DES MOINES, Iowa -- Some of the once-euphoric Iowans who helped inspire the nation to embrace Barack Obama in 2008 are experiencing a deep-seated buyer's remorse over their role in delivering the White House to a candidate they think has let them down.
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By Alex Wong, Getty Images
Some Iowa residents, even longtime Democrats, say they are disappointed with how President Obama's performed in office.
By Alex Wong, Getty Images
Some Iowa residents, even longtime Democrats, say they are disappointed with how President Obama's performed in office.
Take longtime Democrat Debbie Smith. Four years ago, she wore the Obama T-shirts, went to his rallies, made her first campaign contribution and caucused for the first time.
"I wish to have my vote back," said Smith, 51, a small business owner from Clive. "I feel completely responsible, and I feel like I need to tell people this."
A sense of betrayal shows up in Iowa polling conducted by rival Mitt Romney's campaign, said its pollster, Neil Newhouse.
It's a discomfiting hurdle for Obama in a state he professes to have strong emotional ties with, that he won by a landslide four years ago, and that could prove pivotal this year for him or for Romney.
In an attempt to hold Iowa, Team Obama has launched an advertising assault that's unprecedented here for its price tag and early start.
On Tuesday, Obama parachutes into Iowa for the fourth time this year. He's erecting a hefty infrastructure here, with 14 offices open now and Iowa's biggest field organization yet, Democrats say.
Race to close to call
It's a fusillade of campaigning in a state that was not high on team Romney's target list for the general election just a few months ago. After all, Obama won Iowa in 2008 by a decisive 9.54 percentage points. Today, the race in Iowa is too close to call, a rolling average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com shows.
When polling showed Obama struggling here, and when his re-election campaign started dumping money and its top stars into the Hawkeye State, the Republican campaign didn't need any more clues that Iowa is up for grabs.
"We know how to hunt where the ducks are," said Romney political director Rich Beeson. "I feel good about the path to victory in Iowa."
That path has been opened, in part, by voter disappointment in Obama, Romney's polling found.
"We see some of that in other states, but not to that extent," said Newhouse, Romney's pollster. "That's what makes Iowa kind of special -- makes it stand out."
David Axelrod, Obama's chief campaign strategist, noted the amount of time Obama spent here in 2007 as a caucus candidate and predicted ultimate victory.
"You invest 83 days in a state, it's going to matter," he said.
And in this general election cycle, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina pledges "an even bigger, more aggressive campaign in Iowa than we did last time."
"We have Iowa DNA in this place," he said.
But Axelrod also acknowledged the reality of voter disappointment.
"I understand the disillusionment of some," he said. "We not only were dealing with a national economic emergency and two wars but a recalcitrant group in Congress that put politics ahead of solving problems."
Former fans defect
Last week, The Des Moines Register interviewed 23 Republican and independent Iowa Poll respondents who helped carry Obama in the caucuses and general election in Iowa in 2008. Eighteen of them said they definitely would not vote for Obama this year.
One explanation for their dearth of enthusiasm can be summed up by the news on the first Friday morning of each month: the unemployment report. Each lackluster economic report, like the one two days ago that pinpointed the jobless rate unchanged at 8.2 percent, reinforces the sense among Iowans that the country is on the wrong track.
But each former Obama voter interviewed by the Register offered a different take on what bugs them.
Smith said she was drawn to Obama's message that "we're not red states, we're not blue states, we're the United States." But now the nation seems even more divided, she said.
The federal debt deeply concerns Smith, who re-registered as a Republican in 2010. Smith, who works in the advertising industry, said she and her husband "cut out all the extras" in 2008 during the recession. Thirteen workers dwindled to seven today, and her husband does the cleaning. The family's lake home seemed like an expense beyond their means, so they sold it.
"We as a country need to finally learn the lesson that we don't have the money," she said.
When the U.S. Supreme Court made its ruling to uphold the federal health care law, Smith made her first contribution to Romney: $100.
Young people lifted Obama onto their shoulders four years ago, but with unemployment among recent college graduates at historic highs, some said they're hanging up on him now.
At age 16, Des Moines student Megan La Suer witnessed the hubbub of the 2008 Democratic caucuses with her parents, both Obama backers. "People were going crazy," she said. "Everybody was really excited."
La Suer was too young to vote in 2008 or she would have cast a ballot for Obama, she said. But after studying health care and economics at the University of Iowa, she came to her own conclusions about the federal budget and economic policy.
"The big thing is I want to have a job when I graduate," said La Suer, now 20. "Obama has promised that, and I don't think we've seen the results that he's promised."
This summer, La Suer co-founded Students for Mitt Romney.
Some of Obama's Iowa support has leached to Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Guthrie Center resident Leo Kenzie, 65, is an independent voter who caucused for Obama four years ago. He now backs Paul for president.
"Obama did the typical political thing -- he said a bunch of things before he got elected, but he hasn't come through with it," Kenzie said.
It's a common theme among Obama defectors. Four years ago, Iowans hung on his every word. Headlines reflected the gushiness people felt for this new leader, and tears streamed the night he won.
Pollster J. Ann Selzer said Iowans expected an abundance of hope and change, "but anyone who steps into that much enthusiasm is bound to fail. We call it 'anticipointment.' "
Ad war launches early
Obama is fighting hard to keep from going underwater in head-to-head polling with Romney in Iowa. Instead of waiting until both political parties wrap up their nominations in August and September, Obama kicked off a full-scale general election battle in the spring.
Obama has sent ads into various groupings of states. Iowa has been part of every wave. The campaign has purchased $4.8 million of TV advertising in Iowa since April 1, according to ad tracking information shared with the Register.
"That is an unprecedented level of TV advertising at this point," said Brian Dumas, a GOP strategist from the Quad Cities. "You don't come in and invest that much in a state you're confident will be in the win column for you."
Meanwhile, Romney has run just six TV ads in Iowa. Five were positive, with no mention of Obama. But GOP super political action committees have taken up the slack.
Obama's strike-early advertising strategy might prove wise, said David Yepsen, a former Register political columnist and director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.
While Republicans turned the airwaves red during the Iowa caucuses, Obama's campaign was silent, Yepsen noted. "Obama's got to stop the bleeding a bit, and he's doing that," he said. "It makes sense to fire some of your biggest bullets now."
Romney adviser Beth Myers, who was Romney's 2008 campaign manager and now leads his search for a running mate, thinks Iowans will be an early warning system for the country.
If they're giving Obama a skeptical look, "they may be the canary in the coal mine -- they may be looking at the race closer now than the rest of the country," she said.
"When the other voters tune in after Labor Day, they may have the same feelings that the Iowans do."
