opinion

Column: Rand Paul campaign touts ground game

Seated at long tables in a mostly empty office suite on a Monday evening, about 30 staffers and volunteers for Rand Paul’s presidential campaign paused from a phone bank session for a pep talk from the boss.

Chip Englander, the national campaign manager, told them he loved the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross.” His brand of persuasion, however, wasn’t the edgy, profanity-laced hard sell that characterized the Hollywood version of a Wall Street boiler room. He wasn’t selling stocks or futures, but an idea that has driven thousands of volunteers in hundreds of bare-bones headquarters over decades of caucus campaigns.

The message: Polls don’t matter. It’s ground organization that wins campaigns.

“You guys are the key piece in all of this,” Englander said.

Paul, in the most recent Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll of likely Republican caucusgoers, was at 5 percent, tied for fifth place with Jeb Bush.

Englander went on to make many of the same points that the Bush campaign made in the campaign strategy memo that leaked to the media and was first published by U.S. News and World Report. Polls in primaries are volatile. The winners of many past caucuses and New Hampshire primaries were not poll frontrunners at this stage.

Because caucus turnout is relatively low, the number of votes needed to win the caucuses seems infinitely manageable. In 2012, with turnout of just over 120,000, Rick Santorum won with about 29,000 votes, or less than 25 percent of the total. With a bigger field, turnout will likely be a little higher, but Englander figures it will take about 25,000 votes to win.

“Know what campaign talks the most about their organization? … Jeb Bush,” Englander said.

Englander referred to the leaked Bush memo that said Bush’s Iowa campaign had 76 county chairs or co-chairs out of 99 counties. The Paul campaign, he said, has chairs in all 99. With co-chairs, he said, they have 130 people. The Bush campaign reported having 129 precinct captains — people who will speak for a candidate during the caucus. The Paul campaign, Englander said, has 650. The Bush campaign reported making 70,000 phone calls in Iowa. Englander said the Paul campaign has made a quarter-million calls.

Paul himself is making a similar argument to reporters. In a TV interview recorded last week, the Kentucky senator noted that most of the voters — 78 percent in the Register’s mid-October poll — say they could still change their minds. He said the campaign is doing well with young voters and independents, who he believes are under-sampled in polls. He noted that 120,000 college students will be in class in Iowa on caucus day in 2016, unlike the previous two cycles.

“So we think we’re doing better than what the polls represent. But we still want to do better. We plan on winning and we’re going door to door, we’re mailing, we’re calling and we’re doing everything we can to see if we can win in Iowa because we think it’s really important to win here,” Paul said during the taping of KCCI News CloseUp, which is scheduled to air Nov. 22.

Here’s another twist. Englander says that out of 36 nominating contests between Feb. 1 and the end of March, 15 are caucuses. If the Paul campaign has the superior organizing skills that it claims to have, and caucuses are won on organization, as they often are, that implies that Paul could have an advantage.

“It’s a totally unwritten story,” Englander said.

Only five states, including Iowa and Nevada, have caucuses on or before Super Tuesday, which is March 1, so caucuses aren’t a shortcut to the nomination. Englander’s calendar also includes some contests that aren’t consistent with the official Republican National Committee calendar, including some in U.S. territories such as Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Marianas.

Why share a pep talk that campaign volunteers are digesting between bites of free pizza? It’s a good reminder that polls don’t win elections. Behind every caucus vote, there are hours and hours of volunteer time to make phone calls and knock on doors. It takes gallons of caffeine. Unlike in "Glengarry Glen Ross," the coffee’s not just for closers.