Republican candidates seem to have made their way into every corner of Iowa, but none have stopped by Crawfordsville, which residents will assure you is the birthplace of the Grand Old Party.
"We've got nine candidates who had to have visited virtually every corner of the state. You'd think somebody would stop by Craw- fordsville," State GOP Chairman Brian Kennedy says and sighs. "I think it would be a good idea for every candidate to stop by Crawfordsville and pay respect to the birthplace of the Republican Party."A big, white sign standing alone in a soybean field just on the outskirts of town ballyhoos Crawfordsville as the party's birthplace. But there has been no recent sign of any of the candidates competing for support in the Feb. 12 Iowa caucuses.
The closest any Republican candidates have come to Crawfordsville recently has been Washington, a few miles to the northeast.
It may be because the history books and encyclopedias don't mention the southeast Iowa town of 300 as the place where the Republican Party originated. They cite Ripon, Wis., or Jackson, Mich., as the party's birthplace.
Crawfordsville's claim is based on a meeting that local history says took place on Feb. 23, 1854, at the Seceder Church. The town was a hotbed of abolitionism and a stop on the underground railroad, which helped slaves flee to Canada.
Minutes of the meeting have ever been found.
"Ripon has documentation - there's the hitch for us, at least," admits Wilma McAllister of Crawfordsville.
That didn't stop Iowa GOP officials from staging the "Great Crawfordsville Republican Reunion" in 1976, when 1,000 people showed up to promote the town's claim as the GOP's birthplace.
"They're not, you know," says Carolyn Seawell, a former Crawfordsville resident before becoming executive director of the Chamber of Commerce in Ripon. "You know, we have the little White House, where it was founded, on the National Register of Historic Places.
But the lack of documentation hasn't stopped Republican candidates from recognizing a similar claim by Exeter, N.H., which says the GOP was founded there on Oct. 12, 1853. New Hampshire has the nation's first presidential primaries, eight days after Iowa's presidential precinct caucuses.
At a campaign stop in Exeter last April, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the GOP front-runner, said he had always felt at home in New Hampshire.