January 4, 2008

The candidates have spent a year and tens of millions of dollars in Iowa, and Thursday night the first actual voters offered their first assessments. Some candidates and their strategists were hoping the caucuses and the New Hampshire primary next week would settle the race, weeding out the contenders for the two major parties' presidential nominations. Watching the campaign in cold, snowy and mostly empty Iowa, we were hoping for something else - that this year's Iowa-New Hampshire rush to judgment will be the last.

For all of Thursday night's drama, the results in Iowa did not
preclude a race going into New Hampshire, and, we hope, beyond - to South Carolina, Florida and the cluster of primaries on February 5. Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton, but she's got plenty of money left, and John Edwards got a boost. Mike Huckabee's win was unlikely to deter Mitt Romney or the Republicans who did not contest Iowa: John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani.

Keeping this race alive so significant numbers of Americans in more populated states can participate would begin to make up for the ludicrous spectacle of the past year, which enriched the television networks and the political consultants (some $300 million already spent) far more than it enriched the political dialogue. We hope both parties will wake up and end the undemocratic system in which the choice of a new president rests far too heavily on nonbinding votes in January by voters that don't necessarily represent the rest of the country.

We don't question the enthusiasm or the commitment of the people of Iowa and New Hampshire. But Iowa, where a huge turnout amounts to less than 10 percent of the population, is about 92 percent white, more rural and older than the rest of the nation. New Hampshire has a non-Hispanic white population of about 95 percent. Iowa's Democrats are more liberal and more protectionist than the nation's Democrats. Its Republicans are more conservative, and religiously driven, than the nation's Republicans. And yet, The Boston Globe reported that Mr. Romney spent $7 million on ads in Iowa. That's nearly $4 per registered voter.

We do believe that the time has long passed for both parties to not only break the Iowa-New Hampshire habit but also end the damaging race to be third, with states pushing their primaries closer and closer to New Year's Day.

Instead, the country should adopt a more sensible and more representative system of regional primaries, in which states are divided into regional groups that vote on a designated day. The honor of going first would rotate year to year among the regions. That would give a far broader range of American voters a say in this vitally important choice.

Make no mistake, there are choices to be made in this first election in many, many years in which both parties' nominations are being contested. Most of the Republican contenders (with the exception, most of the time, of Senator John McCain) offer the same kind of politics of division that has so polarized this nation over the last seven years. It is a politics that thrives on religious and social intolerance and fear.

Mr. Huckabee, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, cloaks himself in affability and Christianity. But he bullied Mr. Romney into pleading with religious conservatives to accept his Mormon faith as Christian enough for a Republican nominee and, after professing charity, has recently become a scourge of undocumented immigrants.

Fear often appears to be the only plank on which Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is standing, when you can tell where he is standing at all. Mr. Giuliani, who parlayed the 9/11 tragedy into a lucrative business and now speaks, bizarrely, of the "9/11 generation," has switched his views a dizzying number of times - on immigration, on abortion, on New York.

Almost as dizzying, in fact, as the pirouettes executed by Mr. Romney, who wants American voters to forget his record as governor of Massachusetts - where he endorsed gay marriage and reproductive choice - and believe what he says now that he wants to be president. Among Mr. Romney's tailored-for-the-campaign proposals is to double the size of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which even President Bush knows must be closed.

All of the Republicans want to continue President Bush's disaster of a war in Iraq, including Mr. McCain. He, however, has taken a courageous stand for immigration reform, which seemed to doom his candidacy last year, and is a strong advocate of the need to confront global warming and to stop the abuse of prisoners in Mr. Bush's system of secret prisons.

The Democrats are united in their opposition to the war, but none have spelled out a persuasive plan for getting American troops home without setting off a wider conflagration.

Senator Obama generates enormous excitement with his youth, and his promises of change - even if it's not entirely clear what he intends to change or how. Senator Clinton, meanwhile, wavers between wanting to be seen as ready to serve as president because of her eight years in the White House with her husband - and trying to satisfy voters' yearnings for new ideas and new ways.

Mr. Edwards has a strong populist message, but it sounds a bit odd coming from a former tort lawyer and hedge fund executive who ran as a completely different person in 2004. One of his ads features an out-of-work Maytag employee who said Mr. Edwards promised his 7-year-old son: "I'm going to keep fighting for your daddy's job." We're still waiting for Mr. Edwards to explain how he, or any politician, can turn back the tide of economics and globalization. We'd prefer if he explained how to make it work for all Americans.

