With all-nighter in Iowa, Kerry tries to make a mark

SIOUX CITY, Iowa -- Amid a few power naps, an impressive strike and two spares while bowling, and a 3 a.m. acoustic guitar medley, presidential candidate John F. Kerry bonded with some 620 Iowa voters during a 24-hour bus tour across the state that ended late yesterday morning with Kerry red-eyed but in high spirits.

The 11 a.m.-to-11 a.m. stretch was as much a testament to Kerry's endurance as to his enthusiasm for rapid-fire campaigning. He stayed fairly fresh and focused for 12 events with voters, despite almost no sleep, and sought to convince them that this perseverance would carry him to a strong finish in Iowa's Jan. 19 caucuses.

While the campaign was running late for almost every event, Kerry arrived ready to please, bounding into rooms with handshakes and hugs. Joined by his two daughters on the campaign's "Real Deal Express" motor coach, he appeared to be having a jolly time, even poking fun at his recent decision to mortgage his Beacon Hill townhouse in order to spend more money on his pursuit of the Democratic nomination.

The thrust of the 24-hour workday was meeting Iowans in their workplaces and asking questions about job issues.

Some voters initially hesitated in the face of Massachusetts senator's persistent, sometimes prying questions about their salaries and working conditions, but several said later that they appreciated having such an easy way to meet the candidate. "I was real impressed that he was staying up so late to meet different kinds of people," said Sharon Enabrit, a nurse practitioner in Charles City, where Kerry altered his typical stump delivery and gave a shortened, 13-minute speech Monday night and devoted nearly an hour to answering 16 questions from the audience.

"I'm torn between Kerry and a few others, but I liked Kerry's style tonight," she added. "I'm leaning his way."

The campaign-a-thon was not without its rough spots. The first events felt a bit sluggish and relatively stage-managed for a candidate who performs best on the stump when he feels his loosest. He also came across a Republican or two and tried to sway them with his ambitious health care plan; for the most part they smiled politely, if thinly, when he asked them to check out the Kerry campaign's website.

Kerry and his staff kept a close eye on their watches as events dragged on longer than expected, and tried to keep up the pace and preserve energy as the hours passed:

9:45 p.m., Monday: Kerry's jaw dropped in the Charles City tractor museum as Joyce and Hank Vogelman described how the nearby Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock school district had begun charging $18,000 for family health insurance plans to employees who earned about $45,000.

"$18,000?" Kerry said, exasperated. "I want someone on my staff to talk to you. We need to look into that."

10:45 p.m.: Entering the Rose Bowl in Mason City, Kerry greeted a crowd of about 75 Iowans who came out to cheer him on. He picked up a pair of red-and-blue bowling shoes, size 10 1/2, then subjected a rack of six bowling balls to great scrutiny, feeling and lifting and swinging them.

After four minutes he settled on a speckled green ball, which indeed turned out to be The One. Kerry, bowling in Lane 14 between chats with voters and sips from a bottle of Coke, posted a spare, a seven, a nine, a spare, another nine, and a strike, besting most of his aides and several reporters.

2:30 a.m., yesterday: As the patients of Des Moines's Mercy Hospital slept, Kerry chatted up their nurses about the heavy student-loan burden and relatively paltry salaries that many Iowans in the profession face. He paused for several minutes in the neonatal intensive care unit, talking to one nurse who stands for several hours a day by the bedside of a 2-pound baby who was born prematurely, to monitor nearly every breath the baby takes.

7 a.m.: Bearing Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a plastic urn of coffee, Kerry finds some bleary-eyed street-cleaners and other employees at the Council Bluffs Public Works Department. He tries to engage them several times about their concerns for the nation, but no one offers more than a sentence or two. Yet one young man, high school freshman Mike Cherne, shows up at the event with his mother because he was curious about Kerry. Cherne, after chatting with the senator about his college tuition plans, said he would support Kerry in the caucuses if he were old enough to vote.

Some four hours later, Kerry wrapped up the trip in Sioux City, meeting the officials of a social and family services nonprofit and reading a Christmas tale to youngsters there, and then sitting down for a bite with some veterans and voters at a local Holiday Inn. Roughly 645 miles had been traveled, and a Christmas break beckoned.

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.