We all know it happens, but we don’t always have reasons to believe that the candidate is aware that it is happening. Sen. Hillary Clinton, though, apparently knew whom to call on at a campaign stop in Newton, and she pretended like it wasn’t planned.

My friend Pat Caldwell, writing for the Grinnell College newspaper, got the scoop:

On Tuesday Nov. 6, the Clinton campaign stopped at a biodiesel plant in Newton as part of a weeklong series of events to introduce her new energy plan. The event was clearly intended to be as much about the press as the Iowa voters in attendance, as a large press core helped fill the small venue. Reporters from many major national news outlets came to the small Iowa town, from such media giants as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and CNN.

After her speech, Clinton accepted questions. But according to Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff ’10, some of the questions from the audience were planned in advance. “They were canned,” she said. Before the event began, a Clinton staff member approached Gallo-Chasanoff to ask a specific question after Clinton’s speech. “One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask],” she said.

Clinton called on Gallo-Chasanoff after her speech to ask a question: what Clinton would do to stop the effects of global warming. Clinton began her response by noting that young people often pose this question to her before delving into the benefits of her plan.

But the source of the question was no coincidence—at this event “they wanted a question from a college student,” Gallo-Chasanoff said. She also noted that staffers prompted Clinton to call on her and another who had been approached before the event, although Clinton used her discretion to select questions and called on people who had not been prepped before hand. Some of the questions asked were confusing and clearly off-message.

I tried to reach Gallo-Chasanoff and Caldwell to get more information, but neither was immediately available. Still, I don’t have any doubt that the story was reported accurately because I know some of the people involved.

It appears Clinton knew whom to call on, yet she pretended like Gallo-Chasanoff was asking the question because she was a young person — not because a staffer had told her to. When I said that she needed to start taking questions more often to preserve her status in Iowa, I didn’t mean it like this.

Update: Fox News confirmed the story with a statement from the Clinton campaign.

Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elliethee admitted that the campaign had planted the question and said it would not happen again.

“On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Senator Clinton’s energy plan at a forum,” Elliethee said.

“However, Senator Clinton did not know which questioners she was calling on during the event. This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again.”

They deny that Clinton herself knew the question was a plant, which is understandable and difficult to disprove. But the fact that Clinton called on Gallo-Chasanoff and had a ready-made response to the ready-made question about global warming, might lead one to believe otherwise.

That’s what she has up her sleeve: there is no pre-rally on Sen. Hillary Clinton’s public schedule at this point, but we knew she would be doing something. Now that she has been endorsed by Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, she has also announced that she will be bringing Strickland with her to the Jefferson Jackson dinner in Des Moines.

Are other surprises in store?

Rudy Giiuliani received the surprising endorsement of Pat Robertson, arguably the most powerful social conservative leader alive, in Washington, DC, today. Networks covered the two figures’ joint appearance to announce the endorsement live, and the blogs are chattering about it. Sen. John McCain received the endorsement of former candidate Sen. Sam Brownback, one of the more well-known social conservatives in the Senate, in Dubuque, IA, today, with considerably less fanfare.

That the two endorsements were announced in such different ways says something about the different campaigns’ goals. Giuliani wants the story of his Robertson endorsement to be national news. As Marc Ambinder put it, “A DC endorsement means national media coverage, which means that Giuliani’s campaign probably wants the press to focus on the ‘this helps him with Christians’ theme rather than the ‘this helps him in Iowa’ theme.” It is an interesting decision, since Robertson actually placed second in the Republican Iowa Caucuses in 1988.

McCain wants Brownback’s endorsement to help him on the ground in Iowa — specifically among Catholics. More media would have covered the announcement if it had taken place in Des Moines or even Cedar Rapids, where media outlets are located and national reporters are embedded; but McCain and Brownback made the announcement in Dubuque, a decent-sized down that is decidedly out of the way for most of the Iowa press corps. I think it was the wrong decision, but I think I know why they made it: Catholics.

Dubuque has a lot of Catholics. Many of the social conservatives in Eastern Iowa are Catholic, and those who are not Catholic may be less hostile to Catholicism than the evangelicals in Western Iowa. Brownback, who is himself a socially conservative Catholic, may have had his best numbers in this part of the state — the most committed supporters, the best network of churches, the lowest negatives, or whatever.

It could also be that McCain has all but written off Western Iowa, where the most diehard social conservatives live, and that he (like Giuliani, it seems) is targeting the less dogmatic Eastern Iowa voters rather than those in the West.