None of this has led us to a choice in the nominating contests, never mind for the presidency. The majority of Americans are in the same position. That's why they should be allowed to see and hear more of these candidates, and not have to settle for the judgments of the people of Iowa and New Hampshire.

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By PATRICK HEALY, January 4, 2008

DES MOINES - The Democratic and Republican establishments and their presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Governor Mitt Romney, were brought low in Iowa on Thursday night, shaken seriously by two national newcomers who won decisively on messages of insurgency and change.

The victors in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama for the Democrats and former Governor Mike Huckabee for the Republicans, are as far from the status quo as possible. One is the son of a Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother who entered the United States Senate just three years ago. The other is a former Baptist minister who was best known until recently for losing over 100 pounds and taking on the issue of childhood obesity.

The two winners burst the aura of strength and confidence that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Romney had tried to cultivate for months, and left both parties suddenly without a clear path to their nominating conventions, let alone November.

Mrs. Clinton's loss was especially glaring. Her central strategy for much of 2007 was to appear as the inevitable nominee, but Iowans shredded that notion. She tried in recent weeks to convince voters that another Clinton administration could be an agent of change, but Iowans clearly did not buy it.

Without question, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Romney have the money, the campaign apparatus and the legions of supporters to stay in the hunt for the nomination and to right their campaigns. But Mrs. Clinton's lackluster finish raises anew questions about her electability, and whether independent voters - twice as many of whom backed Mr. Obama over her - will ever come around to Mrs. Clinton.

And Mr. Romney, who outspent Mr. Huckabee 6 to 1 in television advertising in Iowa, now faces a far more crowded field of rivals in the New Hampshire primary who are eager to tear into his wounded candidacy

All the candidates now move to that primary on Tuesday, which Mrs. Clinton had tried to make a fire wall for her campaign, as it was for her husband's presidential candidacy in 1992, when he finished strongly in second place.

"If Hillary doesn't stop Obama in New Hampshire, Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee," said Robert Shrum, a Democratic consultant who was John Kerry's senior strategist in 2004.

Clinton advisers declined to say Thursday night if she would now pursue a different strategy against Mr. Obama. But a shift seems likely now that Mrs. Clinton's multilayered, sometimes contradictory message - offering an experienced hand, for example, but also running as a candidate who could bring change - fell flat in this first contest.

"We built a campaign for the long haul - we feel very good about our operation in New Hampshire, and polling has us up," said Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman. The danger for Mrs. Clinton, of course, is that those polls may not hold after the outcome in Iowa.

Further undercutting Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama peeled away broad swaths of women from her base of support, and the political potency of baby boomers fell apart in Iowa. Half of the Democrats under 45 said their first choice was Mr. Obama, according to a poll by Edison/Mitofsky of voters entering caucus sites.

At the same time, it was also historic that so many Iowa Democrats voted for an African-American man and a woman. For Mr. Obama, especially, the ratification of his candidacy by Democrats and independents in a predominantly white and rural state suggests that he may be able to build a broad and multiracial coalition in his bid for the White House.

The nomination fights will only intensify from now, though the steel that Mr. Huckabee will deploy in the battle is unclear. He seemed to come out of nowhere - a former governor who was so little known among Republicans that many of them could not even name the state he once led (Arkansas) - and turned from asterisk-status to giant-slayer in spite of a paltry political organization, slim dollars and a final week marked by gaffes.

As when Pat Robertson made a surprise second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses in 1988, Mr. Huckabee enjoyed substantial political support from evangelical Christians and took advantage of a muddled Republican presidential field to gain his 11th-hour victory.

For Mr. Romney, of Massachusetts, his loss will register as a deep blow to his candidacy - a failure bound to worry establishment Republicans and wealthy donors who have viewed him as their man. It will also energize and inspire Republicans who are backing Senator John McCain in the New Hampshire primary.

Mr. Romney's drive to the Republican nomination was supposed to begin with him looking formidable and confident coming out of Iowa. Mr. Romney, his wife and his sons planted themselves here for months and poured in money, including millions of his own; he now heads to New Hampshire clearly wounded and a target for even more rivals, like Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Senator Fred Thompson, and Mr. McCain, of Arizona.

