U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Seneca, raised a few eyebrows recently when he showed up in Iowa to address the state's Republican convention. Is he running for president? Iowans wondered.

Iowans are accustomed to national politicians showing up years ahead of presidential elections to start building the groundwork for a caucus campaign, says David Yepsen, political columnist for the Des Moines (Iowa) Register.

The media treated Graham as though he were a candidate.

"They followed me around for two days," Graham says. "I got a very warm welcome."

But he downplayed the attention he got.

"If you're a county coroner and go to Iowa, you're running for president," says Graham, a freshman senator.

Graham is a rising star who was elected to Congress during the GOP landslide of 1994. Later, he attracted national attention as a key player in the House impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

Graham denies he went to Iowa carrying any presidential aspirations.

"I'm going to a lot of battleground states to help President Bush," Graham explains. "Hopefully, people will see me as some value to the president."

Graham is known for his independence. He has demonstrated it throughout his career. He has been known to get under the skin of the White House and rankle party elders. He has been compared to a better-known Republican contrarian, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whom he supported for president in 2000.

In his appearance at the Iowa GOP convention, Graham had a message for Republicans, warning that if they don't change their way of thinking, they may not be a major party much longer.

"We've got to be a party of big ideas, but we also have got to adapt," he says. "If we do not appeal to black voters or Hispanics over the next decade, we will not be a national party."

The GOP cannot continue to lose 90 percent of the black vote and 65 percent of the Hispanic vote without major erosion, he says.

His message falls under a general theme, "conservatism with a conscience" - not a bad slogan for a presidential campaign. Today, Republicans talk about conservatism as an ideology, he says, "but conservatism that has no conscience is an ideology without a purpose."

In two days in Iowa, Graham didn't forget the local folks and their favorite subject - ethanol, a form of alcohol made from grains that is used to fuel cars. He told them up front he supports ethanol.

Yepsen wrote that Graham's views are worth considering because he might be a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

Graham doesn't rule out a run. He went out of his way to heap praise on the Hawkeye State's first-in-the-nation presidential contest.

"Iowa's caucuses are essential to maintaining some semblance of representative democracy," Graham told reporters there. "I don't want a situation where we allow the radio and TV to be the only way to pick a president."

Later, in an interview, Graham pointed out that if you try to make things happen, they generally fail.

"When your time comes, you know it and the people know it," he says. "I don't know whether my time has come."