TOLEDO, Iowa — Some voters in this presidential caucus-crazy state show their support with yard signs, lapel pins and bumper stickers. And then some use dairy products.

Norma Lyon, a 78-year-old dairy farmer from Toledo, Iowa, chose to show her support for Sen. Barack Obama, who is seeking to become the first black U.S. president, by sculpting a likeness of his head with 23 pounds of butter.

The butter bust was displayed Thursday night at an Obama campaign event in a Toledo, Iowa, middle school auditorium, melting only a little under the heat of overhead lights.

Lyon said she made the butter Obama about two weeks ago and has been keeping it fresh in a deep freeze in anticipation of showing it off to Obama. 

She plans to haul it out again on Jan. 3 and take it with her to the caucuses, which help determine the Democratic and Republican nominees for the November presidential election. For 46 years, Lyon sculpted the full-size butter cow at the annual Iowa State Fair but she retired in 2006.

Obama thanked Lyon for her support and gave her a hug following a speech in which he pledged to end the war in Iraq, strengthen Social Security and reform the U.S. health-care system.

The senator fretted only slightly over whether or not the sculpture made his ears too big. Lyon said that as much as she liked Obama, she had to be honest in her art.  

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

DES MOINES — The love was flowing Thursday morning as Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama told a packed meeting hall that he wanted to bring a “new kind of politics” to Washington.
 
As Obama spoke about working to cross partisan lines,  someone from the crowd interrupted with a shouted “Love you Obama.” And no, it wasn’t the woman who was made famous for the video “I Got a Crush … on Obama” (4.2 million views and still counting). 

“Love you back!” Obama quickly responded, drawing laughter and cheers from a meeting hall that was so packed with onlookers that campaign workers were forced to turn people away.
 
Outside, novelty salesman Jeremy Beggun did brisk business selling pins and t-shirts supporting Obama, including some with the message: “Hot chicks dig Obama.” 
 
But the best seller was less about the Illinois senator, according to Beggun, and instead was a button bearing the likeness of President George Bush and the message “Good Riddance.”

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

As 10 Democratic and Republican presidential candidates criss-crossed Iowa on Thursday, a small snow storm was making its way across the state and was expected to dump a few inches on places like Des Moines and Davenport, which could make campaigning difficult.
 
Already campaigns have had to cancel numerous appearances over the last few weeks due to ice, snow and yes, even a thick fog that enveloped the state for two days, forcing candidates off the roads and preventing some from even landing their planes.
 
But more importantly, on Jan. 3 when voters make their picks for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, the weather is looking clear, according to the latest forecasts posted by the Weather Channel.
 
Turnout is key in Iowa because voters do not simply go into a voting booth and pick a candidate. They must instead attend meetings in their neighborhoods to caucus for their candidate, which makes high attendance critical for White House hopefuls.
 
See the forecasts for Council Bluffs here, Davenport here and Des Moines here. 

– Photo credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford (Huckabee hunting in the snow on Wednesday)

Many of Iowa’s religious conservatives still seem to be examining the Republican field of presidential candidates and like a blast of birdshot they may yet scatter their vote among the flock.

Conventional widsom holds that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are battling it out for the soul of the evangelical wing of the Republican Party, starting with the sizeable block of conservative Christians in Iowa which kicks off the nominating process with its Jan. 3 caucuses. 

Huckabee’s surge in the polls in Iowa and nationally has been attributed in large part to the former Baptist preacher’s success with this group — but he doesn’t have a monoply on its affections.

With all of the candidates except former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani adopting the conservative wing’s strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, some remain undecided or have even leaned towards other candidates such as Arizona Senator John McCain.

Lee Booton, a 63-year-old former Baptist minister and Navy Vietnam veteran, said at a McCain rally on Thursday that he supported him because of his exprience and integrity and his consistent record opposing abortion rights.

“The one thing about Huckabee is that he has raised taxes,” he said.

