Iowa Dems to Joe Biden: A little TLC would do

Iowa Democrats know they aren’t getting primary clout. They’re just asking Joe Biden for a visit or two.

Feelings among the state’s Democrats remain raw after the party gave South Carolina the first primary slot for 2024 earlier this year, dethroning Iowa after more than five decades in the top spot. With GOP hopefuls flocking to the Hawkeye state routinely — including for this month’s state fair — Democrats fear an already reddening Iowa could slip even further away.

Some Iowa Democrats say they’ve begged for more appearances from President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, visits they say could energize the state party and help down-ballot where the GOP message is dominating without pushback.

“It’s a one-sided argument right now. It’s all Republican. And for a state like ours that has been purple and has shifted red, it’s not helpful at all for us to just be inundated with Republicans. Republicans are out organizing, they have people going door to door. They are registering voters,” said Iowa-based Democratic consultant Jeff Link, Barack Obama’s media consultant during the 2008 election.

Democrats’ souring on Iowa has been in the works for years, and gained steam after the botched caucuses in 2020. The national party punished the state by removing it from its first place in the primary lineup. With the president not having a serious primary challenger, Biden has had little incentive to go there.

But the mix of hard feelings that’s resulted — combined with the increasingly challenging political environment for Democrats in the state — has left some Iowans feeling both concerned and left out this cycle. And the fear in certain circles is that the party there will fall further behind its Republican counterpart without more attention from up high, making it harder to regain seats recently lost and further eroding the Democratic footprint in the Midwest.

“We’re used to getting up close and personal with people who are high ranking. So now, here we have this situation where we have an incumbent president and there’s quite a group of Republicans — such a big field — and they are spending a lot of time here in the state,” said Rita Hart, the chair of the state Democratic Party. “So it’s natural, I think, for Democrats to feel a little left out. They want some attention, too.”

The White House hasn’t completely forgotten or neglected the state. Biden, who lost Iowa to Donald Trump by more than eight percentage points in 2020, traveled to the state in April 2022 to discuss his economic agenda. Vice President Kamala Harris has visited twice this year on official travel, most recently last month to speak with Iowans about abortion access after state Republicans moved to enact a six-week abortion ban.

Democratic State Rep. Jennifer Konfrst said she told Harris that she hopes she’ll come back, explaining how grateful she was to have her in the state just hours before Republicans took the stage at the Lincoln Dinner, Iowa’s annual GOP event. Before the dinner, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz held a press conference with Iowa Democrats, in an attempt to counter the GOP’s message ahead of the event.

“I’m not pie in the sky here. I know from data that the legislature’s work, the extreme legislation — school vouchers and abortion — are not in line with Iowans,” Konfrst said. “And so the ability for people to come and rally Democrats around the issues that Iowans are with us on, is really important.”

It was not too long ago that Democrats had stronger roots in the state. Obama won Iowa in 2008 and 2012. Tom Vilsack was the Democratic governor there until 2007.

Today, however, every member of congress from Iowa is a Republican, and there is just one Democratic statewide office holder: Auditor Rob Sand. After the 2020 caucus’ technical meltdown, Democrats began discussing whether or not it was time to move away from the state. The state has bucked other midwestern states that have seen Democratic gains in recent years.

Biden and the Democratic Party moved forward with picking South Carolina in February, in an effort to give voters of color a more powerful voice in the party’s presidential process. Iowa Democrats haven’t been as openly critical of the move as New Hampshire party leaders, but the state party intends to defy Biden and hold its caucuses on the same day as Iowa Republicans — though a final decision hasn’t been made on the caucus date. The party has said it plans to have Biden on the presidential preference cards it will mail out to Iowa Democratic voters.

“Obviously it’s painful anytime you lose something that you’ve had for so long like they did,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Association of State Democratic Parties and a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee. “It wasn’t a decision that any of us came to lightly, but the reality is when you zoom out a little bit, you realize that caucuses and primaries in these states don’t really beget success necessarily in any of these states. They’re somewhat decoupled from the success in the fall for Democrats up and down the ballot.”

The fear in the state is that if national Democrats believe Iowa has drifted out of reach politically, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy; that you can’t win back a voting population unless you make investments to do so.

As of now, the Democratic National Committee invests $12,500 to the Iowa Democratic Party each month, a 25 percent increase over 2020. The DNC is also investing an additional $2,500 into Iowa each month as part of a new “Red State Fund” program targeted at building long-term infrastructure in “traditionally Republican States.”

On the communication front, the DNC is working with Iowa Democrats and state campaigns on message guidance, and also has a press embed in Iowa, just one of few states that has this position. National and state Democrats also plan to counter-program Republicans at the state fair, which kicks off on Thursday, according to a DNC official.

“[Iowa Democrats] are trying to figure out how the hell to rebuild, and I completely get it. But it is not accurate to say that they’ve completely been forgotten. At the same time, their pain is real because they went from a state that received a ton of attention to one that’s not receiving a lot right now,” Martin said.

Sand and fellow Democrats still see an opportunity for Iowa to shift more in their direction, especially as GOP state legislators move forward with unpopular legislation.

More of Iowa’s population split their tickets to vote for statewide Democrats in Iowa than any other state save Vermont, Sand said. And in 2020, the state saw one of the closest congressional races in U.S. history, when Hart, now the state party’s chair, lost to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks by just six votes.

“So that’s not a state that isn’t competitive,” Sands said. “If you like sports, then you know that every year, there are teams that have better win-loss records than they are as a team, and then there are also teams that are much better than their win-loss record looks. Iowa Democrats are like a team that’s substantially better than its win-loss record looks.”