Tom Vilsack Is Winning Mt. Pleasant

Tom Vilsack yesterday annouced the names of 1,159 caucusgoers who will definitely support him in the 2008 caucuses. However, his support is not very broad. Over 13% of those supporters were from Mt. Pleasant, Vilsack’s hometown (whereas the ratio of Mt. Pleasant residents to all Iowans is 0.3%). The list also includes the wives of Vilsack’s Iowa Field Director, Jesse Harris and his Iowa State Director, Dusky Terry.

There are obvious reasons for such a large number of his supporters to be friends and neighbors. Like the money Vilsack raised in the last quarter, these are all of his “gimmes.” If you serve as Governor of your state for eight years, there should be at least 1,100 people in your state who will automatically support you for President. Unfortunately for Vilsack, who has been prone to bad luck throughout his run, he seems to be relying almost as much on the people who automatically support you for President if you serve as Mayor of their town. This means that Vilsack’s support is highly geographically concentrated, which isn’t good. He’ll have an easy time winning Henry County’s 17 delegates at the State Convention but he still needs to win some of the remaining 2983 delegates.

To be fair to Vilsack, the list has quite a few elected officials and key activists but they are mostly longtime allies, some of whom have supported him since his 1998 Gubernatorial primary against Mark McCormick. Releasing this list is a nice way to hide ugly poll numbers but the ugly poll numbers will keep on coming out and the lists of new supporters by the hundreds won’t.

1 comment February 10th, 2007