and paid local residents $20 an hour in cash to distribute and collect the ballots. Keith Dinsmore, Gephardt's Iowa communications director, cut the deal with Ken Robinson, publisher of the tiny (circ. 1,500) Bayard News. At a late-afternoon dress rehearsal at the Starlite Village hotel, adjacent to the auditorium, Robinson sat quietly while Dinsmore instructed Drake University students and a handful of other paid recruits on how to poll the 8,000 Democrats expected for the event.

On the night of the dinner, Gephardt's local organizers seemed well positioned to win: they filled the auditorium with hundreds of red-capped supporters to counter reports of a stalled campaign. Gephardt admitted that he "would like to have a straw poll." Meanwhile his campaign's hirelings, posing as agents of the newspaper, handed out scores of buff-colored ballots to arriving Democrats.

That's when state party officials stepped in and ordered the police to disperse the unauthorized pollsters. Later a disappointed Dinsmore buttonholed a top Gephardt official inside the auditorium. "Our poll had to be aborted," he reported excitedly.

Last week the campaign denied any connection with the hapless caper. Gephardt Spokesman Don Foley said Dinsmore was an independent consultant, not a full-time campaign official. "Dinsmore was doing this on his own," insisted Foley. As for Dinsmore's $1,200-a-month stipend in September and October and a lofty title engraved on business cards, Foley replied, "We're going to take his business cards back."

Gephardt has personally adopted a more sensible tactic. He has begun using a ringing new stump speech with a no-fudging defense of his tough trade policies, and he has been attacking Simon and Dukakis directly on economic issues. Not only is it a more substantive way to revitalize his campaign, but it might prove more effective than his organization's botched poll scam.