Turning Point
After nearly everyone had written him off, John Kerry turned a limping campaign into a force that couldn't be beat. Here's How
"You have a solid lock on a distant third," Vilsack replied.
"He was alarmingly straightforward," Ricca recalled later. "We were a distant third."
There wasn't much else to say. Whouley mentioned the vice presidency--"Hey, play your cards right, you know you could be the VP," he reportedly said--but everybody laughed. "When you're 22 points down in the polls," Ricca said, "you are not making serious offers of the vice presidency." Both men told Vilsack they couldn't disagree with his analysis of Kerry's status, but the campaign was building, and eventually Kerry was going to win. At least Vilsack didn't laugh in their faces. "The door was left open," Ricca said, "for continued discussions."
Vilsack put it to Crawford more directly. "Without AFSCME and without Harkin, there is no way I can do it to Dick Gephardt," he said. It was not as though Gephardt had a chance for victory, however. In a long interview after the campaign, Vilsack said, "As far as Dick Gephardt was concerned, I love the man, I think he's just a terrific guy. But his organization, his structure, was no bigger than it was in 1988 minus whoever was no longer around. OK? It didn't grow." Vilsack was happy not to endorse anyone. There was no need to offend Gephardt and AFSCME to endorse a guy who was a distant third.
But then things began to change. Vilsack had his own sources of political information, and they were telling him that Kerry's organization was stronger than it looked and that Dean's was weaker. There was a small hint of Dean's weakness that came not from a political source but from the Chicago Tribune . It is difficult for the media to determine how good a political campaign's organization really is before Election Day. If a campaign says it has well-trained precinct captains, knowledgeable county chairmen, and a huge get-out-the-vote effort all ready to go, this is taken pretty much at face value. But two Tribune reporters, Flynn McRoberts and Jeff Zeleny, decided to test how good the Dean organization really was and were immediately rewarded. Though the Tribune buried the story on Page 15, it turned out to be one of the few alerts in the media that the Dean campaign might not be a juggernaut after all. On December 4, McRoberts drove to Atlantic, Iowa, about 82 miles west of Des Moines. Atlantic, population 7,200, is the county seat of Cass County, and the Dean website had promised a "meet up" in all of Iowa's 99 counties that evening. The Cass County meet up was supposed to be at a restaurant called the Farmer's Kitchen, and it was supposed to be hosted by Dean admirer Forrest Teig. Nobody showed up. The Tribune tracked down Teig, who was sitting at home. He said he knew nothing about the event. Then he said of the Dean organization: "It's a group of amateur people working on the campaign." McRoberts and Zeleny wrote: "The gap between the campaign's organizational boasts and the reality . . . illustrates the central challenge facing Dean less than seven weeks before the January 19 caucuses." Their report also pointed out that enthusiastic supporters were one thing and "organizational know-how" was quite another. The Dean campaign, the article said, "is a work in progress." Few in Iowa probably saw the story, but one who did was Tom Vilsack. And he was genuinely shocked. "Nobody showed up!" Vilsack said. " Nobody showed up! And that led me to believe that the passion, the commitment was not as deep as it appeared. There were people from outside the state that felt passionately about Governor Dean, but it did not yet translate into people in the state getting there, making the commitment, and the organization wasn't as strong."
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