An Open Letter To Fellow Iowa Democrats

To: Johnson County Democratic Legislative delegation, Johnson County Democrats Executive Board, IDP Chair Rita Hart, and anyone reading this.

The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee met today and voted on the early state calendar. While this is not final, it is important to note that Iowa did not receive even a single vote from the committee for the midwest slot in the early states, let alone for First In The Nation.

The likely order appears to be:

• South Carolina
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• Michigan
• New Mexico
• Virginia

I am mostly satisfied with this, except for New Hampshire. As you remember, when we lost our place in the early states for 2024, we followed both the state law and the DNC calendar by having an early caucus for party business only, followed by a later mail in vote for presidential preference. In contrast, New Hampshire defied the DNC and scheduled a rogue First primary after being assigned the third slot. They should have faced consequences for that.

I ask each of you to join me in publicly accepting this outcome. It is long past time for Iowa Democrats to let go of the idea that we will get "the caucuses" as we knew them back.

To our legislators: I encourage you to publicly state that First As We Knew It is over, and to introduce and support legislation for an Iowa presidential primary, as our JCDems platform has supported in 2024 and 2026. (A thank you to Dave Jacoby for introducing a primary bill in 2025.) I also urge you to fight hard against any Republican legislation that would prevent us from complying with the DNC calendar and having our national delegation seated, or that would keep us from using absentee ballots in our nomination process.

To my fellow JCDems: I urge you to continue to share the nightmare of our attendance crisis with your friends in other counties. Johnson County is always happy to help other counties, but we need help from the rest of the Democrats in the state on this. No matter what our schedule is for 2028, we MUST have a system to reduce our oversized crowds, by getting the people who only want to vote for president out of the rooms. That will make the caucuses once again the neighborly and deliberative meeting that it was long ago.

To Chair Hart: I ask you to accept this outcome and say so in public, to encourage our statewide candidates to do the same, and to stand firm against the forces in our party who want to defy the DNC. The penalties are strict and severe enough that, even if we do schedule a rogue early contest, the candidates will not come to Iowa. That will both defeat the purpose and will cost us our seats at the national convention. 

I hope this distraction will soon be behind us and we can focus on the more immediate task of winning this year. Thank you all for your support and friendship.

John Deeth

Caucus To Convention Chair, Johnson County Democrats