5 hours, 4 candidates, 1 city
Democratic front-runners make final Iowa caucus pitches in Cedar Rapids
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — In a matter of five hours, four frontrunning presidential candidates converged on Cedar Rapids on Saturday to offer closing arguments on the top issue of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Democratic caucuses: picking a candidate best suited to beat President Donald Trump.
On a small college campus, Elizabeth Warren contended she’s the prime candidate to unify Democrats to take on Trump.
In a middle-school gym, Joe Biden said the president’s own impeachment trial shows he’s most feared by Trump.
In a boutique hotel ballroom, Pete Buttigieg said his generational candidacy offers the starkest contrast to take on Trump.
And before the bright lights of the city’s downtown arena, Bernie Sanders asserted his push for a political revolution would overwhelm Trump.
The flurry of final pitches to thousands of people in Iowa’s second largest city came just two
days before Monday’s caucuses, when many Democratic officials eagerly are expecting record turnout to the 1,678 precincts in church basements, fire stations and school gymnasiums across the state.
Who will win remains less certain. The release of a highly respected poll Saturday night, expected to provide some guidance on where caucusgoers were leaning, was scrubbed late Saturday by the Des Moines Register and CNN after questions were raised about its accuracy.
Over the years, Iowa has become notorious for late electoral surprises in the caucuses, and each of the top four candidates has led the field in recent months and remains within striking distance for a victory. Plus, the 2020 contest has been defined by an unusually high number of caucusgoers still undecided or willing to change their minds.
“If I were going to bet on this, I don’t think I’d put any money down,” said Bret Nilles, the chairman of the Democratic party in Linn County, which is home to Cedar Rapids. “I think the top four are all close, and it’s a matter of throughout the state how well-organized they are to get the support to the caucuses they need to win that plurality. This year, it’s really hard to sense who’s going to win.”
On the bubble is Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, of neighboring Minnesota, who was scheduled to stop through Cedar Rapids on Sunday morning. She drew a large overflow crowd at a brewpub Saturday morning in Bettendorf, part of the Quad Cities on the Iowa-Illinois border, leaving the rest of the crowd to hear a second speech from the candidate in an adjacent bicycle shop.
For Klobuchar, Warren and Sanders, Saturday marked a return to the Iowa campaign after being kept off the trail as U.S. senators serving as jurors in the president’s impeachment trial.
“It’s amazing how all of the sudden they’re all here to make one last pass on the same day, but I think a lot of that has to do with the Senate hearing limiting Senators Warren, Klobuchar and Sanders in getting here,” Nilles observed. “They’re running out of time and are trying to make the biggest impact they can.”
A weekend break in the trial allowed the senators to fly to Iowa for a final pitch, but Buttigieg and Biden took advantage of their absence to pack in events across the state.
During the 16 days from when the trial began on Jan. 16 until the weekend break, Buttigieg and Biden combined to hold more than double the number of Iowa events of their three competitors, a Tribune review of their schedules found.
Buttigieg held 41 events over 12 days while Biden stumped at 24 events over 11 days. Among the senators, Klobuchar hit 17 events in six days; Warren held nine events in six days; and Sanders campaigned at just six events over the course of three days in the state.
“I’ve been in Washington for a long time, locked down, and I need to get to a lot of places around Iowa today and the next day,” Warren said in a gymnasium at Coe College, as she apologized that in lieu of her usual practice of taking photos with supporters, her dog Bailey would substitute.
One central theme hovering over Cedar Rapids, along with the occasional smell of cereal wafting from the Quaker Oats plant along the river downtown: the candidates pitching themselves as the top foil to Trump. That effort has broken into two distinct camps: the progressives led by Sanders and Warren and the more moderate wing represented by Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
Sanders and Warren stumped Saturday for a familiar slate of major changes to the federal government, including “Medicare For All,” the cancellation of student loan debt, tuition-free public college and the Green New Deal to combat climate change. In the closing days, the moderates have emphasized their appeal to voters in swing states while contending that more sensible changes are needed such as building upon the existing Affordable Care Act and offering more tuition assistance for students who need it the most.
“There’s a lot of heart versus head agonizing,” said Dennis Goldford, a professor of political studies at Drake University in Des Moines. “Do I go with my heart the person who I think is wonderful and represents everything I believe in or with my head — in cold, rational terms — of who has the best chance of beating Trump?”
