Politicians love, loathe Iowa caucus system

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.

Iowa's most passionate defenders, however, include some of this year's presidential candidates. "Thank God for Iowa," says Democrat Joseph Biden. He says the state's small size enables candidates without big advertising budgets to make an impression. "Can you imagine my being able to do this in Florida or California or Texas or Pennsylvania?" he asks.

Winning the Iowa caucuses isn't necessarily a ticket to the White House, but losing badly can break a presidential campaign. Since 1972, no candidate who has finished worse than third has gone on to win a major-party nomination.

Republicans began holding caucus votes in 1980 because "frankly, the Democrats were getting all the publicity," says Steve Roberts, the state GOP chairman at the time.

The two parties, however, operate their caucuses under different rules. Republicans show up, cast a secret ballot and go home. Democrats engage in a public negotiation. Supporters of various candidates stand together to be counted. Candidates who don't get enough support to qualify for a delegate (usually 15% of caucusgoers) must find more supporters or be eliminated.

Norm Sterzenbach, political director of the Iowa Democratic Party, confessed to a fast one he pulled in 2004 as a precinct captain for John Kerry. With enough caucus participants to get Kerry three delegates but not enough for a fourth, Sterzenbach sent a couple of Kerry voters to help Democrat Dick Gephardt qualify for one delegate.

Sterzenbach wasn't being magnanimous. By helping Gephardt, he explains, he prevented John Edwards from securing a third delegate. "It's a little bit of internal strategy you can use, based on the math," he says.

Candidates emphasize organizing for the big night. Tim Albrecht, spokesman for Republican Mitt Romney's campaign, says the former Massachusetts governor has spent nearly a year fine-tuning his turnout machine. Democrat Barack Obama's precinct captains are arranging child care and rides for caucusgoers.

"You want to offer people snacks but not too much (soda) pop or water because they might have to go to the bathroom and not be there for the vote," says Obama worker Deborah Lake.

Several campaigns offer how-to videos on their websites. Clinton's video features her husband, former president Bill Clinton, working out on a treadmill while dreaming of a Big Mac to demonstrate that "caucusing is easy" compared to other activities. In a cartoon on Edwards' website, a precinct captain places loaves of homemade bread where they can be seen and sniffed by everyone, "especially the undecided."

The results will be more important than ever this year, Yepsen predicts. So many states have moved up their primary and caucus dates — 30 states will vote by Feb. 5 — that "a candidate can't do poorly in Iowa and hope to recover," he says.

Chuck Rocha of the United Steelworkers, who is helping Edwards, said it's good that grass-roots efforts matter. "The bad part is 100,000 people in a little state called Iowa may be picking the next president."