Thursday, Dec. 15 2011 5:33PM
Tales from Iowa: On the campaign trail
By John Beaudoin, jbeaudoin@lsjournal.com
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ReprintRemember the name John Cox? You know, the gun advocate and first Republican in the presidential race of 2008?
No, doesn’t ring a bell, eh? Well, he really didn’t poll very well, participated in virtually none of the debates in 2007 and his campaign lost all steam after the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. How about James Gilmore? Tommy Thompson? Christopher Dodd? Mike Gravel?
Still nothing?
Well, the 2008 campaign was filled with a lot of little known politicians and pie-in-the-sky hopes as George W. Bush was term-limited and the battle was on for the White House.
For the record, John Cox was the man from Chicago, a fiscal conservative, who traveled to all 99 counties in Iowa pushing for support leading up to the important Iowa Caucus.
Cox was the first of 19 candidates I interviewed in 2007 leading up to that caucus, all from my tiny towns of Logan and Woodbine.
Cox and I met at the previously written about Bunkhouse Café. And while he seemed a long shot for that nomination, I suppose I believed anything was possible at the time.
Gilmore, Thompson, Dodd and Gravel never got much traction, the former two as little-known Republicans, the latter Democrats with long political histories but no real footing to run for such a large office.
Then there were the bigger names that made an immediate and direct impact in Iowa and the national polls, people like Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Giuliani was the only candidate in the bunch whose campaign never responded to a single interview request from my newspapers.
The rest (save Clinton, but I eventually got her) were relatively easy to track down and more than happy to answer questions from my tiny little newspapers.
All of them stormed through Iowa and did the local café and livestock auction run-throughs.
I remember seeing Biden, Obama and Edwards all at the same livestock yard in Dunlap, Iowa.
Each had a different message, a different crowd and a different feel as a candidate. I remember Biden pointed to me at one point during his speech and noted something would be off the record. I had to remind him that in Iowa – in front of 150 farmers – nothing was off the record.
The best part of covering the presidential election in 2007 and 2008 in Iowa was the access to the candidates. Sure, it was purely access given at a time when each of them was racing to all four corners looking for support. Still, it was access nonetheless and most of the candidates understood how important that contact was to the overall campaign.
In end, I may have been a little hard on Clinton and, of course, I had no idea what shenanigans John Edwards was up to on the campaign trail.
But it was a fun 18 months as a newspaperman. One I hope every journalist and political watcher will get to enjoy again in 2011-12.
John Beaudoin is the publisher of the Lee’s Summit Journal. To comment, call 816-282-7001 or e-mail jbeaudoin@lsjournal.com
