And now it’s Iowa’s turn to be heard

DES MOINES —  The costliest, most competitive race in the history of the Iowa caucuses wound to a cliffhanging finish Wednesday, as a crowded field of presidential hopefuls made their final pleas -- on the airwaves, in churches, in crowded gymnasiums -- on the eve of a vote that will lift some contenders and cripple the rest.

On the Democratic side, the race shifted to a somewhat quieter tone after days of discord.

The three deadlocked candidates bought blocks of TV time Wednesday evening to bring their final argument into Iowa’s homes. As the state prepared for today’s caucuses, 2008’s first presidential nominating contest, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both argued that only they could deliver the change America needs.

“After all the town hall meetings, the pie and coffee, it comes down to this,” Clinton said. “Who’s ready to be president and ready to start solving the big challenges we face on Day 1?”

“The question you have to ask yourself when you walk into that caucus tomorrow is this: Who can take us in a fundamentally new direction?” Obama asked.

John Edwards featured a supporter in his spot -- a worker laid off from a Maytag factory in Iowa who says he wants to ensure that his generation, like others, passes along a better America. “And I think the person that’s going to get that done is my friend and yours, Sen. John Edwards,” Doug Bishop says.

The two Republicans running even in the polls continued their verbal fencing, with Mike Huckabee suggesting that Mitt Romney was trying to buy a victory in Iowa, and Romney questioning Huckabee’s decision to fly to Burbank for a Wednesday night appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”

“My concern, frankly, is with the caucus in Iowa,” Romney told reporters at a news conference in Bettendorf. “I think Mike is more concerned about the caucus in Los Angeles.”

The rest of the field -- numbering half a dozen -- stumped in the hopes that an unexpectedly strong showing might vault them into contention in one of the states that follows. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona flew from New Hampshire for a last-minute visit in hopes that a third-place win here might carry him to victory in that state’s leadoff primary five days later.

McCain addressed about 200 backers who crammed into his Des Moines-area headquarters, including dozens who waited in near zero-degree weather for 45 minutes. McCain said he was buoyed by the support, but downplayed his expectations for tonight.

“I’m happy with the progress we have made,” McCain said, “but we do have a long, hard fight here in Iowa, and we know it.”

The caucuses -- a collection of 1,781 neighborhood political gatherings -- have been a major event on the presidential nominating calendar for more than three decades. But their import has been greatly magnified this election, thanks to a collapsed schedule that puts a premium on winning early.

Candidates spent more money than ever in Iowa -- tens of millions of dollars -- and aired more than 20,000 TV spots in the last month alone, according to Evan Tracey, whose company, TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, tracks political advertising.

Despite all that, a final round of polls showed the Democratic and Republican races were exceptionally close. Democrats were stacked within an eyelash of one another, with an aggregate of the latest surveys showing Sen. Clinton of New York at 29%, Sen. Obama of Illinois at 28% and former Sen. Edwards of North Carolina at 25%. Among Republicans, former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee had 29% and former Massachusetts Gov. Romney 27%.

Clawing for any last advantage, 11 candidates took to the skies or rumbled through the state Wednesday by bus and auto caravan.

Clinton raced through some of Iowa’s major population centers, accompanied part of the way by actors Mary Steenburgen and her husband, Ted Danson.

Introducing the candidate at the First United Methodist Church in Indianola, Steenburgen spoke of an easy-natured -- and bawdy -- side of Clinton the public rarely sees.

“You can have a conversation with her as delicious as who’s going to win ‘American Idol’ this season, or you can dive down into the deepest, most spiritual depths,” Steenburgen, who stumped in Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, told the crowd of several hundred.

The former first lady has a “deep, deep raucous belly laugh,” Steenburgen added. “It’s a little bit dirty, actually.”

As part of the day’s charm offensive, the senator surprised her traveling press corps by personally delivering morning coffee and bagels to their bus. “I didn’t want you to feel deprived,” she said, then thanked reporters for taking time away from their families to cover the relentless campaign over the last year.

“I don’t know about you, but for me it’s been a great experience,” she said. “Maybe we’ll toast tomorrow night.”

It was a conciliatory Obama, as well, who trekked east to west from Davenport to Des Moines, rarely mentioning his opponents by name.

“I do not want to pit red America against blue America,” he told a crowd of nearly 500 Iowans crowded into a community center in Davenport. “I want to be the president of the United States of America.”

He went on: “We can’t have the same partisan food fight in Washington, where it’s all about tearing your opponents down instead lifting the country up. We can’t afford that anymore; we need to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history.”

Edwards, running as the fiery populist in the field, also lowered his voice a few decibels.

“We have an epic fight on our hands,” he said Wednesday afternoon to several hundred people jammed into Capanna Coffee Co. in Iowa City, one of 16 stops in a 36-hour nonstop campaign marathon. “We should not fool ourselves. Corporate greed is stealing your children’s future, and corporate greed is destroying the middle class.”

He, too, took indirect jabs at his competitors, saying it would be impossible to make deals with powerful interests, such as drug and oil companies, if a candidate had taken their contributions (an allusion to Clinton). He said it was also untenable to expect to negotiate with these special interests and get them to voluntarily agree to reduce their power and wealth (an allusion to Obama).

“It is a complete fantasy,” Edwards said. “They will give their power away when we take their power away from them.”

In the GOP race, a characteristically upbeat Romney flew by private jet across Iowa, touching down in four cities. At a small rally in a cavernous hangar at the airport in Cedar Rapids, he exuded the ideal suburban dad, dressed casually in a navy pullover sweater and khakis, reminiscing about the family values of his father, a onetime auto company chief executive and Michigan governor, who once said his proudest accomplishment was raising his four children.

In addition to zinging Huckabee for his Southern California visit, Romney took on McCain for opposing President Bush’s tax cuts and supporting the Senate’s failed attempt at immigration reform. He brushed off a Web video that McCain aired questioning Romney’s foreign policy credentials. “I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over ads,” he told reporters.

Earlier, before heading to Burbank, Huckabee appeared at stops in northern Iowa, where he needled Romney -- without naming him -- as well as the media.

“I’d like you to join me in proving that in Iowa, voters are not for sale,” said Huckabee, who has been overwhelmingly outspent by Romney. If money determines the winners in elections, “we might as well sell [the presidency] on EBay,” he told about 200 people crammed into a restaurant in Mason City.

Huckabee, whose surging campaign has benefited from an avalanche of free publicity, also criticized the media, saying, “East Coast pundits” and the “chattering class” want him to lose. “You can prove the pundits wrong and the people right,” he said.

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Times staff writers Robin Abcarian, Maria L. La Ganga, Scott Martelle, Joe Mathews, Dan Morain, James Rainey, Louise Roug , Peter Wallsten and researcher Nona Yates contributed to this report.

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About the caucuses

Some facts on tonight’s Iowa caucuses, the first presidential nominating contests of 2008:

Start times (PST)

Democrats: 4:30 p.m.

Republicans: 5 p.m.

Precinct locations: 1,781

Results: Numbers may start coming in as early as 7 p.m. PST. Outcomes expected by 8:30 p.m.

Participants: About 200,000 people, 7% of Iowans, expected.

For the latest results, go to latimes.com/politics.