Ames Straw Poll 2007

Well, the votes are counted (despite some technical difficulties), the tents folded the spinmeisters are spinning, the pundits are punditing & I am rested & recovered from all the fun & excitement of the Straw Poll.

I would highly recomend that the next time arround (not until 2015 God willing!) when the party is looking for its next president that if at all possible, GO!!!!! There is nothing like it, it is part political rally, it is part carnival & all fun.

I will get to what I see the results as saying & comment on some of the other comments I've read, but 1st I'd like to talk about the whole experience.

For those (few) who don't know, the event was held on the South East Campus of Iowa State University in Ames, IA. It took place in the area surrounding Hilton Coliseum & Stephens Auditorium. Each campaign was given an area to set up a tent for its supporters (& others) to visit, eat & hear speeches, be entertained. There were also an area set aside for booths for a variety of orginizations. & there was also an area set up with carnival rides. & at various times there were groups of Romney or Ron Paul supporters marching.

I went down on 1 of the Brownback buses. When we got there, the 1st thing we did was to go to a polling place to vote. The whole process ran very smoothly & despite the long lines we got through a lot faster than expected.

To vote you had to have a ticket & an ID that proved you were eligible to vote in Iowa. Things were set up to guarentee you could only vote once. They had a reader to scan the magnetic bar on the back of Iowa licenses, IDs etc so that the info could be entered into the computer. This was to prevent you from going to another site & voting again. The ticket was also scanned & punched to keep it from being reused by someone else. (Makes sense. After all, this is part fundraiser for the Iowa GOP.) The ballot was an opti-scan ballot. I didn't have any problems, but some of my friends did have problems with the machine they fed it into accepting the ballot. (A sign of things to come?) Everyone had to also do a thumbprint, similar to the proceedure in Iraq's elections. The ink is a permanent ink that was another means of preventing double voting.

Then we went to Sen. Brownback's air-conditioned tent for Famous Dave's Barbecue, music & speakers like Norma McCorvey (Roe of Roe v Wade) telling about why they supported Sen. Brownback. While there, I was interviewed by a reporter for World Magazine. I was asked about why I supported Sen. Brownback for an article that will appear in a week or so.

After listening to a few speakers I took of to check the booths. & there were quite a few. I got to most of them. They were mostly issue advocacy. There was 1 that was promoting getting Alan Keyes to run. C-Span had its bus.

The advocacy groups included Fair Tax, The Arab American Institute, The ONE Campaign (poverty), Everyday America (voter education), ED in 08 (education), Iowa Family Policy Center, & the National Center for Constitutional Studies. Political news groups that had booths were Iowa Politics & Campaigns & Elections magazine. The Iowa Right to Life Committee had a petition to encourage the Republican Party to stay Pro-Life.

Probably the most unique booth was that for My Political Pets. What it is is a means of raising funds for animal shelters under the concept of "What if our pets could vote?"

Unfortunately, because of the time our buses were leaving, I didn't have time to check out the other campaign tents. Still, I thought everything was well organized. I only ran into 1 person who was a bit rude in trying to sway me towards his candidate.

The results:
1. Mitt Romney – 31.5% - 4516

2. Mike Huckabee – 18.1% - 2587

3. Sam Brownback – 15.3% - 2192

4. Tom Tancredo – 13.7% - 1960

5. Ron Paul – 9.1% - 1305

6. Tommy Thompson — 7.3% - 1039

7. Fred Thompson – 1.4% - 203

8. Rudolph W. Giuliani – 1.3% - 183

9. Duncan Hunter – 1.2% - 174

10. John McCain - 0.7% - 101

11. John Cox - 0.3% - 41

As is well known by now, there was some problems with a voting machine. This was unfortunate as there was already some controversy about the fact that the Story County Auditor was a supporter of 1 of the candidates & might rig the machines. I personally doubt that she would, because if it came out she did, then it would do almost irreperable damage to the Straw Poll. There was an auditing process that could have been better. It only confirmed the number of ballots, not that the Diebold machines recorded them accurately. With all the problems in recent elections this glitch will, unfortunately, give plenty of fodder to those who want to question the validity of the Straw Polls existence. Attendance being down will add more fuel to the fire.

The 1st official casualty of the Straw Poll is Gov. Tommy Thompson who pulled out on Sunday. I say official because, despite what they claimed, Giuliani & McCain were already casualties. They pulled out to save face. Unfortunately, that gave the Straw Poll denigrators more ammo. They are wrong. The Straw Poll WILL be back.

It is interesting to also see the way different people are seeing Brownback's results. Some bloggers are seeing his coming in 3rd as a sign he should pull out. Yet, Dave Yepsen of The Des Moines Register sees it differently. He says: "Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback finished second and third. Those finishes should give their campaigns a boost. Historically, the eventual GOP nominee comes from the ranks of the top three finishers in the straw poll."

I've already made a couple comments but here is how I see things:

1. Romney & the media are playing it as a win. But it wasn't the big win it should have been, esp with Giuliani & McCain sitting out. The impression I had was that he was going to get closer to 50%. That is until a few days ago when the comment was made that he was going to pull back on getting people there. At that point I began wondering "Why?" & my thought is that the campaign realized that it wasn't going to do as well as expected & they needed some cover to make it look like a failure was still a victory. & since he is a "media annointed frontrunner" they would go along.

2. I thought Duncan Hunter would do better than he did & that Ron Paul would do worse. In fact eaCh ended up where I thought the other would. Even though I knew it wouldn't deter Ron Paul if he didn't do this good, this IS definitely a big boost for his campaign. & even though there may be some "flakes" as they are called supporting him, most of his supporters are normal everyday people who like much of what he says. Hunter will be following Gov. Thompson's lead in a short while.

3. I've already seen the claim that it was Anti-Catholic bias by evangelicals that hurt Brownback. I disagree. As a supporter of Brownback, I am aware of how much he has reached out to the evangelicals. I see the Anti-Catholic bias as being a very part in things. Yes some went with Huckabee for that but not many. Besides both percentage wise & vote wise, they weren't that far apart to be a reason.

4. Ditto for the claim that he lost the social conservatives.

5. I expected Brownback to come in 2nd (hoping) or 3rd so I am happy with the results. It would have been nice for him to have beaten Romney. In a way Huckabee & Brownback did since, as I said, he didn't really do as well as was expected.

6. Tancredo was in the top 4. No surprize there. He came in about where I expected.

7. Pay no attention to those naysayers who are burying the Straw Poll. They are the same ones (mostly) who have tried to do the same to the Iowa Caucuses. & look at how right they were about that. Iowa will continue to play the roll it does because of who we are, average Americans who work hard, who study the issues & know what we are doing. We aren't the elites, we do represent the average American. That qualifies us to be 1st in the nation.

8. John Cox did exactly as I expected. He showed up over a year ago to announce he was running, & immediately dropped off the face of the Earth. He will probably be dropping out soon also.

9. The reality is Giuliani & McCain won't do good in Iowa even at the caucuses. That is the real reason they pulled out, to prevent a fiasco that is going to happen in Iowa sooner or later. McCain left too many hard feelings from 8 yrs ago. & doing a repeat this yr didn't help. & McCain-Feingold is another albatross arround his neck As for Rudy, take away 9-11 & you have someone who is so out of touch with Iowa values. & his dropping out didn't help either.

Well, on to the caucuses, whenever they finally end up occuring.