But whatever the reason, McCain’s decision to announce the endorsement in Dubuque was the wrong one. He was endorsed by a former presidential candidate and sitting senator, and all the press will be talking about today is Pat Robertson. And if the Giuliani campaign rushed out the Robertson endorsement today because they knew Brownback’s endorsement of McCain was coming (which is a real possibility), that’s just mean.

Update: Jay Wagner, Iowa Independent’s primary GOP politics correspondent, finds Brownback supporters who say they won’t automatically support McCain.

Big-name columnist/commentator Chuck Offenburger caught Gov. Bill Richardson at a campaign stop Sunday. Richardson gave what Offenburger characterized as a “tremendous 45-minute speech,” but that’s not even half the story:

…but the more he starting lifting his arms, putting his hands behind his head and sticking his hands in his jeans’ front pockets, well, those of us on the east side of the front few rows couldn’t help but notice that the zipper on the fly of those jeans was creeping downward.

My wife Carla Offenburger, who is very good at spotting flaws in men, if you know what I mean, turned to me and whispered, “I think you should be telling him that he needs to zip up his pants!” I had a two-word answer: “Not me.”

Richardson started taking questions from the audience, became even more animated and soon that zipper had slipped down a good four or five inches. Then we could see white underpants – thank God.

John Deeth covered former Sen. John Edwards’s “major foreign policy address” in Iowa City today for Iowa Independent, and he spoke briefly with Joe Trippi at the beginning. Here’s what Trippi had to say about Clinton and, perhaps more interestingly, about Obama having missed his chance to make a dent in the race:

The focus on Clinton was also on the mind of Edwards advisor Joe Trippi, who was lurking near the press table at the back of the hall. “We’re here to keep making the clear differences between us and Hillary Clinton,” he told me before the speech. “On Iraq, she wants to continue combat missions, we want to end it. In Iran she’s bought into the terminology of the Bush administration of the `global war on terror,’ and Bush is already using that. Her vote to call the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization was a mistake. We wouldn’t have done that, Biden didn’t, Dodd didn’t.”

Are Obama and Edwards canceling each other out in the race to be the Not Hillary candidate? “Obama’s been out there for 10 months, and he hasn’t really taken hold,” Trippi says. “In a lot of ways, he’s had his shot to make his case, and we’re just beginning to make ours,” he said, citing the recent debut of Edwards’s first major TV buy in Iowa. “People saw Edwards make his case in the debate and saw the differences with Hillary Clinton.”

When the Iowa Democratic Party started selling tickets to its 2008 Jefferson Jackson Dinner, the state party’s largest fundraiser — and candidate cattle call — of the year, it kicked off something of an arms race between the three top Democratic candidates for president. Each scrambled to buy up as many tickets as possible, to the point that members of the public who did not have tickets already reserved for them because of previous donations to the IDP were unable to buy them at all. (Update: The issues that I’ve heard about from members of the public trying to buy tickets, it seems, may have been overstated. Carrie Giddins, IDP Communications Director, tells me there are still a few balcony seats available and that, although the campaigns were particularly active in buying tickets this year, some members of the public were able to buy tickets through the party.)

Now, campaigns have to find ways to actually fill all of the seats they bought, and it may be trickier than it sounds. Getting over 1,500 signed supporters to Des Moines next Saturday will be a struggle for any candidate, and I don’t envy the people in charge of crowd-building for it.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which is either ahead or tied in the polls in Iowa (depending on whom you ask), has begun recruiting supporters from other Midwestern states to help build up their crowd. In an email obtained last night, Clinton’s Political Director for the Midwest, Sean Johnson, asks out-of-staters to come to Iowa for a “day of action,” which will include a canvass during the day and — perhaps more importantly — a chance to waive signs and look good on camera at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner.

This will be the biggest battle of optics of the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John Edwards, and Clinton are each planning to hold rallies in Des Moines leading up to the dinner. Clinton may not want to be outdone like she was at Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual Steak Fry in September, when thousands of Obama supporters marched in unison with their candidate to the Indianola Balloon Field, far outshining the Clinton campaign’s fairly impressive barrage of yard signs blanketing the city.

The Clinton campaign’s email to out-of-state supporters is reprinted below the fold. They may argue that every campaign will resort to this tactic before next Saturday, but as of yet I have not seen evidence that any others are doing so in public.

Read the rest »

Said John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. And we did. But nobody in presidential politics wanted to talk about anything but Tuesday night’s debate. Sen. Hillary Clinton has hardly even tried, it seems, to take our minds off of it (which, I suppose, says something about what her campaign is thinking).

So I’m going to go see the Mountain Goats tonight in Grinnell, where the only “piling on” I will witness is when a bunch of high school hipsters from Iowa City think they’ve spotted an open spot in front of the stage.

