DES MOINES — John F. Kerry sat in a 10th-floor suite at the Hotel Fort Des Moines on Monday night, surrounded by his family, grinning. Howard Dean had called to offer congratulations. He'd called Dick Gephardt himself. He and John Edwards had played phone tag but finally connected.
The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus results were in, and he was the winner.
"How does it feel? It feels like comeback Kerry. I like it," he told the small group of reporters who had followed him on his journey from frontrunner to laggard and back again.
Or as he put it in his victory speech after descending to the hotel's ballroom: "Not long ago this campaign was written off." No more.
Kerry had begun the race head and shoulders above his competition -- literally and figuratively. Tall, patrician, with a resume that wouldn't quit, he spent the first half of 2003 as the Democratic frontrunner.
But the last poll that had him ahead nationally came out in July. By then, Dean was coming on strong, tapping into Democrats' anger about the war in Iraq and castigating his competitors from Washington for their votes in favor of the resolution that sanctioned combat.
Kerry began his long, slow slide, fueled in part by internal rancor and competing strategists on his campaign staff. Then came the autumn implosion. The Sunday before Veterans Day, Kerry fired his campaign manager, Jim Jordan. On Veterans Day, chief spokesman Robert Gibbs and deputy finance director Carl Chidlow quit in protest.
He brought in Mary Beth Cahill, chief of staff for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, as campaign manager and Stephanie Cutter as spokeswoman. He headed into a three-state tour -- Iowa, Arizona and New Hampshire--unable to shake the story of his staff upheaval.
"John Kerry made a decision to change the direction of his campaign in November," said senior advisor Michael Meehan. "There wasn't a lot of time left .... Then there were tough nights in December, we were firing away, making news and not getting any coverage."
These days Kerry spokeswoman Cutter is reluctant to discuss the difficult November. "It didn't slow us down," Cutter said Monday. "A couple days after the staff shake-up, John Kerry was back on the stump giving one of the best speeches of his campaign at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner here in Iowa on the Saturday after Veterans Day. It was a real high point for him."
