Legislating Caucuses
The Iowa presidential precinct caucuses are held every four years. The parties actually hold organizational caucuses annually to help build their team prior to other elections, but for the past half century, the global focus has been on the quadrennial events.
Iowa and New Hampshire have held those traditional spots…Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus; New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary…through hard-fought agreements and a unified front.
Now, of course, the Biden team and the Democratic National Committee have declared that Iowa should be shuffled further down the list since Iowa has never voted for Joe Biden in his own right…not in a caucus, not in a general election.
That has left the Iowa GOP hanging in the breeze as Iowa Democrats desperately try to alter their caucus to satisfy national folks—because that’s worked so well so far. Currently, they’re talking about a mail-in caucus—which defeats the chance of bolstering their organizational strength, but far be it from me to tell them what to do.
Lawmakers are contemplating a bill in Des Moines mandating that Iowa’s partisan caucuses be in-person events. It’s a way to preserve the uniqueness of the Iowa event…and help us as we get New Hampshire to stand with us in maintaining the status quo of things.
Democrats are hopping mad, despite the fact that anything that looks like a primary would violate our agreements with New Hampshire and the state would lose everything.
Caucuses are run by the political parties, not the state…it’s not an election, simply an exercise carried out by the parties. In that respect, the Democrats current pleas to defeat the proposed bill, to keep the state out of party events, makes some sense.
Except those same Democrats were the ones, with Republicans, begging the state legislature to pass a law requiring Iowa to be the first in the nation caucus state, a certain number of days before New Hampshire’s primary. Literally, state law requires us to hold our event before New Hampshire’s primary…a law that helped Iowa tremendously before the 2008 caucus, which for a time we thought would actually be held in December of 2007, the threatened leapfrogging of states was so intense.
So yes, it’s a party-driven event…but you can’t complain about legislation regulating caucuses now, when you opened the door for it and requested it in the past.
If Democrats are bent on destroying the unique position Iowa has held, fine; just don’t take everyone else down with you.
