Dump the Iowa Caucuses for a primary? No way

The 2024 Iowa caucuses are finally over. They weren’t without their blips and hiccups, but with frigid temperatures tempering turnout compared to 2016, no one was shut out of the GOP participating due capacity limits, as I’d feared would happen but hoped would not. Nor did the presidential ballot counting process go down in flames. Well done us.

I have many reasons to be glad for the overall statewide success of the Republican caucuses. One in particular: every time something goes wrong, demands that we dump our caucus process in favor of a primary grow stronger and louder.

This year’s comparatively quiet caucuses help keep those demands at bay. But with Iowa Democrats already ripped from their lead spot in the lineup by their national leaders in part because of Iowa’s use of the caucus system, it’s still worth discussing why Iowa Republicans shouldn’t — and certainly won’t any time soon — drop their caucuses in favor of a primary.

In short, doing so would require significant changes to state law. It would present loads of logistical questions with no simple answers, create upheaval in the primary process, and shift the burden of cost onto Iowa taxpayers. Let’s look at why.

Existing primary would be affected by presidential addition

Iowa already has a primary election every general election year, in early June. It covers every partisan office except for president and vice president. In the primary, voters registered (or willing to register at the time) with a major political party choose among candidates who have filed to run for their party’s nomination for a particular office on the general election ballot.

Not all Iowa primaries involve contested races. When they do, turnout is considerably lower than in a general election. In 2022, just under 23% of Iowa Democrats opted to choose among three candidates in a multimillion dollar primary to challenge U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley. Grassley himself had a primary challenger that year — almost 27% of Iowa Republicans voted a primary ballot.

Would turnout be higher if the presidential nomination were added to Iowa’s June primary? Surely not. By then each major national party usually has its presumptive nominee (the candidate who has secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination.) Our presidential nominating contest would go from being the most significant in the country to a totally irrelevant, more or less taxpayer-funded formality. No thanks.

What about moving the primary elections to an earlier date to include a presidential vote that retains a modicum of significance? Just the thought makes me shudder.

To keep first-in-the-nation status, Iowa would be looking at a January or early February primary date. That would cause a sea change in the state electoral process, and candidates for all levels of public office would have to gather signatures and file their nomination papers well over a year before a November general election.

What about keeping the other primary elections as they are and holding a separate presidential primary earlier? Adding a whole extra election to the existing workload would be very hard on county elections departments. Especially in rural counties with fewer staff.

The window of time to prepare for such an election would also be critically small. Last Monday’s caucuses happened exactly 70 days after the 2023 city council and school board elections. If that same narrow time existed between city/school elections and a presidential primary, preparations for that primary — and its onslaught of voters — would need to begin well before the city and school elections were finished.

Juggling two overlapping elections with different voter qualifications (only registered party members can vote in a primary) would surely put incredible strain on election workers. Plus, should any municipal race require a late November/early December runoff to determine the winner (as it has twice in Cedar Rapids in only the last six years,) yet another election would be tossed into that tight time frame mere weeks before the presidential primary. Yikes.

Iowa’s leadoff ally rankled

Logistical nightmares aside, we’d still face another problem holding a first-in-the-nation primary. Just as our state law requires Iowa to hold its presidential caucuses at eight days before any other state contest, our friends in New Hampshire have a similar law mandating that they hold the first presidential primary. Should we change to a primary, we pick a needless row with them. And they’re not afraid to throw down.

The Granite State already fired a warning shot to Iowa Democrats in April 2023 over their mail-in presidential preference cards planned for this year. And earlier this month the New Hampshire attorney general sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC.)

The AG’s harshly-worded letter was sent after the RBC had the gall to instruct New Hampshire Democrats to “educate the public” that their Jan. 23 primary is “meaningless” because it doesn’t capitulate to the DNC’s new lineup, in which South Carolina was crowned the new leadoff primary state at the request of President Joe Biden, who wanted to reward the first state that was willing to say, “Aw, hell, let’s go with the old guy who needs his wife to lead him around everywhere” in the 2020 primary.

So, complicated timing and overstepping with our leadoff state counterparts makes switching to a primary a bad idea for presidential nominating. But there’s even more to consider.

Presidential primary is party business

Keep in mind that in Iowa’s current partisan primary elections, the winning candidate’s name is, except in rare circumstances, automatically placed on the November general election ballot. A presidential primary would not accomplish that.

Nor should it. If Iowa’s 2016 Republican caucus was a primary following the same process as Iowa’s existing primary elections, Iowans would see top vote-getter Ted Cruz instead of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee on the 2016 general election ballot. On the 2020 ballot, they would see Bernie Sanders instead of Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.

How, then, did Donald Trump and Joe Biden appear as the nominees on the 2016 and 2020 ballots, respectively? Because a state’s presidential nominating contest, whether via a primary or caucuses, never actually determines the names that end up on the state’s general election ballot for president and vice president. It determines how many delegates will be pledged or bound to each candidate at the party’s national convention that summer, where the party’s chosen candidate is then — and only then — officially nominated, and qualified for placement on a general election ballot as the party nominee.

And who actually gets to be one of those delegates choosing the nominee at the national convention? People chosen by state-level delegates of — you guessed it — the party.

It’s party business from top to bottom. Party voters indicate their preferred candidate. Party delegates attend party conventions to select the party’s nominee. And if the nominee wins the state that November, party-chosen electors assume the prestigious task of casting the state’s votes in the Electoral College.

In states with presidential primary elections, the foundation of that process is paid for by taxpayers. Iowa, on the other hand, along with the other two remaining caucus-only states, has the good sense to make sure that this function of party business is entirely party-planned, party-funded, and party-executed — as it should be.

Were Iowa foolish enough to cave to caucus critics who probably haven’t thought much about what a change would actually entail, the whole state, not just our major political parties, would pay for our mistake. And our state’s political identity would fall into decay.

Iowans love the charm of a caucus

But headache-inducing logistical questions aren’t even my primary reason (pun intended) for wanting to keep our current format. I love our quirky, rickety caucus process. I love that it’s largely run by volunteers who take incredible pride and ownership in the process.

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I love the fact that a presidential wannabe has to come to our humble flyover state and actually talk to us if they want a snowball’s chance of a strong start toward the nomination. I love that we go to meet them and hear what they have to say, often on multiple occasions.

I love that this most important function of party business requires citizens to show up and gather in good faith with their neighbors. I love that we get the opportunity to make the case about who everyone should vote for and why. Sure, that wild candidate alignment process used by the Democrats was too much, but a fellow caucusgoer taking two minutes to address their neighbors about the candidate they believe will unite the country? I’d take that any day over a barrage of big-dollar ad buys.

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I love how we count the ballots as group. I love that we encourage caucusgoers to get involved beyond just casting a quick ballot. I love that a handful of them actually do get more deeply involved.

I love how some people travel in from out of state on their own time and own dime because they’re fascinated by our process and want to see it at work.

And I love how even the most coveted positions of national delegate and presidential elector are chosen through a process that started by gathering in an elementary school gym or a church basement with other perfectly ordinary Iowans on a freezing cold January night. Iowans are proud of our perfectly imperfect caucus process. And we are intent on keeping it.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com