During a day in which some caucusgoers said they visited as many as three different campaign events in Cedar Rapids, the rally Sanders threw in a downtown sports arena by far stood out as the largest and most enthusiastic. A crowd of more than 3,000 people, some of them sipping on beers and margaritas, filled the floor and many of the balcony sections for a precaucus concert with the group Vampire Weekend.
At the top of his speech, Sanders declared the No. 1 issue of the 2020 election as “the absolute understanding that we must defeat the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country.” A political revolution that draws far more people into the political process is the answer to defeating Trump, he said, not a marginal campaign that seeks incremental progress.
“The reason we’re going to defeat Trump is that we are the campaign that is going to bring about the largest voter turnout in American history,” Sanders said to a roar of applause. “This is the campaign where the working class of America is going to stand up and say loud and clear, ‘Enough is enough!’ ”
The long line of opening speakers, including Cornel West, Michael Moore and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, repeatedly pointed to Sanders’ long track record of railing against the political establishment and inequality as the reason he’s the most trusted candidate in the Democratic field.
“With Bernie, what you see is what you get, and that’s a huge advantage,” Sanders’ wife, Jane, said in introducing him. “The best way to defeat Donald Trump and to fight lies and hatred and bigotry is with truth and love and compassion. Bernie is the candidate who Donald Trump will not be able to vilify as inauthentic or hypocritical during the campaign.”
Jacob Bayne, who described his politics as “very far left,” said he caucused for Sanders four years ago and plans to again on Monday, hoping he gets a shot to take on Trump. Bayne said he doesn’t consider Trump a real Republican and Bernie “also isn’t a Democrat,” noting his status as an independent senator and self-described democratic socialist.
“That would make it an interesting clash that’s really hard to predict,” said Bayne, 25, who lives in Cedar Rapids and works at a brewery. “I don’t know if he could beat Trump, but Bernie is a lot better than who I assume the Democrats will pick — Biden. That’s the same as picking Hillary in 2016.”
Warren, appearing before a more subdued crowd of 500 supporters, delivered a final thank-you message to Iowans, saying that in her yearlong quest for the nomination, they had made her a better candidate and will make her an “even better president.”
She said her plans to create a wealth tax, a surcharge on incomes above $50 million, and her fight against corporate greed and corruption in Washington made her the candidate with the best plan to unify Democrats as well as gain backing from independents and some Republicans.
“We’re all wanting to build a better America,” she said. “We’re down to the final strokes here. We must come together as a party and beat Donald Trump.”
The vast plans of Sanders and Warren, however, have caused more moderate rank-and-file Democrats to question their ability to win back voters who backed Trump in the last election.
Biden has tried to capitalize on that by repeatedly leaning on his experience as vice president, his lengthy tenure in the Senate and even previous contacts he made with Iowa voters in unsuccessful bids for president in 1988 and 2008.
“You owe it, I owe it, to make sure Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States,” Biden told a packed middle-school gymnasium of 400 people before railing against the president’s “ridiculous tweets and stupid policy.”
“I will beat Trump flatout!” Biden declared to a loud standing ovation. Dennis Loux was sold. “I hate to say it, but beating Trump is the biggest part of it this year,” said Loux, a 73-year-old small business owner who lives in nearby Hiawatha. “Joe has the experience for it, he has the background for it and he has a little better chance to win in the Midwest. A lot of these people could probably get elected, but it comes down to the fact that Joe has the best chance to win.”
In recent days, Biden repeatedly has said Republicans and Trump fear him most in a general election. He offers the central issue of Trump’s impeachment as proof: allegations that the president withheld U.S. financial aid to Ukraine in exchange for that country conducting an investigation into Biden and his family.
“Can you think of another time where a sitting president has invested so much time, money and interest in trying to pick who’s going to win the Iowa caucus and to make sure who doesn’t win?” Biden said Thursday during a rally in Fort Madison. “It’s amazing.”
In the final stretch of the campaign, Buttigieg has been more outspoken in challenging both Biden, a more direct rival on the moderate side, as well as Sanders, who has seen continued energy for his campaign despite his absence from Iowa — signs that the Vermont senator enjoys a strong ground game in the state.
