ANKENY, Iowa -- Bobby Morehead sweet-talked his pregnant wife, loaded up on Mountain Dew to stay awake and then drove more than 14 hours in shifts from Georgia with a nephew so they could volunteer here in U.S. Rep. Ron Paul's campaign.
Morehead is among many out-of-towners with a Southern drawl who are pouring into this state for Tuesday’s Republican caucuses. Newt Gingrich’s campaign is expecting at least 30 Georgians to show up. Mitt Romney’s campaign is also relying on Peach State volunteers.
But the candidates also are attracting help from many other states. Gov. Rick Perry is reportedly getting a boost here from hundreds of people from his home state of Texas.
These volunteers are traveling here at their own expense. They are taking time off from their jobs. They gave up their New Year’s holiday. They are missing a lot of football bowl game-watching (though many Georgians slipped away to a local sports bar for a few hours Monday to watch the University of Georgia play in the Outback Bowl).
It's all to do some pretty unglamorous work: putting up campaign signs in the bone-chilling cold, lining up people to speak for their candidates at caucus meetings, and making cold calls from campaign offices tucked away in drab office parks.
Their reasons for traveling so far to be here are simple: They are passionate about their candidates and see the campaign work as civic and solemn duty. None of this is unusual. Iowans say they are accustomed to visitors invading their state every four years.
“I don’t think an Iowan bats an eye over it,” said Craig Robinson, editor-in-chief of The Iowa Republican and a former political director for the state’s Republican Party. “If they are willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty a little bit, I think it is great.”
Promises of a nice anniversary
Morehead said he prepared for a delicate conversation with his wife before departing. He was about to leave her with their two young children in Carrollton, west of Atlanta, for about a week, so he got her thinking about their fifth wedding anniversary, which falls in March.
“My wife wasn’t too excited about me coming up here,” Morehead said in between putting up Ron Paul campaign signs around Ankeny, just north of Des Moines. But he brought up their anniversary, and "we might be going somewhere either expensive or where I don’t want to go.”
Morehead and his nephew, Jared, arrived around 1 a.m. here Wednesday. Their uncle, John McGowan, came, too. Morehead plastered his father’s pearl white Lexus SUV with bright blue Ron Paul campaign signs.
Morehead, who works for his father’s trucking company, said that when he arrived at Paul’s Iowa campaign headquarters here, he volunteered to greet voters and put up campaign signs around town. Morehead and his relatives held up campaign signs in a busy Wal-Mart parking lot in Ankeny, getting thumbs up from motorists. They wore heavy jackets to shield themselves from Iowa’s angry, penetrating winds.
Norrae Prine of East Des Moines piloted her late-model Mercury Grand Marquis toward Morehead as soon as she saw him. She said she was undecided about whom to vote for and wasn’t 100 percent sure about Paul. But she respected Morehead’s efforts and asked him for a Ron Paul yard sign.
“I think it’s pretty cool,” she said as Morehead handed her some campaign material. “I like to see them out like that.”
Moments later, a pair of Wal-Mart employees showed up, told them they were on private property and shooed them away.
Morehead said he’s willing to do such work because he likes the Texas congressman’s more dovish foreign policy approach, his strict interpretation of the Constitution, and his honesty.
“I like everything about him. You know for a fact you can trust him,” he said. “The guy doesn’t lie.”
‘We have to make a change’
Unlike Morehead, Tim Johnson decided to take a little more time on the road from Georgia. The attorney spent two days driving here from Atlanta to volunteer in Romney’s campaign. He traveled here on his own nickel, arriving Wednesday and settling in for a week.
Johnson said a few things compelled him to spend the New Year’s holiday away from his wife. A father of three, the former Coca-Cola executive is bothered by how many college graduates are unemployed now. And he bemoaned how people’s savings aren’t growing amid the weak economy.
Johnson is helping line up people to be Romney’s eyes and ears at each of the state’s caucus precincts. This isn’t Johnson’s first trip to Iowa. He spent two weeks working for the former Massachusetts governor here last month.
Johnson talked about his work during a break from the campaign at the Star Bar in Des Moines, watching Georgia Tech blow a 14-point fourth-quarter lead and hand the Sun Bowl to Utah in overtime.
“We have to make a change,” he said of his decision to come to Iowa. Romney, he added, “is the best horse to compete in the general election.”
David Oman, who served as the chief of staff to two Republican governors in Iowa and is now advising Romney’s campaign, praised Johnson’s persistence.
“It’s not often we see people coming halfway across the country,” said Oman, a former co-chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. “He is terrific. He is very devoted. And he is here utterly on his own” expense.
Sorry for the intrusion
Stuart Griffin decided to start each of his cold calls with an apology. The Brookhaven resident knew the Iowans he was calling on behalf of Gingrich had already been besieged with similar calls from other campaigns. So he said sorry right off the bat before asking for a little bit of their time to talk about the former Georgia congressman.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But the Iowans were nice about it, at least. He called one of the ones who refused to talk to him the “nicest mean person.”
“She had no desire to talk to me whatsoever, but she was incredibly nice,” Griffin said as he ended another call.
A runner, Griffin is used to setting goals for himself. Sandwiched between other volunteers in Gingrich’s state campaign headquarters in Urbandale, Griffin sought to make 100 calls an hour. He fell short each time, but he pressed on, occasionally taking a break to fuel himself with chocolate energy bars.
Like the other volunteers, Griffin felt compelled to travel to Iowa out of a sense of duty. Griffin said he believes a provision of the federal health care overhaul that requires certain people to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. Griffin, who does government relations work in the health care industry, said he wonders what else the federal government could make people buy.
“I just can’t sit back and let Barack Obama get re-elected,” said the married father of two young children. “Newt is the man who will get us back to where we need to be.”
Griffin made his calls sitting at a fold-out table amid makeshift booths divided by huge blue “Newt” campaign signs. The office was humming with activity as more than 40 volunteers from many states were pumping out cold calls.
Shyla High, a cardiologist from Dallas, sat beside Griffin, making the same calls. They made it a friendly competition, each seeing who could get the most number of Gingrich supporters in a row. High won with five.
“I’m obviously more successful,” she joked before picking up the phone and starting her next conversation with an apology for the intrusion.
Griffin playfully responded: “She is stealing my line. That is why she is more successful.”
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