Cruz has potential in Iowa, but others stand in the way
Republican Ted Cruz has a good chance to earn one of the three tickets out of Iowa in February, but he’ll need to snatch caucus voters from Donald Trump and Ben Carson, Iowa political experts and strategists said.
Cruz has said he is playing hard to appeal to a large range of voters: Christian and evangelical conservatives, tea party members, libertarians and "moderates who are tired of losing."
But in the fight for Iowa’s Christian conservatives — the state’s largest Republican voting bloc — both Carson and Trump come in above Cruz for voters’ first- and second-choice votes, a recent Register analysis of Iowa's four main GOP voter lanes showed. The same goes for Iowa’s tea party voters.
“Cruz has got to concentrate and try and kill off some of the other Republicans that are running if he wants to get those percentages up,” said Steffen Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University.
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The Texas senator is ramping up in Iowa, using the infrastructure his campaign has built to hopefully solidify his standing among a large swath of voters. So far in October, Cruz has 22 public events in Iowa planned -- equal to all of his events in June, July, August and September combined, according to the Register’s candidate tracker.
Stepping up his Iowa game
“We are working vigorously to … earn the votes of tea party voters and conservatives, to earn the votes of evangelicals, to earn the votes of libertarians, even to earn the votes of moderates who are tired of losing, which is what happens every time we nominate a moderate,” Cruz said in an interview with the Register.
Cruz recently opened up an Iowa office, and he completed a three-day tour of the state this week. He told the Register his campaign now has eight paid staffers here.
“I do believe what I see with Cruz from an infrastructure standpoint, an enthusiasm-on-the-ground standpoint and resource standpoint, he’s positioning himself exceptionally well to be a real player in Iowa and beyond,” said Bob Vander Plaats, CEO of the Family Leader Foundation.
Political observers in Iowa noted Cruz has a strong ground game. Now, he just needs to execute on it.
“Sen. Cruz is doing exactly what he should be doing now: putting in the time, looking these activists in the eye, especially because the electorate that he is targeting … those are the types of caucusgoers who not only expect to meet the candidate they ultimately support, but expect to really get to know them, look into their soul,” said Matt Strawn, former Republican Party of Iowa chair.
Still, Cruz trying to appeal to multiple voter lanes pits him against a number of other candidates vying for the same factions. It’s a long list that includes Trump, Carson, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and possibly others.
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“You’ve got Bobby Jindal picking up a few people, you’ve got Huckabee picking up a few people and Marco Rubio picking up a few more people than that,” Schmidt said. “You go down the list and you’ll see those are all at Cruz’s expense.”
Strawn said Cruz will need to convince Christian conservatives and anti-establishment voters that he alone has what it takes to carry the fight beyond Iowa and New Hampshire.
“He needs to figure out how to unite the clans of the ideological right sooner rather than later,” Strawn said.
One way to do that, Schmidt said, would be to “drop some major heavy artillery” on the other candidates to push them out of the spotlight or the race.
“Cruz is bare-knuckle fighter. He doesn’t have any problems telling off the establishment leadership in the Senate … so he shouldn’t have any problems calling out some of the weaker Republicans and trying to undermine them,” Schmidt said.
Cruz, however, has typically refrained from calling out his 2016 competitors by name.
“I don’t think Republican primary voters are interested in the food fights that some of the debate moderators have been trying to generate. I don’t think they have any interest in politicians bickering like schoolchildren,” Cruz told the Register.
Arriving early, returning now
To succeed in Iowa and nationally, Cruz has said he’s relying on a grass-roots effort, referencing campaign chairs in all 171 counties of the first four voting states.
He has also touted his fundraising haul so far this year — $26.5 million from 360,000 contributors.
While Cruz was the first to come to Iowa as an official presidential candidate, he only showed up periodically throughout the summer.
“The strategy from Day One was to begin building incrementally and then after Labor Day to ramp up on staffing and expenditures. … We are running a national strategy to go the distance. A critical part of the strategy was limiting our burn rate in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and nationwide,” Cruz said.
The fact that Cruz is playing more heavily now in Iowa means more than if he had been here a lot all summer, said Chris Larimer, associate professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa.
“It’s more important that he’s here now, but it was important that he at least made an effort early on so that when he comes back he can say he’s back, he’s pushing hard,” Larimer said.
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Iowa GOP strategist Eric Woolson agreed, saying it's more important that candidates put in the time now.
“People this summer really didn’t want to commit,” Woolson said. “They had so many choices and they were reluctant to jump on board early. I don’t think that it did hurt (the Cruz campaign), especially having done a lot of that ground work that they did (early on).”
Will he be drowned out?
Even if he’s able to successfully organize supporters come Feb. 1, Cruz will face a tougher battle if the GOP field isn’t winnowed.
“As long as there’s all that noise, people are looking left and right and there are all these other candidates running around, and his message gets drowned out by all that noise,” said Schmidt, of Iowa State University.
The effect of that noise is mirrored in the polls. While Cruz has avoided large downward swings, unlike some other candidates, he’s stayed closer to the middle of the pack rather than the top tier.
Cruz is ranked sixth in national polls and fourth in Iowa polls, according to the RealClearPolitics rolling average. In both cases, he is polling behind Trump, Carson and Fiorina.
University of Iowa political scientist Tim Hagle said Cruz may be able to bide his time and see if anyone else drops out of the race.
“That’s going to be the key: Can you hang on long enough until some of the other people you’re competing with drop out and then people start paying attention to you?” Hagle said.
