Romney: campaña de baja intensidad en Iowa

ABC News:

(...) He announced this week five additions to his Iowa campaign team and held a tele-town hall with Iowa voters. His footprint is light — his only visit to the state this year was before he officially announced his presidential campaign — but he’s not ignoring the crucial first caucus state, despite tamping down expectations.

According to a report from the Des Moines Register and confirmed by the Romney campaign in Iowa, he spoke with nearly 10,000 Iowans during the tele-town hall and told them that despite skipping the straw poll, he will visit Iowa for the state fair next month. He’ll also be in the state for the Fox News debate in August and his Iowa team says that although he will leave the state right after the debate, he'll be back to campaign sometime after that. On the tele-town hall, he told the Iowans listening in, “you won’t be seeing too little of us.”

According to the Register report, Romney said he will still play in Iowa despite not participating in the straw poll. “Nothing should be read into our lack of participation in the straw poll other than we want to do as well as we possibly can in the real contest that selects the delegates,” he said. And he reminded the listeners just how much time he spent in the state the last time around, reminding them of Mitt Mobile and how it visited all 99 counties during the last campaign. “And so we know the state, love the people of the state,” he said.

(...) Romney held hundreds of events, spending close to $7 million at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 to come in a disappointing second to Mike Huckabee. The campaign will be different this time and Romney Iowa campaign consultant David Kochel says they have kept in touch with their old supporters with many volunteering for the campaign now while also seeing new support from Iowans focused on the economy. Kochel stresses that they are absolutely not skipping the first caucus state.

“If you look at the Pawlenty campaign or the Santorum campaign, they are going to spend dozens of and dozens of days in Iowa because they have to. It’s a state where they are going to focus all their attention, all their resources so they can break through. Gov. Romney is a national candidate. We spent a lot of days in Iowa last time pursuing the same strategy that these other campaigns are pursuing right now,” Kochel said.

Kochel also revealed some of that post-straw poll strategy, stressing that right now he’s “happy to have lower expectations.”

“We don’t have to be advertising in advance of the straw poll and all throughout the months before the caucuses because we already have very high name ID. Many Iowa Republicans already know how they feel about Gov. Romney. We’ve got a pretty good level of support right now and what we need to do is take the volunteer component of the campaign, give it more energy, bring Gov. Romney back not only for the debate and for the state fair he will be going to, but after that, try and demonstrate we want their support and we need their help,” Kochel told ABC News. “We’re not going to take things for granted. We are going to work for it. We’re hoping that we are going to be successful and do very well in Iowa, but we will do it with a fraction of the resources that we spent in 2007 and 2008. (...)