Rare News Desk
Tucked away in the heartland of the United States is Van Meter, Iowa. Just west of Des Moines, the thousand or so people who reside there are the folks politicians are referring to when they glowingly speak of “middle America.” Van Meter is the real deal — envision the city in the movie Field of Dreams, except smaller and more rural.
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Van Meter’s official web site lists the names, addresses and phone numbers of all forty-one businesses and three churches within its city limits. It also lists Raccoon River Days as the city’s signature festival, but doesn’t post when it takes place. They probably don’t need to do so. I suspect everyone in Van Meter already knows the date of the Raccoon River Days parade.
One business in Van Meter is a museum built in tribute to the town’s best known resident, Hall of Fame hurler, Bob Feller. Drafted in his teens by the Cleveland Indians, Feller skipped the minors and went straight to The Show. His career in baseball was interrupted by World War II, where Feller became a Navy anti-aircraft gunner. Despite missing several of his prime years on the field due to the war, Feller was still able to accumulate 266 career wins.
Feller’s journey from Van Meter to Cooperstown is the stuff small town folks boast about for generations. That “Rapid Robert” Feller was also known as the “Heater from Van Meter” is a source of pride in his hometown years after his death.
The good people of Van Meter, Iowa are talking proudly again as one of their own residents — David Young — captured the Republican nomination for Iowa’s third Congressional seat. The former Chief of Staff for Senator Chuck Grassley, Young captured the nomination with the strangest of campaign strategies – by being a nice guy from a small town.
As political wonks know from following the caucuses, Iowa is an interesting study in American presidential politics. It turns out the state’s process for choosing Congressional nominees is just as unique. Like most states, Iowa’s process starts with a popular election. But if no candidate gets 35% of the primary vote, the process moves to a party nominating convention.
In the primary to choose the GOP’s nominee, none of the six candidates got anywhere near the magic 35% total. So back in June, 513 Republican precinct officials gathered in a steamy high school gym to choose who would represent them on the ballot in November.
After the primary, the campaign had gotten nasty with the candidates all attacking each other’s records and personality flaws. No sooner had the polls closed than all the candidates went negative – all, that is, except David Young.
Understanding that a convention is much different than an election, Young quietly went about doing what comes naturally to him – being a likeable good guy. While others were attacking, Young began meeting convention delegates one-on-one and talking about the things people from small towns tend to talk about. In between chatting about farming and, well, farming, he’d toss in his conservative credentials and impressive party resume. At the end of each conversation, Young spoke favorably of the candidate the delegate supported and simply asked if they would support him in the event their first choice dropped out.
The strategy worked. One-by-one, as candidates dropped from contention, delegates committed to Young. In between each of the five convention ballots, Young worked the rows of GOP faithful, shaking hands and reminding them of the commitment they had made when they had visited. It didn’t take much. They all liked him and thought he was a good guy.
In the end, the man who had a month earlier finished next to last in the voting was suddenly the party’s nominee for Congress.
Young’s “aw-shucks” personality came through at the convention. In his acceptance speech, the convention delegates believed him when he said he was humbled. When asked in a post-convention interview what he was going to do next, Young replied: “Go see a movie.”
The next day, the Des Moines Register opined about “nice guys” finishing first. Young was more pointed. “Isn’t an election about making friends?” he told me. Naïve, maybe, but just what you might expect from a regular guy from a small town like Van Meter, Iowa.
After all, as history reminds us, Young’s “second-choice” convention strategy worked well for a small-town lawyer when he ran for president and changed history in the process. If being a “nice guy” worked for Abraham Lincoln, maybe it’ll work for David Young.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je57zPXo4gQ
