Thompson State Director Chad Olsen:
Question:  Where are we in this campaign?

OLSEN:  This is sort of the phase of the campaign where people are getting used to the candidates; they're checking everybody out.  All the candidates are visiting the state.  It's a little earlier I think than the last cycle.  I think the number of visits obviously are a lot higher than they were this time eight years ago for Republicans, but it's still sort of the exploratory stage where a lot of the Iowa voters are getting out and listening to all the different candidates, and so from our perspective, we're here every single week and that's what we're tyring to do is get out in front of as many people as possible to help them make their decision.  Although it's only April, we're only four months away from the Straw Poll, and that's kind of like a mini-caucus really in Iowa.

Caucuses are a lot different.  It's not like a primary where you go and vote in a voting booth.  You actually go into someone's living room or to a school or to the court house with your neighbors in your precinct, and you get up and you actually talk about why you support your candidate.  So you're dealing with a really refined group of people.  They're activist types.  You have "X" percentage of the population that's registered to vote.  Out of that maybe a third of them are Republicans. [ed. note-as of April 2, 2007 there were 1,896,195 active registered voters; 575,608 or 30.4% were Republicans].  Out of that third we're only going to have probably 100,000 people go to the caucuses...  So it's a small universe of people; they're politically active and pay attention to issues.

And we're only four months away from the Straw Poll, which will draw 25,000 or more people to vote for the candidate of their choice at that time, and it's a really good opportunity for campaigns to gear up organizationally and see how they're doing.

Question:  Is it an opportunity or is it make and break?

OLSEN:  It's make and break for a  lot of campaigns, especially in the second tier.  Last time even Elizabeth Dole, who was really not considered a second tier candidate--she was considered one of the major candidates--her performance, even though she got third place in the Straw Poll, was not good enough for her to continue.  She wasn't going to be able to raise the money she needed to compete, so she dropped out.  Lamar [Alexander] dropped out.  There were several people that dropped out after that because it's harder to make your case to your donors and to supporters that you're goin to do well if you can't do well on it.

Question:  So on your calendar, that's a huge--?

OLSEN:  That's it, yeah.  That's the first big test.  So even when we're planning trips, we're thinking ahead to we need to go here, X, Y and Z because these are good possibilities for communities where we can get poeple to go to the Straw Poll.  So everything's sort of geared toward that.

Question:  So visits.  What about organizing and the field?

OLSEN:  See our map on the wall with the different colors?  The state's divided up into territories for the field staff and they're out working each one of those individual counties.

And it starts pretty simple.  The first thing they do is contact the [Republican] central committee in the country, they go to the central committee meeting, introduce themselves, get some information out there.  Occasionally they'll find a couple of people that are interested in the campaign that they can start working with in that county, and then when we get to a certain point we can actually take the candidate to that county and build an event.

And then once we're there then we on our campaign work very hard to sign people up at the actual event.  So we have supporter cards that we hand out and we make a pitch for people to sign up.  And so those steps help us build an organization in that county and then once you have some good supporters in that county you can take them and they will help you build the organization further.

And at this point in time, it's either, sometimes it's helping with another trip, of course talking to their friends and recruiting people to support the campaign and also it's time to start working on the straw poll and thinking about taking August 11th and going to Ames Iowa.

Question:  How do you plan for that?

OLSEN:  It's a big thing.  It's a lot of people and you try to get your supporters from all across the state, and I know personally, because everyone is reserving buses already so that their supporters in Sioux City can get on a bus with 30 other or 40 other people that support the candidate and come on down to Ames.  You don't have to worry about driving or anything like that.

Question:  So have you yourself looked into that already?

OLSEN:  We have already looked into that.  We've already reserved most of the buses that we think we need and I can tell you that other campaigns have huge numbers of buses, huge.  In fact the largest bus company in the state was entirely booked by one campaign already--that's almost 200 buses.  So it's already started and it's a huge logistics thing.  You have to figure out how to get all your supporters there, what kind of staff you're going to need to make this happen.  It's a big entertainment venue so candidates usually bring in some of their star performers that are supporters to be there to attract and entice people around the state to come on down.

Question:  And the food?

OLSEN:  An the food, yes; we have to have someone cater the event.

Question:  Cheese curds?

OLSEN:  We'll have to see about that Wisconsin theme--dairy cows or in his case the Belted Galloways.

Question:  So are you making headway in terms of organizing these various counties?

OLSEN:  I think we're really doing well.  I worked on the Forbes campaign the last time around and we started at 0, 1, 2 percent and ended at about 30, were second to Bush.  We were at the Straw Poll--same sort of percentages.  So I think we're ahead of where we were in the game for that campaign.

