Romney's big investment in Iowa turns bitter
Evangelicals' distrust of Mormons likely factored in Huckabee victory
By Thomas Burr
The Salt Lake Tribune

01/04/2008

DES MOINES - Bested in Iowa by rival Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney headed
to New Hampshire late Thursday hoping to look beyond the sharp setback
aided by a large evangelical turnout.
    "Well, we won the silver," Romney, the former head of the 2002
Winter Games in Salt Lake City, told a crowd of more than 1,000
supporters who had hoped for a victory party.
    But, Romney added, like anyone who doesn't win at their first
Olympics, "you come back and win the gold in the final event."
    Romney's campaign pointed to initial results showing large crowds
at caucuses in strong evangelical areas as part of their loss to
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister. But they camp stayed away from
blaming the loss on Romney's Mormon faith, which polls have shown may
be a concern with evangelical voters, some of whom who view the LDS
Church as heretical.
    "I would disagree with any assessment that it was about
denomination," campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said when asked whether
Romney's Mormon faith affected the race. "What you have is a lot of
voters who are evangelicals who identified with someone who is also an
evangelical."
    But, he quickly added, "I don't know if it made the difference."
    Rising from single digits, Romney led the Hawkeye State for most
of the year before losing ground to Huckabee, a former Arkansas
governor.
    Romney outspent Huckabee 20-1 in the state, according to some
estimates, yet the advertisements, ground structure and piles of
mailers couldn't help him at the caucuses, the first test of the
presidential primary election process.
    On Fox News, pollster/commentator Frank Luntz said Romney made a
"big mistake" by going negative against Huckabee. Focus groups used by
Luntz indicated that Iowa Republicans were turned off by the blizzard
of attack ads from the Romney campaign and found Huckabee the "most
human of all the candidates."
    Huckabee never mentioned Romney by name in his victory speech but
declared the results show "People really are more important that the
purse."
    Huckabee appealed to the large evangelical base of the state
through television commercials highlighting him as a Christian leader
and at one point even asked a reporter whether Mormons believe Jesus
and Satan are brothers. He later apologized.
    Some 45 percent of Huckabee's vote came from those who described
themselves as "born again," according to news media entrance polls,
and Huckabee won 55 percent of those people who said religion mattered
a "great deal." Romney only got 19 percent of the born-again votes and
only 12 percent of those who said they cared a great deal about
religion.
    "It is not clear that all of the Huckabee votes were anti-Mormon,
but it is plausible that Romney's faith posed a problem for him," says
John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Center for Religion and Public
Life.
    Sen. Bob Bennett, a Utah Republican and fellow Mormon, said Iowa
is fertile territory for evangelical voters on the Republican side and
Huckabee benefited from it.
    "There's obviously some anti-Mormonism in this," Bennett said.
"You see the kind of mailings that are being made, [and] some of the
television people that are attacking the church, but I'd like to
believe it is more a pro-Baptist [choice] than it is anti-Mormon."
    Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has worked to overcome
the hurdle polls showed with voters wary of casting a ballot for a
candidate who belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints.
    In early December, he addressed the issue in a much-hyped speech,
saying that while his faith - and its shared values with other
religions - informs who he is as a person, the LDS Church would not
dictate his actions if elected president.
    Many observers say it's too early to tell how much concerns about
his faith affected the race in Iowa.
    "It's never clear when [voters] say they won't vote for him,
whether it's the Mormonism, or whether they can't identify with him as
a middle class person, or they're concerned about his positions on
things," says Michael Cromartie, director of the evangelicals in civic
life program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "It's all too
early. We can't base everything on Iowa."
    Richard Bushman, professor emeritus of history at Columbia
University, says a big Romney loss could be a bad sign.
    "That could mean the intensive campaign, the big speech, the
constant refrain of being a sensible Christian is simple just not
winning over evangelicals," Bushman says. But he adds, there are
"other things in play. Even so, it would be a sign that the whole
operation has not yielded fruit."
    Iowans seemed aware of Romney's religion when asked at caucus
sites Thursday night.
    "I have thought about it," Romney supporter and Catholic Luke Feld
said at the Waukee Middle School. "But it doesn't bother me. I don't
hold it against him at all."
    Whether Romney's faith hurt him in Iowa or not, the LDS Church
helped boost Romney to this stage.
    Romney's name was one of three submitted by a church leader during
a search for a new leader to rescue the scandal-ridden Games in 1999.
    Then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, also a Mormon, asked a number of community
leaders, including LDS Church apostle and Olympic liaison Robert D.
Hales, "for a short list of names - people who could possibly do what
was needed to re-establish confidence and handle the extraordinary
challenge of staging an Olympic Games," the church said in a written
response in 2001.
    Romney was one of three people Hales recommended.
    Romney is credited with turning around the debt-loaded Games into
a successful world event, an act he then parlayed into the
Massachusetts governorship, and eventually, his presidential bid.

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