In Iowa, British-Accented Radio Host Draws G.O.P. Hopefuls

 If you’re competing in the Iowa caucuses, there’s a new obligatory stop on the campaign trail this year, and it’s not a greasy spoon or an evangelical church.

It’s the WHO-AM radio show ofSimon Conway. Mr. Conway, while cutting and often brash, does not fit the conservative talk radio mold. For one, he is British by birth, and his thick English accent can be somewhat disorienting as it booms from stereos here in the heartland. He also happens to be Jewish, a fact that seems lost on many listeners, especially those who are wishing him Merry Christmas these days.

“Rick Perry. Had him in last Friday for an hour,” Mr. Conway said in an interview this week.

Newt Gingrich? “I’ve looked him in the eye. Twice had him in.”

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum, who stopped in for an hour-long interview on Wednesday, have all been on his afternoon show several times on WHO. Mitt Romney has yet to agree to come on, though Mr. Conway said his campaign was mulling a request.

“If you want to reach Iowans, pretty much you’ve got to sit in WHO,” Mr. Conway noted.

On the national stage, Fox News is the media outlet of choice for Republican candidates, who are sitting for continuous rounds of interviews and spending considerable sums on advertising, because the network is a surefire way to reach large numbers of conservatives.

But in Iowa, WHO-AM (1040) plays that role, as the most listened-to and widely broadcast news radio station in the state.

WHO’s 50,000-watt signal carries easily across Iowa’s mostly flat terrain, making it available to just about any Iowan with a radio. Unlike the state’s segmented television markets — which are split into several regions from Sioux City in the West to Des Moines in the center to Cedar Rapids in the East — WHO offers the only truly statewide broadcast.

“It’s a 50,000-watt blowtorch,” said Matthew Strawn, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. According to Arbitron, nearly 65,000 people across Iowa tune in during the 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. afternoon drive period at any given point during the average week when Mr. Conway’s show is broadcast — a small audience but still the largest in Iowa for talk radio. And given the demographics of talk radio — the audience tends to skew toward the politically attuned, conservative type that Republican candidates want to reach — WHO offers a highly targeted way for campaigns to convey their messages, through interviews or advertising.

Mr. Conway was named in April to WHO’s storied roster of hosts — the station is where Ronald Reagan made a name for himself as a sportscaster in the 1930s — replacing Steve Deace, a firebrand religious conservative whose 4 p.m. program was another must-visit destination for Republican candidates. (Mr. Deace now hosts a syndicated radio program.) The choice to hire Mr. Conway was a bold one for the Des Moines station, an institution that has always prided itself on its Hawkeye heritage. But minus the accent, he seems right at home here.

“He is very good at stirring the pot, and I have some admiration for how quickly he was able to figure Iowa out,” said Stephen Winzenburg, a professor of communications at Grand View University here who studies the intersection of media and politics. “He’s good at working the system, figuring out who the key players are and inviting them on his show.”

Mr. Strawn of the state Republican Party said that Mr. Conway set sights on him early. Shortly after Mr. Conway started at WHO, the Republican leader said he got a text message from him proposing that they meet.

Mr. Conway, who has a broad chest, blue eyes and swept-back brown hair that is graying slightly around the temples, wears an American flag pin on his lapel, a gold necklace with a Hebrew letter chai pendant and cowboy boots. He cast his first ballot in an American election in 2008. “That was for McCain,” he said, wincing and plugging his nose. His dog, a rescued chocolate Labrador retriever, is named Reagan.

His interviews, which tend to be free-wheeling and nonconfrontational, have produced some of memorable moments in the presidential campaign. He prompted Representative Ron Paul of Texas to acknowledge that his noninterventionist foreign policy would have precluded him from carrying out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. And in comments that grabbed headlines, Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, told Mr. Conway that he would fire Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke.