The Real Romney (40 page)

But Romney was committed to his all-in strategy for Iowa. His internal polling showed that he remained strong in New Hampshire. If he could win in Iowa, New Hampshire would surely fall into place and the nomination would be his, according to his advisers. So Romney went on Fox News to chastise McCain and Giuliani for failing to compete in the straw poll, further raising expectations that he would win the caucuses. “If you can’t compete in the heartland, if you can’t compete in Iowa in August, how are you going to compete in January when the caucuses are held?” he asked. “And then how are you going to compete in November of ’08?”

He had set himself up for a fall. The “metrics” told him that he had won, that spending millions of dollars in Iowa to identify supporters was paying off.
The Des Moines Register
, however, told its readers in a front-page story that Romney’s straw-poll win was “a bit hollow.” Meanwhile, one of the nation’s best-known Christian conservatives, Bob Jones III, the chancellor of the fundamentalist school named for his family in South Carolina, endorsed Romney’s candidacy—but that, too, seemed a bit hollow. “As a Christian I am completely opposed to the doctrines of Mormonism,” Jones said when he announced the endorsement in October. “But I’m not voting for a preacher. I’m voting for a president.”

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omney could put off the questions no longer. From the time his candidacy had begun, he had hoped there would be no need to deliver a major speech about his Mormon faith. He thought he had dealt with the matter in countless interviews, and he worried that a big speech would draw more attention to the issue than ever. At the same time, he’d been collecting ideas and begun writing a draft. Finally, Huckabee’s rise left Romney with no option; the speech had to be delivered. The question was where. Months earlier, Mitt had met privately with former President George H. W. Bush and discussed everything from the rigors of running a campaign to the impact of family to the role of religion. Now Romney accepted an invitation to deliver one of the most important speeches of his life at Bush’s presidential library in Texas.

But what would he say? Some urged him to explain why he believes in Mormonism and to address directly charges by some evangelicals that it is a cult. Romney flatly rejected the idea. Instead, he followed the advice of Richard Land, the Baptist leader. The year before, Land had urged him to follow John F. Kennedy’s example—to simply defend the right of any American, of any faith, to seek the presidency. Land privately thought it was “a mistake” that Romney had waited a year to deliver the speech. But now that Romney was going ahead, he agreed to take a prominent seat at the Bush library.

On December 6, 2007, about a month before the Iowa caucuses, Romney walked to the podium and took his place in front of a line of American flags. Several television news networks cut into their broadcasts to provide live coverage, with anchors predicting that Romney’s words could make or break his campaign. But if listeners were hoping to hear about the Mormon doctrines he lived by, they were disappointed. He mentioned the word “Mormon” once and made a passing reference to the faith’s former president, Brigham Young. He said he believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind. Referring only obliquely to Mormonism’s belief that other religions are wrong and that Christ came to America, he said, “My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not basis for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.”

Romney assured voters that he would “serve no one religion” and would “serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.” He emphasized repeatedly that his candidacy should be seen as evidence of the nation’s belief in religious liberty. “There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.”

As he closed his speech, he concluded with the story of how Boston’s Samuel Adams had been at a meeting of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774 when there was disagreement among members of different faiths about whether to say a prayer. As Romney told the story, Adams rose to say that “he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot. And so together they prayed, and together they fought, and together, by the grace of God, they founded this great nation.”

At that, the audience at the presidential library rose to its feet, applauding loudly, even though the speech was not finished. Romney looked pleased, and his aides afterward said they had never heard him speak with such passion. The reviews were good. Glenn Beck, who was then a host at CNN (and is himself a Mormon) told the nationwide audience that Romney had hit a “home run.” But the glow did not last long, at least not in Iowa, where a candidate’s views on religion are so important. A few days after Romney’s speech,
The New York Times
published an article that described an upcoming magazine story on Huckabee. At one point in an interview with the
Times
writer, Huckabee seemed to go out of his way to stoke questions about Romney’s religion. “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” he asked. The newspaper, in reporting Huckabee’s rhetorical question, said that the authoritative
Encyclopedia of Mormonism
referred to Jesus as the son of God and Satan as a fallen angel, not “as brothers.”

Romney was outraged by Huckabee’s comment and sought to turn it to his advantage. “I think attacking someone’s religion is really going too far. It’s just not the American way, and I think people will reject that,” Romney said. But Huckabee was the man of the moment. Though Romney’s speech was generally well received, it had been delivered when Huckabee was rising in the polls. A withering dispute continued within Romney’s campaign about how to respond to the Huckabee threat. Castellanos, the leader of Romney’s original media team, urged a strong attack on Huckabee. A raft of opposition research—“oppo” in campaign lingo—had been prepared. One file detailed Huckabee’s support for raising taxes. Another bulged with documents about Huckabee’s support as Arkansas governor for paroling a convicted rapist. After a parole board had released the rapist, he had raped and murdered a woman and been convicted in 2003.

As Castellanos made his case to go on the attack, a member of Romney’s second media team, Stuart Stevens, played down Huckabee’s importance. “Why the sudden focus on Huckabee?” Stevens wrote to Castellanos and other campaign officials in an October 23, 2007, e-mail. “Is there any reason to believe everything has changed from a week ago or two weeks ago, when we got our data. We are reacting as if there was some new development in the race. . . . Let’s don’t suddenly get in the mindset that our Iowa mission is to kill Huckabee.”

