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http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pg6citVsFXzSMeIsAPFzwDy+7osGao6voS+kik6kGDcyjly20pb1+WFKip3h85LSmRowk0M5G77L/NsHVbBmoPKP5SSSdLlQFs/XdX2LxytCvl2H/yLxKD10JzhTEwqtoPFJ/XbxOTYxY0hOiPH9MVBw==&campaign_id=129&instance_id=65609&segment_id=79717&user_id=1ef030aa7a483e750f4addce9f6f355b®i_id=60088859
Calm Manner Has Ben Carson Rising in Polls
By TRIP GABRIEL
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/trip_gabriel/index.html>OCT.
25, 2015
Photo
Supporters at Ben Carson’s book tour bus in Ame, Iowa. Credit Mark
Kauzlarich/Reuters
AMES, Iowa — Donald J. Trump, who is rarely at a loss for words,
admitted “I don’t know what’s going on” when confronted by Ben Carson’s
surge past him in early-voting Iowa, where Mr. Trump had led the
Republican presidential field for months.
Mr. Trump has derided Mr. Carson for lacking the vigor and fortitude to
be president, but voters here are drawn to the retired neurosurgeon’s
low-pitched manner.
“That smile and his soft voice makes people very comforted,” said Miriam
Greenfield, a farmer in Jewell, Iowa.
In an election season that has confounded party leaders and experts, the
rise of Mr. Carson is another unexpected twist. His supporters cite Mr.
Carson’s character, not his positions, as the main reason they back him.
And they say his low-key approach is precisely what would tame
Washington’s bitter partisanship, rather than Mr. Trump’s swagger.
*
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/25/ben-carson-calls-for-ban-on-abortion-in-all-circumstances/>
“He is kind when he speaks, and he doesn’t have an agenda to set himself
up as wonderful,” said Donna Christiansen, a retiree in Ames.
Photo
Ben Carson spoke at a fraternity breakfast at Iowa State University in
Ames on Saturday. Some polls show him leading in Iowa. Credit Mark
Kauzlarich/Reuters
What is more, Mr. Carson’s provocative comments on topics like Nazism
and slavery, which pundits and commentators regularly denounce, seem
only to deepen the enthusiasm his evangelical base feels for him. He has
connected with Republican women here, who prefer him to Mr. Trump. And
he has built momentum far from the political establishment, which was
unimpressed with his debate performances and his lack of governing
experience. He conducts chats on Facebook and visits medical clinics and
churches rather than the usual political stops.
In a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released Friday, not
only was Mr. Carson the top choice among Republicans, with 28 percent,
but he was also described by those surveyed as the most presidential
candidate, the most pragmatic and the one they would trust most with a
finger on the nuclear button.
And unlike some other candidates popular with the party’s grass roots,
Mr. Carson has built a muscular financial base. His $20.8 million raised
over the summer, most in small donations, was more than the total of any
other Republican candidate. On Friday, he released his first television
ad in the four early nominating states.
On Facebook, Mr. Carson answers nightly questions from his 4.3 million
“friends,” covering personal topics (his ailing mother is “much
better”), policies like a recent suggestion that he would end Medicare
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
(he denied it) and the campaign (the debates are “just a boxing match”).
Book sales are another below-the-radar means of cultivating support. He
is on a 26-day book tour, notably wending through Iowa, Florida and
South Carolina, that critics derided as a campaign vacation. But Mr.
Carson attracts buyers by the hundreds, who exchange a few words with
him as they stop for a signature.
Jason Walke, a trial lawyer in Des Moines, said neither Mr. Trump nor
another fiery outsider, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, “has a snowball’s
chance of changing things in Washington the way Ben Carson does.”
“I believe someone as mild-mannered and gentlemanly as Ben Carson is
just about the only kind of person that could,” said Mr. Walke, who
heard Mr. Carson speak to a modest crowd on the lawn of a fraternity
house at Iowa State University on Saturday.
Similar views surfaced in a focus group of Republicans last week in
Indiana: Many criticized Mr. Trump as divisive while praising Mr. Carson
as “wise” and a “gentleman.”
Story suggests that each party’s eventual nominee will emerge from
2015 in one of the top two or three positions, as measured by
endorsements, fund-raising and polling.
