By Elaine Rassel
We will be voting for a President of the United States in November of 2024. All ready we have been bombarded with political ads (mail or television) endorsing a certain candidate. Some of these aren’t very nice in nature as a candidate is being spoken to as “tricky”, not for real, cannot be trusted, and even goes into their background for “unclean” information as to why YOU should not vote for this particular person—but rather for them.
Now comes the time for caucus meetings to determine who would be best. A caucus is any political group or meeting organized to further a special interest or cause. Webster’s Dictionary defines it as a closed meeting of a group of persons belonging to the same political party or faction usually to select candidates or to decide on policy. Iowa’s Caucus is held on January 15, 2024 for Iowa Republicans who will cast their votes in support of a candidate for the 2024 election.
Democrats are using a mail-in-ballot this time and results will be known March 5. There will be in-person caucus events held on January 15, but these events would only conduct specific party business. Mail-in ballots for this Democrat Caucus opened on Nov. 1 and will run until February 19.
I have received information from the Democrat party stating “Your Participation in the Iowa Caucuses are Vital!” The Iowa caucuses are not just an electoral process; they area a unique and excit9ing way for you to contribute to the selection of our elected leaders. And, you get to choose which caucus to participate in!
Republican Caucus information received state, “Iowa Is Trump Country! Caucus for President Trump Jan. 15. President Trump will Always Deliver for Iowa! Highlighted are: Secured $A28 bullion in aid for farmers harmed by China’s unfair grade practices; lifted restrictions on the sale of E15 gasoline; Presided over a record economy; Passed historic tax cuts; Appointed Conservative Justices who ended Roe v Wade and protected life; and Secured the Border. Caucus for President Trump—America first Conservative.
Former President Trump has been scheduled to speak ahead (Jan. 14) of the Iowa Caucus on Jan. 15 but if you attend, you will have to have a ticket that are available through the Trump website. Doors to this event open at 1 p.m. and Trump will speak at 4 p.m. (How well I know this long time span before the speaker finally arrives! If you want a good place to “stand” you will have to be there early. After three hours of waiting, your legs are announcing the they aren’t going to give you much more time. I used to go but will stay home and get the results on television!)
Iowa Caucuses are not overseen by state government but rather by the state party. Representatives for a certain candidate will make a speech with votes being tallied by secret ballot and delegates for the county convention are selected. However, delegates may campaign to attend the Republican National Convention on behalf of their chosen candidate.
Local precincts are listed where you must attend if you live in that district. In other words, you just cannot pick and choose where you will attend a Republican Caucus meeting. It is your right to attend a Caucus meeting and if you don’t and aren’t satisfied with the results—then forever hold your peace.
I sent my secretary for further information on “caucus” in general. The word caucus originated in Boston in the early part of the 18th century, when it was used as the name of a political club—the Caucus, or Caucus Club. In its subsequent and current usage in the United States, the term came to denote a meeting of either party managers or duty voters, as in “nominating caucus,” which nominates candidates for office or selects delegates for a nominating convention. The caucus of a party’s members in Congress nominated its candidates for the office of president and vice president from 1796 until 1824. At the same time, the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor were nominated by the party members of the state legislatures in what was know as “the legislative nominating caucus”. Occasionally, districts unrepresented in the legislature sent in delegates to sit in with the members of the legislature when these nominations were made, and this was termed the mixed legislative nominating caucus.
The American use of the term denotes a faction within a legislative body the attempts to further its interests by influencing either party policy on proposed legislation or legislative offices; hence such bodies as the Black Caucus (representing African Americans) and the Women’s Caucus.
In Great Britain, the term came into wide use in 1878 when Joseph Chamberlain and Frank Schnadhorst organized the Liberal Association of Birmingham on strict disciplinary lines, with a view toward managing elections and controlling voters. This type of organization became the model for other Liberal Party associations throughout the country; and because it was a supposed imitation of the U.S. political machine, Benjamin Disraeli gave it the name “caucus.” Thus, the term came to be used thereafter not in the American sense of a meeting but of a closely disciplined system of party organization, not infrequently as a term of abuse applied by politicians of one party to the controlling organization of its opponents.
The Iowa caucuses are traditional held first among the nomination contests and followed by New Hampshire. However, because of criticism that those states were unrepresentative of the country—both are overwhelmingly white—and exerted too much influence in the nomination process, several other states began to schedule their primaries earlier. In 1988 there were 16 largely Southern states that moved their primaries to a day in early March that became known as “Super Tuesday.” These primaries and caucuses continued during the 1990’s, prompting Iowa and New Hampshire to schedule their contests even earlier, in January, and causing the Democratic Party to adopt rules to protect the privileged states of the two states.
By 2008, some 40 states had scheduled their primaries of caucuses for January or February; few primaries or caucuses were held in May or June. For the 2008 campaign, several states attempted to blunt the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire by moving their primaries and caucuses to January, forcing Iowa to hold its caucus on January 3 and New Hampshire its primary on January 8. Some states scheduled primaries earlier than the calendar sanctioned by the Democratic and Republican National Committees, and as a result, both parties either reduced or, in the case of the Democrats, stripped states violating party rules of their delegates to the national convention. Such penalties contributed to a slight decrease in front-loading in 2012. Now, some states worried that a crowded calendar would result in their contest being overlooked. While there were subsequently minor changes to the schedule, the vast majority of primaries and caucuses continue to be held in the first four months of an election year.
As a result of the severely cutoff season, candidates required to raise more money sooner, making it more difficult for lesser-known candidates to gain momentum by doing will in early primaries and caucuses.
The United States is the only country to have “caucuses”. In France and Spain, popular front governments were formed. Popular front—any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties united for the defense of democratic forms against a presumed Fascist assault. In the mid-1930’s, European Communist concern over the gains of Fascism, combined with a Soviet policy shift, led Communist parties to join with Socialist, liberal, and moderate parties in popular fronts against Fascist conquest.
