"They wanted the campaign gathering to appear full, but..." [View all]

[Miles Archer]

DES MOINES — As Ben Carson got ready for a television interview beside the pulpit of a Pentecostal church this week, campaign aides asked his supporters to move across the room and sit in the empty pews behind him.

They wanted the campaign gathering to appear full, but few of the voters who had turned up for the event could hear the soft-spoken Mr. Carson explain how he is on the upswing in Iowa. Some wandered away in disappointment.

“I thought he would be louder,” said Jody Kunanan, who drove from Ankeny, Iowa, to see Mr. Carson. Still, she remains hopeful that he will somehow pull out a victory in the state next week despite polling in the single digits.

Such is life for the Carson campaign these days, where disappointment and frustration have overtaken last year’s sense of optimism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/us/politics/ben-carsons-campaign-beset-with-frustration-disappointment-and-grief.html