Iowa GOP may face choice between caucuses, straw poll

CEDAR RAPIDS - What would the Iowa GOP Straw Poll be without an actual straw poll?

A survivor, perhaps.

When state Republican leaders meet Friday morning, the question facing them may not be so much the future of the straw poll as the future of the Iowa caucuses.

'My sense is among some Republicans … is that if they're feeling that to save the caucuses, they have to cut the weak member of the herd - the straw poll - they might be willing to do that,” Drake University political science professor Dennis Goldford said Thursday.

Iowa has something 46 other state Republican parties would like in the first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses that bring attention from candidates and media.

'People always had their long knives out for the caucuses,” Goldford said. 'Throw in the GOP Straw Poll, and the accuracy of the caucus results, and that gives critics further ammunition.”

Republican Party of Iowa leaders have declined to speak on the record other than to say the straw poll will be on the agenda for the Friday morning telephone meeting.

The six straw polls conducted by the Iowa GOP starting in 1979 have been the source of funds and immense publicity for the state party, and continual criticism from other state Republican parties. They argue Iowa gets 'two bites of the apple” by hosting the straw poll and the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

Dropping the straw poll might quiet the criticism but would change the nature of the event, said Tim Hagle, who teaches political science at the University of Iowa.

'It would be a less competitive, multicandidate event,” he said, similar to some of the other so-called cattle calls of GOP candidates this year.

He and Goldford agree that as long as Iowa hosts the first-in-the-nation caucuses, there will be cattle calls such as U.S. Rep. Steve King's Freedom Summit, agri-businessman Bruce Rastetter's Ag Summit and Sen. Joni Ernst's Roast and Ride that attracted seven candidates last Saturday.

Hagle admits that he likes the GOP Straw Poll and thinks many Iowa Republicans like the 'political fair” atmosphere.

'It's not just an opportunity for candidates, but the groups that come in to make their pitch to the candidates and the activists,” Hagle said. The event attracts groups pushing health care, education and tax reforms, renewable energy and a variety of other causes.

'Plus, it really was an early test of organizing,” Hagle said.

That might be needed more this year than any other, he said, because of the large field of GOP candidates.

Even if the state Central Committee pulls the plug on the GOP Straw Poll, Goldford said something will fill the void.

'You know in Iowa, as long as the caucuses are seen as significant by reporters and candidates, if two people bump into each other in a cornfield there will be 17 reporters there and 43 candidates,” he said.