How My Iowa Precinct Caucus Works

With all the talk about Presidential Campaigns, debates, etc. these days, I thought the world could stand yet another story about how the caucus process works in Iowa.

Other folks can fill you in on how the larger precincts work. What I am going to write about here is how my little precinct works - in a town too small to have a retail business (unless you count the post office).

I usually arrive about 15 minutes before registration is to start. I can turn on the lights, get the posters hung on the walls, get my lists and literature together, etc.

One thing to remember is that the precinct caucuses are held in all even numbered years and the caucus rules are the same regardless of whether it is a presidential year or not. We have yet to see the official agenda and rules, but they haven't changed for many years, and a change risks alienating the presidential campaigns, who would naturally charge that any changes were an attempt to influence the outcome.

At the advertised time, folks start trickling in and we sign them up. Generally, we have 6 to 8 in attendance. In 1988, I think we had 12 and that was the biggest I have attended in Center Junction. Now back when I lived in Ames, that was another story. We had some big crowds there, sometimes over a hundred.

After registration, we convene. The temporary chair (me), asks if anyone wants to be caucus chair. Usually no one wants it, so I end up being drafted volunteering. We draft someone else to be secretary.

After the election of the permanent chair and secretary, the next order of business is to decide whether to split into preference groups. You see, our caucus will elect 3 delegates to the county convention, and we can elect them at large, or we can decide to divide into preference groups, do the arcane math and rounding, realignment if necessary, and then have each preference group elect delegates and alternates.

The funny thing about preference groups is this: in the non-presidential years, hardly anyone ever wants to divide. We just elect our delegates at large. But in Presidential years, most folks want to divide. Just remember that the rules are the same whether or not there is a presidential nominating contest going on that year.

You might ask, what preference groups would you form in non-presidential years? Well, in 2006, some precincts formed gubernatorial preference groups because one of the candidates for governor was pursuing a strategy of trying to stack the state convention in case the nomination in the three way race went to the convention. It didn't, and he did not have enough delegates at the convention anyway. But that is one type of preference group that could be formed.

Also keep in mind that no rule limits the formation of a group based on any particular preference. The groups do not have to divide based on presidential preference, or in opposition to each other. In 1976, even though it is commonly said that Jimmy Carter won the Caucuses, in actuality, "Uncommitted" preference groups elected more delegates than Carter preference groups. If 15% of a precinct caucus wanted to form a "nuke the whales" preference group, or a "we like rhubarb pie" preference group, that is allowed under the rules. If enough members of an extended family wanted to be sure some of their family were delegates, they could form a family preference group. The caveat is, they could not keep others from joining their group and voting on which caucus attendees would be delegates to the county convention. This would also apply, say, if someone wanted to organize the caucuses to elect delegates in favor of ending Dubya's ill fated occupation in Iraq. They would just need to form the preference groups and elect their delegates.

But in my little precinct, I imagine we will form presidential preference groups as we have every Presidential year except 1996.

So after we vote to break into preference groups, we will take a count, do the preliminary math, and start the clock on the realignment period. During that time, we move on to considering any platform resolutions anyone wants to bring up. Usually there are two or three the Farm Bureau is trying to get passed and maybe a couple of others. An envelope will be circulated to collect donations to help pay for all the party's expenses putting on these caucuses. Letters from candidates and elected officials will be available (we never read them out loud, though I hear that some precincts do that). There will be nomination petitions to sign, too.

We usually have time to elect our two precinct committee people to serve on the Jones County Democratic Central Committee, draft our members of the County Convention committees, and generally talk about the weather, too.
Then the clock runs out on the realignment period.

By this time, the math has been figured out and nothing has changed. Once in awhile, we have a non-viable group who all go to another group to help out on their totals. Sometimes the non-viable group just doesn't realign, and that throws the math way off. (Actually, there are processes in the rules to deal with that.)

Then we will argue over who will be elected to be delegates to the convention because none of their group wants to go to the county convention and listen to a bunch of speeches all day when they could be home doing something on a Saturday. Alternates are even harder to find.

The groups' delegate(s) selected, we reconvene as a caucus and ratify the slate, ratify the business of the caucus, and adjourn.

It’s not a bad way to spend a winter evening, and sometimes you get to meet some of the new neighbors.

Hmmm...

"Ending Dubya's ill-fated occupation in Iraq" preference group has a nice ring to it, but I hate to be a single-issue caucus chair.

How is that going to help?

As more states move their primary dates up, presumably to attract more attention from the candidates and to have more of a say in the nomination, the effect of such leapfrogging on individual candidacies is unknown. There is a lot of discussion about the jockeying going on among the states for calendar position and no apparent consensus about what the result might be for any particular candidate for the presidential nomination.

But a discussion we seem not to be having is just what result we want to achieve by any change in the calendar or the process. That is, while the objections to the calendar seem to be defined, any changes ought to be evaluated in terms of achieving the goals of the Democratic Party at the national level.