Mr. Huckabee, a folksy and fairly plain-speaking politician with a sense of humor that many Iowans enjoyed, appealed to Republican caucusgoers who put a premium on a candidate's Christian faith, and who were deeply wary about seeing a Mormon, Mr. Romney, become president.

But Mr. Huckabee also struck many populist themes that have deep appeal to middle-class Iowans and farmers, promising to tailor his economic priorities to their needs and taking tough stands on a key issue here, immigration.

But Iowa voters are not New Hampshire voters, as Mr. Huckabee and his advisers are well aware. Devoutly religious voters do not exist in nearly the same numbers in the Granite State. And the fervent anti-tax sentiment among Republicans there is likely to clash with Mr. Huckabee's record of raising taxes in Arkansas.

"If Huckabee scares the Republican establishment and makes the party fear losing, you could see a rapid rallying around a second candidate," said Nelson Warfield, a Republican consultant not working for any candidate. Still, he said, "Nothing makes a man look like a leader more than a winner."

Mr. Robertson's Iowa victory in 1988 - when he came in second to Bob Dole and edged out the ultimate nominee, George H. W. Bush - gave him little bounce in New Hampshire, given the lack of a fervent evangelical base. "I'm going to be the nominee," Mr. Robertson said right after his victory, crediting God in particular with his success. But his fortunes faded after a drubbing soon after in New Hampshire.

Mr. Huckabee talked about God on the Iowa campaign trail, as well, but on Thursday night there was one other word that he - as well as Mr. Obama, Mr. Romney, Mrs. Clinton, former Senator John Edwards - discussed especially and emphatically: "change."

As Mr. Edwards put it, "the status quo lost and change won" in the caucuses. Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee repeated the words incessantly in their victory speeches, brandishing the word as a talisman that overcame Mrs. Clinton's decades of experience and Mr. Romney's leadership bona fides. Yet change was not only the political message; change was the two men themselves.

Marjorie Connelly contributed reporting.

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By GAIL COLLINS, New York Times January 3, 2008

DES MOINES

As the presidential candidates tell them every single day, Iowans deserve to be the nation's kingmakers because they are exceptional citizens who take their responsibilities very, very seriously. So tonight, even though it's very cold - even though it's Hokies vs. Jayhawks in the Orange Bowl - the sturdy Iowa voters will pull on their parkas and go out to fulfill their historic destiny. Perhaps as many as 15 percent of them!

"Money will become irrelevant once somebody wins the Iowa caucus," said John (I Currently Have No Money) Edwards. "The winner of the Iowa caucus is going to have huge amounts of money pouring in." Edwards, the Democratic third-runner, has spent more time in Iowa than many Iowans, who have a tendency to flee to Florida in the winter.

People, ignore whatever happens here. The identity of the next leader of the most powerful nation in the world is not supposed to depend on the opinion of one small state. Let alone the sliver of that state with the leisure and physical capacity to make a personal appearance tonight at a local caucus that begins at precisely 7 o'clock. Let alone the tiny slice of the small sliver willing to take part in a process that involves standing up in public to show a political preference, while being lobbied and nagged by neighbors.

Ah yes, good work fighting for democracy around the globe, American troops, Pakistani lawyers, international election observers. The tiny slice of the sliver of the small state approves.

Tonight, the Iowa Deciders will divide into 1,781 local caucuses. Past history suggests that a few of these gatherings may not draw any attendees whatsoever and that several others will consist entirely of a guy named Carl. Attendance has no effect on the number of delegates involved, and we hardly need mention that the whole thing is weighted to give rural residents an advantage. Iowans in politically active neighborhoods where 100 people show up may find their vote is worth only 1 percent as much as, say, Carl's. This gives them the opportunity to experience what it is like to be a New Yorker or Californian all year round.

Iowa Republican caucuses, which involve writing a name on a piece of paper and going home, are like Athens in the Age of Pericles compared with the Democrats, who are closer to Turkmenistan in the age of Saparmurat Niyazov. Tonight the Democratic caucus-goers (We are expecting way more than 100,000!) will divide up into groups supporting each of the different candidates. (Secret ballots are for sissies.) Then some of the smaller groups will be dissolved under rules so complicated they are known only to the local insiders and experts hired by the candidates to decipher them. (Sometimes these turn out to be the exact same people!)

