Saturday, October 22, 2011

Update on Cain's Campaign in Iowa

Here's a good NRO profile of the new head of Herman Cain's campaign in Iowa:


On the heels of his first-place showing in Rasmussen’s latest poll of Iowa Republicans, HermanCain announced a new hire: Steve Grubbs, a top Hawkeye State consultant.
Grubbs, a former state GOP chairman, will direct Cain’s Iowa effort. He tells National Review Online that Cain will make a strong play for the upcoming caucuses...
“...I like the way the campaign has created a national strategy,” Grubbs says. “Cain has become one of the frontrunners. But between now and caucus night, we are going to help him continue to rise.”
...For months, Cain’s small Iowa team — four staffers in a Des Moines suburb — has been operating on a limited budget, stoking interest on Facebook and Twitter. Grubbs says work will continue, but expect more than social-networking outreach.
“It will not be different than how we did it for Bob Dole and Steve Forbes,” he says. “We’ll have lots of volunteers on the phone, find supporters, and keep them excited.”
Grubbs, who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 caucus victory and was a key staffer in Dole’s 1988 caucus win, says Cain’s campaign will “do the old-fashioned blocking and tackling.” His immediate goal is to “find our 1,000 or 1,500 precinct captains, the people who will put their names on paper to work on a cold night in January.”
That may take some time. Grubbs acknowledges that, so far, Cain hasn’t done much on the ground. But at this point in the contest, he says, most campaigns would rather have the enthusiasm of Cain’s thousands of supporters, not a couple well-staffed offices...
“That’s why I feel good about Herman Cain,” he says. “He has the enthusiasm in place, and we can generate the organization. The former, if it’s not there, is hard to create. But we are already catching up on the latter. We have both elements.”

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