A few Romney faithful made it to Ames

By Matt Viser, Globe Staff

AMES, Iowa -- The Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, had no presence at the straw poll here today, and the campaign was making little effort to reach out to supporters.

It meant no food, band, or air conditioned tent to entice voters. No buttons to hand out or t-shirts to distribute.

But there were at least two people who decided to come out and show their support.

Jacqui Norman and her husband were both sporting yellow Romney t-shirts left over from a different time four years ago, when Romney was focused like a laser on winning the Ames straw poll.

“We’ve had lots of people come up and ask us where we got our t-shirts, because they wanted to find them,” said Norman, a 40-year-old from Ames who volunteered for Romney’s previous campaign. “We had a couple dozen stickers left over, so we gave those to some people.”

In a sea of thousands of politically active Iowa Republicans, she said they spotted three others in Romney shirts today.

It was a marked difference from his strategy four years ago, when Romney spent ample time and resources competing in Iowa. He won the straw poll, but lost the caucuses, and his team has been trying to downplay the expectations in a state that has not always been friendly territory.

That’s one reason why Romney left Iowa yesterday to return to the state he's far more focused on this time around: New Hampshire.