Ames, Iowa – The event may have just opened half an hour ago, but there was already a crowd buzzing around Michele Bachmann, asking her to take photos and sign her autograph. I passed one woman excitedly telling her young son that his autographed Bachmann sign would be worth money when Bachmann became the first female president. Another man was less ardent: he waved a Herman Cain sign and called out, “Michele! Be Herman Cain’s running mate!”
But the Bachmann campaign is already working on how to spin it if Bachmann doesn’t win at Ames.
“I think we have all the right ingredients, except for one,” Iowa state senator Kent Sorensen, chairman of Bachmann’s Iowa campaign, tells National Review Online in reference to whether Bachmann would win tonight. “And that was time. Time has not been on our side because we’ve only been doing this for five weeks. If we win, it will be the first time ever in straw poll history that someone came in and won in five weeks.”
That, Sorensen notes, is different than the “two years” some of Bachmann’s competitors may have spent organizing.
But they’re hoping to pick up some undecided voters.
“I’m hearing from people that they were undecided until the debate and now they’re supporting Michele,” Sorensen says.