Gov. Thompson is a very personable guy.  And he was elected four times in Wisconsin, which is kind of a blue state most of the time.  And he ran as a Republican against an incumbent Democrat, won and easily won re-election.  And he's just very likeable and he's probably one of the best retail politicians I've ever seen.  Once you get him in a room with people we have a pretty high conversion rate.  So we are signing up a lot of people at our events and things are going pretty well.

Question:  On the flip side, what's the biggest challenge you face?

OLSEN:  Raising money is probably the biggest challenge I think any candidate faces, evn those that have been successful.  Some of the other candidates have a really high burn rate, and their overhead is a lot higher thatn ours.

It's hard for--I think with the compressed schedule this time, it's hard to say how much help the money is going to be to a candidate, versus our strategy which basically is spend more time campaigning, less time fundraising and concentrate on the early states.

Question:  So do you have your next weekend's trip already in the works?

OLSEN:  Oh yeah.  We plan usually a week or more out.  We still have to be flexible because the governor is a failry busy guy.  But we're going to be here Wednesday and Thursday this week and we're doing an event over in Davenport and then we're overnighting and then we're doing conservative week at the University of Iowa...  And then next week on the 26th he'll be here, and I've got a lot of yellow on my calendar following that...
 

Question:  What was the first campaign you ever worked on?

OLSEN:  The first campaign I ever worked on was Paul Cronin in Massachusetts was running in a Republican primary for governor against Bill Weld and Paul Celucci and there were a couple of other candidates in there.  That would have been '90 I think, 1990 probably.

Question:  Field staff?

OLSEN:  Not really.  I was pretty much a volunteer.  I was a College Republican and Paul Cronin was a trustee of my college, and the College Republicans had all decided to support him so we had a lot of volunteer help, and I did a lot of different things--went with him on trips and staffed events and just whatever he wanted me to do.

Question:  Has that been your career ever since, working on campaigns?

OLSEN:  It was.  I continued to do that in college and then when I got oout of college I got a real job in finance.  And after about 3 1/2 years I just was bored to death.  So I walked into Sen. Phil Gramm's office here in Des Moines in '95, it was down by the Capitol, and I just walked in and said I'd like to work on his campaign and handed my resume in, and I thought actually at the time, I thought well six months and then I can figure out what I want to do.  What happened was at the end of each campaign I had offers to work on other campaigns before that one was over and it was seven years again before I decided to get out.  So that was a six month job that turned into seven years.

Question:  So you've been out--?

OLSEN:  For a few years.  I worked in a primary in 2002.  Doug Gross, Steve Sukup and Bob VanDer Plaats ran for governor and I was with Sukup and that was a close three-way primary, and after that I decided I was going to stay back in Panora and work on some small business that my wife and I had started and we ended up opening a restaurant.  And I really didn't think I was going to be--I though I was going to go vote in the Straw Poll in August as just a regular guy, but things happen.

Question:  How did that happen?

OLSEN:  I started getting phone calls in last December and early January and the first few that I got I said I'm not interested.  I'm not coming back; I'm perfectly happy.  And Steve Grubbs and Brian Dumas are good friends of mine.  And Brian called me one day, and I said well I can guess why you're calling me.  So he talked to me for a while, and I said we'll I'll think about it.  I talked to those guys for the next week and a half or so and decided that yah I think I'm going to do it again.  So that's how I ended up back at it.

Question:  This office itself--locating it, we're you in charge of the search or--?

OLSEN:  Well for a long time, all the campaigns were downtown, in downtown Des Moines, and everybody rented office spaces in buildings downtown that were available at the time.  When we worked on the Sukup campaign I knew from past experiences that a lot of times a lot of our volunteers tended to be on the West side of town, and they didn't want to come downtown to volunteer at night.  So on the Sukup campaign we went with a campaign office out to the west side of town and we had a lot more success getting volunteers.  So this time I just figured we should just be where most of our, or the majority of our supporters are living, so that's why we concentrated out here.

Question:  Did you look at all downtown?

OLSEN:  I did and a lot of the spaces were just too big or in just kind of an awkward location, and I kind of had my mind made up that I wanted to be out in this area.  It seems a little unconventional I guess 'cause I'm used to some of those places on Ingersoll or Grand where you put all your signs out and everything, but when it gets right down to it, if most of our volunteers are out here and this is easier for them to get to...we should be here.

Question:  How many square feet do you have?

OLSEN:  Just 2,000.

Question:  In conclusion, Gov. Thompson is the best choice for Iowa Republican caucus goers because--?

OLSEN:  Because he's the reliable conservative.  He's got the best track record and he's done some pretty significant things in his career: welfare reform, school choice, issues that are really important to caucus goers in Iowa who tend to be pretty conservative.
 
 
 

Copyright © 2007  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action