Day 1: Romney HQ Des Moines Iowa

Let's start with the logistics.  I landed in Des Moines yesterday afteroon after two easy flights, switching planes in Memphis.  Grabbed my rental car (Prius--really like these things) at the airport and headed downtown--a 4.5 mile trip of no real consequence.  I checked into my way overpriced Hotel (it is a Hyatt--but apparently one of their lesser marques....) and then headed in search of vittles.  Ate a decent steak down the street from the hotel, then returned for the night to my iPad/Kindle app--I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo and it is riveting....

I contacted Iowa Romney Director Sara Craig this morning, and she asked me to join them at 1030, after they'd gotten some meetings out of the way.  This enabled me to amble over to the Marriott, were I was told a better breakfast awaited me than in my hotel.   I downed a fabulous three egg omelet and was on my way.

Romney has a modest operation in Iowa this time around; he went for broke here in 2008 and then underperformed, sorta knocking him on his butt early.  This time, he basically ignored the straw poll and let Tim Pawlenty be the guy who bet everything on Iowa (Pawlenty even rented the same sprawling HQ building that Romney had then).  Romney is very much campaigning for the Iowa Caucuses in February--but just didn't feel the Straw Poll was worth the effort.  So the downscale operation is housed at the consulting firm where Sara works--and after some introductions and chatter about the big news (Gov. Perry is in town), I headed off to another office where I was put to work by Phil, a full-time staffer and a big Mitt fan.  Phil's 26 or so, and a graduate of Catholic U (got my MA there, so we had something to chat about).  Phil's been living and breathing Iowa for over a year, and he really seems to have a pretty deep understanding of what is going on, what Romney's strategy is, and how to make it happen.  Best of all though, Phil was ready for me, in that he had some tasks all lined up to put me on.

I can pretty much sum up my day's labor by saying that I merged databases.  Seriously.  I had a bunch of excel spreadsheets in various states of quality, which were the result of countless meetings/meet and greets throughout the state.  Order needed to be brought to this chaos--and that is just the kind of task I like.  And so, that is what I did--so that by the time I left this afternoon, I had thousands of names neatly arrayed with their emails, zipcodes and counties....which was what the folks "in Boston" want.  Far from complete, the product I left off with today has hundreds if not thousands of missing zips and counties that I will labor to locate via the interwebs and other useful databases which I have been given access to.

Governor Perry's entrance into the race was--as I said--big news here in Iowa.  I listened to a radio program this morning where he was the guest, and he acquitted himself well.  I'd like to see Perry and Bachman pick up where Bachman and Pawlenty left off, but I think Perry's going to aim squarely at Romney throughout.  We'll see how that shakes out.

It really is amazing how this place (Iowa) is obsessed with politics.  It's all over the newspapers, the news shows, the radio--and this is days AFTER the caucus is over.  I imagine it stays at a pretty fair level through the Fall and then gets ridiculous in November/December. Maybe I'll come back out for that....

So far, so good.  I liked doing what I did today--I know it sounds menial and boring, but it is necessary stuff and I think it will be helpful.