Sunday, January 18, 2004

By Fritz Wenzel, Block News Alliance

DAVENPORT, Iowa -- His presidential campaign finally surging after months in the political shoals, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry stopped the other day at St. Ambrose University, a small college nestled in an old Davenport neighborhood. Minutes from the western bank of the Mississippi River, St. Ambrose is a place unfamiliar to Washington power brokers, except now, in the days before the Iowa caucuses.

	Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Fran McDowell of Washington, Pa., canvasses for Dean in Des Moines on Thursday. McDowell said she decided to drive to Iowa at the last minute to support Dean.

"I want to thank Iowa for an extraordinary welcome, an extraordinary lesson in the virtue of our own democracy," Kerry told about 125 students, activists and curious residents crammed into a corner of the student union building. Another 75 peered down at the senator from a crowded perch on a balcony.

"I have learned a lot here, listening to people play out democracy in VFW halls and living rooms, in barns, on farms, standing in front of gracious fields of corn on a beautiful summer day and trudging through the snow and watching snowmobilers careening along beside us on the side of the roads," Kerry said. He called the caucuses an "incredibly grass-roots, face-to-face, person-to-person democratic process."

Tomorrow's Iowa caucuses are unique in American politics. In each of nearly 2,000 precincts statewide, Democrats will gather with their neighbors to declare their choices for president. Some caucuses will hold discussions before making final decisions, while others will simply convene, count hands and report results.

The caucuses require an extra measure of dedication on the part of voters because they must show up and publicly announce their views to take part. There are no absentee ballots, no provisional voting, no secret ballot.

In Iowa, public opinion polls mean less, because it is so difficult to know in advance who will turn up at a caucus and how their choices might change if horse trading ensues.

And get out-the-vote efforts mean more, testing the organizational skills of the presidential campaigns.

Linda Hutchcroft, a college professor from Mediapolis in southeastern Iowa, said the reason caucuses work here is that "we in Iowa are the heartland. We have spunk. We have determination. What you see is what you get in Iowa. We are who we are. We don't make pretenses."

By their nature, Iowans can sift the wheat from the chaff in the presidential field, she said. "We really do think for ourselves."

Mark Daley, spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party, said this year's race has captured more than the usual amount of attention.

"There is a lot more interest because there are four candidates within the margin of error in the polls. It's more exciting. We've got a real race," he said.

"Iowans really enjoy our role as the first in the nation, but there are arguments from other states, that maybe they should go first," Daley said. "One argument is that we are not as diverse a population as other states that we are not a microcosm of the nation as a whole, but there really is no state that is a microcosm. Iowa is as good a place as any to be the first -- especially since the process here is so hands-on."'

The caucuses, first employed by Democrats in 1972, have had a history of helping to catapult those who finish third or better to their party's nomination or the presidency.

They rose to prominence after Democrats, upset about divisions in the party during the Vietnam War, formed a commission to find ways to broaden participation in party affairs. That commission was chaired by Iowa Gov. Harold Hughes.

George McGovern used the caucuses as a springboard to the nomination in 1972. Jimmy Carter cemented a key role for the caucuses four years later, when, as a little known governor of Georgia, he won Iowa after pouring resources into the state and went on to become president.

Iowa's caucuses were scheduled early in the year mainly to accommodate June party conventions.

The state later struck a deal with New Hampshire that provided for Iowa to hold the first caucus and New Hampshire the first primary. Dates of the primary and caucus have moved, but both states, backed by the national parties, have held on to their first-in-the-nation status.

Without that status, Iowa would be politically insignificant. Just one percent of Americans live in the state. Iowa delegates to the Democratic National Convention this year will make up less than 3 percent of the number needed to win the presidential nomination.

And because Democrats award delegates based on the share of votes a candidate captures, the winner in Iowa is likely to come away with half, or fewer, of the state's 45 pledged delegates.

Iowa also is very different demographically from the nation at large. It is 93 percent white, two percent black and three percent Hispanic versus national figures of 69 percent white (non-Hispanic), 13 percent black and 13.5 percent Hispanic.

Only 61 percent of Iowans live in cities, compared to more than 75 percent nationally. Iowa's proportion of elderly is third-highest in the nation, so presidential candidates devote chunks of nearly every speech here to health-care or pension issues.

Politically, 29 percent of Iowans consider themselves Democrats, while 32 percent say they are Republicans; 39 percent are independents.

Republicans control both houses of the Iowa legislature, but Gov. Thomas Vilsack is a second-term Democrat -- the first Democrat to be re-elected governor since 1966, and the first Democratic governor since 1968.

Iowa has supported Democrats in recent presidential elections. Democrat Bill Clinton won the state twice, and Al Gore won it -- by the narrowest of margins -- in 2000.

Speaking to the crowd at St. Ambrose, Kerry put the caucuses into perspective, saying that tomorrow, Iowans "will be the most privileged people on the planet. People die in some countries to have the right to do what you will do.

"This is a great privilege," he added. "And it is even more so a privilege and a burden because the eyes of the world will be upon you, because you are not just choosing a president of the United States, you are choosing a leader of the free world."

The Block News Alliance consists of the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, both of which are owned by Block Communications, Inc. Fritz Wenzel is a staff writer for The Blade.

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