While I was never going to be satisfied with the Iowa Democratic
Party’s first effort at a party-run primary (“mail-in caucus” in IDP’s
language), which wrapped up March 5 with a results announcement, there were at least some successes.
In fairness, with Iowa Republicans still First In The Nation on their
side and opposed to any substantive changes to accommodate the new
calendar that removed Iowa from the early Democratic states, IDP didn’t
have many realistic options other than what they did: a January 15
in-person caucus for party business only to comply with state law, and a
later mail-in process to comply with Democratic National Committee
rules.
I recommended that plan myself long before IDP implemented it.
For the first time in three cycles, the IDP produced results promptly
and without controversy, though the format was sub-optimal and did not
include the all-important percentages used to calculate delegate counts.
(At this writing it appears non-Biden groups are not viable anywhere,
and late arriving ballots in the next few days are unlikely to change
that.)
The turnout of 12,193 as of March 6, while low, is in the same
general ballpark as the in-person attendance during Barack Obama’s 2012
re-election year caucus. And we got about one hour of media attention at
the beginning of Super Tuesday coverage, before polls closed in states
that were voting in person.
So as a dry run in a more or less uncontested year, not bad. NASA
didn’t land their first rocket on the moon either—they had to get John
Glenn into orbit first. But as a critic, and as someone who’s worked on a
lot of caucuses and elections, I’m focused on the Room For Improvement
side of the ledger. What did we learn and how can we make it better?
First and most importantly:
We should have accepted long ago that our role as an early state is over.
I would have felt better about all this had IDP leadership
immediately accepted the reality that Iowa is no longer an early state,
and started working toward both a post-First era of party building and a
presidential primary run by county auditors.
IDP chair Rita Hart is in a bind between rank and file activists like
me who care more about HOW Iowa votes than WHEN we vote, and old guard
stalwarts who think Iowa should have defied the Democratic National
Committee the way New Hampshire did and held an old fashioned Stand In
The Corner To Vote caucus on January 15 anyway.
But a system that required in person attendance at a long meeting was
indefensible in the party of voting rights, and the summer 2022
proposal to change to the mail-in system was too little too late for a
DNC that was already hostile to Iowa’s demographics and past errors.
Iowa Democrats should have thrown in the towel in December 2022, the
moment President Joe Biden named five other states as the early states
and said caucuses should no longer be part of the Democratic Party’s
nominating process. State Representative Ross Wilburn, then near the end
of his term as IDP chair, should have loudly and publicly said “it’s
over,” loudly and privately told the Des Moines donor class the same,
and introduced a presidential primary bill on Day One of the 2023
session, with every legislative Democrat as a co-sponsor.
Instead, under both Wilburn and Hart, we had ten months of secrecy and denial—almost
certainly because of back stage maneuvering to try to squeeze into the
early states after Georgia Democrats took themselves out of the running
due to lack of cooperation from Georgia Republicans. And once IDP
leaders finally accepted being out of the early states for 2024 as a
fait accompli, everything about the way they “accepted” it indicated
that they still consider it just a temporary setback and that they
intend to get early state status back in 2028.
Iowa cannot change its old and white demographics, and that alone may
be too much to ever overcome in a party that values diversity. But we
can try to change our process and our electoral results. We do not even
deserve to be considered as an early state till we have an auditor-run
primary and until we win some elections. Those items, rather than a
futile fight for First, should be our priorities.
While we eventually complied with the rules, we should have done so much sooner. The Biden campaign suffered as a result.
The DNC has strict rules about campaigning in states that are not in
compliance with the nomination calendar. That’s why, when New Hampshire
refused to go along with its assigned date, Biden had to run there as a
write-in candidate. He made the new rules, and he followed them. Iowa’s
“contest date”—the results release on Tuesday—was not in compliance with
the DNC rules until October.
Biden was never going to campaign here the way he did as a
non-incumbent—but the strict rules mean even surrogates and local
volunteers had their hands tied. Last summer, while a score of
Republican candidates barnstormed the state, and while rogue Democrats
Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips stood on the State Fair Soapbox,
local party activists could barely utter the name “Biden.” We had to
worry about whether carrying a Biden sign in a parade would get the
president in trouble with his own rules.
Biden’s critics had the state to themselves for months, and the president’s campaign can’t get those months back.
New Hampshire needs to be thrown out of the national convention.
For a couple of ridiculous weeks, DNC chair Jaime Harrison insisted
on calling his native South Carolina “First In The Nation,” emphasizing
their newly assigned slot on the calendar even after New Hampshire had
voted. I get that South Carolina was excited about their new role. But
they very objectively were not First. New Hampshire was.
New Hampshire was encouraged, even begged, to do more or less what we
did—make the state run primary a non-binding “beauty contest” to comply
with state law in a Republican controlled state, and hold a party-run
process later to allocate national delegates to comply with the DNC
calendar.
They refused. They don’t care about a 50 percent reduction in
delegates, and they don’t care about Biden staying off the ballot. They
care about voting First, and they won the only battle they cared about.
The national press played along with countless “Biden is in trouble in
New Hampshire” reports (he won with 64 percent as a write-in).
We did it way too late, with way too much reluctance, and we are
still in denial, but in the end Iowa did follow the DNC rules. New
Hampshire did not. South Carolina leaders were conciliatory after their
voting date, arguing that New Hampshire should be seated at the
convention. I’m less generous. Our state got punished pretty
significantly for the results failure of 2020, which was unintentional
(the finger pointing over Who Broke The App will never end). New
Hampshire broke the rules on purpose.
