Iowa’s Field Of Dreamers

Iowans are nice, maybe too nice. Late last month, NEWSWEEK political blogger Andrew Romano followed Democratic candidate John Edwards into the Depot restaurant in Shenandoah, Iowa (home of the Everly Brothers), and saw a woman wearing an Edwards button. Are you a supporter? the reporter inquired. "That's just today," she responded. "Joe Biden was here earlier this week and I was wearing his buttons." So, Romano asked, it's between Biden and Edwards for you? "No, no, no," she said, shaking her head at the re-porter's innocence. "This is Iowa. I've even worn a Romney sticker."

Pity the presidential candidates who spend many millions of dollars and months crisscrossing Iowa's thinly populated landscape searching for supporters. Jimmy Carter, the first candidate to exploit Iowa, sometimes left notes on the doors of empty farmhouses saying he'd dropped by. The contenders are prospecting for those few hardy souls who will go out in subfreezing temperatures on a January night and spend two or three hours in the local high-school auditorium casting—and then, sometimes changing—their votes. "In Iowa, people are so nice they'll tell you they'll support you, but then they don't show up," says Wally Horn, the longest-current-serving Democratic state senator in Iowa. Even if they do, sometimes the bargaining is just beginning. Under the Democrats' rules in Iowa, a candidate must collect at least 15 percent of the vote at a local caucus to be considered "viable." If the votes fall short—entirely possible in a six- or seven-person field—then the caucusgoers can switch their votes to another candidate, setting off a hectic round of horse trading and arm twisting and turning close contests into sudden runaways.

It's all arcane and confusing—and critically important to the 2008 presidential race. According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, Hillary Clinton is 20 points ahead of other candidates nationally, but if she doesn't win the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, her campaign could implode. The current polling in Iowa is far closer—Clinton leads Barack Obama and Edwards, but not by much—and, given past history and the fickleness, er, niceness, of Iowa voters, polls may not mean much anyway. In 2004, Howard Dean looked strong in Iowa. He seemed to have plenty of money, and he had flooded the state with "Deaniacs," young and zealous supporters who knocked on every door and got out the vote. But on caucus night, the front runner finished third and was reduced to the primal "Scream," his candidacy's last yelp.

Iowa is an odd place to anoint as kingmaker (or kingbreaker) in the race for presidential nominations. True, it is just about in the center of the country, the classic "heartland," and it is fairly well balanced between liberals and conservatives. But it is notably older and whiter than the rest of the country, and its voters sometimes demand a level of pandering that is embarrassing even to politicians who know little shame. Its baroque caucus system is not very democratic: only one in 29 Iowans braves the cold to vote. But it has become, along with New Hampshire, state of the first primary, the traditional bellwether of American presidential politics. Though there is still an outside chance New Hampshire will leapfrog Iowa and hold its primary in December, it seems likely that the Hawkeye and Granite states will preserve their one-two punch.

For years, other bigger, more representative states have suffered from early-nominating-contest envy. This time around, many big states, including Florida and Michigan, California and New Jersey, pushed their primary dates up on the calendar. The scrambling and jostling was slightly ridiculous, if not unseemly—the Democratic National Committee warned Florida it would not seat the state delegates at this summer's national convention if Florida persisted in moving its primary date to Jan. 29 (it did it anyway, figuring an early primary would give the state more clout). For all the desperate jockeying, the net result may have been, ironically, to magnify the power of Iowa and New Hampshire. There once was a time when Iowa caucused a good month before New Hampshire's primary and New Hampshire came three weeks before the rest. Now it seems Iowa will caucus on Jan. 3 and New Hampshire will vote on Jan. 8—just before Michigan votes on the 15th and Nevada caucuses on the 19th. When a candidate had 30 days, he could recover from defeat in Iowa, just as Ronald Reagan did after an upset loss to George H.W. Bush in 1980. But there will be almost no time to come back from a subpar showing in Iowa in 2008—potentially creating a catapult or slingshot effect.

The candidates are well aware of Iowa's significance. According to The Wall Street Journal, the three leading Democrats—Clinton, Obama and Edwards—have spent twice as much money in Iowa as in New Hampshire, and far more than in any other early-voting state. Clinton has opened 25 offices in Iowa and has at least 117 staffers there. Obama has spent more than Clinton—between $5 million and $6 million, versus $3 million to $4 million for Clinton. Obama has opened 33 field offices and is targeting 17-year-olds who can caucus if they turn 18 by Election Day '08. (The youth vote may be a false beacon for Obama: the average Iowa voter is in his or her 50s.) Obama is strong in Iowa's small black community (less than 2 percent of Iowa's voters), though Flora Lee, Sioux City president of the NAACP, has heard black voters at dinner parties gloomily say, "Well, he's black, he'll get assassinated." The less-well-financed Edwards has toured all 99 counties and has been working the state almost nonstop since 2004.