Feb. 8, 2007
MONTOUR, Iowa -- He says he's made 16 or 17 trips to Iowa since deciding to consider giving this presidential thing a swirl. Mitt Romney probably needs a lot more to really get known here.
"I never heard of him," LaVerna Watson told me while working in the post office in the town of about 250 people, unaware that a candidate for president had been across the street.
"Are you him?" she sheepishly asked me. When I assured her I wasn't, she appeared a bit relieved and said "Well, good luck to him. There's a lot of 'em."
Presidential candidates are plentiful these days, and they'll be widespread in Iowa through the next 11 months leading up to the state's presidential caucuses. But they rarely stop in this central Iowa town with a restaurant, a meat locker, an auto-repair shop, and little else for business.
"I don't know of a presidential candidate ever coming here before, and I was born and raised just north of Montour," said Joyce Wiese of rural Toledo, less than 10 miles from here, on the other side of the Meskwaki Tribe's casino/hotel complex.
But that changed when former Massachusetts governor Romney rolled into town in the front half of a 2-car caravan. He rode in a maroon Chevrolet Impala on a day that began with temperatures under zero degrees Fahrenheit.
Romney campaigned at a lunch-hour event in Rube's Steakhouse, which long ago put Montour on the map in Iowa. If you're from Iowa, you've probably at least heard of Rube's if not stuffed yourself there. It's a modest, grill-your-own place with large charcoal grills situated in three different areas of the restaurant. But on this day, the Romney campaign hired Rube's staff to prepare fat sirloins and baked potatoes for a gathering of about 130, most of whom were seniors who spoke and applauded like true-red conservative Republicans.
"I like what he stands for. I thought he made real good sense," Wiese said after Romney gave a speech and then took a few questions from the audience."
"I have a son in the military," said Wiese's friend, Donna Gitausis of Tama. "I just don't like people yapping about how we should get out of there (Iraq). We've got to stay and we've got to win.''
"I wish we could get the media to tell the true story," Wiese said. "You talk to guys that have come back, and what they know and what the media tells you are on opposite ends. I just think it's pathetic that (the media) come back and tell the stuff they do and let the people overseas hear that."
Like the other two women, Audrey Lutes of nearby Gilman is a staunch Republican. "I watch two shows every Sunday," she said. "I watch 'Meet the Press' and Fox News. I don't agree with that guy on 'Meet the Press.' I watch it for the news.
"The Democrats, they said they were going to work with President Bush (after last November's election) and they are not. When he was first elected, he tried to work with them, and they wouldn't."
To hear Romney tell it, stopping in Rube's was a sentimental journey on a day in which he also made campaign appearances in the vastly larger cities of Boone, Ames, Marshalltown and Des Moines. A little over a quarter-century ago, he spent some time working in Marshalltown, 15 miles from Montour with a poulation of almost 40,000. Romney was vice president of Boston-based Bain & Company Inc., and one of his clients as a consultant was Marshalltown's Fisher Controls, a manufacturing company owned by Monsanto at the time.
"We used to go to dinner at Rube's," Romney remembered with a smile. "Rube's at the time was just one grill and about maybe 10 tables and a glass refrigerator with good steak. I cooked my own and I cooked it very well done like I like it, with lots of salt."
Romney only ate a little from the salad bar's offerings when he sat at the head of one of the three long tables assembled in Rube's main dining room. But after his speech was over and the crowd had dispersed, he ate by himself in the adjoining dimly lit bar, enjoying a large cut of beef that was in a Styrofoam container. For a few precious moments, it was steak and solace.
Shortly before that, Romney had stood three steps from the salad bar to shake hands with attendees as they filed out of the restaurant and back into the Iowa cold.
"I liked what I heard," an elderly woman told the candidate. "How about running against Ted Kennedy and getting him out of there?"
"I tried that once (in 1994),'' Romney told her, "but he beat me good and solid."
"Really? I can't believe it,'' the woman replied.
Romney is returning to Iowa next Tuesday, the day he makes the formal announcement that he's running for president. Clearly, he has get-to-know-me work remaining here.