Dale Roberts, 58, a retired advertising manager, said at the same rally attended by several dozen mostly middle-aged and elderly Iowans that he backed McCain because he was endorsed by his first presidential choice, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, a conservative Christian who dropped out of the race in October.

“I read Brownback’s book (From Power to Purpose) and I became enthralled with him. And he said Sen. McCain had the same traditional values that he did,” said Roberts, who described himself as a “non-denominational” conservative Christian. 

But there were still plenty of undecideds, including leading conservatives. 

Steve Scheffler, the president of the Iowa Christian Alliance, said he thought many evangelicals were still pondering the Republican field as they did not want to pick someone who would just pay “lip service” to their causes.

“I have still personally not decided how to cast my own vote,” he said.

CONWAY, New Hampshire — Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards may have made millions of dollars as a plaintiff’s attorney suing big U.S. corporations, but he wants voters to know that he’s no city slicker.

Campaigning in Conway, a town of 9,200 in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Edwards argued that his Southern drawl would make him a more appealing candidate to rural voters.

“The last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both talked like me,” the former North Carolina senator and son of a textile-mill worker said, trying to link himself to their good fortunes.

“I’m from small town America and that’s a place where we usually have trouble,” he said of the Democratic party. “There’s nowhere in America that I can’t go and campaign with our congressional candidates and not only not be a drag on them but actually help them. And that makes a difference.”

Edwards was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004 but his ticket did not win.  And, voters who turned out to hear his pitch on Wednesday were mixed on whether the drawl would really matter.

“I like it,” said Tom Wright, of Intervale, New Hampshire, who said he planned to vote for Edwards. “My opinion is he’s more electable than all the other leading candidates.”

Hope Nusbaum, a homemaker from Conway, said that a candidate’s accent would not influence her thinking.

“For me, it does not make a difference,” said Nusbaum, who said she was leaning towards Edwards but had not yet made her final decision for the Jan. 8 primary. “He could come from New York City and if he still had these ideas, I’d still vote for him.”

– Photo credit: Reuters/Scott Malone

It was almost like a Cold War-era spat in Iowa among top Democrats on Wednesday. Much like how countries tried to steal spies in a tit-for-tat fashion, Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were highlighting how they were pilfering each other’s supporters.

Clinton’s campaign announced at midday that she had snagged former ironworker Bobby McFadden, who was a member of Obama’s campaign labor steering committee. In a statement released by her campaign, McFadden cited Clinton’s “strength and experience to enact universal health care and deliver the real solutions our country needs.”
    
Obama’s campaign shot back two hours later saying they had signed up one of Clinton’s 10 co-chairmen of her Iowa veterans committee, just three days after she spent an afternoon in the state highlighting her past work on the behalf of veterans.
 
Vietnam veteran Kent Sovern switched his allegiance to Obama, citing his “judgment and courage to stand up for America’s veterans and find a responsible way to get our combat troops out of Iraq,” according to a statement released by the campaign.
 
Clinton and Obama have been locked in an intense battle in Iowa, where polls show the two in a statistical dead heat. 

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

WATERLOO, Iowa — It’s probably only something a preacher could do — get a former president, namely Bill Clinton, to give him his necktie. 
 
In snowy Waterloo, while Bill and Hillary Clinton attended church services at the Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church, the pastor, Frantz Whitfield, spoke of the Christmas season of giving and apparently noticed the former president’s rather striking, red necktie.
 
He went on to describe a show he had seen recently on the cable music television channel VH-1 that mentioned Clinton once giving up something valuable, one of his neckties.
 
“You know I do like neckties,” Whitfield said from the pulpit and looking over toward the former president. “This is the Christmas season. President Clinton, I’m not making you do anything … but if you just so decide …” the preacher said to peals of laughter and applause from the audience. 
 
But it apparently was a hard sell. Clinton got up and gave a five-minute speech introducing his wife without referring to Whitfield’s Christmas gift idea. 
 
