Obama’s intense focus on Iowa has made the war look asymmetrical. Since April, he has unleashed a torrent of TV advertising. Romney is just beginning to make his case via TV ads, but the super political action committees are also revving up again on his behalf.

Romney eyes an opening with battleground Iowa's evangelicals

Evangelicals haven't turned out 

for him in caucuses, but may 

give him a November win.

Could the third time be the charm for Mitt Romney?

Romney’s strength in the 2012 Iowa caucuses was with economic voters, especially those in the Des Moines suburbs. But the same evangelical conservatives who sidestepped Romney twice in the Iowa caucuses could be his best friends in the general election.

As the general election approaches, Romney is running as strongly as conservative icon U.S. Rep. Steve King with voters in Iowa’s GOP-dominant western coast, according to internal polling obtained by The Des Moines Register. That’s a good sign for Romney — there’s no such thing as a King/Obama voter.

If Iowa’s evangelicals put a GOP presidential candidate over the top, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Everyone — including the Register’s Iowa Poll — thought Democrat John Kerry would win Iowa in 2004. But a larger than expected evangelical voter turnout in the western part of the state secured the Iowa trophy for George W. Bush.

The guy with the spatula who flipped Iowa for Bush that year?

King, said Chuck Laudner, the congressman’s former district director.

“It’s going to be 2004 all over again,” predicted Laudner, who campaigned aggressively in Iowa this cycle for former presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

Romney isn’t repeating Karl Rove’s 2004 appeal-to-the-base strategy in Iowa, his campaign strategists say. The Rove-directed George W. Bush re-election campaign targeted mainly northwest Iowa and a ring of Des Moines suburbs. Romney’s campaign intends to hold those coalitions in place, while pursuing voters in purple counties in eastern Iowa, southeast Iowa and central Iowa.

President Barack Obama’s perceived liberal agenda alone is a bloody shirt that revs up the right, so Romney can invest his dollars in reeling in independents and conservative Democrats, numbers that could put him over the top in what is expected to be a close race here. And his message will focus on the economy, an issue that plays to his background as a businessman and the emotions of listeners pummeled by the recession and its aftermath.

Obama is up by a hair, 2.5 percent, in a rolling average compiled by RealClearPolitics.com, but polling quickly becomes ancient history, and this race will start moving fast, campaign strategists said.

Last week, The Des Moines Register interviewed 12 conservative independent or Republican voters who told the Iowa Poll in February that their opinion of Romney was “very unfavorable.” Now, all but one say they will definitely vote for Romney in November.

“He’s all we have left right now,” said conservative Republican Sarah Martin, a substitute teacher from the Fremont County town of Imogene who backed Santorum. “This is the last two minutes of the ballgame.”

General election is a new ballgame

Romney would have every right to be gun-shy about Iowa. After he pampered Iowa in 2008, with $8 million in spending and a constant presence on the campaign trail, caucusgoers veered around him in favor of former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee. This year, they fell in line behind Christian conservative Rick Santorum, helping him overtake Romney at the last minute.

But Romney almost won — and the news articles his Boston headquarters selected to hang on the walls, reflecting the count on caucus night, say he did win. Missing are the headlines on the certified count two weeks later that gave Santorum the official victory.

Although the scoreboard reads Obama 2-0 in Iowa and Romney 0-2, pollster J. Ann Selzer underscores that Romney’s two losses here were in caucuses, which means a very small voter pool.

“This is his first general election, and there’s nothing else in comparison,” she said.

But at a time when Romney needs evangelicals, the leader of their movement isn’t doing much for him in Iowa. On Tuesday, Santorum starts a two-day “thank you tour” in Iowa. None of his six stops includes campaign events for Romney.

If Iowans sense a Santorum slight toward Romney, that’s unlikely to affect the election, said David Yepsen, a longtime Iowa politics writer who is now director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

“His failure to be a good trooper hurts Santorum much more than it’ll hurt Romney. You’ve got to be a good loser in this game,” Yepsen said. “Romney doesn’t need Santorum’s blessing.”

Team Romney has started to ramp up

Obama’s intense focus on Iowa has made the war look asymmetrical. Since April, he has unleashed a torrent of TV advertising. 

Romney is just beginning to make his case via TV ads, but the super political action committees are also revving up again on his behalf.

Team Obama repeatedly cites the strength of its Iowa organization, with 14 offices and a robust staff, as an advantage over Romney. The GOP effort is playing catch-up: Seven offices are open in Iowa, and the first large-scale Republican volunteer effort was Saturday.

“Clearly they’ve invested a ton on infrastructure,” acknowledged Rich Beeson, Romney’s political director, in an interview in his office at the Boston campaign headquarters. “They’re trying to personally lower the unemployment rate by hiring field staff — and they need to because there’s an incredible intensity gap out there.”

The Romney camp believes his investments here last year — grass-roots organizing through the year and an all-out push by Romney himself in late December — will heighten his competitiveness.

Both camps convey sense of confidence

Data that make Republicans salivate: In January, Iowa Democrats had a nearly 30,000-person lead in active registered voters. Today, they trail the Republicans by more than 21,000 — a 50,000-voter swing over six months, state records show.

Iowa Republicans also trace a resurgence to Terry Branstad’s victory in the 2010 governor’s race, along with a spate of down-ballot wins. Couple that with a flagging approval rating for Obama nationally, and Romney strategists see promise in Iowa.

Team Romney remains convinced that in the end, the election will turn on the economy. And each month of continued national economic stall — like Friday’s report that June’s unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2 percent — reinforces that confidence.

“Iowans are going to be critical to the outcome of this election,” said Lanhee Chen, Romney’s policy director. “In Iowa as in other parts of the country, there’s a real sense that the economy could be stronger and that the signs of recovery we’re seeing in Iowa could be happening more quickly, and Mitt Romney’s got the policies that are going to help make that happen.”

In contrast, Obama chief strategist David Axelrod thinks his boss’s extended 2007 conversation with Iowans about the economy will help him this fall.

Back in 2007, Obama was talking about the economy before anyone knew the depth of the disaster, Axelrod said.

“Everywhere he went, he talked about the American dream slipping away, and that was a central concern of his,” he said. “That remains the challenge. That ultimately is why he won Iowa, and I think that’s why he’ll win Iowa again.”