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
Securing Christie's endorsement wasn't easy. Kerry and his wife, Teresa, both met with her while Christie got no chance to meet with Judith Steinberg, Dean's wife, who didn't show up in Iowa until just before the caucuses (which was, Dean now admits, a big mistake). "What was surprising, I think, of all this," Tom Vilsack recalls, was that John Edwards didn't pursue [an endorsement] by Christie as strongly as I would have thought." (Rob Bernsten, Iowa director for Edwards, said many attempts were made to meet with Christie Vilsack, but scheduling conflicts prevented it.)"I do think Christie's endorsement validated what people were thinking but were fearful to openly express because all the press, all of the buzz, was about Howard Dean," Tom Vilsack said. "But people said, 'Well, jeez, if Christie thinks he's OK, then I think he's OK, and I'm going to tell my neighbor I think he's OK,' and before you know it things were on a roll."
It wasn't quite that simple, of course. The Kerry campaign was ready for Christie Vilsack's endorsement, ready to have her make a robo-call to thousands of Iowans, ready to put her on the campaign bus, and ready with media interviews. And then a terrible thought struck John Norris: Mount Pleasant, where the Vilsacks vote in southeast Iowa (it is her hometown, and he was mayor there from 1987 to 1992) was not exactly Kerry territory. So what would happen if Kerry didn't get enough votes in Christie Vilsack's home precinct to earn a delegate? What would the press do with that? Norris called her and asked her to please line up a precinct captain for caucus night, so Kerry would have someone who could argue his case. Governor Vilsack, still officially neutral, felt he should not go to the precinct caucus, but his wife did. As it turned out, Kerry did earn delegates in Precinct One of Mount Pleasant but did not carry the precinct. Edwards won, with six delegates, followed by Kerry and Dean with five each. (Christie was later named an at-large delegate and will lead the Iowa delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.) Which is very Iowa. Think the voters of Precinct One might be impressed that the governor's wife had endorsed Kerry? Impressed enough to carry the precinct for him? Naw .
Wait, this is even more Iowa: In minute Cumming, Iowa, population 162 and home of Tom Harkin, you would think Harkin would be a very big deal, and he is. And you might also think that when a U.S. senator from your hometown endorses Howard Dean, that would carry the day for him there. Naw . "Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt, they all started talking about how Dean couldn't win, couldn't beat Bush," Harkin said. "And I started getting calls from friends, neighbors, regular caucus goers, saying, 'We got to win, Tom. Dean can't win. I'm going for Edwards. I'm going for Kerry.' This was a snapshot of what was happening around the state." Harkin went to Dean and told him that things were not looking good--no matter how many Ones he thought he had. "But he had no seasoned political people around him to feed him ideas," Harkin said. "You can't know everything yourself. And something is very wrong when someone's campaign manager is getting more publicity than the candidate. I went to Governor Dean, and I told him, 'I have an uneasy feeling and not just about Trippi but about everything.' He thanked me and that was it." In the end, Harkin managed to get a second-place finish in his precinct for Dean behind Kerry. "But I had to talk to two or three friends real hard," Harkin recalled, "to get Dean that."
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