Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards is in eastern Iowa today. Edwards has events in Muscatine and Iowa City on his schedule. A group of women that includes movie star Sharon Stone, singer Roberta Flack and Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg — the daughter of President Kennedy — is holding events around the state today for the Kerry/Edwards ticket. On the Bush/Cheney side of things, Commerce Secretary Don Evans is in Des Moines and Vice President Dick Cheney is due in Iowa tomorrow, with stops in Cedar Rapids and Nevada. Is this steady drumbeat of surrogate campaigners for Bush and Kerry effective? Grinnell College political science professor Barb Trish says each of those celebrities, bureaucrats or candidate’s wife has appeal to a small group of people. Trish says the campaigns are just “overly cautious” and worried that if they don’t hit all their bases, they’ll be missing something. Trish also says the campaigns are using celebrities to try to lure reporters into writing stories about the campaign.