Hillary Clinton walked to the podium and before her husband could sit down she gestured for him to take off the tie and give it to the pastor, prompting thunderous applause from the crowd.

As the service broke up, Whitfield quipped to congregants: “I’m going to wear my new tie tonight at our Christmas program.” 

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

Former President Bill Clinton was scouring Iowa Saturday morning to sway more undecided voters to back his wife Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, but had some kind words for a possible rival in the 2008 race: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
 
Clinton talked about the need to reform how political campaigns were financed and used the billionaire mayor as an example of how the dynamics of the 2008 race could be changed.
 
“Let’s take someone I really admire, the mayor of New York City Mike Bloomberg. I like him, he’s a really good mayor,” Clinton said to voters in West Des Moines. “If he runs for president, he could spend $1 billion and hardly miss it. That’s real money for most of the rest of us. Under the law there are no constraints.”
 
Bloomberg has publicly denied he plans to run. He switched from being a registered Democrat to be a Republican during his first mayoral race and later became an independent, which was considered by some political watchers as a possible move to run for the White House.
 
In a rare acknowledgment, Clinton said he had few ideas on how to fix the campaign finance system but urged voters to help come up with ideas. He did offer a couple of ideas: giving candidates more federal dollars or cheaper air time for advertisements if they agreed to abide by spending limits.

– Photo credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford (Clinton earlier this month on the trail)

INDIANOLA, Iowa — Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards was hoping on Saturday to highlight his $25 billion plan to boost the U.S. economy and create more jobs, but instead he found himself having to disavow an independent group that was planning to run ads supporting his White House bid.
 
Rival Barack Obama criticized Edwards over a group called Alliance for a New America which planned to spend $750,000 on television advertisements after Christmas on the former North Carolina senator’s behalf which came to light a day after Edwards had criticized such organizations.
 
“You can’t say yesterday you don’t believe in them, and today you have three quarters of a million dollars being spent for you. You can’t just talk the talk. The easiest thing in the world is to talk about change during election time. Everybody talks about change during election time, you have to look at how they act when it’s not convenient, when it’s hard,” Obama said during a campaign stop in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
    
Edwards disavowed the group and demanded that they stop their efforts: “They are part of the law, but let me be clear: I am asking this group and others not to run the ads.”
    
And he also had a retort for Obama, accusing him of only refusing to take campaign contributions from lobbyists and political action committees once he began his presidential campaign.
    
“I’m proud of the fact that, unlike Sen. Obama, I have never taken any money from a Washington lobbyist or PAC. From my perspective that is not an academic or philosophical question,” Edwards said.

– additional reporting by Kay Henderson

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

DES MOINES - A snow and ice storm grounded most presidential campaigns earlier this month in Iowa. Thursday and Friday it was a very thick fog that blanketed the entire state and made travel conditions hazardous, complicating life on the trail.
 
While Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton was campaigning in New Hampshire, husband and former president Bill Clinton was supposed to fly to a rally in Columbus Junction, Iowa. But, he was lucky to get to land in Des Moines and was forced to phone in his remarks.
 
“They wouldn’t allow my plane to land almost anywhere within the borders of Iowa so that I could get there. I had to land in a dense fog in Des Moines,” he told the crowd via telephone.
 
Rival Barack Obama tried to fly from New Hampshire to Iowa before taking a couple days off for the Christmas holiday. He, too, ran into the fog problem.
 
He canceled two events — in Davenport and Coralville — because his plane could not land due to fog. Instead he flew to Chicago and drove down to make a third event on his schedule, in Washington, Iowa.
 
The fog wasn’t just dangerous to political candidates. The Quad-City Times newspaper ran an article describing how it contained all sorts of particles that could be harmful to the elderly and children. Read here.

And, by the way, another snow storm is expected tomorrow.

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (snowstorm earlier in December)