Iowa caucuses are political party meetings taking place in the state of Iowa to select U.S. presidential candidates. Traditionally occurring first among the nomination contests, the Iowa caucuses have been regarded as an important indicator of a candidate’s likely success. Beginning in 1976 when former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter won Iowa’s Democratic caucus and was propelled to national prominence, capturing the Democratic presidential nomination and sweeping to the White House over Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, candidates, media, and voters alike often saw Iowa winnow the presidential field for the New Hampshire primary that traditionally followed it.
In 2023 the Democratic National Committee voted to replace Iowa with South Carolina as the first contest in the party’s nomination process for the 2024 presidential election. Iowa’s Republican caucus retained its first-in-the nation status.
At caucuses, partisans gather to make decisions on whom to back. In the U.S. presidential nomination system specifically, caucuses are local party gatherings at which delegates are selected to go on to county, district, and state conventions that untimately determine the delegates the state’s party sends to the national convention and thus, indirectly, which presidential candidates the state supports.
Most state parties today hold primaries rather than caucuses. Primaries, unlike caucuses, are run by state election officials rather than party officials. In primaries, any party member (and sometimes even those outside the party) can show up at voting stations just as in a general election. Reforms in the Democratic Party from the early 1970’s generally followed by Republicans in later years, placed strict limits on presidential caucuses, steering more and more states toward the primary election method of selecting national convention delegates and away from the caucus-to-convention system.
Iowa cleaves to its caucus tradition as well as its traditional first-in-the-nation status. Since its entry into the union in 1846, the state has always used the caucus-to-convention system for its presidential nomination decisions, with the exception of 1916, when Iowa held one ill-fated presidential primary. The state uses primaries to select all other levels of candidates, with the exception of judgeships.
In 1971, the Iowa Democratic Party moved its precinct caucuses up to January 24, which state Democrats said would better accommodate Iowa’s complicated nomination process and would be more accessible to voters. That put Iowa’s caucuses before the New Hampshire primary, making Iowa the site of the country’s first contest in the presidential campaign. After witnessing how South Dakota Sen. George McGovern’s second-place finish in the 1972 Iowa caucuses propelled him to the nomination, Carter saw the value an early win might provide in the next election cycle. He organized his campaign around doing well in Iowa, and the strategy paid of. Buoyed by the media, the win helped him capture the nomination and the White House.
Let’s go to the Republican side. Former CIA director George H.W. Bush, in turn, duplicated Carter’s Iowa-centered approach in the 1980 presidential cycle. Toppling the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, former California Governor Ronald Reagan, tn the state, Bush rode the momentum until the next contest and ultimately to a showing that prompted Reagan to grant him the vice presidential slot on his ticket.
Again in 1984, the Iowa caucuses played a political role disproportionate to the delegates they allocated. Former vice president, Walter Mondale beat the Democratic field decisively in the state. The media judged that Sen. John Glenn (Ohio) had been badly wounded by his rout there and that the second-place showing of Sen. Gary Hart (Colorado) catapulted him into the challenger position and gained him a national following. In 1988, Republican front-runner Vice pres. George H.W. Gush was stunned in the caucuses, finishing third behind both Sen. Bob Dole (Kansas) and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
Bush corrected his stumble by defeating Dole in New Hampshire soon after and went on to the nomination and the presidency. The 1992 presidential race in Iowas was rendered all but irrelevant with the incumbent Bush seeking reelection on the Republican side and the candidacy of popular native son Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa) getting votes on the Democratic side. But in 1996, the caucuses were back with Dole once again besting a tough field of Republican opponents and setting his feet to the path to the nomination.
The 2000 caucuses fueled the ascendance of the Democratic nominee, former vice president Al Gore, and that of the election’s ultimate victor, the Republican nominee, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
In 2004, Iowa once again crowned a Democratic nominee: Sen. John Kerry (Massachusetts), with the air of a war hero’s electability, washed over front-runner and former Vermont governor Howard Dean in the caucuses and rode the current all the way to the Democratic nomination. The 2008 caucuses saw first-term sen. Barack Obama (Illinois) take the lead over likely nominee Sen. Hillary Clinton (New York) as well as former senator John Edwards (North Carolina), forging a path to the nomination and ultimate victory over his rival, Republican Sen. John McCain (Arizona). McCain himself made a poor showing in Iowa, though former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee established himself as a national figure in part due to his caucus victory there.
In 2012 former senator Rick Santorum (Pennsylvania) emerged slightly ahead of the eventual Republican nominee, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Romney went on to lose the general election to Obama, who was unchallenged in the Democratic caucus. In 2016 Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) comfortable won the Republican caucus, defeating Donald Trump, the eventual Republican nominee and winner of that year’s election, while Clinton finished just ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont).
The results of the 2020 Democratic caucus were delayed by technical problems, miscounts, and other failures that resulted in what an Associated Pres reporter called “a disaster of epic proportions.” Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was eventually identified as the winner, narrowly defeating Sanders; Joe Biden, who later won the general election was the Democrat’s nominee, finished fourth. Trump won the largely uncontested Republican caucus.
In response to the problems during its 2020 caucus, the Democratic National Committee began an assessment of its nomination calendar that concluded in early 2023, when the DNC voted to replace its Iowa caucus with a primary election in South Carolina in February 2024, which would be followed by primaries in Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, and Michigan. “This calendar does what is long over due,’ the Democratic National Committee chair said prior to the vote. “It expands the number of voices in the early window, and it elevates diverse communities that area at the core of the Democratic Party.” Iowa Republicans subsequently scheduled their first-in-the-nation caucus for January 15, 2024.