Trump is rough; Carson is reassuring,” said Peter D. Hart, the
pollster who led the focus group. “And the unknown elements of Carson
are calming, and the known elements of Trump are disturbing.”
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/presidential-candidates-dashboard.html>
Mr. Carson’s events have a distinct feel. Voters approach him with
something close to reverence, and he appears gracious and unhurried when
interacting with them one on one. On Saturday, his wife, Candy, a
Yale-trained classical violinist, sang an a cappella version of the
national anthem on the lawn of the fraternity house, pausing midmeasure
to tell the crowd, “Hands over hearts, please.”
Mr. Carson swept past Mr. Trump in two polls of Iowa Republicans last
week despite infrequently visiting the state. Now, he is promising to
return at least twice monthly leading up to the Feb. 1 caucuses.
“The key thing for me is I don’t sit down and strategize like
politicians, because I’m not a politician,” he told reporters. “I don’t
want to be a politician. I think we need some authenticity. We need some
honesty in our country right now.”
Mr. Carson’s support has not been dimmed by his statements on the
unsuitability of a Muslim to be president; his linking of gun control
and the Holocaust; and his likening of President Obama’s health care law
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
to slavery. On the contrary, 57 percent of Republicans in the Register
poll rated as “very attractive” his comparison of the health care law
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
to slavery, and 73 percent said his opposition to a Muslim as president
made him more attractive.
On Sunday, Mr. Carson gave critics more fuel by opposing abortion in
cases of rape or incest, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “I would
not be in favor of killing a baby because the baby came about in that way.”
Mr. Carson’s rise in Iowa is driven by his consolidation of evangelical
voters, who constitute close to 60 percent of Republican caucusgoers, a
trend that could carry him strongly into later voting states in the
South with similar demographics.
“People are very attracted to Ben Carson’s bedside demeanor,” said Bob
Vander Plaats, a leader of the Christian right in Iowa.
Continue reading the main story
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/us/politics/calm-manner-has-ben-carson-rising-in-polls.html?emc=edit_th_20151026&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=60088859&_r=0#story-continues-10>
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<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/election-2016.html>,
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Traditionally, a single anti-establishment candidate has emerged from
the state, finishing in the top two or three, around whom conservative
Republicans rally. Mr. Carson, Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz are all vying for
the role.
In two surveys last week, Mr. Carson led Mr. Trump soundly by eight and
nine percentage points. A third survey by CBS News released Sunday
showed the two tied in the state, but Mr. Trump held a robust lead in
two other early voting states, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“I don’t understand Iowa because, frankly, I just left and we had
tremendous crowds and tremendous enthusiasm,” Mr. Trump told CBS’s “Face
the Nation” on Sunday. “Frankly, even to be tied, I’m a little surprised.”
Mr. Trump appeals to a somewhat different demographic from Mr. Carson’s:
working-class voters with high school educations, for whom social issues
and religious beliefs are less important. The rally he described, which
drew thousands, was in the Democratic-leaning eastern side of the state,
where he has done most of his campaigning.
Many of those drawn to Mr. Carson and Mr. Trump have not participated in
Iowa’s caucus system before, making them more difficult to organize. The
two are undertaking among the most aggressive efforts by any of the 15
Republicans running to encourage caucus participation.
Much of Mr. Carson’s organizing is done by a “super PAC
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/campaign_finance/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,”
which stationed volunteers at the Books-A-Million store in Ames, where
he appeared Saturday. They buttonholed customers, collecting email
addresses and phone numbers. The super PAC
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/campaign_finance/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
known as the 2016 Committee, began training supporters how to caucus
recently.
“People that are following Ben, a lot of them support him but have never
caucused and they need to know what to do,” said Rita Davenport, a
county chairwoman for the super PAC.
“We have the resources to go into each community and do these types of
things,” she said. “The campaign would be stretched far too thin to even
think about going to each of these small towns and doing caucus training.”
Darren Westercamp, who emerged from the store with a signed book, said
he became curious about the candidate when he visited his father and
noticed a Carson sticker on his vehicle.
“I grew up in a family that did not have stickers on their vehicles,” he
said. “When I saw that, I said I need to listen to this man.”
*Correction: October 25, 2015 *
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a retiree
from Ames, Iowa. She is Donna Christiansen, not Christensen.
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