"What if the largest groups are not immediately apparent because more than one nonviable Presidential Preference group contains the same number of eligible attendees and will not realign?" the party guide asks rhetorically. This is the simplified version of the rules prepared for the benefit of the media, but the answer, obviously, is that you flip a coin. ("A game of chance is used to determine which groups may remain.")

On the Republican side, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are at a grave disadvantage because of a failure to campaign enough in Iowa. (You'd think Florida was a state or something.) Fred Thompson is so desperate to go home that he's practically begging people to vote for somebody else. Mitt Romney is by far the best organized. His victory in the important Iowa straw poll last summer demonstrated that he would really be a president who knows how to rent a bus. Meanwhile, the very enthusiastic evangelicals are going to try to prove that if a commander in chief has a heart like Mike Huckabee's, it won't matter whether he knows where Pakistan is.

Obama backers believe Barack will win on a record-breaking turnout of new participants, some of them being actual Iowa residents. (Checking is for babies.) Or everything could come down to the minor candidates' supporters - rule by the tiny piece of the slice of the sliver.

In the Democratic caucuses, if your group is the smallest in the room you might have to: A) Relive the moment in ninth grade when you were the last one chosen for volleyball and then B) Walk over and join a different team. Dennis Kucinich has told his followers that if - by some wild chance - they find that they are not one of the most popular groups, they should switch to Barack Obama. Kucinich's positions on most issues actually seem closer to John Edwards's, but last summer Edwards was caught on tape whispering to Hillary Clinton that Dennis was really not a serious contender. Petty, perhaps, but in a contest that begins with the presumption that nobody is qualified to lead the most powerful nation on earth without making at least two visits to Pottawattamie County, it resonates.

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By ADAM NAGOURNEY
New York Times
January 1, 2008

DES MOINES - Iowa is packed with presidential candidates and hundreds of campaign aides, advisers and contributors. Twenty-five hundred representatives of news organizations have been granted credentials to cover the caucuses Thursday night, twice as many as in 2004. Rarely has a political event been so intensely anticipated as a decisive moment, at least on the Democratic side.

But what if it is not decisive?

What if at the end of Thursday, the three leading Democrats - former Senator John Edwards and Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama - are separated by a percentage point or two, leaving no one with the clear right of delivering a victory speech (or the burden of conceding)? A number of polls going into the final days have suggested that after all of this, the Democratic caucus on Thursday night could end up more or less a tie.

In truth, amid all the endless permutations of outcomes that are being discussed - can Mrs. Clinton, the putative front-runner, survive a third-place finish, or Mr. Edwards a second-place one? - aides are beginning to grapple with the frustrating possibility that all the time, money and political skill invested here might prove to be for naught when it comes to identifying the candidate to beat in the primaries and winnowing the top tier.

"It would be like a six-month trial and a hung jury," said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. "I think it is really possible."

Rather than clarify the state of play and consolidate this crowded field a bit, an outcome like that would almost certainly muddle things further and potentially extend the time before Democrats know their nominee.

For different reasons, Iowa is not likely to determine much for the Republicans, either. Only Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, are going all-out here, and whatever happens between them, the Republican race already seems likely to go on at least until the cavalcade of primaries across the country on Feb. 5.

But for the leading Democrats, an inconclusive ending here would be a much more complicated result.

Because none of them would be judged a decisive loser, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama would all be able to go on to the New Hampshire primary next week, no questions asked. And you can bet on this: the other Democrats in the race - Senators Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph R. Biden Jr., Representative Dennis J. Kucinich and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico - would feel less of the morning-after-Iowa pressure to pull out.

It would be hard for any candidate to play the "I beat expectations" game and claim some sort of chimerical victory, much the way Bill Clinton proclaimed himself the winner after coming in second in New Hampshire in 1992 - although Mr. Edwards, who for much of the year campaigned in the shadow of his two rivals, would no doubt try.

"Frankly, if there's a three-way tie, that changes the dynamics of what has been reported the entire year: that it's a two-person race," said Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, the Iowa campaign director for Mr. Edwards, who has put in more than a year preparing for this week. "It changes the way people look at the race, and they'll see it as a three-way race."