In case you didn’t know, I used to be a rock critic. Things were a lot simpler then. (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and — my personal favorite — Exhibit C.)

Later, haters!

Former Michigan Congressman David Bonior, who is former Sen. John Edwards’s national campaign manager, wrote an op-ed for Iowa Independent on why he supported Edwards taking his name off the Michigan ballot:

John Edwards’ decision has generated a lot of controversy, especially in Michigan - a state that I had the honor of representing in Congress for 26 years. But John’s decision was the right one.

Michigan is a big state, and the nominating calendar was designed to let early states go first. In the age of the multi-million dollar primary campaign, it is more important than ever to keep things that way. In early state contests, issues matter more than money, celebrity and advertisements. Voters can cut through the gloss and the spin to make decisions based on who the candidates really are, and what they stand for.

Since last night’s Democratic debate (I wrote my analysis here), I have been in a thinking mood. I had a really interesting discussion (some might say “argument”) with Taylor Marsh on her show this afternoon, and I have been watching the political coverage online and on TV, but mostly I have been trying to take a step back and reflect on the presidential race, which officially began a year ago this month (Gov. Tom Vilsack announced his candidacy the day after election day, 2006).

Here are some questions about the race in general that are kind of interesting to think about:

• A year ago, what did you think the Presidential race was going to look like? Which of the possible candidates did you expect to jump into the race, and who did you think would win? (Anybody guess former Gov. Mark Warner? Sen. Evan Bayh? Sen. John Kerry?) Are there any candidates whom you were suprised to see?
• Had you even heard of former Governors Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney? Sen. Chris Dodd? Rep. Ron Paul? Did you know Arthur Branch was a former Senator — one who would run for president?
• Did you predict that polling data would show that both a female candidate and a black candidate had a strong chance of winning a general election?
• How much money did you think candidates would raise? Which party’s candidates did you expect to raise more money?
• Where did you expect the candidates to fall on the political spectrum? Did you correctly predict which candidates would run more as “moderates” or “centrists” and which would run as “lefty” candidates? Or, on the Republican side, could you have separated the more moderate candidates from the right-wing candidates?
• Did you think there would be more attacks or fewer?
• Did you expect that the United States would have more combat troops in Iraq, rather than less?
• Did you think Iran would emerge as a major issue in the campaign?
• What else about the presidential race is different from what you would have expected a year ago?

I don’t think my idea from a year ago of how the race would shape up was horribly inaccurate, but I certainly didn’t guess everything right.

The thing is, a lot of us formed impressions of the candidates during the time period after the general election and before the major players started announcing their candidacies in December or January. And even though much has changed about the campaign since then, those initial impressions of each candidate can influence our coverage of the race right now. We should do our best to guard against that.

…And for one additional educational opportunity, if you are so inclined, watch the video from WhyTuesday below. It does a pretty spectacular job explaining the Iowa Caucus system without sounding snooty or resentful.

(Thanks for reading. Back tomorrow!)

Two weeks ago, it was Iran. Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards started attacking Sen. Hillary Clinton very directly on her vote in favor of a resolution classifying Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. The Clinton campaign, perhaps sensing that the attacks were catching on, sent an uncharacteristically defensive mailing to Iowa voters explaining her vote. Seeing blood in the water, Obama brought the issue up again in a mailing a few days later.

Over the weekend, the new issue has become social security. Obama came out first on the issue in a speech in Des Moines, criticizing Clinton for failing to have an “honest conversation” about how to fix it. Sunday, he launched a TV ad on the subject emphasizing his attack on Clinton in thinly veiled terms, in which he says, “I don’t want to just put my finger out to the wind and see what the polls say. I want to bring the country together to solve a problem.” (This caused controversy in the intellectual left about the problems of alarmist social security politics, with many noting that social security is actually in a lot less trouble than a lot of other critical government programs. But from a strategic perspective, it works.)

Today, the Clinton campaign launched an ad targeting elderly voters to air in Iowa and New Hampshire that opens with a mention of her record on … social security. The ad, entitled “There for You,” highlights a law she created “to ease the burden on family caregivers” and her efforts to “stop long term care insurance scams that prey on the elderly” before concluding, “These days, it seems like every candidate on earth is coming here for you. But which candidate has been there for you all along?”

I suppose it is possible that the Obama campaign got wind of Clinton’s plans to highlight her record on seniors this week and made a quick decision to preempt her last week, but the more likely possibility is that quite suddenly, Clinton has lost control of her message. An inevitable frontrunner would continue to campaign on her own terms, ignoring moves by the other candidates to reshape the issues of the race. So what’s going on with the Clinton campaign?

Clinton’s new ad is below: