Over the last few weeks I've had a chance to chat at some length with one of the Precinct Chairmen for tonight's Iowa Caucuses. Our company has a business relationship with this individual, and one of my associates in the office put us together on the phone when I expressed an interest in picking the brain of one of the insiders in this unique exercise in American democracy.
I wasn't conducting an on-the-record interview, and didn't get permission to use his name in this space, so I'll just call him DJ, and will try to paraphrase his comments as best I can from memory, using direct quotes sparingly.
DJ is a die-hard Republican from the western part of the state, where farming and cattle industries predominate. He lives in a county where George Bush won in 2004 with a higher percentage of the popular vote than in any other county in the U.S. He has been active in party politics since the 1980 election and the Reagan landslide, a year he cites as the one with a higher GOP caucus participation in Iowa than in any election since.
What comes through immediately in a conversation with DJ is that he's a political junkie who is proud of the Iowa Caucus, and of the role it plays in our political process. He refers to it as "democracy at its finest", describing the unruly and emotion-charged scenes in the schools and churches and municipal buildings all over the state with an animation that betrays his love of it.
And for his particular precinct, one of some 400 in the state, DJ is the man. It is he who will officiate, and do the counting of the show of hands for each candidate, and it is he who will call in the vote totals at evenings' end. In a normal election year, DJ gets about 300-400 registered Republicans to come out on caucus night for the three-hour political free-for-all. In 1980, he says, they drew about 800 people... such was the discontent with the Jimmy Carter "malaise", and the enthusiasm for Reagan. He expects upwards of 600 tonight. By way of contrast, in this part of the state, DJ says, "now, the Democrats could probably all meet around somebody's kitchen table." In the eastern part of the state, the reverse is largely the case.
All attendees here must be registered Republicans. No crossover voters in the Iowa Caucus. When I asked him if they check everyone's ID, he replied "We don't have to. We know them all by name." Not everyone gets to say his piece at the caucuses. One individual is designated to stand up and make the case for each one of the candidates, and to persuade as many people as possible of his or her merits. A fair amount of argument, discussion and back-and-forth inevitably goes on...hence the three-hour event...and then the votes are taken.
My questions for DJ centered on his own impressions of the specific candidates, and what he felt to be the overall sentiment of Iowa voters, especially the Republicans. Say what you will about the process itself, and debate if you wish whether it should have such an out-sized influence on our selection of presidential candidates, but Iowa voters certainly have more face time with the candidates than the rest of us ever will. DJ has met both Romney and Huckabee. He shook Obama's hand, and has seen Thompson, Edwards and several others in person at one time or another in recent weeks.
DJ is a Huckabee man. In fact, he is the designated Huckabee spokesman...(a 'huckster' perhaps?) for the precinct. His comments about Huckabee sound much like what all of us have by now heard about him - he's real...he's authentic..you get the sense that he's sincere and honest...he's believable. But DJ had just got done telling me how Iowa caucus voters are notorious for being at the extremes of their respective parties. How about the popular notion that Huckabee is hardly a conservative, save for his pro-life stance, I asked. I got the idea that DJ had not been forced to defend the conservative bona fides of his preferred choice too often (this was three weeks ago), and he fell back on the authenticity and "straight-talk" talking points. Fair enough.
I asked him about the perception of Iowa by many U.S. citizens as a state swimming in Ethanol subsidies and billions of federal tax dollars for farmers, and the opposition to same by voters in both parties in the rest of the country. He replied that most man-on-the-street Iowans aren't big on the Ethanol industry because they claim that many of those dollars don't stay in the state. The benefits accrue to a small percentage of the people, and the pandering of politicians to regular Iowans on the issue of Ethanol is misplaced or unnecessary.
He had wondered why Romney had not caught fire with Iowans, given his credentials and his spending and time commitments in the state. Could he be coming off a little too scripted and rehearsed? Thompson, he said, had appeared "old and tired", and this was before the three week long Thompson push to the finish line. During our last conversation, just yesterday, DJ predicted the statewide order of finish among the Republicans as Huckabee first, Romney second, and McCain third. We'll see how keen his sense of statewide sentiment is.
Posted by dan at January 3, 2008 6:31 PM