Buttigieg, 38, has portrayed himself as a Washington outsider and the leader of a new generation for Democrats compared with Biden, 77, and Sanders, 78.
“What we’re hearing from the vice president right now is this is no time to take a risk on somebody new. Well, I’m here to suggest that history has taught us that when there is a great moment of risk like this, the biggest risk we could take is to try to deal with a fundamentally new challenge by falling back on the familiar. We’ve got to be ready for a different approach in our politics today,” Buttigieg told a crowd of about 350 at a hotel on the south edge of the city.
“Sen. Sanders, speaking to goals I think we all share, is offering politics that suggests you’re either for a revolution or the status quo,” he continued. “This insistence on a better president is the work of an American majority that agrees on not only what we’re against but on what we’re for.”
The former South Bend mayor jokingly thanked the audience who “kindly dubbed the city ‘Peter Rapids’ to make me feel at home.”
After hearing Buttigieg, Kathy Munson said she planned to back Buttigieg on Monday night, citing his age.
“I want the next generation,” said Munson, 71, a retired school teacher from Cedar Rapids. “He’s inspiring, he’s hopeful, he’s a problem solver.”
Since the summer, the Iowa contest has been defined by the front-running foursome of Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren jockeying for position at the front of a crowded field that at times exceeded 20 candidates.
In the span of a little more than four months, each of the four has enjoyed a run atop polls in the Hawkeye State.
Biden started the race out in front, a position he held throughout the summer until Warren gained a lead in late September, according to Iowa polling averages. By November, Buttigieg had surged to the front of the pack, but he since has been supplanted by Sanders leading in most Iowa surveys.
In January, Sanders averaged the highest level of support in polls, but Biden topped some also. The Des Moines Register and CNN poll was pulled back shortly before its scheduled release Saturday night.
In a statement, Carol Hunter, the Register’s executive editor, said a poll respondent “raised an issue with the way the survey was administered which could have compromised the results of the poll,” saying one candidate’s name was omitted in at least one interview.
Hunter said it is “imperative whenever an Iowa Poll is released that there is confidence that the data accurately reflects Iowans’ opinions.”
Biden has tended to lead polls that only question Iowans who previously have caucused. That includes recent surveys conducted by Monmouth University and USA Today/Suffolk University that both found Biden with a 6 percentage point lead.
Sanders, on the other hand, has grabbed the lead in polls that also question those who intend to caucus for the first time, including a recent one conducted by the New York Times and Siena College that found the Vermont senator leading by 7 points.
Cedar Rapids and Linn County is reliable Democratic territory. Democrats defeated Republicans in the last three presidential elections.
In 2016, Sanders won Cedar Rapids and Linn County over Hillary Clinton. Nilles, the chairman of the county Democratic party in Linn County, said that victory came as a late-developing surprise.
So far, Nilles said, Warren and Buttigieg have had the most visible strength on the ground and have had displayed similar strength in terms of the number of campaign offices, staffers and volunteers. But Nilles also said he knows better than to discount Sanders’ grassroots operation, which he called “under the wire” and described as more stealth.
On Saturday night, Sanders laid out for his political foot soldiers what’s at stake.
“This is the political reality of the moment: We are taking on the entire political establishment — both the Republican establishment and the Democratic establishment. We are taking on Wall Street and the insurance companies and the drug companies and the fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex and the whole damn 1 percent!” Sanders shouted as the crowd drowned him out with applause. “We’re taking them all on.”
Sanders cautioned his backers to be vigilant and make sure their friends and family caucused. He predicted that if the state indeed experiences its largest voter turnout in history as predicted by some, “We’re going to win.”
Nilles, however, said Biden has shown far less in organizational muscle, trailing the other campaigns in Cedar Rapids, a city of more than 130,000 people.
The vice president’s campaign got a late start, he said, and its grassroots operation isn’t as widespread. Biden, however, will have the benefit of firefighters turning out to caucus sites for him across the state, thanks to the endorsement of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Still, there have been reports in recent days raising doubts about the strength of Biden’s campaign organization, including the suggestion from party officials that he’s short on precinct captains — the key volunteers who help organize on the campaign’s behalf at caucuses.
Asked if a lack of volunteers might hamper his turnout and chances of winning on Monday, Biden offered his trademark answer any time a potential weakness is raised: “Watch me.”