Of course there is always a discussion of the relative power of the individual states in the nominating process, and whether Iowa should retain its traditional first in the nation status (if you mean by "tradition" since 1972 when the Democratic Party adopted the McGovern-Fraser Commission’s recommendations for the delegate selection process), whether Iowa and New Hampshire are representative enough of the nation, etc. Then there is the discussion surrounding the influence of money and the problem of nominating a candidate who is beholden to this or that (or many) corporate interests.

In order to achieve goals, the goals must be set. That seems self-evident. So let’s see what the goals of the Democratic Party, and the party’s nominating process are. I would propose that the goals are stated within the following: "To nominate a presidential ticket that will win the general election, serve the following four-year term, and govern in a manner that reflects as nearly as possible the views and in accordance with the values held by the party."

There are a bunch of caveats that could be thrown in, and, of course, a laundry list of special statements about empowerment, civil rights, etc. But what I am looking for here is consideration of the process itself.

Let’s look at the history of the process as it has been, more or less, since 1972.

1972 – McGovern ran as the anti-war candidate. Nixon won a landlside for various reasons including the "southern strategy" and by painting McGovern as just this side of a communist.

I’m not so sure there was a candidate who could have beat Nixon, but that is open to discussion. Edmund Muskie won the Iowa Caucuses while McGovern came in second. It was also a trial run for the new process. Perhaps Muskie could have run a better campaign, had he held his campaign for the nomination together

1976 – Carter ran as a fiscally conservative southern Christian who was at least tolerant of liberal social views. He used the Iowa Caucuses (where he finished second to ("uncommitted") to get the momentum for a national run. He won the presidency, but he was not an extremely strong candidate and the vote was very close. but the Watergate scandal had lowered public respect for government and politicians. The Republicans right took advantage of that to gain strength for the next election.

1980 – Carter (after a challenge from the left, led by Ted Kennedy) was tagged with the "malaise" speech and was attacked as ineffectual. The Iranian hostage crisis did nothing to help him, either, especially when the military botched a rescue mission.

Would Kennedy have been a better nominee? If so, how would the process have had to change to deny the nomination to the incumbent President?

1984 – Mondale led another electoral disaster against an incumbent Republican. Who could have beat Reagan? I don’t think any one could.

1988 – Dukakis blows a chance at the open seat. George H. W. Bush was not that popular with the right wing, but he held their interest in the face of Dukakis, who was framed as an effete east-coast liberal.

Dukakis was a horrible candidate. Standing up for Iowa, he came in third in the caucuses behind Gephardt and Simon. 1988 was Gephardt’s chance win, but the rest of the country decided to nominate Dukakis. Whatever change in the process would prevent that sort of thing from happening again deserves a look. But Iowa certainly did not dictate thae nomination – and that was a bad thing in that instance.

1992 – Clinton is nominated as a "centrist" with help from Harkin (whose candidacy made Iowa irrelevant), and the "Super Tuesday" primaries across the old south. Clinton, with help in the general election from H. Ross Perot as a spoiler, won the presidency. It would seem, then that the process worked to nominate another southern governor to go on to win the general election. The argument could be made that it worked because of Harkin and in spite of Iowa’s position on the nominating calendar.

1996 – Clinton was renominated without opposition. Again the process worked.

2000 – Vice President Gore staves off a challenge from Bill Bradley to gain the nomination. Gore won the popular vote and there is little doubt that had the votes been counted honestly in each state, he would have won in the Electoral College as well. Instead, five right-wingers on the Supreme Court effectively nullified the election and appointed George W. Bush. But, again, the process seems to have worked in nominating a popular candidate who actually won the election.

2004 – Kerry gains the nomination after perhaps surprisingly coming in first in Iowa. Kerry could have run a better campaign against W. But, in all honesty, who would have been a better candidate in 2004? Gephardt was past his prime and the media set about to destroy Howard Dean. Perhaps Edwards would have connected more with those average voters had he been on the top of the ticket. If so, how could the process have been different to achieve the result that we may see as having been preferable?

Of course, in all instances, I can see that there could be other candidates who did not even attempt to negotiate the nomination process. And perhaps that other candidate could have been nominated and could have turned out to be the best president ever. Fill me in in the comments section if you think that might be the case.

If a different calendar or process would not have given us a better ticket, then there would not seem to be a reason to change.

Now, all of this is getting a bit long, but the nut of it is this: any change in the process and the calendar should be made for the purpose of ensuring the selection of a presidential ticket that will win the general election, serve the following four-year term, and govern in a manner that reflects as nearly as possible the views and in accordance with the values held by the party.

So as for me, when I see proposals to leapfrog primaries and caucuses, front-load the nomination process, increase or decrease the influence of certain states in that process, etc., I will be asking myself this:

How is that going to help?