It is a good bet, in fact, that one candidate would try to claim a victory, even if it was by a single percentage point or less. Still, that is not likely to get him or her on the cover of Time or Newsweek (that would be the old-school way of measuring the political impact of winning in Iowa). The other two would be left fighting for the right of second place. And politics being politics, it is likely there would be a campaign trying to present a three-way tie as a victory.

Beyond that, New Hampshire, which for Democrats has seemed something like a stepchild in this year's nominating process given all the attention being paid to Iowa, would get a chance to have some real influence over the nomination. For 25 years, there has been debate and study about how the outcome in Iowa affects New Hampshire voters. This time around, because of the decision by the New Hampshire secretary of state, Bill Gardner, to set the primary on Jan. 8, voters will have just five days to examine the candidates and make their decision.

One of the bedrock political assumptions of the year - and certainly one that has informed Mrs. Clinton's campaign - is that winning Iowa and New Hampshire would set the table for sweeping the 20 or so states that vote on Feb. 5, the day when many Democrats believe that their contest will effectively be decided. But if Iowans end up being equally divided among what many party leaders view as an unusually strong cast of candidates, who is to say that voters in the Feb. 5 states won't be as well?

None of this is meant to suggest that such an outcome would mean that what has taken place here over the past year is insignificant. Quite the contrary. Watching these candidates, Democrats and Republicans, deliver their final speeches, take the last rounds of questions from Iowans and shake the hands of supporters one more time, it is apparent that most of them are much better at campaigning than they were a year ago.

Mr. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, an old Iowa caucus hand who has moved here to help out in the final days, said as much in explaining why he would be comfortable with even an inconclusive outcome. "The experience here in Iowa," he said, "has been tremendous for the entire campaign."

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By LESLIE WAYNE
New York Times
January 1, 2008

DES MOINES - Spurred by a recent Supreme Court decision, independent political groups are using their financial muscle and organizational clout as never before to influence the presidential race, pumping money and troops into early nominating states on behalf of their favored candidates.

Iowans have been bombarded over the last few days with radio spots supporting John Edwards that were paid for by a group affiliated with locals of the Service Employees International Union, which just kicked in $800,000 - on top of $760,000 already spent.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, rolled across Iowa on Monday in a customized black-and-gold bus emblazoned with his picture and the logo of the International Association of Firefighters, which has spent several hundred thousand dollars supporting him. And at campaign events in Iowa, backers in AFSCME union shirts turned out Monday to show their support for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. Those appearances come in addition to the union's $770,000 advertising campaign promoting her candidacy.

The groups are prohibited from coordinating their efforts with the campaigns. But the candidates, while often distancing themselves from these efforts, certainly benefit from their activities. Iowa airwaves have been filled with commercials from these groups as they take advantage of the June ruling that lifted a ban on broadcast messages from independent groups within 30 days of a primary or caucus.

Independent groups also act as a vehicle for negative advertising that campaigns are reluctant to engage in. The Club for Growth, for instance, has spent $700,000 so far, largely on broadcast spots here and in other early voting states that criticize Mike Huckabee's record on taxes while he was Arkansas governor, an effort that has received several hundred thousands of dollars from an Arkansas political rival of Mr. Huckabee, a Republican.

The shifting stand on abortion by Mitt Romney, a Republican former governor of Massachusetts, has come under attack in broadcast advertisements here and in New Hampshire from the Republican Majority for Choice, a group of Republican women who support abortion rights.

In the final two weeks before the caucuses on Thursday, independent groups have so far spent at least $5 million in Iowa, with much of the money benefiting the campaigns of Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton. During the last presidential primary election cycle, these groups spent nothing on advertising before the caucuses, largely because of the prohibition on such activity in the 30 days before nominating contests. But independent groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and MoveOn.org played a major role in the 2004 general election.

The June ruling, in a case involving a Wisconsin anti-abortion group, allowed television issue advertisements from third-party groups - whether unions, corporations or wealthy individuals - to run right up to an election day. Under the McCain-Feingold law, which limits the role of money in campaigns, these spots had to cease 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general one.

"This more permissive standard," said Kenneth Gross, a veteran campaign finance lawyer, "means there will be more money, more ads and more saturation."

Unlike national political parties and their candidates, many of these interest groups face no limits on how much they can take in from their contributors and often do not have to disclose their donors' names until after an election. As a result, it is difficult - if not impossible - to determine just how much money they are spending. While there is, ostensibly, an independent relationship between a campaign and these groups, restrictions on coordination between the two are considered so murky that they are often difficult to apply.

