Politicians love, loathe Iowa caucus system
Iowa's eccentric ritual of caucus holds love-hate status for politicians.
DES MOINES -- Determining the next leader of the free world may come down to mastering these details: Finding babysitters for potential voters. Having backup transportation for an ice storm. Getting the right snacks.
Welcome to the Iowa caucuses, an eccentric ritual that combines the charm of an old-fashioned community meeting with the ferocity of high-tech, high-stakes politics. The outcome will be determined by a relatively small group of people who show up for 1,781 precinct meetings on Thursday night.
The first-in-the-nation caucuses are one of those things that some politicians love and others loathe. Every four years, they bring would-be presidents to scrounge for support in coffeehouses, school gyms and community centers across this sparsely populated state.
The Iowa caucuses have never attracted more than 250,000 participants from both parties, in a state with 2.9 million residents.
"You're going to have an opportunity most Americans don't," Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton told a crowd gathered in Carroll last week. "They won't get to meet the candidates in person."
If the number of days each Republican and Democratic candidate has spent in state since Jan. 1, 2007, are combined, it would be the equivalent of more than 18 months, according to records kept by both state parties.
Because there's no incumbent president running for re-election — and no Midwestern candidate who's a clear favorite with Iowans — this campaign has been the state's most intense ever, according to David Yepsen, a Des Moines Register political columnist who has covered the caucuses since 1976.
The Register and USA TODAY are owned by Gannett.
Yepsen's paper calculated that tiny Grundy Center (population: 2,531) has snagged 13 visits by White House contenders.
The attention lavished on the Iowa caucuses infuriates some members of Congress from larger states. "This is a cockamamie system to nominate someone for the most powerful position in the world," complains Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. He estimates that his state (population 10 million) has received "a handful" of visits from presidential hopefuls. Levin and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., are co-sponsoring legislation to set up six multistate primaries that rotate every four years.
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