Thursday, March 1, 2007
Lightning outside didn’t stop a political thunderstorm inside the Dole Institute of Politics Wednesday evening during the final installment of the 2007 Presidential Lecture Series.
David Yepsen, a political columnist for the Des Moines Register, was joined by Tom Rath, a Republican political strategist, and Jonathan Epstein, a Democratic political strategist, in a panel discussion called, “Winning the Nomination.” The panel focused on the Iowa Presidential Caucus and the New Hampshire Presidential Primary. Institute Director Bill Lacy mediated the discussion.
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Yepsen and Epstein estimated it will take $20 million to even enter and have a chance in the presidential race this year, while Rath said he thinks it would take more than $60 million to have a shot at winning the White House.
Yepsen joked with the crowd of more than 100 people about the one reason why the Iowa caucus continues to be a key battleground for presidential candidates.
“Uh, they’re first,” he said.
Rath tried to steal some of that thunder when he was asked what was so unique about the New Hampshire primary.
“It was first,” Rath said.
Yepsen said Iowa and New Hampshire fought back and forth beginning in the early 1970s about which state got to be the initial hot spot for deciding which candidates would advance in their parties and which ones would be left scrambling for their parties’ bid for presidential candidate.
He said the two states made a deal in 1983 that would designate Iowa as home of the first caucus and New Hampshire home of the first primary.
Rath, who is also the former Attorney General of New Hampshire, said the two campaign battlegrounds are important because the press continually tries to cover presidential elections much like it does a baseball game.
“New Hampshire tells you what the score is and it tells you very early,” he said.
Yepsen said that no candidate who had ever placed lower than third in an Iowa caucus had gone on to win his party’s ticket.
Epstein said he remembered working for John Kerry’s campaign in 2004 when he and other campaign workers made thousands of calls a night to voters in Iowa, trying to establish relationships with them.
“We tried to build as large a net as possible,” Epstein said.
The panelists also discussed what they called the compression of the presidential election calendar. Because of the diminishing amount of time between primary dates in recent elections, the panelists said candidates have to recover quickly from primary failures and move on to new ones.
Another topic was the amount of money presidential hopefuls need to even get their campaigns in motion.
Yepsen and Epstein estimated it will take $20 million to even enter and have a chance in the presidential race this year, while Rath said he thinks it would take more than $60 million to have a shot at winning the White House.
Governor Kathleen Sebelius said she attended the discussion because she has known Rath for 40 years and because Epstein and her son once worked on the same campaign.
Kansan staff writer Tyler Harbert can be contacted at tharbert@kansan.com.
— Edited by Jyl Unruh
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