Tipton, Iowa — Iowa Democrats are ending their year the way they began it: meeting candidates and thinking about whom to support during the caucuses Thursday night. In this rural eastern Iowa town, almost 100 hundred people crowded into the back room of the Tipton Family Restaurant to hear John Edwards speak on Friday night and to try to make up their minds.
Roxanne Conlin, a prominent Des Moines lawyer who serves as Iowa chairwoman for Edwards’ campaign, asked how many people in the room were still “shopping” and almost a third raised their hands. Keith Whitlatch, a Tipton retiree, was one of the undecided. He had seen Edwards once already but hadn’t made up his mind.
Snowy roads and a prior appearance delayed Edwards by nearly an hour, so Conlin and David Bonior, Edwards’ national campaign manager, used the time to detail policy stances and to push the themes of poverty and economic populism. Audience members threw out questions about Israel, the Federal Reserve, and how Edwards’ health plan compares with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s. His positions on the economy, particularly on the mortgage crisis, drew loud applause in this largely blue-collar town.
Once Edwards arrived and took the microphone, he repeated familiar vows to fight the role of corporate interests in health care and trade policy. But in a contrast to his softer 2004 rhetoric, he told the crowd that he is determined to get tough. “We can’t ‘nice’ these people to death . . . They have billions of dollars at stake,” Edwards said. That drew a reaction from Whitlatch: “I think his track record of doing things for the little people is important.” Whitlach said the evening’s appearance was a dealmaker for him. “At first I wasn’t sold on him. Tonight I am,” Whitlatch said. “He just seemed more forceful.”
Pat Furchtenicht, 62, of West Branch, caucused for John Kerry in 2004. This year, she’s choosing Edwards because of his focus on poverty, but also because of his wife, Elizabeth. Furchtenicht, a breast cancer survivor, said she could identify when Edwards spoke during a Des Moines fundraiser about his wife’s battle against cancer. “I literally was sobbing. I knew right then I had to support him,” she said...
http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002650767
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