How to make famous friends: Run for office in Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — If you live beyond these gently sloping hills of eastern Iowa, you’ve probably never heard of Rod Blum, a bespectacled Dubuque businessman and father of five who’s running to represent Iowa’s 1st Congressional District.

But in the past few months, the nation’s top Republicans have flown in from across the country to see and be seen with him. Since late spring, Blum has held court with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. He had an hourlong conversation recently in Des Moines with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Dr. Ben Carson, a best-selling conservative author and neurosurgeon who’s considering his own presidential run, made sure his latest book tour swung through Blum’s district.

Blum has secured photo ops in the local press and enthusiastic endorsements from these big-name Republicans, who shower him with praise.

His secret? It’s all about the geography.

“It’s helped us raise money and get free media,” Blum told Yahoo News recently on a swing through D.C., where he had just met with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in the senator’s Washington office and had spoken to Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan the night before. “I always say with a wink, ‘They must like me a lot. I don’t understand why they’d want to come here!’”

As an Iowa Republican running in a cycle before an open presidential caucus, Blum is in the right place at the right time. Iowa will hold the first-in-the-nation caucuses in January 2016, so presidential hopefuls have been flocking here to place themselves in his good graces. Other Iowa House candidates, such as David Young in the 3rd District and Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the 2nd District, are constantly bombarded with visits from smiling politicians who seem all too eager to lend a hand. Curiously, candidates in neighboring states like South Dakota, Minnesota and Illinois don’t seem to get nearly as many high-profile visitors.

These are future Iowa kingmakers in training.

The “kingmaker” title is a term Blum and his staff once tossed around in jest, but with each phone call from a famous politician asking if he’ll spare some time to be seen with them, he’s starting to think it could actually come true.

“We had initially joked about this internally, but we kind of do get an indication as to who is getting really serious,” Blum said about presidential hopefuls. “Who is actually trying to build an organization in my district and get on to the voters? It went from being a ‘Ha-Ha’ thing to, ‘Hmm, we might be onto something here.’”

Winning Iowa’s 1st Congressional District would be a major coup for Republicans. Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley, who’s currently seeking the state’s open Senate seat, has held the seat since 2007. In 2012, President Obama won the district with 56 percent of the vote after winning a majority, with 58.5 percent, in 2008. Blum’s victory would pad the GOP’s majority in the House and put him in a prime opportunity to court and promote more GOP presidential candidates who will no doubt flock here many times over the next year.

Blum’s epiphany came when Christie arrived in Iowa with his entourage to campaign for Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, the man who has turned the state into a must-stop destination for aspiring politicians by tightly guarding its precious first-in-the-nation status. Blum said he was awed by the spectacle of the visit: The crowds, the media, the governor’s security.

“My God, it was a media throng. It was amazing, I’d never seen anything like it,” Blum said of the summer fundraiser, where Christie promised him that he’d return before the election to campaign for him.

“He said, ‘Hey, I’ll come out here and help you in Iowa.’ He said it directly to me,” Blum said. “The word we had from his staff was that he was only going to make appearances with other governors, because he’s the head of the Republican Governor’s Association. So I was kind of surprised when he offered. I didn’t even ask! He offered. Then I saw him later in the day at another campaign stop that we both went to, along with Gov. Branstad. I walked by him and I said, ‘Hey, you’re not going to stand me up, are you?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely not, man, no worries. I’ll be back to help you.’ So that was good.”

Visits from presidential aspirants, of course, are mutually beneficial. Unknown candidates like Blum get a chance to raise their name recognition, while White House hopefuls develop relationships with leaders they’ll need to support them in 2015.

For now, Blum won’t say which suitor he fancies the most.

“I want to see a conservative candidate for president in 2016. If there’s a real Democrat on the ticket and Democrat-light, people are going to vote for the real deal,” he said. When I asked if he intends to endorse someone closer to the time of the caucuses, he paused: “How do I answer this? Perhaps.”

Blum said he has started to gauge which candidates are serious by their level of enthusiasm in organizing a trip to his state. He seems to spend about as much time as the media playing the odds of who will run for president.

He’s curious, for example, about what it means that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker hasn’t made the trip.

“Madison’s an hour-and-a-half drive to Dubuque, where I live. So I’m like, geez, do you want to be president or don’t you want to be president?” he said. “I know he’s running for governor, but it’s 90 minutes.”

Same goes for Rubio, who still might need to do some fence-mending with conservatives after he championed a bipartisan immigration bill in 2013 that offered a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants.

“It hurt him in Iowa big-time. If I mention Marco Rubio, the first thing out of an Iowan’s mouth is, 'Well, I liked' — past tense — 'him until immigration.'”

Can he overcome it?

“That’s a good question,” Blum said. “He needs to get out in my district.”