But that was the mind-set of Castellanos, who had been through many campaigns that had risen or fallen on such decisions. He ordered the production of an ad that attacked Huckabee’s parole record. It was envisioned as one of the most powerful spots of the campaign, a more empathetic version of the infamous “Willie Horton” ad that had helped sink the 1988 presidential campaign of Democrat Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Instead of using a heavy-handed narrator, Castellanos and his team tracked down and filmed the mother of a woman murdered by a convicted rapist who had been released during the Huckabee administration. The ad showed the mother holding her daughter’s locket and accusing Huckabee of having supported the rapist’s release. The emotional words of the mother were accompanied by a frame that said, “Mike Huckabee granted 1,033 pardons and commutations.”

Other Romney advisers feared that running the ad would backfire. It elevated Huckabee’s importance in the race and might turn off some voters, they argued. The final decision was left to Romney. Concerned that the attack would seem desperate and create sympathy for Huckabee, he killed the ad. Instead, the Romney campaign aired what it considered a “soft” spot. Titled “Choice: The Record,” it began by comparing Romney and Huckabee favorably, praising them as “two former governors, two good family men, both prolife, both support a constitutional amendment protecting traditional marriage.” The difference, according to the ad, was that Romney had cracked down on illegal immigrants (a claim undercut by a report that he had hired a landscape firm that employed illegal immigrants) while Huckabee supported more lenient immigrant policies. The ad infuriated some Romney advisers, who considered it only a glancing blow at Huckabee and a questionable one at that.

By the time the Iowa campaign was over, Romney would spend nearly $10 million, much of it on ads and microtargeting. That is a stunning amount for Iowa and about ten times what Huckabee wound up spending. It greatly diminished the resources available for fights to come, especially in South Carolina and Florida. The financial advantage was so overwhelming that Huckabee was initially given little chance to win. Indeed, a Huckabee aide said the campaign was so short of cash that it couldn’t afford the $30,000 cost of buying a state Republican Party list of people who had voted in the previous caucuses, the bare minimum information needed by most campaigns. But Huckabee had an unexpected ally. A Colorado-based political consultant named Patrick Davis, who would not set foot in Iowa during the campaign, orchestrated an independent $1 million effort designed to boost Huckabee and hurt Romney. Davis, who had been a political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, believed that Romney’s flip-flop on abortion disqualified him. He set up a telephone operation to conduct what was called a “political survey.” The operation was massive, with calls to 850,000 Iowa households—twice—in the days before the caucuses. The survey was known in the political business as a “push poll,” in which questions are designed to influence opinion, not just gauge it.

One question went like this: “Does the fact that of the leading five candidates for president, only Governor Huckabee has always been pro-life and made protecting the lives of the unborn and the vulnerable in our society a top priority throughout his public life make you want to learn more about Governor Huckabee?” After the “survey” was finished, the listener was told that more information was available at “TrustHuckabee.com.” The Romney campaign was outraged but could do nothing to stop the calls. Inside the Romney campaign, meanwhile, there was frustration that no similar independent group was stepping up to promote Romney. “We were waiting for some kind of help from somebody, and it never seemed to arrive,” said Brian Kennedy, Iowa’s former Republican Party chairman, who oversaw Romney’s campaign in the eastern part of the state.

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omney’s troubles in Iowa were having potentially disastrous repercussions in New Hampshire. Romney raced back to the Granite State, where his campaign’s overconfidence was looking increasingly ill founded. Romney’s latest strategy was to blast McCain for supporting an immigration bill that Romney said would let “everybody who came here illegally . . . stay forever.” But Romney was under attack by two of the state’s most important newspapers. The
Concord Monitor
, which had a more liberal bent, ran an editorial calling Romney a “phony” and urging voters to back someone else. Though Romney’s campaign dismissed the
Monitor
’s editorial policy as liberal, it was unprepared for the endorsement of McCain by the influential and reliably conservative
Union Leader
, which blasted what it called Romney’s untrue attacks on the Arizonan’s record.

McCain promptly authorized a devastating ad that cited the
Monitor
’s characterization of Romney as a “phony” and quoted from a
Union Leader
editorial that said, “Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that. . . . Mitt Romney has not.” Romney seemed rattled. The former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, the owner of a New Hampshire lakefront home, was in danger of losing everything on what should have been home turf. McCain could not resist sending a zinger Romney’s way. “I know something about tailspins,” the former Navy pilot said, “and it’s pretty clear Mitt Romney is in one.”

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omney could stay in New Hampshire no longer. His campaign in Iowa seemed to be imploding, even as his staff remained publicly optimistic, convinced that the “metrics” predicted a victory. They were openly dismissive of Huckabee and his organization. A few days before the Iowa caucuses, a writer for the conservative
National Review
—which had given Romney its valuable endorsement—asked Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom to assess the contest.

“We’re going up against a loose confederation of fair taxers, and home schoolers, and Bible study members, and so this will be a test to see who can generate the most bodies on caucus day,” Fehrnstrom responded.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those groups?” the
National Review
writer asked.

“Not that there’s anything wrong, but that’s just a fact,” Fehrnstrom replied. “That’s just where he has found his support. I have a theory about why Mike Huckabee holds public events in Iowa like getting a haircut or going jogging, or actually leaving Iowa and going to California to appear on the Jay Leno show. It’s because he doesn’t have the infrastructure to plan events for him. And when he does do events in Iowa, he goes to the Pizza Ranch, where you have a built-in crowd, so you don’t have to make calls to turn people out. We’re very proud of the organization we have built in Iowa.” Huckabee’s national campaign manager, Chip Saltsman, was as bemused as he was angered. “Eric’s quote just shows the disrespect they had for us,” Saltsman said. But Saltsman was happy to have his candidate underestimated.