Kansas City caucus tourists head to Iowa to get up close and personal with candidates
When Sue Wood lived in Iowa, she looked forward to presidential candidates becoming her quasi-neighbors who spent months, even years, organizing support for the first-in-the-nation party caucuses that can make or break campaigns.
Like the day in 2007 when she had lunch and dinner with the junior U.S. senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.
“You get so accustomed to seeing everybody,” said Wood, who moved away seven years ago and is an associate professor of education at Northwest Missouri State University.
Last Saturday Wood was back in Iowa, at the Frontier Village Opera House in Fort Dodge, waiting for a town hall with former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. It was her second recent weekend spent checking out the 2020 Democratic presidential field, which will face the judgment of Iowans who will gather in schools, libraries, churches and living rooms next Monday for their caucuses.
“I absolutely miss this atmosphere. We just don’t get this in Missouri,” Wood said, “the excitement of candidate after candidate after candidate just doesn’t happen.” Next on the itinerary were Sen. Bernie Sanders in Ames and former Vice President Joe Biden in Des Moines.
Wood is one of the Kansas City-area’s politically-engaged residents barnstorming neighboring Iowa, taking advantage of the last frenzied days of campaigning, as candidates’ calendars are crammed with appearances across the state.
Missouri has its own Democratic primary on March 10. But it will be after the four big, possibly trend-setting, early contests (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina) and Super Tuesday (March 3) when 14 states, including California and Texas, will determine about 40 percent of the Democratic Party’s pledged delegates.
The race could be all but over by then. Kansas Democrats (May 2) have an even longer wait.
It means Iowa could be the best chance for Kansas Citians to get an unfiltered look at the candidates.
Sometimes really unfiltered. Rich Warwick said he was walking down a hallway at the Hampton Inn in Cedar Falls on Monday morning when he saw Biden, in sweats and a T-shirt, headed to the lobby to grab his free continental breakfast.
“It’s just amazing how accessible people are,” said Warwick, 61, who owns a small greeting card company in Kansas City. His encounter with Biden capped a weekend of candidate watching: Andrew Yang in Fairfield, Buttigieg in Fort Dodge, Sanders in Ames, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar in Waterloo.
He called it “a front seat to democracy.”
Warwick even got a turn at the microphone on Sunday, asking Sen. Elizabeth Warren a question at her Cedar Rapids town hall. Warwick recounted a dinner party where a friend of his, a conservative Democrat, said he couldn’t vote for either Sanders or Warren because of their hostility to capitalism.
“We want to win,” Warwick said, “So how do you convince white men who aren’t as smart as me that Elizabeth Warren is the candidate?”
Warren laughed and said she supports free markets but believes that they don’t work in certain sectors of the economy, like health care and education.
“Markets without rules are theft,” she said.
Others are making the drive north to scout the competition. Stacy Eisman, 42, a sales operations analyst from Lenexa, is a self-described libertarian Republican and social conservative.
“So that eliminates all of these guys,” he said.
But Eisman was at a converted post office in Perry, Iowa, last Sunday to see Sanders — and his big name opening acts, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and filmmaker Michael Moore.
”We can get it all on TV, But this is something. Everything is in person, and you’re not depending on what the media tells you,” he said.
Like Iowans themselves, Kansas City’s caucus tourists are all over the map when it comes to who they support. Wood and her teaching colleague at Northwest Missouri, assistant professor of education Vicki Seegar, said they’ve looked at the whole field but keep coming back to Buttigieg for what they see as his honesty, forthrightness and commitment to climate change.
“He’s honest and direct on the issues. He has risen to the top every time,” Seeger said.
Warwick is a Biden guy, and plans to vote for him in Missouri. Sitting in the front row during Biden’s appearance at the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Art Center in Cedar Falls, Warwick said he was struck by an empathy that doesn’t come across from a distance.
“People make these knee-jerk assessments,” Warwick said, referring to the wide criticism of his performance in the televised debates. “He stumbled. He must be old. In person, the guy is extemporaneously sharp as hell.”
Afterward, as audience members shook his hand they poured out personal stories, sometimes with tears in their eyes.
“He treated everyone like family,” Warwick said.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
