White House candidates launch early Iowa invasion

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – More than two years before
Iowa’s caucuses kick off the 2008 White House race, the state
is already crowded with potential presidential hopefuls looking
for a head start on the campaign.

On most weekends, one or more prospective 2008 contenders
stop by to shake hands, help the local party raise money,
appear with local candidates or do anything else they can to
ingratiate themselves with activists and build buzz for a
potential campaign.

Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist was here last week.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, and Indiana Sen.
Evan Bayh, a Democrat, were here the week before. New York Gov.
George Pataki, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Nebraska Sen.
Chuck Hagel, all Republicans, will be here in the next week.

The story is the same in New Hampshire, the other
traditional campaign kick-off state, as a huge field of
contenders gears up for a wide open race that for the first
time since 1952 will not include an incumbent or a sitting vice
president.

The blizzard of early action has amazed even veteran Iowa
political activists accustomed to heavy attention for the
state’s presidential caucuses.

“This is the earliest and most intensive campaigning I’ve
seen, and it’s primarily because the race on both sides is so
wide open,” said Gordon Fischer, former chairman of the Iowa
Democratic Party. “No one wants to be the last to get started.”

That is why Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry
headlined a fund raiser for a Cedar Rapids city council
candidate earlier this month, less than a year after he lost
his bid to unseat President George W. Bush last November.

Kerry’s running mate, former Sen. John Edwards of North
Carolina, already has been to Iowa three times this year.
Pataki’s visit this week will be his third, including one he
made during the annual meeting of the National Governors
Association this summer.

That event attracted more than a half-dozen governors from
around the country pondering White House bids and anxious to
test the Iowa political scene.

In all, more than a dozen potential 2008 contenders have
popped through the state in the last two months. Many are
looking for worthy local candidates to support in local polls
with the money raised by their national political action
committees.

“They work the dinners and picnics for the local parties,
put money into various state legislative campaigns and build
grassroots support that way,” said Mark Smith, president of the
Iowa AFL-CIO.

“They figure if they support the local party and various
candidates in 2006, people will remember them in 2008,” he
said.

Notably absent has been New York Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton, the early Democratic leader in opinion polls for the
presidency who is running for re-election to the U.S. Senate in
2006.

Clinton, who says a decision on the White House race will
wait until after her Senate bid, has not been to either Iowa or
New Hampshire this year but has held fund raisers elsewhere for
local candidates from both states.

“She’s brought Iowa over to her place,” Fischer said.

Despite the heavy attention, the 2008 Iowa contests could
be different from earlier years in several respects.

Democrats, concerned by the state’s relative lack of
minorities, are considering calendar changes that would move
other states earlier in the selection process and could reduce
Iowa’s influence over the final choice of their candidate.

Republicans already have given Iowa the go-ahead for its
traditional kick-off slot.

Iowa’s Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack also is contemplating a
White House run, which could reduce the state’s impact even
more. The last time an Iowan ran for the White House,
Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin in 1992, no other Democrats
campaigned in the state as the caucuses neared.

Two Democrats, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Connecticut
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, skipped Iowa in 2004. A leading
Republican who might run, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, skipped
Iowa during his 2000 presidential race and still scored a huge
upset over Bush in New Hampshire a week later.