Sydney Ember and Reid J. Epstein

Since the 1970s, Iowa has hosted the country’s first nominating contests, with a singular ability to make or break White House hopes. Yet with less than three months to go, the state’s preeminent position — and the caucus process itself — is once again taking heat.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said this week — to an Iowa reporter no less — that the caucuses were not “representative.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts demurred when she was asked at a forum in South Carolina whether the order of the early-nominating states should change because Iowa and New Hampshire were “two of the whitest states in the country.” “Are you actually going to ask me to sit here and criticize Iowa and New Hampshire?” she said. “I’m just a player in the game.”

And Julián Castro, the former secretary of housing and urban development, said Iowa was “not reflective of the United States” and “not reflective of the Democratic Party.” He called for the state to lose its spot at the front of the presidential nominating calendar.

In Iowa, fretting about the caucuses is a quadrennial tradition among Democratic and Republican officials alike. But at a time when leading Democrats have made the fight for ballot access, voting rights and diverse representation core principles, their marquee presidential contest offers none of those elements.

The state is more than 90% white, rankling officials and activists who say it does not match the party’s diversity elsewhere. The caucuses take place on a Monday night in frigid early February, disenfranchising Iowans who cannot attend because they have to work, have child care obligations, are disabled or are out of state.

The grumbling reached a roar over the last week, amplified by the possibility that Michael Bloomberg might enter the Democratic presidential contest and bypass the four early states, a strategy that if successful could render Iowa irrelevant for good.

After touching off the latest round of Iowa pearl-clutching with a vigorous denunciation, Castro has continued to speak out against the primary schedule. It has become one of the few avenues for his struggling campaign to receive attention.

“We can’t as a Democratic Party continually and justifiably complain about Republicans who suppress the votes of people of color and then turn around and start our nominating contest in two states that, even though they take their role seriously, hardly have any people of color,” he said.

Iowa officials are accustomed to twisting themselves into rhetorical pretzels to justify the state’s antiquated caucus system. They have argued it gives lesser-known candidates — like Jimmy Carter in 1976 — an opportunity to parlay retail politicking skills into an electoral breakout.

They’ve used their political clout to keep the first spot in line. When Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was campaigning for his post in 2017, he got the Iowa delegation to switch its support to him after pledging to protect Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status. (Other candidates for party chair, including Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, also pledged to keep Iowa first.) Perez declined to be interviewed about the Iowa caucuses.

Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, argued in an interview Tuesday that Iowa’s population, which is 90.7% white, was in fact plenty diverse.

“Those who say that diverse voices are not being heard need to spend more time here in Iowa,” Price said. “Everyone thinks that the only thing Iowans talk about is corn and that the only thing we talk about is the ag economy, and that’s just simply not true.”

But asking other Iowa Democrats to defend the caucuses this week led to a series of deep sighs and requests to speak off the record, before many privately acknowledged that the process was indefensible as a matter of democracy.

Zach Simonson, Democratic chairman in Wapello County, admitted: “It’s a terrible way to do Democratic decision-making.”

Others made more a parochial argument: It is good to be first.

“If Iowa changed to a primary, we’d be dead,” said Claire Celsi, a Democratic state senator from West Des Moines. “There would be nothing special about it, so I’m against that. I think we should stay a caucus state, as long as we can figure out the inclusion piece — because without that, the caucuses are no good.”

Donna Brazile, the former DNC chairwoman, has been traveling to Iowa since she worked for Jesse Jackson’s first presidential campaign in 1984. She said Iowa could be trusted with first-in-the-nation status because the state’s well-informed electorate takes the responsibility of choosing a presidential nominee more seriously than voters elsewhere.

“While it doesn’t look like America, when they take into consideration the qualities and values we’re looking for in a candidate, I believe that they represent what is truly best about our country,” Brazile said. “They’re smart, and they take this seriously.”

Still, grievances from other states are growing louder.

In Texas, the nation’s second-largest state and one where a majority of Democratic primary voters are likely to be black or Hispanic, Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, said he was having trouble getting presidential candidates to commit to attending a planned January forum before the March 3 primary. They all have told him they’ll be too busy in Iowa.

“It is not right that we have a caucus in Iowa that makes it difficult for people to vote, and right after that a primary in New Hampshire, in a little tiny state that does not represent the diversity of America,” Hinojosa said. “It is bizarre. It makes absolutely no sense except for tradition, and sometimes tradition doesn’t get us anywhere.”

Hinojosa said he planned to push to change the nominating calendar before the party’s next contested primary.

Elaine Kamarck, a member of the DNC’s rules committee who wrote a book about the presidential nominating process, said concerns about caucus accessibility and a lack of diversity in Iowa have long been outweighed by a belief that “there’s a quality to the participation in a caucus state that you don’t get in a primary.”

