Proposed in-person caucus voting requirement ‘premature,’ Democrats say

DES MOINES — Iowa Republicans insist newly proposed legislation that would require in-person voting in the Iowa caucuses is designed to preserve the state’s first-in-the-nation status, which Democrats already have lost.

Iowa Democrats insist the legislation — and New Hampshire’s threat to jump ahead of Iowa in the presidential nominating order if Democrats’ plans for mail-in balloting proceed — are premature and unnecessary overreactions.

Prominent Iowa Democrats made their first public comments Thursday on the recent developments.

On Monday, state lawmaker Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican from Wilton and the son of Republican Party of Iowa chairman Jeff Kaufmann, introduced legislation that would require Iowa caucus participants to cast their presidential preference in-person.

If passed into law, the legislation would effectively nullify Iowa Democrats’ plans — which were designed to appease critics in the national Democratic Party as they redesigned their presidential primary voting order — to collect presidential preferences via the mail ahead of caucus night.

On Wednesday, the New Hampshire state Republican Party chairman posted on social media a screenshot of an email in which New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan wrote that if Iowa Democrats follow through on their plans for mail-in balloting, New Hampshire will move its primary election earlier in the calendar, before the Iowa Democratic or Republican caucuses.

If Iowa Democrats move to primary balloting vs a Caucus, New Hampshire would move our primary ahead of that date. @IowaGOP @NewHampJournal @NHGOP @FoxNews @steinhauserNH1 @TheIowaHawkeyes @TimothyAger1 pic.twitter.com/cJuqKBui65

— NHGOP Chairman Chris Ager (@NHGOPChairman) April 12, 2023

It was the exact scenario Iowa Republicans had been warning against.

‘What’s best for Iowa’

But Iowa Democratic Party leaders on Thursday said the legislation and calendar jockeying are premature.

Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman Rita Hart, speaking to reporters on a virtual news conference, said the Iowa House Republican legislation and threats from New Hampshire are unnecessary because neither party knows yet what Iowa Democrats’ exact plans for mail-in participation in the 2024 caucuses will look like. She said those plans are still being crafted by state party workers.

Hart added that she does not believe Iowa Democrats — or Republicans — should feel beholden to New Hampshire’s interpretation of their caucus plans.

“As chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, I’m committed to doing what’s best for Iowa, not what’s best for New Hampshire,” Hart said during the new conference. “And if Iowa Republicans are serious about defending Iowa, and I believe that they are serious about that, they won’t let another state weigh in on the laws that we write. And they would give me an opportunity to work with them to work together with them on behalf of Iowans.”

Scott Brennan — a member of the Iowa Democratic Party’s state leadership committee, its representative on the national party’s rules committee, and a Des Moines lawyer — hinted the bill may be challenged in court if it becomes law.

Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Iowa College of Law, said this week he thinks the bill may be unconstitutional.

“I am a practicing lawyer, and I have my own thoughts on the subject,” Brennan said. “But maybe, ultimately, somebody will have to make a decision who’s wearing a black robe.”

Brennan called Scanlan’s threat to jump in front of Iowa Republicans if Iowa Democrats use a mail-in system “insanity.”

“If he’s got a crystal ball, I’d love to see it. But we do not have a final determination of what we’re going to do,” he said.

GOP: It’s a primary

Chairman Kaufmann asserted in a statement Wednesday that the Democrats’ plan — as publicly presented — turns the Democratic caucuses into a primary election.

“In an effort salvage their caucus and appease party insiders, Iowa Democrats have developed a plan to turn the Iowa Caucus into a primary,” Chairman Kaufmann said, “a move that would ignite unnecessary one-upmanship with New Hampshire and its first-in-the-nation primary and ensure the demise of the entire Iowa caucus and Iowa’s ability to go first as the first-in-the-nation caucus state.”

Iowa bill advances

The proposed legislation, House Study Bill 245, passed out of an Iowa House committee along party lines on Thursday.

Minority-party Democrats offered a raft of amendments — that were destined to fail — that would have disqualified former President Donald Trump from being a candidate in the 2024 Republican caucuses and drew attention to Kaufmann’s employment by the Trump campaign.

The Democrats’ amendments would have barred any candidate from participating in the caucuses if they were under investigation for election-related crimes or they owed outstanding debt to the state or a local government.

Trump was indicted this month on charges related to payments to an adult actress, and Sioux City officials said last year some expenses had not been paid a month after his Nov. 3 rally. The city was reimbursed by January.

Another amendment would have said a person employed by a presidential campaign should recuse themselves from voting on bills that would affect their outcome in the caucuses.

“This bill is not about preserving Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus, or even getting more Iowans to participate in the caucus,” said Rep. Amy Nielsen, D-North Liberty. “This bill is straight politics. This bill is about putting in the fix for Donald Trump.”

Bobby Kaufmann said the changes in the bill apply to all candidates equally, and Iowa voters should choose candidates without restrictions.

“This bill unequivocally and absolutely protects the Iowa caucuses for both parties, period,” he said. The idea that the bill is about a particular candidate, he said, is “not a factual statement.”

Democratic caucus changes

In recent years, an increasing number of leaders in the national Democratic Party have expressed criticism of caucuses as a means of nominating the party’s presidential nominee.

Unlike elections, caucus participants must attend the event on a specific date for a specific time, which can make it challenging to attend for people with conflicting work schedules or those who do not have access to child care.

On the night of the 2020 Iowa caucuses, a new program designed to calculate and more rapidly report the Democratic caucuses’ results crashed, throwing the process into chaos. Official results were not finalized for weeks.

That failure presented an opening for caucus critics, and when in 2022 the national party decided to reset its primary calendar, Iowa Democrats developed a new caucus plan in hopes of addressing criticisms of the caucus structure. They landed on a process by which Iowa Democrats would state their preferred presidential candidate on a ballot that would be mailed to the state party before caucus night, when the results would be announced.

But the national party still spurned Iowa Democrats and announced a slate of five early-voting states that does not include Iowa.

Iowa Democrats have said they plan to continue with their mail-in ballots, because it will make a part of the caucus process more accessible to more Iowans.

But some Iowa Republicans warned such a process would compel New Hampshire, which historically has followed Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses with the country’s first presidential primary elections, to enact a clause in its state laws that allows the state to move ahead of any other state that attempts to hold a presidential primary election earlier.

Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com

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