With less than three months before voters start weighing in on the 2016 presidential race, Republican Ben Carson is putting his campaign into high gear.
He finished up a tour for his latest book — A More Perfect Union — last week that gave him plenty of exposure to voters, and book lovers, in the South and Midwest, but left him little time to campaign.
And after a week of stories examining the veracity of his personal history, Carson’s campaign is ready to hit the early primary states hard.
“We’ll start increasing our time in Iowa a great deal,” said Doug Watts, spokesman for the campaign. “But we’re in first or second place in 17 states and seven of those, we’ve never stepped a foot in.”
Resonating with Christian conservatives
His campaign so far has resonated most with Christian conservatives frustrated with politics in Washington. So after Tuesday night’s debate in Milwaukee, where Carson did little to hurt or help himself with voters, he went to Liberty University in Virginia, the world’s largest evangelical Christian university.
“Our nation’s survival is rooted in our value system and the real question is are we ready to stand up for those values or are we going to be intimidated by those secular progressives,” he told the standing room only audience of several thousand.
He affirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage and said the next president must work with Congress to pass laws to protect the religious freedom of people who believe marriage is between one man and one woman.
“What we’ve seen recently is the legislative branch, which represents we the people, has been acting like the peanut gallery. The executive and judicial branches are overstepping their boundaries,” he said.
It’s a message that will be key in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 1 first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa, Watts said. But it won’t just be targeted to religious conservatives.
The African-American vote
The campaign also is looking to make inroads in African-American communities that traditionally vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. They began airing radio ads on black radio stations on Friday in Miami, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, Little Rock, Memphis, Houston and Detroit.
“These are traditional African-American, Christian families who don’t really care about a party label,” Watts said.
That will be a big ask in places like Carson’s hometown of Detroit, where more than 90% of residents traditionally vote for Democrats. But the Carson campaign believes that they can get at least 500 or 1,000 votes in some of those urban congressional district areas and be able to win delegates.
Airing radio and TV ads
The campaign will continue to air ads in the first four states holding primaries or caucuses – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada – and is also buying up radio and television time in 10 of the 12 March 1 Super Tuesday states, Watts said.
“We will have the money and the organization to go all the way through to the convention and we’ll have more than a handful of delegates,” Watts said. “And we expect to have at least a few states as wins under our belt, too.”
If he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’s on the right path, said J. Ann Selzer, an Iowa pollster.
“He’s doing a lot of the right things. His message is resonating, he’s building an organization here and he’s fending off attacks by other candidates,” she said. “Right now the equation is working for him.”
Recent headlines could hurt Carson
However, the recent stories that have questioned his personal history as a youth with a sometimes violent temper and his claim to receiving a scholarship offer to West Point could have an impact, said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher and founding editor of the Rothenberg and Gonzales Political Report.
“At various times, I thought the stories were really serious, but now, I’m more skeptical that it will take him down,” he said. “If he came across as kind of a phony or a fraud, it might make a difference. But he doesn’t come across as a snake oil salesman. Carson is different, his strength is his earnestness, his modesty and his sincerity and people who like him may be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
It’s a challenge that the campaign is not ignoring. Watts said Carson might lose some moderate or independent voters over the stories, even though Watts and Carson dismiss the stories as unfounded and pedaled by the mainstream media, which wants to bring down Carson’s candidacy.
“The primary attractions for Dr. Carson is his biography and if you think that it’s not accurate, then some people will have some problems,” he said. “But usually the canary in the coal mine is fundraising. We’ve raised $4 million in the last seven days.”
Whether that support will last past Iowa is still debatable, said Rothenberg.
“He’s a really formidable contender for Iowa, but he still has a huge hurdle to get over,” he said. “We just don’t have voters who are so inclined to say just throw out all those qualifications that we normally look at and pick somebody who has never held public office. So I remain skeptical in the long term.”
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