When Iowa's brave and resilient Republicans venture into the Arctic cold Monday night to cast the first presidential election of 2024, Richard Bender will watch with special interest and a twinge of regret.
Bender, 78, has been called the godfather of the iowa caucusesin recognition of his role more than 50 years ago in creating one of the most closely watched and idiosyncratic events in American politics.
At the time he was a young Iowa Democratic Party staffer, an ardent enemy of the Vietnam War and an architect seeking to build bridges between the party's old guard and the anti-establishment wing.
Today, Bender is retired from a career on Capitol Hill, lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and laments his party's avoidance of Iowa. at the behest of President Biden – in favor of later races in South Carolina and Nevada.
“It was good for my state,” Bender said of the caucuses that both major parties relied on for decades to begin choosing their presidential candidates. “I think we really had an impact on national politics. I suspect that Jimmy Carter and [Barack] Obama” – who used strong Iowa displays run for the White House: “they would agree with me on that.”
“And, frankly, I was personally proud of it,” Bender said. “So I wasn't too happy to see it fall by the wayside.”
As Bender is the first to attest, no one imagined that the caucuses would become the internationally watched spectacle and crucial early test of political strength. His election, as the first event on the presidential calendar, began as a pure coincidence.
Iowa had long elected its delegates in a series of meetings starting at the district level – those are the caucuses that will be held on Monday night – and will conclude in a state convention. But those meetings, typically held in the spring, were largely the province of party bosses and political insiders anointing their chosen candidates.
After the maelstrom of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when party bosses chose the presidential candidate and blood flowed in the streets of Chicago, there was a strong push to reform the process and give voters more of a say.
In Iowa, the party was led by Clif Larson, who had endorsed Eugene McCarthy's anti-war candidacy in 1968. He tasked Bender with leading an effort to devise a new, more open system for electing the state's presidential delegates.
Among the changes are the elimination of the winner-take-all rule, allowing candidates to receive a share of delegates based on their grassroots support, and the requirement for public notification before each step of the nomination process.
The party's difficult circumstances led to Iowa's fortuitous place at the top of the political calendar.
The Democrats were essentially broke before the 1972 campaign and were dependent on an old mimeograph machine. Counting back to the May 20 state convention, and allowing printing and mailing materials before each of the four rounds, the party proposed Jan. 24 for the initial voting at the precinct level, making it the first vote in the country.
Thus an institution was born.
A modest contingent of national political reporters showed up in Iowa to chronicle that first January caucus. Four years later, interest exploded when Carter, a little-known former Georgia governor, came out of nowhere and overcame a group of Democratic heavyweights to catalyze his underdog campaign.
(In fact, Carter finished second in the caucuses, behind “uncommitted,” but his 28% result exceeded expectations, which has become the measure of success.)
In 1976, Republicans were on board with early voting, and for years Iowa and its rituals—kaffeeklatsches, state fairs, pandering to farmers and agricultural interests—were an indelible part of presidential politics.
Aware of their privileged role, “Iowans really started to care and feel responsible,” Bender said, in a thick corned beef accent he retained from his native New York. (He moved to Iowa in 1967 to study biochemistry at Iowa State.)
“They became a very sophisticated and careful electorate,” Bender said. “Expert. Considered.”
Richard Bender has been called the godfather of the Iowa caucuses.
(Courtesy of Richard Bender)
But as Iowa's influence grew, so did resentment.
politicians in big states like California He complained about Iowa's enormous influence. Others complained that the state was too white and too rural, making Iowa unrepresentative of the country in general and the Democratic Party in particular.
When Iowa Democrats failed in the 2020 caucuses – taking days to declare a winner – provided one more reason to strip the state of its privileged place. (It also didn't help that Biden, a two-time candidate in Iowa, never finished better than fourth in the caucuses.)
This year, Democrats have officially bypassed both Iowa and New Hampshire, which has long hosted the nation's first primaries and has also been criticized for being too white and rural. the match start giving you delegates February 3 in South Carolina.
The Republicans have had his own mistakes in Iowa.
On caucus night in 2012, Mitt Romney was declared the winner by only 8 votes. The state Republican Party then backtracked on that call and more than a week later announced that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick In fact, Santorum had finished first. By then, the campaign had already been underway for some time.
Still, with no incumbent dictating the 2024 presidential calendar, Republicans kept Iowa in first place.
Watching from afar, Bender acknowledged that the caucuses are considerably removed from their humble origins. Thousands of journalists now descend on the state to chronicle its presidential campaigns, which have become multi-year spectacles that fuel a multibillion-dollar industry.
Apparently the time has passed when a candidate can win Carter-style by going from town to town, hanging out with local families and spending years meeting a handful of voters at a time.
Trump, who caused a sensation in 2015 by giving children rides in his helicopter, has appears relatively rarely this election cycle, and remains the heavy favorite to win.
“It was an extreme example of what's been going on for a long time,” Bender said, as television, radio and, more recently, social media have come to matter more than the one-on-one campaigns that gave caucuses their intimacy and charm.
Still, Bender remains hopeful, optimistically? naively? – that once Biden leaves, Iowa can regain its prominence in Democratic politics.
It remains a place where voters can approach most presidential hopefuls and ask them a question or two. “And I think that's really helpful,” Bender said, “unlike [candidates] creating five 30-second ads to represent who they are.”
It also remains relatively easy and inexpensive to campaign in Iowa, where many people are willing to listen carefully to an unknown politician.
“It would be the Jimmy Carter situation,” Bender said, envisioning a revival of the Democratic caucus.
He built it. Wait for his party to come again.