In Iowa, the efforts on behalf of or against the candidates involve not only television and radio advertisements, but also the nitty-gritty of a campaign: direct-mail brochures, bus tours, pep rallies, telephone calls, educational efforts to explain the caucuses, and traditional get-out-the-vote efforts. Independent groups pay for billboards, banners, yard signs, caps, T-shirts and mugs and set up Web sites on behalf of their favorite candidates, efforts that often look as though they were produced by the campaign itself.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is the only leading Democrat who has not attracted support from any of these groups in Iowa. By contrast, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards are the biggest beneficiaries of independent efforts, largely because of the union support the two have garnered. And yet both candidates are proponents of stricter campaign finance rules.

Mr. Edwards, in particular, has made tightening such rules a cornerstone of his campaign, putting him in a delicate position as he denounces expenditures coming indirectly from some of his closest supporters, like locals of the service employees' union.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Edwards has called on the groups, known as 527s for the section of the tax code they fall under, to stop running advertisements supporting him. But he has said he will not ask them directly.

"I do not support 527 groups, Mr. Edwards said. "They are part of the law, but let me be clear: I am asking this group and others not to run the ads. I would encourage all the 527s to stay out of the political process."

Mr. Dodd is getting a spirited boost from the firefighters' association, which is traveling with him on a 23-city tour on a bus with an enormous picture of him and the union's logo on its side.

"You can see that bus from two miles away," said Harold Schaitberger, the union's president, who flew in from Washington to lead the effort for the 287,000-member union.

Mr. Schaitberger declined to say how much the group planned to spend, other than that it would be "a considerable sum."

The bus tour shows how the lines are blurred: a previous tour cost the union $100,000, while this one, using the same bus, is being paid for by the campaign. The union has also posted "hundreds" of four-foot-by-eight-foot Dodd signs, he said. Federal records show that the group also spent over $10,000 in the last few days on billboards and $102,000 on full-page advertisements in Iowa's 23 largest newspapers last Sunday.

Emily's List, a political action committee that supports women running as Democrats, is making a special effort for Mrs. Clinton. Its campaign is titled "You Go Girl!" and is directed at women who have never attended a caucus.

The group's own polling showed that Mrs. Clinton had a two-to-one lead among women who had not previously attended a caucus. As a result, that group, which Emily's List pared to 60,000 names, became the focus of its efforts with a direct-mail campaign, a phone bank and a "You Go Girl!" Web site. All efforts feature women with Midwestern accents explaining how the caucus works and urging them to support Mrs. Clinton.

"Getting someone who has not caucused to go out is the hardest effort," said Maren Hesla, director of the effort, which she says has cost $300,000 so far and "we're not done spending."

The Web site is also linked to a number of Google search terms. If an Iowan searches terms like "safe toys," "stocking stuffers" or "after-Christmas sale," a banner advertisement with the link to the Web site will appear.

Mrs. Clinton is also the beneficiary of a $770,000 television advertising campaign from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The spot features Iowa voters talking about how Mrs. Clinton can "start this job on Day 1," which is one of her campaign's themes. The union estimates that it will spend more than $1 million on this television campaign.

Mr. Edwards's efforts to distance himself from third-party efforts has not halted the ardor of some union groups campaigning on his behalf.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners has formed a group, Working for Working Americans, that has paid around $500,000 for television spots supporting Mr. Edwards. The advertisements focus on the issue of job loss and cite the closing of the Maytag factory in Newton, Iowa. They say Mr. Edwards would end the practice of giving tax breaks to companies that move jobs overseas, and urge voters to "give voice to your values" while showing pictures of Mr. Edwards. Federal records show money for the spots came from the union's general fund.

Mr. Edwards is also benefiting from more than $1.5 million from the Alliance for a New America, which has primarily been running a radio campaign in Iowa. While most of the money has come from service union locals, one big donation of $495,000 that came in last Friday was given by a longtime Edwards supporter.

The name of the donating entity is Oak Spring Farms, which lists its address as Central Park South in New York. The entity is a partnership between Rachel L. Mellon, the 96-year-old widow of Paul Mellon, and her lawyer, Alexander D. Forger. Oak Spring Farms had previously given $250,000 to Mr. Edwards's One America committee, a 527 committee he set up to fight poverty.

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