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This is the column from Iowa's leading political columnist in this morning's Des Moines Register:

Yepsen: Without Gore, Iowa is anybody's race
By DAVID YEPSEN
Register Political Columnist
12/16/2002

Former Vice President Al Gore's decision not to run for president turns the 2004 Iowa caucuses into a political jump-ball with former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt the most likely beneficiary of the freshly scrambled contest in Iowa.

But party insiders say that's no prediction of a Gephardt win if he runs in the 2004 Iowa caucuses, only a recognition that he's probably the best-known candidate among Iowa Democrats. With more than a year until the Jan. 19, 2004, caucus meetings, there's plenty of time for other candidates to make up ground on Gephardt, who won the 1988 Iowa contest but whose presidential campaign faltered later that year.

Gore's announcement Sunday night "makes the 2004 Iowa caucuses really big," said Sheila McGuire Riggs, a former state party head.

Gore led in early polls of Democrats for his party's 2004 nomination. With his departure Sunday, the Iowa contest becomes much more like the 1988 race, when Iowa Democrats had to choose among several lesser-known candidates. Now, as then, little-known candidates need to use Iowa to break from the pack as the presidential nominating contest heads into subsequent events, such as the New Hampshire primary.

The shape of the new race is best indicated by a poll of likely caucus-goers taken Dec. 3-9 by the National Journal's Political Hotline. The survey asked respondents whom they would be for if Gore was out of the race. In that match-up, Gephardt shot to the front of the pack in Iowa. He won 26 percent of the vote, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry had 18 percent and Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman received 16 percent. South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle was at 12 percent, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards had 4 percent and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean got 1 percent. There were 23 percent of the respondents who were undecided or didn't know who they'd favor. The poll had a 5.8 percent margin of error.

If political history is any guide, a contender needs to finish in one of the top three places to remain viable. Throughout the history of the Iowa caucuses, no candidate who finished worse than third has gone on to win a party's nomination. That fact is the reason most political experts believe the function of the Iowa caucuses is to "winnow the field," as former Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker once put it.

Presuming all these people run - a big presumption - an early handicap of the race in Iowa looks like this:

* Gephardt: While he's the initial beneficiary in Iowa, he's also got the most to lose. The political community will expect him to win Iowa, and he might not be able to. By 2004, it will be 16 years since he won Iowa in 1988, and the question will be: Can he get the old band back together again in the Hawkeye State? Lots of younger activists aren't that familiar with him.

"I don't see anyone who is in a better position in Iowa than Gephardt," said Chuck Gifford, a former union leader in Iowa and a close friend of Gephardt's.

* Kerry: He's just getting started in Iowa, but all he really needs out of the state is to finish in one of those top three positions. According to the Hotline's poll, he's in second place among the candidates, and that's just about what he needs as he heads into the New Hampshire primary, where his neighboring-state roots make him the leader in a Hotline poll of Democrats there. A victory in Iowa would make him difficult to defeat for the nomination. After all, he's already in second place in the state without having done much campaigning here.

* Lieberman: The Connecticut senator is pretty hawkish for dovish Iowa Democrats. But with other candidates carving up the liberals, Lieberman might be able to rally centrist Democrats and make a good showing.

* Daschle: As a neighboring-state lawmaker, the expectations for Daschle will be high in Iowa. But he's just getting started in Iowa and will compete with Gephardt for Midwestern "home court" support.

* Edwards: He's one of the freshest faces in the race. He's an articulate politician who knows how to campaign to rural audiences and has excited some Iowa Democrats who are looking for a newcomer to be the party's standard bearer. But he's quite unknown and could have difficulty making the cut into third place in a field like this. He could also be squeezed by the Midwesterners in Iowa and the New Englanders in New Hampshire before he gets a shot at a more hospitable electorate in South Carolina.

* Dean: He's already spent a lot of time in Iowa and is picking up support from some of Bill Bradley's and Jimmy Carter's old backers. He's a fresh face, too. Dean leaves the governorship at the end of this month, and that will give him more time to campaign than the others - who all have day jobs in Washington.

Perhaps the most important statistic in that poll is the one showing close to a fourth of Iowa's Democrats are up in the air. That's enough uncertainty here to give any credible contender a chance to do well in the state.

I know it's long. Sorry for that. There is already a lot of "attempted organizing". In related article, Iowa's D Governor implied that Iowa is ready for a fresh candidate. I'll go fetch the article and post it to you.