How long will Democratic presidential contenders keep going to Iowa?
Possible 2028 Democrats keep trekking to the Hawkeye state but those visits aren't guaranteed to last. Here's why.
At FHQ: Iowa Matters Less Than Ever for Democrats, but They Can’t Quit It
Let’s talk about Iowa.
Because apparently Democrats cannot quit the Hawkeye state.
After all, 2028 remains rather distant, a little more than two years out from the start of the voting phase of the nomination process. And that is not to mention that Iowa Democrats lost their place at the front of the presidential primary queue for 2024 (and do not exactly look likely to return there the next time around).
So what gives? None of that, together, is something that screams, “Come to the heartland!” Yet, folks said to be kicking the tires on a potential White House bid keep popping over to Iowa for some reason.
Reid Epstein had a nice piece up at the New York Times in late September that captured much of how FHQ has been thinking about nascent 2028 candidate travel to Iowa. It’s the attention, stupid. Trips to Iowa still resonate and, in fact, register nationally in a way that some other out-of-state travel just does not seem to match.
Iowa is still a thing in people’s minds with respect to the presidential nomination process. It is still a thing to which the media will pay attention and cover as well. Yes, national Democrats removed the Iowa caucuses — actually it was a mail-in, party-run primary — from the early window of the calendar for 2024, but that was only one part of the overall Iowa industrial complex.
Republicans are still in town and playing the same early calendar game that had been operable for both major parties since the 2008 cycle. That is, until the Democratic National Committee reshuffled the deck for 2024.1 On the Republican side then, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada have led the way and are very likely to continue leading the way in the Republican presidential nomination process into 2028.
And truth be told, the way the early calendar process for 2024 was handled by the Democratic Party and played by Iowa Democrats always kind of left the door open for 2028. It was something of an open secret that Iowa Democrats, unlike their counterparts in New Hampshire, were playing along with the 2024 changes. They were playing the long game in the hopes of being in the good graces of rules makers on the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) once it came time to consider the 2028 calendar. That time has now come and while the national party has maintained the line that Iowa Democrats will have the same chance to pitch the RBC on including the delegate selection event Hawkeye state Democrats conduct in the early window, the signals so far have not been promising from an Iowa perspective. Thus the chatter about Iowa going rogue (but more on that below).
But the Iowa industrial complex is about more than just the parties. As NYT’s Epstein notes, the campaign/political infrastructure is still there. It did not just disappear when national Democrats pulled up the tent stakes and headed off for South Carolina and Michigan for 2024.2 As noted above, those Iowa hands still had incentives to keep at it with a possible early spot for 2028 dangling out there (however remote those chances may ultimately be in the current context). Nor, FHQ would add, did members of the national media discard all of their Iowa contacts before and during 2024. They, as another part of that infrastructure, had the same incentives as the volunteers and operatives in the state. Plus, again, Republicans continued and continue to uphold Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.
Additionally, Democrats obviously do not actually have a calendar for 2028 yet. The only things that are close to set in stone in the early calendar are that state laws in Nevada and Michigan require state-run presidential primary elections to take place on the first and fourth Tuesdays in February, respectively and that New Hampshire still has its first-in-the-nation primary law on the books.
Given the above conditions, and especially in the absence of defined calendar rules for 2028, of course, prospective Democratic presidential candidates are going to Iowa to fill the void.
But how long can that last? Is the trend of Democrats trekking to Iowa guaranteed to continue up to and into 2028 or will there be some break, whether engineered by the national party or that develops organically, to change the incentive structure described above? Let’s explore that below.