Kerry Doesn't Hesitate to Woo Those Who Do

[Feanorcurufinwe]

This is what it's like when you're a candidate on the move, when your crowds are growing and your poll numbers are rising — in Iowa at least. When, all of a sudden, after months as the Guy Who Squandered an Early National Lead, the end is in sight and the critical first contest of campaign 2004 is up for grabs. What do you do? You talk to everybody. Really. Everybody. Or at least you try.

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Kerry landed in Iowa on Jan. 9 insisting that "this campaign does have energy," and has spent the ensuing days running hard to give it some. He has been battling a cold, popping zinc and swilling a concoction made of lemon, honey, ginger and his wife's "secret ingredient … a hot toddy without the toddy." He shakes nearly every hand that's been stretched his way. He regularly gives half a dozen speeches daily and often as many interviews. He starts his days before 6 a.m., and ends most of them after midnight. He talks less between events to save his voice. He's getting a little ragged around the rhetorical edges.

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Kerry fared a little better with Sally Catron, 33 and one seat over — although you wouldn't have known it by the look on her face after she listened to him speak. "I'm more confused than when I came in," moaned the Altoona resident, who was split between Kerry and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. "I was hoping to eliminate Kerry."

She couldn't.

Larry Dellinger, a veteran and an alpaca rancher, ventured into the cold Friday for a 7:30 a.m. Kerry stop at Waverly City Hall. An undecided voter, he'd been torn by the embarrassment of electoral riches: "Too many good candidates," he said. Kerry "was my first choice overall until I got confused," Dellinger said. "So I came to hear him one more time … As of right now, I think I'll vote for him."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kerry17jan17,1,2852828.story?coll=la-headlines-nation