After more than a year of campaigning, this is how the Iowa caucuses end: At more than 1,600 precincts in schools, libraries and the largest sports arena in the state Democrats will gather Monday night to stand in groups and make their choice for the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
Iowa’s caucus night is unlike any political event in America, a two-hour public political declaration in front of one’s neighbors, with the sort of cajoling usually left to professional organizers being done instead by rank-and-file supporters.
Unlike political contests in virtually every other state, there is no secret ballot and no absentee participation — Democrats must appear in person at either their neighborhood precinct or at one of 87 satellite caucus locations.
In Johnston, two precincts will gather at the Johnston Middle School. Tom Leffler, a 72-year-old retiree who worked in information technology at the Pioneer seed company, will serve as the caucus chairman for one of the precincts, known as Johnston 2.
Tom Leffler, the Johnston 2 caucus chairman, at Johnston Middle School in Iowa.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Mr. Leffler, who has been active in presidential politics since he was a volunteer for Eugene J. McCarthy’s 1968 campaign, has run caucuses since the 1990s. He has a team of about 20 volunteers who will help him. Some will sit at check-in tables and ensure everyone is both registered to vote and a registered Democrat.
“You want to get them all signed in and get the meeting started a little after 7, so you have to have a machine to make that work,” Mr. Leffler said. “Otherwise, you have to have a song and dance to kill time and people lose patience.”
Before anyone arrives, Mr. Leffler will have already arranged the gymnasium to designate places for each candidate’s supporters to gather, with areas on the bleachers reserved for the four leading candidates and chairs on the basketball floor for supporters of other candidates.
Each campaign has a designated precinct captain, who is responsible for herding supporters into his or her respective group.
“My main job is to get things set up and greet people at the door,” said Gregory Davis, a 69-year-old retired Lutheran minister who is the Johnston 2 precinct captain for Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. “People can identify me as an ‘Amy person,’ and I’ll try to persuade people to come to my side.”
Once everyone is signed in — 295 people caucused at Johnston 2 in 2016, and 350 in 2008 — the proceedings begin.
If a candidate or an elected official is in attendance, Mr. Leffler will give them a few minutes to speak. But nobody else gets a chance to campaign.
Then comes the counting.
This is perhaps the most important moment on caucus night. The difference between 14 percent and 16 percent might just be a handful of supporters, but falling below the viability threshold could mean a candidate risks winning no delegates from the precinct.
Mr. Leffler will announce the results and then give caucusgoers 15 minutes to do something that makes Iowa’s process truly unique: supporters of candidates below the 15 percent threshold must join a new group or combine with supporters of another candidate below the threshold in order to get above 15 percent.
(Iowa Democrats are able to caucus as uncommitted, though an uncommitted group would be required to meet the 15 percent threshold.)
The 15-minute interval is critical. This is when the politics of big rallies and millions of dollars in TV advertising gives way to neighbors talking to neighbors.
“For the ones that I do know — and obviously if I’m friends with them or we’re neighbors — I’ll remind them that we share a value system that is important to us,” said Penny Schempp, a 76-year-old retired community college counselor who is the precinct captain for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “Our values system in Iowa, especially among my neighbors, got Obama elected. And we were really proud of that.”
Clockwise from top left: Penny Schempp, the precinct captain for Mr. Biden; Lara McAdams, the precinct captain for Mr. Buttigieg; Gregory Davis, the precinct captain for Ms. Klobuchar; Caleb Short, the precinct captain for Mr. Sanders; Rhonda Gooding, the precinct captain for Ms. Warren; Reid Mickunas, the precinct captain for Mr. Yang.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Rhonda Gooding, a 70-year-old retired administrative assistant who is the precinct captain for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, said the Warren team has assigned a persuasion captain, a sign-in-captain, a math captain and an alignment captain to make sure no Warren supporters defect.
Winning support in the realignment is more about understanding what other candidates’ supporters care about than it is talking about what your candidate can do.
“You listen to what their concerns are,” said Lara McAdams, 52, an account executive for the Vizient health care company who is the precinct captain for Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. “Find out why they weren’t in our camp and try to provide them the answers.”
Caleb Short, a 33-year-old bartender who is the precinct captain for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said he has learned tricks during the last 10 months of soliciting support about what works and what does not in trying to persuade people to make Mr. Sanders their second choice.
“We’ll just try to find common ground,” Mr. Short said. “A lot of candidates have adopted a lot of Bernie’s original ideas.”
In the groups that are not viable on the first alignment, leaders will have a choice to make: let supporters act as free agents and scatter to other candidates, or try to move as a bloc.
The precinct captain for the entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Reid Mickunas, a 26-year-old who works at Bone-a-Patreat, a holistic pet supply store in Des Moines, said if the candidate failed to reach the 15 percent threshold, he would be inclined to move to back Mr. Sanders if there was not a way to make Mr. Yang viable on the second alignment. But he suggested that campaign staff members may want to strategize about splitting Mr. Yang’s supporters among a number of other candidates.
Twelve people will be elected from among the supporters of the viable candidates. They will become delegates to the Polk County Democratic Convention, the first step in the process by which delegates are chosen for the Democratic National Convention in July.
The precinct will also divide its state delegate equivalents, a formula that allocates Iowa’s 41 national convention delegates based on the number of Democratic votes in the 2016 and 2018 general elections.
This is the number that will be displayed on cable news screens as the results come in. Johnston 2 has 3.36 state delegate equivalents out of 392 in Polk County, the state’s largest county.
The Iowa Democratic Party has traditionally reported only the delegate results, but under pressure from Mr. Sanders and his allies, the Democratic National Committee for the first time is requiring caucus states to also produce the raw number of people who support each candidate, from both the first and second alignments.
The goal, Mr. Leffler said, is to be done with the evening within two hours.
“It really needs to be done by 9 because people lose their patience,” he said. “You lose control if you don’t keep things moving.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