The DNC will never be able to set state law, but they need to set an
example to discourage other states, and the only way to set that example
is to completely bar New Hampshire from the convention. Ooh, but what
if it costs us the state in November? Only the 20 party bigwigs who
would have been delegates will care, and they’re the exact people who
need the lesson.
The IDP still owes us some explanations.
Why did Iowa Democrats stall on setting our contest date from December 2022 until October 2023? I know the answer—we were lobbying for the Georgia slot—but someone needs to be honest about that.
How much was spent on the outside consultants who managed the vote,
when we have 99 auditors who know how to count? Every dollar spent on
this party-run primary is a dollar that won’t be spent on a tough
legislative race.
It would have been a worst-case option, but given the shaky state of
IDP finances, and the relatively low turnout, it might have been
reasonable to forego a vote entirely and just have had the state central
committee select a delegate slate. Yes, that’s an insider process, but
so is a party-run primary that only a little bit bigger circle of
insiders know about.
Why were the first ballots sent out more than two weeks after the announced January 12 date?
How were requests managed to make sure that voters did not attend
Republican caucuses on January 15, change party again before the
February 19 deadline, and request a Democratic ballot? There was a lot
of emphasis that this was illegal, but only vague explanations of what would be done to prevent it.
(The only fail-safe ways would be to share valuable and proprietary
caucus attendance lists with the Republicans, which is unlikely—or to
have a government-run primary.)
What about claims from multiple
voters that they never received their ballots? That may have been user
error with the online request process—but why was there no system for
voters to confirm that requests had been accepted and that ballots had
been sent or received?
The language was part of the problem.
Why did the terms “preference card” and “mail-in caucus” annoy me so much? Because the language is part of the denial.
After the 2016 de facto dead heat in Iowa, the DNC adopted a rule
saying caucus states had to include a recountable document – since you
can’t re-count the heads when they are no longer in the room.
In discussions with New Hampshire, IDP learned that the word
“ballot,” and especially the process of qualifying for a ballot, were
key elements of what the New Hampshire Secretary of state considered the
difference between a “caucus” and an “election.” So IDP came up with
the term “presidential preference card” (NOT a “ballot”) and made them
all write-in (thus there was no process to qualify).
In this cycle, with Iowa Democrats officially scheduled after New
Hampshire, we should no longer care if the term “ballot” triggers them. A
little common-sense language would have gone a long way toward
convincing critics that IDP really is committed to a new post-First era.
Yet IDP insisted on calling something that any reasonable person
would call a “ballot” a “preference card” instead, and called their
mail-in voting process a “caucus.” That sent the message that they
consider 2024 a temporary setback and that the “natural order” will be
restored in 2028. At least this time they put candidates’ names on the
“preference cards.”
With few exceptions, state journalists uncritically parroted IDP’s
Newspeak terms “preference card” and “mail in caucus” in the few stories
that publicized the process.
Granted, process stories aren’t as fun as chasing candidates. The
state press and IDP could do little about the fact that Biden was not
going to actively campaign here. In 2012, Barack Obama wasn’t here much
either—but he had a large campaign presence in Iowa, which was still a
swing state. In 2024, Iowa is about electoral vote 420 on Biden’s depth
chart.
So there wasn’t much Democratic news to report. But the stories that
did run tended to be too late and too vague—“Deadline to request
preference card is today” was a typical story. Confused voters would
call their auditor the next day (as the deadline fell on President’s
Day) only to be told it was too late and there was no way to vote in
person. And when the “preference cards due today” stories landed,
auditor staffers like me had to field phone calls from voters standing
outside their polling places wondering why they weren’t open.
It didn’t help that there was publicity, including two tweets from
Vice President Kamala Harris’s account, listing Iowa as a Super Tuesday
state and urging people to go out and vote.
The party needs a better publicity plan.
This may be the most realistic place to expect improvement.
If we will be stuck with this hybrid process for the future, which
seems likely, Iowa Democrats need to find better ways to get the word
out and boost turnout. The public expectation—a mass mailing to all
registered Democrats—is too expensive for a financially challenged
party. But the online request process required voters to already be kind
of in the know about the inner workings of the party, and confused many
older voters. And, again, there was no confirmation email to indicate
the request had been successfully completed.
Maybe a contested nomination process will take care of the publicity.
We will never again see the kind of candidate resources we saw back in
the days of First, but even as a Super Tuesday state we’ll see more than
the nothing we saw this cycle.
Democratic legislators need to introduce a primary bill.
The lack of a primary bill makes it look like Iowa Democrats are more
committed to the donor class (who feel they have a constitutional right
to personal phone calls from presidential candidates) than to our role
as the party of voter rights.
We are past the “funnel” deadline for the 2024 legislative session,
but there is still time to offer amendments, and there are still
election bills pending. I know it won’t pass, and there are of course
many other priorities this session. Yet legislators had time this week
to introduce two dozen troll amendments to the Don’t Tread On Me license plate bill.
A primary bill is still valuable for the purposes of discussion, and
to show national critics that Iowa Democrats are committed to change.
The sooner the Iowa Democratic Party truly lets go of its early state
fantasies, the sooner we can start undoing the damage Republicans are
inflicting on our state.
