Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson campaigns at a Des Moines-area church in August. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

DES MOINES, Iowa — It’s been more than two years since he retired, but Ben Carson still speaks with the bedside manner of the pediatric neurosurgeon he used to be: calm, reassuring and ­decidedly nonflashy.



Taking the stage at the Iowa State Fair political soapbox last month, the doctor turned Republican presidential hopeful sounded more like an inspirational speaker than a politician. In a soothing tone, he recounted his personal story as a “desperately poor” black kid from Detroit who overcame major life obstacles to become one of the most celebrated brain surgeons in the world. He was the first to successfully separate twins conjoined at the back of the head, a story that was later immortalized in a made-for-TV movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

In the searing summer heat, a few hundred sweaty fairgoers listened as Carson, a political novice who has never held public office, paused and marveled at the magic of the human brain and its capacity for knowledge. He argued that if they were to really put their mind to it, Americans were capable of solving the nation’s problems starting first with the lack of civility in our culture and politics.

“Can you imagine what the human brain can do if you really concentrate?” Carson said in an earnest tone. “We the American people have the ability to solve the many problems that face us … the problems that threaten to destroy us as a nation. They’re not Democrat problems; they’re not Republican problems; they are American problems versus un-American. And we have got to remember we are Americans first. It makes all the difference in the world.”

Carson’s speech wasn’t packed with the red-meat rhetoric that many of his rivals talked up during their soapbox remarks. In fact, like most of his appearances, he gave a stump speech that barely mentioned any policy at all — aside from a call for people to “talk more about God” and their faith in political discourse. But the crowd loved it, whooping and hollering at times, so loud that it drowned out Carson, who, even using a microphone, often speaks so softly that he’s difficult to hear.

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Indeed, for most of the summer, Carson’s campaign had seemed drowned out — first by rivals who were better known and then by Donald Trump, whose brash, take-no-prisoners way of campaigning quickly shot him to the top of the early GOP primary polls, shocking just about everybody.

At the GOP debate sponsored by Fox News last month, Carson even joked about his struggle to get noticed — at one point thanking the moderator, Megyn Kelly, for calling on him a second time. “Well, thank you,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I would get to speak again.”

But in what has been deemed the “Summer of Trump,” perhaps most surprising has been Carson’s quiet, gradual rise in the polls, in spite of the fact that he’s campaigning on very little beyond his own personal story and his position as a political outsider willing to shake up Washington.

Carson poses with a supporter at the Iowa State Fair in August. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A CNN/ORC national poll of likely GOP primary voters released Thursday found Carson in second place in the Republican nomination race behind Trump and with a double-digit lead over rivals, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. According to the poll, 19 percent of Republicans are backing Carson — a 10-point surge since early August — compared to 30 percent for Trump and 9 percent for Bush.

But in Iowa, Carson has erased Trump’s edge. A slew of recent polls — including a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics survey — found the former surgeon narrowly trailing Trump among likely GOP caucus-goers. Another poll from Monmouth University released last week found Trump and Carson tied among Iowa Republicans.

In some ways, Carson’s surge in Iowa is unusual. Unlike some of his rivals, including former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who spent days crosscrossing the state in July and August, Carson has devoted significantly less time here. His last visit to Iowa was on Aug. 16 — his day at the fair — an eternity for a state where voters demand to see their candidates up close and frequently. Overall, he’s spent fewer than 20 days campaigning in the state this year, according to a tally by the Des Moines Register.

But Carson isn’t exactly the invisible man in Iowa. In fact, he seems to be everywhere — on billboards, on TV and at local fairs and other gatherings, where volunteers hand out modified copies of his biography, “Gifted Hands,” for free.

“You can’t go to anywhere without seeing four or five Ben Carson people there, trying to sign you up or give you material,” said Matt Strawn, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party who is neutral in the GOP race. “There is a constant and visible presence that you don’t really see with the other candidates. From an organizing standpoint, they are really on it.”

