Carson’s popularity with the conservative grassroots has never been in doubt, but the question hovering over his candidacy is whether he would ever become more than a curiosity for GOP voters. An early-June story in The Washington Post lent credence to those suspicions, reporting that Carson’s campaign had been “rocked by turmoil,”which included the departures of several senior staffers. The article gave the impression that the campaign was flying by the seat of its pants, operating as a magnet for political operatives to make money off Carson’s popularity as much as a serious bid for the presidency.

In the three months since, as Carson has dipped and then bounced in the polls, there remains an ongoing debate about whether he has built the kind of campaign infrastructure that can translate grassroots enthusiasm into actual votes. Nowhere is organization more important than in Iowa, where the caucus format demands more time and candidate loyalty from voters.

Matt Strawn, a former state party chairman who is one of the few remaining neutral Republican operatives in Iowa, said he was impressed by the “robust organizational effort” he’s seen from Carson on the ground, both from his official campaign and the super PACs supporting him. “If there are five Republicans in Iowa that are getting together someplace, odds are you’re going to see a Ben Carson person there trying to sign them up,” Strawn told me. The co-chairs of Carson’s Iowa campaign are Rob and Christi Taylor, respected veterans who are influential in Des Moines. Carson’s supporters boasted last year that they had already signed up precinct captains in each of Iowa’s 99 counties.

“I think his appeal is firm,” said Steffen Schmidt, a longtime caucus-watcher at Iowa State University. Carson, he said, was picking up support from conservatives who previously backed Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012—two candidates struggling to recapture the momentum of their previous bids.

Carson’s paid staff in Iowa has grown to 10 since the start of May when it was half of that, said Doug Watts, the campaign’s chief spokesman. “We’ve never had any chaos in the campaign,” Watts said by way of disputing the “turmoil” reported by the Post. “The campaign has sort of incrementally moved and proved and done what campaigns do—fill out and grow from the beginning.” Carson aides have boasted in recent days of raising $6 million in August, more than double the previous month. And in contrast to the money sources of the more experienced Republicans in the race, almost all of Carson’s contributions have come from small donors giving $200 or less. Watts said the campaign had recently received its 400,000th donation and had 275,000 “unique donors,” providing a broad base to which the campaign hopes frequently to return. “We’ll never be hurting for money,” he assured me.