With turnout for Iowa’s Feb. 3 Democratic caucuses expected to top the 2008 high-water mark of 240,000 people, Kamarck said there were growing concerns that Iowa Democrats did not have the infrastructure necessary to accommodate record caucus turnout.

“It’s really, really hard for a state party every four years to do what a state government does with absolute regularity,” she said.

The past two Iowa caucuses have not gone smoothly. In 2012, the Republican Party of Iowa declared Mitt Romney the winner by eight votes on caucus night. Two weeks later it amended the results, saying that Rick Santorum had actually won. Four years later, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders fought to a virtual draw in Iowa. Sanders called for the raw vote totals to be released, but the state party hadn’t kept track — officials had only counted the delegates that had been awarded.

After the 2016 election, the DNC encouraged the 10 states that held caucuses to switch to primaries to involve more people in the nominating process. For the three remaining caucus states that refused to switch to primaries — Iowa, Nevada and Wyoming — the DNC required state parties to allow some sort of absentee participation and devise a mechanism to conduct a recount and count raw votes.

Iowa’s initial plan to allow remote caucusing by phone ahead of the Feb. 3 contest was foiled when the DNC security team easily hacked into the prototype system. Instead, Iowa Democrats plan to allow “satellite caucuses” that enable people to participate remotely. Their votes will count for a fraction of what they would if they attended one of 1,678 sanctioned caucuses.

To allow for a possible recount, Iowa Democrats plan to report both the delegate and supporter totals for each candidate, opening the possibility of two candidates declaring victory in Iowa — one who wins the most delegates and another who claims the most support from actual humans.

“The DNC recognizes the critical role the early states play in the nominating process, and Democrats are making historic efforts to increase the accessibility of the caucuses and primaries to ensure more voters participate than ever before,” said David Bergstein, a party spokesman.

Myriad efforts to strip Iowa and New Hampshire of their coveted positions have failed in recent years. New Hampshire law stipulates that it holds the nation’s first primary, and Iowa has received dispensation from the Democratic and Republican National committees to hold the nation’s first caucuses.

“We’ve tried all different ways of knocking them out of first and second,” Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, said of Iowa and New Hampshire. Before the 2008 campaign, Reid managed to get his home state of Nevada locked into the third spot on the Democratic presidential nominating calendar.

Asked if there was any way to justify Iowa and New Hampshire’s positions, Reid replied: “None whatsoever. But they’re going to be there, we might as well move on.”

This article originally appeared in

Love Iowa? Oh, You Bet. Caucuses? Deep Sigh.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Even the Democrats trying to win the Iowa caucuses won’t defend them.

Speaking to thunderous applause during the party’s biggest Iowa political event of the year, Warren denounced candidates in the presidential race who opposed bold ideas in favor of more moderate solutions, in veiled attacks on Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg.

“Complacency does not win elections,” she said at the Iowa Democratic Party’s fundraising dinner. “Hope and courage do not win elections. I’m not running some consultant-driven campaign with some vague ideas that are designed not to offend anyone.”

Befitting her front-runner status, Warren was the target of heated attacks from three of the first five speakers on the stage: Biden, Buttigieg and Kamala Harris. None of the candidates mentioned one another by name, although Biden and Buttigieg both presented themselves as more capable of uniting the country.

“We will fight when we must fight but I will never allow us to get so wrapped up in the fighting that we start to think that fighting is the point,” Buttigieg said.

Biden, who spoke directly after Buttigieg, extended the theme, saying, “If you can’t bring the country together we’re in real, real, real trouble.”

Even Harris, whose campaign is lagging to the point that she may not qualify for the party’s December debate, attacked Warren personally for the first time.

“I’ve only had one client in my life — the people,” Harris said of her career as a prosecutor. “Unlike others, I’ve never represented a corporation.”

The sharp exchanges underscored the urgency motivating the candidates as the race enters its final phase ahead of the Iowa caucuses three months from now.

The dinner occurred on one of the most consequential days of the race so far, with Warren, under pressure from other candidates over how she would pay for “Medicare for All,” finally introducing a long-awaited, $20.5 trillion proposal that immediately drew a fierce attack from her chief rival, Biden.

Biden declared that under his health care plan, there would be “no increase in taxes for the middle class. None, none, none,” a shot at Warren’s delay in articulating whether such taxpayers would see tax increases. Instead, Biden promised an opportunity to “buy into a Medicare-like proposal.”