While his actual campaign apparatus is small — he has just five paid staffers in the state, according to reports — Carson has benefited from a super-PAC known as the 2016 Committee, which appears to be doing most of the heavy lifting on his behalf. Among other things, the group has paid for ads to raise the retired doctor’s profile in the state — including billboards positioned just outside the entrance of the state fairgrounds in Des Moines and another on a highly trafficked strip near the airport.

A billboard advertising Carson’s presidential campaign in Des Moines. (Photo: Joshua Lott/Reuters)

Originally founded in 2013 as a draft committee to lure Carson into the race, the 2016 Committee raised and spent more than $13 million to lift his profile nationally before he even declared his candidacy, with most of that focus on Iowa. And since Carson officially joined the race in May, they’ve raised and spent millions more — with a significant amount of money spent to establish a ground game in Iowa that seems even more robust than Carson’s own campaign operation.

According to the group, they’ve recruited hundreds of volunteers across Iowa, including precinct captains in all of the state’s 99 counties who are not only working to promote Carson’s candidacy but are also being trained to turn out voters for the caucus.

“What we are doing isn’t terribly unique,” said Bill Saracino, national director of the 2016 Committee. “We’re doing retail politics at the ground level — knocking on doors, going to events, getting Carson’s name out there on the premise that if more people know who he is, know his personal story, the more support he will have.”

The group has been a mainstay at public events here over the summer, popping up at county potlucks, Republican gatherings and even simply on the side of the road, where volunteers have been spotted waving Carson campaign signs and beckoning drivers to pull over for more information. At the Iowa State Fair, it was impossible to tell the difference between a volunteer or staffer for Carson’s campaign and those working on behalf of the super-PAC. Under federal law, Carson’s campaign cannot coordinate its activities with the PAC or even share information, which raises an interesting question for the former surgeon as he tries to build his own get-out-the-vote operation in Iowa. In a state where politics is very strategic, can Carson sustain his momentum in the polls if he doesn’t know the makeup of his Iowa ground army and what it’s up to?

To be sure, Carson, at least for now, has a powerful foundation to build on. According to the recent Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, 79 percent of likely caucus-goers viewed Carson favorably — a higher rating than anyone else in the Republican field. The poll found him leading among Christian conservatives, who make up roughly 40 percent of the electorate in Iowa. Carson was the second choice — behind Trump — for two other pivotal groups: self-described tea party supporters and “business-oriented establishment types.”

One thing believed to be helping Carson in Iowa is his standing among homeschooling families, an influential and highly organized voting bloc that is widely credited for boosting the last two winners of the Iowa GOP caucuses: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008 and former Sen. Rick Santorum in 2012. Carson is well known to the movement. He’s spoken at dozens of homeschooling conferences, and many parents have incorporated his book into the curriculum they use to teach their kids. In recent months, he and his supporters have made a major play to lock up that support for his nomination bid.

Carson speaks at the Iowa State Fair in August. (Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But Carson is facing some questions among that group. According to Barb Heki, a longtime leader in the homeschooling movement in Iowa who is undecided in the race, Carson’s support for mandatory vaccinations and the perception that he might be squishy on parental rights issues has given some homeschooling parents pause.

Carson “is an incredible person who has an incredible story,” Heki said. “But there are some cautions there, and there are so many candidates to choose from this year, I think a lot of people are split on what to do.”

One significant strength of Carson’s is that he is widely perceived as being civil and just plain nice — qualities that play well in Iowa and provide a useful contrast to the brash and truculent Trump.

And yet like Trump, Carson seems to be potentially attracting voters who haven’t necessarily been engaged in politics before. In July, he spoke at a party forum in Dubuque, where Strawn, who had meticulously traveled the state as head of the Iowa GOP, was surprised to see faces he’d never seen before. They weren’t the usual local legislators or party activists, but rather average Iowans.

“They didn’t seem to fit into any ideological box,” Strawn recalled. “They just seemed to be intrigued by him, like ‘Who is this guy?’”