The news that Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will not participate in the Ames, Iowa, GOP straw poll this August virtually ensures that an event once viewed as a key step to winning the Republican nomination will be essentially meaningless.
Both McCain and Giuliani announced their decision to step out of the straw poll today. Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who is expected to formally join the race in the coming months, has long been expected to skip Ames.
With three out of the four frontrunning candidates likely bypassing the straw poll (only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney remains committed to it), the ultimate results will carry nearly no significance. It also sets up a break with tradition, as no candidate in the past three decades who has skipped the straw poll has gone on to win the Iowa caucuses.
Giuliani campaign manager Mike DuHaime called it a "resource allocation decision." He estimated that mounting a serious straw poll campaign would have cost nearly $3 million, money they feel would be better spent on efforts to win the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 14. That, DuHaime assured, is Giuliani's intention: "We are 100 percent playing in Iowa. You will see the mayor there early and often."
McCain's camp announced their decision after the Giuliani news was reported earlier today. "In light of today's news, it is clear that the Ames Straw Poll will not be a meaningful test of the leading candidates' organizational abilities, so we have decided to forgo our participation in the event," said McCain campaign manager Terry Nelson in a statement. (Nelson, it's worth noting, is an Iowa native and came up through the ranks of the Iowa Republican Party.)
McCain's decision -- much like Giuliani's -- is almost assuredly about money. McCain struggled to raise money in the first quarter of 2007 and with the pricetag to compete and win in Ames estimated in the millions of dollars, the strategists around the Arizona senator likely decided it simply wasn't worth the investment.
If three of the four frontrunners don't participate, it seems like a waste of resources for Romney to play heavily. Of course, a big straw poll win might help build his reputation as the frontrunner for the state's caucuses. But without any of his major opponents participating, it could also be a hollow win with little bounce for Romney.
Today's developments beg the question: Historically, how important is the straw poll? Let's check the most recent contests without a Republican incumbent:
In 1999, most of the major Republican candidates for the nomination participated. George W. Bush's win cemented him as the Republican frontrunner while Sen. Lamar Alexander's (R-Tenn.) sixth-place showing was the beginning of the end of his candidacy.
McCain, on the other hand, did not participate in the 1999 straw poll or the 2000 Iowa caucuses, but wound up as Bush's main rival in the 2000 race.
Four years earlier, Sens. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) were the top finishers in the straw poll. Dole went on to win the caucuses and the nomination, while Gramm lost momentum, posting a fifth-place finish in the caucuses that led to his early exit.
So winning was good for Dole and Bush, but opting out didn't appear to dim McCain's chances in 2000.
At the very least, the straw poll will make its quadrennial contribution to political theater.
As Alexander strategist Mike Murphy (currently unaligned in the 2008 contest) observed in 1995: "The straw poll is a bit like a chess championship at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. It's something serious wrapped in something silly."
And former GOP congressman Jim Nussle, a Giuliani supporter who represented an eastern Iowa district for 16 years before losing the governor's race last November, calls it a "sideshow," but with the potential to distract and lessen the importance of the caucuses.
Whether the caucuses will retain their stature is another matter for debate. With several delegate-rich states shifting their primaries to the weeks following the caucuses, some of Iowa voters' electoral power may be voided.
Source : blog.washingtonpost.com
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