The caucus impact

The 2024 Iowa presidential caucuses have finally come and gone. So now might be a good time to evaluate their impact on the state and its people. Iowa has had the pole position in the presidential nomination horse race since 1972. Should that continue? The national Democratic Party has already shaken up the works through major changes to its nominating order.

Like most major events, the caucuses have their pluses and minuses. For example, the event showers huge riches on the state’s TV stations, which provide candidates and their campaigns round-the-clock opportunities to drive home their messages.

Benefits also accrue to the restaurants, bars, and lodgings around the state that provide creature comforts to the candidates, their hundreds of campaign staff members, and the media crews that follow in their wake. The overall Iowa take from providing publicity and travel facilities totals many millions of dollars.

Because politics thrives on winning support from potential beneficiaries of government action, and because presidential candidates struggle desperately to please Iowa voters, a few sectors of the Iowa economy enjoy pledges of fealty from most candidates in both parties. One example is the state’s ethanol industry, and therefore Iowa agriculture. It’s a rare hopeful who fails on the stump to regularly boost the benefits of the fuel additive distilled from Iowa corn, and Iowans are not reluctant to remind the eventual winner of that pledge.

Candidates with larger-than-life personalities and impressive speaking ability get a running start in the race, since their introduction to Iowa voters, often face-to-face, helps them shine brighter than competitors who may be equally capable but lack the people skills they need. That head start often exerts influence throughout the campaign.

And when the caucuses finally happen in January, some residents of Iowa towns large and small can say—-to themselves and others—-that they have seen, heard, and evaluated a number of presidential candidates up close and quasi-personal. And that’s a real benefit to Iowa voters.  

But the design of the caucus systems also denies many, many politically interested Iowans a chance to register their choices, compared to a primary nominating process.

Employees whose working stints include the 7 p.m. hour cannot take part in the caucus event even if politics holds an intense interest for them. People whose budget doesn’t permit hiring child care help for a couple of hours on caucus night, or whose children need their presence in the evenings for whatever reason, or if they have difficulty with January weather like what we have this year, or if they’re disabled, or if they can’t attend for any number of other reasons, can’t cast their preference for a presidential candidate at an Iowa caucus.

The vast majority of states over the years have chosen to go to a presidential primary system. Today only four states, including Iowa, and a few Pacific island territories still cling to the caucus process.

Presidential nominating primaries always turn out more voters than caucuses do. In 2016, for example, the last year when neither political party had an incumbent running for President, about 16 percent of Iowa voters came out on Caucus Night. A week later in New

Hampshire, which uses the primary system, more than half the eligible voters turned out to cast a ballot.

There’s no doubt the Iowa caucus system offers advantages to its voters. For many weeks prior to last Monday’s Caucus Night, candidates had to shake as many hands as possible around the state and give voters a chance to size them up.

But it may be the case that those one-on-one occurrences resulted not from the fact that Iowa has caucuses, but rather that Iowa goes first, at least in the Republican nominating process. Candidates are now spending about as much time in New Hampshire as in Iowa, and for the same reason: New Hampshire is the first state to hold a presidential primary. 

Bottom line: would Iowa, and Iowans, be better off under a presidential primary nominating system? More Iowans would be able to participate under a primary process, but the state would have to hold it sometime down the line instead of being able to announce the nation’s first results.

The national Democratic Party leadership has already in effect taken away Iowa’s first to-weigh-in status. Iowa Democrats this year picked up a preference ballot on Caucus Night, which they will fill out and mail in, with the results to be announced in March. The national leadership was dismayed in 2020 at the snafus in the reporting of Iowa’s caucus results. In addition, Iowa is not nearly as diversified as the nation at large, a fact that looms large in

Democratic priorities.

Also, because President Biden is the party’s incumbent President, his nomination outcome is not in doubt this year so long as he chooses to run again.

Democrats still conduct party business, like choosing party leaders and drafting platforms, on Caucus Night. But assuming Iowa Democrats continue to use a mail-in ballot system in the future, with announcement of the results delayed until after some other states have their say, will Democratic presidential hopefuls still spend weeks on the campaign trail trudging through Iowa? I doubt it.

Will Iowa be the last state to give up the presidential caucus process?

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. He also currently covers Jefferson city council, Greene County supervisors and Greene County school board.