To scarf up Iowa votes, candidates' first stop is pizza

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — A chain of Midwest pizza buffets has become a sort of circuit ride for politicians looking to court Iowa voters.

In late March, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee sat at a table at a Pizza Ranch location here. His town hall meeting was winding down, and the GOP presidential hopeful would soon hop in a car to another meeting at a Sioux City, Iowa, Pizza Ranch. But with the smells of fried chicken and pepperoni in the air, the winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses waxed nostalgic.

"I largely won it because of Pizza Ranches all over the state," Huckabee said. "We created the Pizza Ranch strategy. A lot of people have copied it since then, but I think we created it."

Presidential hopefuls campaigning at Pizza Ranches across Iowa — the "Pizza Ranch circuit," the media call it — has become a staple of the Iowa caucuses. The down-home, Western-themed restaurants offer a microcosm of the caucuses' local-local politics: The nation's next leader may stand before you as you scarf an all-you-can-eat buffet for $10.51.

More than 70 Pizza Ranch restaurants operate across Iowa, mostly in small towns. All offer a free meeting space to anyone who signs up and buys some pizza, making them the go-to venue for campaigns light on cash.

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Huckabee glad-handed heavily at Pizza Ranches ahead of his 2008 Iowa victory. So did Rick Santorum before he won the caucuses in 2012. Now both are gearing up for 2016 runs, and both have returned to the Pizza Ranch circuit.

Other Republican presidential aspirants also have appeared at the chain this go-around: Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio.

"Now I have fulfilled my dream of coming to a Pizza Ranch," Rubio said at the chain's Pella, Iowa, restaurant last fall.

Pizza Ranch's mission, to "glorify God by positively impacting the world," endears itself to evangelical conservatives in small-town Iowa while attracting candidates looking for their votes. Christian music plays softly at many locations.

"The people who typically go to a Pizza Ranch or go through the buffet with their families were Mike Huckabee-type voters," said Chip Saltsman, Huckabee's 2008 campaign manager. "You go where your base is."

Cody Pierce, Pizza Ranch's vice president of marketing, oversees expansion and branding for the company, which began in 1981 in Hull, Iowa, and spread to 13 states. He acknowledges that "the endearing quality of Pizza Ranch could match well with certain political candidates" but stresses the chain doesn't endorse any political ideology.

Its president does, though: Weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Adrie Groeneweg, the chain's co-founder, donated $1,000 to Huckabee. Groeneweg also donated $5,000 to social conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats' run for governor in 2010.

But candidates of all political stripes visit Pizza Ranches: Democrat Hillary Clinton was the first to set foot in one ahead of 2008, according to Des Moines Register data. She drew 200 people to the Emmetsburg Pizza Ranch in May 2007 but hasn't visited one since.

Democrats Joe Biden, John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson also appeared at Pizza Ranches for their '08 campaigns. However, no Democratic presidential candidate — prospective or declared — has held a Pizza Ranch event in the 2016 cycle.

While the 35-year-old company's is nearly as old as the caucuses itself, Pierce said executives didn't notice political candidates frequenting the restaurant until 2008, the year Huckabee won Iowa.

If Huckabee launched the Pizza Ranch trend, it was out of necessity. The former Arkansas governor's campaign was broke in its early days and struggled for attention.

Huckabee's staff realized the restaurants functioned as de facto gathering places in many small Iowa towns.

"They've got all those nice little side rooms," said Saltsman, the campaign manager. "You get a couple pizzas there, and you might get a little action."

In July 2007, Huckabee was luring 40 people to hear his stump speech at North Liberty's Pizza Ranch. By August, 50 people came to the Pizza Ranch in Pella.

As interest picked up in weeks leading to the caucuses, the campaign stuck largely to Pizza Ranches, which Saltsman by then viewed as a good luck charm.

"I remember Mount Pleasant. Good Lord, every stop in the northwest," said Eric Woolson, a longtime Iowa campaign operative who led Huckabee's Iowa effort. "Typically, if I had the Pizza Ranch option, I was using it."

Other campaigns used it, too. In 2008, long-shot Republican candidate John Cox visited nine Pizza Ranches in 10 days, according to Register archives.

In 2012, the trend broke open: Michele Bachmann spoke at 20 Pizza Ranches within 12 days in December as she tried to visit every Iowa county.

The day before Santorum edged out eventual GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the caucuses, he spoke at three Pizza Ranches in a day. One of those Pizza Ranches, in Boone, Iowa, even named a Santorum Salad after him.

So far in the 2016 cycle, Huckabee leads the way in Pizza Ranch stops with three — no other candidate has done more than one. Huckabee will make an official announcement about entering the race Tuesday. On Thursday, he's scheduled to appear at a Pizza Ranch in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Huckabee is better known — and better financed — than he was in 2008, yet Saltsman, who's been traveling with him in Iowa, sees the Pizza Ranch circuit in their future.

"Like I said, we feel like it's a good luck charm."

Avoiding the Ranch

In 2012, every Republican candidate made a Pizza Ranch appearance except one: eventual nominee Mitt Romney.

Romney's second presidential campaign intentionally avoided the chain because of a scandal surrounding one of its co-founders, The Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette reported.

Co-founder Lawrence Vander Esch, a Sioux City, Iowa, businessman, pleaded guilty in 2001 to charges that he sexually abused employees. Vander Esch, who is no longer with the company, was released from prison in 2006. A district court judge vacated the charges.

That was enough for Romney's 2012 campaign, led in Iowa by Des Moines strategist David Kochel, to avoid the chain. Kochel, now a strategist for Jeb Bush, took a different tack ahead of 2016: Bush's first small-scale stop took place at a Cedar Rapids Pizza Ranch.

"A lot of time has passed," Kochel told the Gazette the night of the event.