In Campaign, HQ Reflects Candidate

Most of them have lingering coughs. Their eyes are red-tinged and glassy from lack of sleep. Doughnuts and cookies fuel them.

No matter. The troops are feeling good down at John Edwards headquarters. Their candidate’s plan to wage a positive campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination seems to be paying off.

Edwards has edged up in the polls and now is locked in a four-way battle with Howard Dean, John F. Kerry and Dick Gephardt. “We got mo’!” is the new Edwards rallying cry.

“Everyone is jealous of us because we have the highest morale and the most fun,” said Edwards staffer Emily Meeker, 22, a field organizer from Raleigh, N.C., who speaks with confidence on this matter because she has friends in other campaigns.

A few blocks away at Kerry headquarters, there’s no palpable sense of excitement. Among discernibly older volunteers, many of whom are military veterans, there is instead a serious, nose-to-the-grindstone kind of determination, rather like that displayed by Kerry himself.

“Hero 4 President” says a handmade sign dangling from the ceiling, a reference to Kerry’s medal-winning service in Vietnam.

Late last week, Kerry rose to first place in an opinion poll everyone’s talking about, but Kerry staffers aren’t worked up; they understand the vagaries of the process.

Polls go up and polls go down,” said Kerry press aide Stephanie Cutter with a tight smile, refusing a local television reporter’s invitation to gloat.

In the campaign headquarters of the four frontrunners in this up-for-grabs race, hundreds of true believers are engaged in the same struggle -- assigning tasks to out-of-state volunteers, begging for votes over the phone, organizing door-to-door forays into neighborhoods. But each place also offers an uncanny reflection of the candidate himself.

That’s probably to be expected. As Gordon Fischer, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, pointed out, most organizations take on the personality of the person at the top. “I think it’s true with the campaigns too,” he said.

In Des Moines, even the physical quarters resonate with a weird kind of symbolism. Edwards, a wealthy former trial lawyer who emphasizes his working-class roots, operates out of a former auto parts store.

Dean, the scrappy former Vermont governor whose campaign has nearly single-handedly relocated the intersection of cyberspace and politics, is based out of an erstwhile computer store.

Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who attended boarding school as a child and married a wealthy widow, has commandeered a one-time luxury car dealership where, on close inspection, one can make out the words “Jaguar,” “BMW” and “Mercedes” on the storefront.

And Gephardt, the plodding, well-organized Midwesterner whose self-imposed nickname is “the turtle,” has rented a bland Iowa Realty building, right across the street from a Tru Valu hardware store.

In the realty building’s basement, Ben Sislen, 23, worked the phones in a forest green T-shirt bearing the Gephardt campaign’s informal slogan, “Fear the Turtle.” Here, as elsewhere, absolute certainty about the mission prevailed.

“The informed voter,” said Sislen, from Washington, D.C., “is a Gephardt supporter.”

Harlan Wells, a serious but weary 29-year-old political science major from Montana who braved 36 hours on a bus through a snowstorm to get here, has been making 200 to 300 calls a day for Gephardt. Each day, he said, he usually finds 25 nonsupporters and turns them into fans.

What helps Wells keep going, he said, is that he believes in his heart that he is calling folks for their own good.

The evangelical fervor of the campaign workers might gladden the heart of anyone fretting that the electorate is awash in apathy, except that this electorate is, in fact, awash in apathy.

Iowa has 533,000 registered Democrats, says Fischer, compared with more than 600,000 Republicans and more than 700,000 independents. Even the Republicans and independents can participate in Monday’s caucuses, provided they re-register at the door as Democrats.

A turnout of 100,000 on caucus night would be considered huge.

At Dean headquarters, a block from the Kerry office, there is, not surprisingly, an atmosphere of organized chaos. Whereas, in broad terms, Kerry appeals to veterans and Gephardt to union members, the Dean campaign is more eclectic and skews younger.

Even Fischer, who is officially required to be in love with all the Democratic candidates, has noticed it: “There is more of a feeling that, ‘We’re not only involved in a campaign, but it’s a crusade,’ which kind of represents the candidate.”

Dean, perhaps the most spontaneous top-tier candidate, has inspired thousands, many of whom are political neophytes, to put their lives on hold and head for Iowa. Estimates suggest there are at least 2,500 non-Iowans, but no one can give an exact number with confidence.

Jerry Cayford, 46, a public policy researcher from Maryland, was walking a precinct for Dean on Thursday in freezing temperatures. He has never done anything like this before.

“I’ve had to face my reluctance to impose myself on others,” said Cayford. “Knocking on doors can be quite intimidating, but you’re just talking to people and it shouldn’t be difficult or taboo to say ‘I care who we elect and give me 10 seconds of your time to see if you care, too.’ ”

Just as their headquarters reflect the candidates, the gimmicks being rolled out also express the spirit of each endeavor.

At Gephardt’s West Des Moines headquarters, 27-year-old staffer Kim Molstre sincerely said that “one of the lesser-known facts is how easygoing and funny” Gephardt is.”

As proof, she pointed to the “Great Iowa Pie Challenge,” a compilation on his website of memorable desserts he’s eaten around the state.

“Everywhere he goes now,” said Molstre, “people bring him pies.”

Edwards, who oozes sincerity and Southern charm in his speeches, has a nifty interactive feature on his website. It’s a red-and-blue electoral map: “How can Democrats take back the White House? See for yourself.”

Click on each state, Fischer said, and you can see the senator from North Carolina is “hoping to sell the idea that if you can win some Southern states, you can do well.”

Kerry, who has imported veterans from around the country to help him campaign, made sure reporters saw him take the controls of a helicopter that ferried him around the state the other day (he eschewed a flight suit, however).

But Dean, who has slipped in the polls, may have done them all one better. His out-of-state volunteers, who have been dubbed “The Iowa Perfect Storm,” wear Day-Glo orange beanies when they canvass precincts. Like the candidate, the brilliant orange caps are a bit brash.

Cayford said he felt a little odd putting his on the first time, “but they do make you feel vaguely official.”