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Mehlman Delivers

The RNC chairman takes his message to the exurbs.

Jul 25, 2005, Vol. 10, No. 42 • By FRED BARNES
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Waukee, Iowa

KEN MEHLMAN WAS IN HEAVEN. And heaven for the Republican national chairman was Dallas County outside Des Moines. Mostly an exurb, it lies miles from downtown Des Moines and is dotted with new homes and housing developments still under construction. Locals brag it's the 10th-fastest growing county in America. It's also Bush country. President Bush won the county in 2000 but lost Iowa. But in 2004, he more than doubled his margin of victory in Dallas County and won Iowa.

Mehlman, naturally, emphasizes fast-growing exurbs. "This is where you find the new conservatives and the new Republicans," Mehlman says. After taking over the Republican National Committee in January, he delivered Lincoln Day dinner speeches in several exurbs: Douglas County outside Denver, Lee County in southwest Florida, Pottawatamie County in Iowa across the Missouri River from Omaha. And last week Mehlman came to Waukee, a boomtown in Dallas County, for a party fundraiser. He was greeted like a rock star.

He isn't one. Mehlman, 38, is neither flamboyant nor brash. He wears bland suits. He is anything but excitable. And he is unusually task-oriented. He travels constantly, and his trips are not junkets. In Iowa, before getting to Dallas County, he met separately with social conservatives interested chiefly in the president's judicial nominations, Republican legislators, and with state party officials. He did two TV interviews and two radio interviews. And he chatted with two Des Moines political reporters, both of whom he knows from past Bush campaigns in Iowa.

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