Strategist focuses on president's devotees
NEW YORK -- Karl Rove tells a story that in a different political environment might seem quaint: about a wealthy donor in Arizona who, having given the maximum to President Bush, is now consumed with forwarding campaign literature to her friends over the Internet.
''She literally reports to me, 'I talked to so-and-so, and their kids in San Francisco are a lost cause, but they think they can get their kids in Oregon,' " Rove said recently. ''So I said: 'Don't worry about the kids in San Francisco. Go get the ones in Oregon.' "
''That," Rove added, ''is the level of what we are trying to create."
Rove's willingness to openly dismiss voters in California for a slight advantage in the battleground state of Oregon is a revealing glimpse into his political calculations. And the mere fact that Rove, one of the most powerful strategists in modern history, is fielding reports on particular voters speaks volumes about the extent to which his personal reputation is riding on the unusually risky strategy he has devised for Bush's reelection effort.
Despite an expected showcasing of the ''softer side" of the Republican Party at the convention in New York this week -- an attempt to win undecided and moderate voters to the GOP cause -- the heart of the strategy is to drive up the turnout of hard-core believers.
Bush spends a striking amount of time in Republican-leaning areas of swing states, seeking to ratchet up enthusiasm. His campaign has run advertising on cable networks tailored to such Republican-friendly viewers as golfers and fishermen. To Rove, an obsessive number cruncher, it all boils down to a simple empirical fact: There are more potential Republicans out there in battleground states than undecided moderates. Get the Republicans to show up on Election Day and the race is won.
But the approach breaks from conventional wisdom, and it is, by all accounts, a gamble -- one that could cement Rove's reputation as a political legend and shift the paradigm of future elections if it succeeds, as it apparently did in the congressional midterm elections in 2002, or offer an embarrassing indictment of Rove's master plan if it fails.
''Bush will be judged on many things, win or lose, but Karl's legacy is electoral," said Bill Miller, a Texas Republican strategist who has worked with and against Rove. ''Karl is going to be judged by whether he put that guy back in the White House another four years. It's that simple. It's a pass-fail grade."
Rove, 53, has been lionized and vilified, thanks to his history of hardball tactics and his relentless pursuit of victory on behalf of his most important client. Alternately nicknamed ''boy genius," as Bush once called him, or ''Bush's brain," as a critical new documentary and biography of him are titled, Rove is often described as the ruthless mastermind behind the conversion of Texas into a Republican state, the transformation of Bush into a viable politician, and the design of a long-term strategy to bring lasting Republican dominance at the national level.
But Rove also has a third nickname, given to him by Bush: ''turd blossom," a moniker in jest that he could hear more often if the Bush reelection strategy fails. Some Republicans and many Democrats see Rove as far from infallible and say he may have miscalculated Bush's political fortunes after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, stubbornly adhering to his focus on Republican turnout rather than trying to transform the identity of the Republican Party to include moderates and even liberals who gave Bush a second look after the terrorist attacks.
''Karl believes he is engaging in a science, not an art -- that so many volunteers plus so much money equals X, and X plus Y equals victory," one Bush adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, adding that the formula did not take into account the shifted emotional tenor of the electorate in the fall of 2001. ''If there were ever a modern presidency that had the potential to slip the surly bonds of partisanship, it was this one, post-9/11. But there was a choice made, and the choice was, are we going to focus on the Republicans, or are we going to say, 'This is not a time for politics?' "
Ralph Reed, a conservative strategist and a Bush campaign adviser, would not characterize Rove's approach as divisive, but did agree that the Bush campaign has shed the conventional wisdom that reveres moderate swing voters.
''I think not only Karl would say, but a lot of people would say, that the number of true independent and swing voters is actually very small," Reed said. ''Over time, as we get more precise in the polling and in identifying them, there is a consensus emerging that the swing vote is not what it was 20 years ago -- and may not have been as large as we once thought it was."
Rove and other Bush campaign advisers vehemently deny that the divided electorate is their doing.
''American politics over the last decade has become increasingly polarized by party," Rove said in an interview with the Globe. ''You don't want to read too much into that, but you don't want to read too little into the fact that the pool of true independents has been shrinking. And even more than that, if you step back, the two parties are now at parity, which is not the way it has been through most of our adulthood."
In other words, Rove said, there are now as many Republicans as Democrats, liberating the GOP from the need to pick off sizable chunks from the opposition.
Asked whether it is now mathematically possible to win a presidential race without any swing voters, Rove did not skip a beat. ''Yes," he replied.
''But I think that's a very risky strategy," he quickly added. ''You have to be persuading people who are for you, as well as driving up turnout."
Rove describes his focus as ferreting out ''suspected Republicans" -- people who live in predominantly Republican areas and are predisposed to vote for the president, but are either unregistered or unmotivated to go to the polls. These, Rove argues, are the voters who are most capable of tipping the balance in a narrowly divided race, comprising an arguably more potent bloc than the meager few who have not yet made up their minds.
To that end, Bush often visits Republican-leaning pockets of battleground states, traveling to places he won by comfortable margins -- such as the western panhandle of Florida or York, Pa. -- rather than devote himself exclusively to evenly divided counties, or venture into hostile territory, as Senator John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, often does. Over the weekend, traveling in Ohio, Bush visited Miami County (which he won in 2000, 61 percent to 36 percent), Allen County (which he won 65 percent to 32 percent), and Wood County (which he won 53 percent to 44 percent).
Democrats revel in the Rove strategy, frequently arguing that if Bush is tending to his conservative base, he must be worried about defections.
But there is no evidence to suggest that trend, and Rove scoffs at critics who would misread the Republican strategy in that way.
''Karl does not believe there's a true 'middle,' " one Bush adviser said. ''Everyone is a 'leaner,' and the leaners are affected by the actions of the base, much like an earthquake. If the base is excited, the closer you are to the epicenter, you're going to have a pretty strong shock." 