Newt Gingrich is finally opening up offices in Iowa, but up until then it was up to Jim Conklin, an early supporter and chair of the Linn County GOP, to keep up an unpaid grassroots effort. And it was a pretty lonely job.
“The people in the county willing to stand with Newt six months ago, I could probably send a postcard with all their names on it,” he told TPM. “Nobody had enough guts to say he’d win then. Everyone repeated the news media.”
Conklin credits Newt’s anti-media message at debates with reviving his campaign.
“Reporters and news media make it pretty difficult because they want to see all the Republicans coalesce around one leader,” he said. “Newt’s tactic in the debate is wonderful, to say ‘stop trying to find our negatives, we all have them.’ What are their positive ideas? Pick the best one, stop trying to find the fault in each of them.”
He added that the media’s focus on Gingrich’s worst features still missed the mark.
“The talking heads last week, I’ve been laughing because they’re saying ‘the voters don’t care about his baggage,'” he said. “They didn’t care about a blowjob in the middle of the Oval Office either, why should they care about Newt?”
Ultimately, however, he said he’s “not surprised” to see Gingrich surging.
“His plans were every well thought out, the goal was to keep building our low level organization,” he said. “I laugh when I keep hearing Gingrich doesn’t have a good group of people — he actually has some of the best people in iowa, we’ve just been keeping our noses clean and not wasting money.