The Biden, Buttigieg and Warren campaigns each bought large sections of the 16,000-seat Wells Fargo Arena here for supporters to cheer on their candidates. Buttigieg’s section was particularly enthusiastic, clapping thundersticks and waving flashing lights throughout his address. Warren’s fans were also spirited, unfurling a banner during her speech with the words, “Win with Warren.”

Bernie Sanders, while speaking at the event, brought no supporters, electing to lead them in a march outside instead, part of a pattern of the independent senator’s antipathy toward Democratic Party functions.

At the same time, the candidates have been wooing voters with bus tours, rallies and town hall-style events. Harris, the California senator who is trying to revive her campaign, has taken to cooking Sunday night dinners in supporters’ homes and plans to spend Thanksgiving in the state.

The surge in attention on Iowa coincides with a more contentious phase of the race, marked by aggressive campaigning and an increased willingness to go on the offensive.

Sanders, the senator from Vermont, and Biden, the former vice president, have resumed their attacks on each other, with back-and-forth sniping in the last week about Medicare for All and super PACs. Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have shown an increased willingness to go after Warren, the senator from Massachusetts.

Hours before the dinner was to begin, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas announced the end of his presidential campaign. His departure was so sudden that supporters had already planted scores of his signature black-and-white campaign signs outside the arena.

Lower-tier candidates looking to energize their campaigns have also been more pugnacious: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, for instance, has amped up her criticisms of the Democratic National Committee, the news media and even Hillary Clinton, who is not in the race.

But nowhere has the battle been more intense than at the event Friday, with candidates trading barbs less on specific policies, and more on political ideology.

“We need big ideas, and here’s the critical part: We need to be willing to fight for them,” Warren said. “It’s easy to give up on a big idea, but when we give up on big ideas, we give up on the people whose lives would be touched by those ideas.”

Of the top-tier candidates, only Sanders — the sole candidate to stand stationary and speak from notes on a lectern — did not attack his opponents, instead delivering a version of his standard stump speech that championed the working class and took aim at corporate interests and the rich. He quoted Franklin Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela and provided please for his signature policy proposals, including Medicare for All and tuition-free public college.

He also announced his campaign was donating $20,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party in a symbolic show of solidarity even as he continues to eschew traditional party politicking.

The crowded and diverse field — there are still 17 candidates — has proved challenging for contenders outside the top tier. While nine have qualified for the party’s November debate in Atlanta, just four are guaranteed a spot for the December debate in Los Angeles.

A poll taken this week of likely caucusgoers by The New York Times and Siena College shows the top four candidates locked in an extraordinarily tight race. Warren held a narrow advantage, with the support of 22% of voters, while Sanders drew 19% and Buttigieg 18%. Biden, who entered the race as a front-runner, had the backing of 17% of likely caucusgoers, much weaker than his position in national polls.

For Democrats who had been inclined to support Biden but now find themselves shopping around, that means the moderate choices are limited to Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, with other would-be options like Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey falling out of the conversation.

Susan Swift, a 58-year-old yoga teacher from Dubuque, said at a Biden event Wednesday that even after watching nine months of campaigning she was still trying to decipher the field.

Swift said she liked the former vice president for “his experience,” but had become more impressed with Buttigieg the more she had seen him.

“Did you see the pluck that that guy had in the last debate?” she said. “Seriously? I was like, ‘You just won my heart.’”

Conversations this week with 24 of Iowa’s 99 Democratic county leaders revealed moderate Democrats moving from Biden toward Buttigieg and Klobuchar, who the county officials said had benefited from strong debate performances and repeated trips to the state.

Sanders, who fought Clinton to a draw in Iowa four years ago, has struggled to retain support in the party’s most liberal pockets. Some of his anti-establishment backers have gravitated to candidates even more outside the mainstream, like entrepreneur Andrew Yang and Gabbard.

Zach Simonson, the Democratic chairman in Wapello County, backed Sanders in 2016 and said he was now torn between Sanders and Warren.

“I was all in for Bernie in 2016, but with Warren in the race, some of the weaker parts of his candidacy are magnified,” Simonson said. “He’s got a very reasonable critique of the national Democratic Party institution, but from campaigning so much on the outside, I don’t know if he’ll be ready to take the role of national standard-bearer for all Democrats after the convention.”

Democrats Sharpen Attacks to Win Over Iowans

DES MOINES, Iowa — Displaying a new assertiveness toward her Democratic opponents, Elizabeth Warren laced into her chief political rivals, warning on Friday night that the country was in a “time of crisis” and arguing that Democrats would lose in 2020 if they nominated “anyone who comes on this stage and tells you they can make change without a fight.”

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Sydney Ember and Reid J. Epstein

Articles written by the author

Love Iowa? Oh, You Bet. Caucuses? Deep Sigh.

Democrats Sharpen Attacks to Win Over Iowans