Iowa GOP unanimously votes to cancel Straw Poll

By James Q. Lynch, The Gazette

Faced with a lack of presidential candidates willing to participate, the Republican Party of Iowa announced Friday it will cancel the seventh edition of its GOP Straw Poll.

'We set the table, but the candidates didn't come to supper,” Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said after a Friday morning telephone meeting with all 18 members of the party's state Central Committee.

Since 1979, the Straw Poll has been a staple of the pre-caucus, pre-primary political season in those years when there was a contest for the GOP nomination.

Candidates would bus in thousands of supporters to the daylong festival that featured music and food before the participants cast non-binding votes in a poll that could dash one candidate's campaign and launch another's.

But given the reluctance of candidates to commit to a retooled Straw Poll planned for Aug. 8 at the Central Iowa Expo near Boone, Kaufmann said the Central Committee had financial concerns. In 2011, he said, 18,000 of the tickets sold were bought by presidential candidate committees.

That seemed unlikely to happen with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee declining invitations, and other candidates and likely candidates unwilling to commit.

However, the overwhelming concern for the party was preserving Iowa's first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses, the chairman said.

Iowa's leadoff role has irritated other state GOP parties. Among the complaints is that the caucuses and Straw Poll gave Iowa 'two bites of the apple” before other states had a chance to participate.

The criticism was misdirected, according to Loras Schulte, a Central Committee member from Benton County.

'This is something we're trying to do for the rest of the country,” he said, explaining that 'any Iowan, with minimal effort, can meet the candidates. The rest of the country doesn't have the same opportunity.”

The state party intended big changes for the poll this year. It moved the event to Boone from its usual Ames, and announced it would be more about retail politics than fundraising. The party had planned to provide free lot space to candidates, attract food vendors so campaigns don't have to wage culinary warfare between them and provide electrical hookups so candidates don't have to bring generators.

But the reaction of some Iowa Republicans to candidates' hesitancy to commit to the event was beginning to send the wrong message, Kaufmann said.

'There comes a time when passionate advocacy turns into bullying,” he said. 'We're here to support candidates, not force them to come to our fundraiser. That's what it was beginning to feel like.

'I would rather spend my time highlighting (Hillary) Clinton's dysfunctionality as a potential president than trying to gain a particular candidate, to back them into a corner and force them to Boone,” Kaufmann said.

With the end of one tradition, Kaufmann said the party's focus will shift to the Feb. 1 precinct caucuses that are the first official step in the Republican National Committee's presidential candidate nomination process.

'The candidates chose to not go with this tradition,” he said, 'so we're going to make the most important tradition, which is our caucuses, make it the absolute best caucus we've ever had.”

Central Committee members debated the question Friday morning for about an hour before voting.

'Just a lot of disappointment, regret,” Kaufmann said.

Kaufmann, a college history teacher who said he likes tradition, included himself among those who hated to see the Straw Poll end.

'Am I disappointed? Yes,” he said. 'I don't say this with any animus toward the candidates. They made decisions that were good for their campaigns. The Republican Party of Iowa exists to help promote Republican candidates.”