THE AMES straw poll reshaped the race for a Republican US presidential candidate yesterday. It forced former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty to quit and sent poll-winner Michele Bachmann on a frantic tour of television shows to sustain her momentum now that Texas governor Rick Perry has joined the field.
“We needed to get some lift to continue on and to have a pathway forward,” said Mr Pawlenty. “That didn’t happen.” He came third in the poll with only 14 per cent of the vote despite pouring most of his campaign funds into the event.
Announcing his decision to quit, Mr Pawlenty said he had run on his record as governor of a centrist state, “but I think the audience, so to speak, was looking for something different”.
The poll in Ames, Iowa, is traditionally the first test for Republican candidates, establishing who has momentum in the state that is first to vote in the presidential nomination process. The results suggest what Iowa Republicans are looking for is an anti-establishment candidate who will run hard from the right.
Ms Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman who has surged in Iowa based on support from evangelical Christians and the Tea Party movement, won the poll with 29 per cent. But she faced questions on whether she can sustain that now that Mr Perry, a fiery conservative who appeals to similar voters but has a 10-year record of managing one of the largest states, is in the race.
“There is no requirement in the constitution that one be a governor in order to go into public service,” Ms Bachmann said.
“Ronald Reagan was a governor, but what made Ronald Reagan great wasn’t his governing experience as a governor. It was his core principles.”
Ms Bachmann cited her work on school reform. But Mr Perry is generating excitement because his message – that Texas created more jobs than other states while he was governor – seems tailor-made to compete with Barack Obama in hard times.
Mr Perry scored 718 write-in votes in Ames – 4.3 per cent – even though he announced his candidacy in South Carolina just hours earlier, did not participate in the Iowa debate and had not travelled to the state there seeking support.
That is an alarming development for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is considered the national leader in the race, but recorded only 567 votes despite his name appearing on the ballot. Mr Romney chose not to compete in Ames, preferring to focus on other early voting states where his more moderate, centrist message has greater appeal.
Ron Paul, an isolationist and libertarian congressman from Texas, came second, a few hundred votes behind Ms Bachmann. Although he has always had grassroots support, his poll strength suggested his views were gaining traction.
There was also encouragement for former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who came within a few hundred votes of Mr Pawlenty despite running a shoestring social conservatism campaign, and Herman Cain, the Georgia businessman, who came fifth. But the results looked terminal for former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who won only 2.3 per cent.
Democrats are likely to use the results as a sign of what they have called a march to the right in Republican politics. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)