| When caucus results don't wind up very much like pre-Iowa caucus polls, a lot of non-Iowans get confused about that. There's an easy two-word answer: precinct captains.
The final results in Iowa are influenced more by precinct captains than by the quality of TV ads, the amount of mail caucus attendees receive, the number of turnout calls caucus attendees receive from paid phone banks in D.C. or even volunteer phone bankers in the campaigns central HQ in Des Moines. Precinct captains are the heart and soul of the Iowa precinct caucuses.
The reason why these captains are so important is the nature of those caucus meetings themselves. The participants don't drop by a polling place whenever it's convenient throughout the day to do a quick secret ballot that lasts a few short minutes. Caucuses are a two-hour long, highly social, highly interactive process, one that gets played out in public in front of your neighbors. Taking two hours out of your day at an exact-assigned time takes a pre-arranged juggling of your normal schedule, dealing with your kids and other family members, maybe taking time off from work or leaving early. Once you get there at all, it's a process where you have to make decisions as to where to stand, where to move to if your first choice doesn't get 15%, whether to run for delegate, and who else to support for the other delegate slots your candidate has allocated to his campaign.
Without strong precinct captains, a campaign in this environment is screwed. The precinct captain's job responsibilities include:
-Getting all known supporters in the precinct to show up on the night of the caucus
-Getting there early and making sure your supporters are greeted and accounted for when they first come in
-Making sure that when the time comes to caucus for candidates, that your people aren't being talked into going to another camp because a friend is over there, or that you aren't missing people who are going to the bathroom or out smoking
-Once your viability is determined (you have to get 15%), you have to start working all the unviable candidates' groups, and all the folks who went to the undecided corner in round one. (That process, by the way, is very political, because everybody in those not-viable groups is being courted by all the viable campaigns. You have to be good, and agile, at cutting deals with the people who want to be elected as a delegate to county convention, and you have to be really persuasive, more persuasive than every other campaign's precinct captains).
In a race with 8 candidates, plus the undecided option, there are going to be a lot of folks who will have to make a second choice, so your precinct captain has to be good at wheeling and dealing, cutting deals and persuasion. If that captain is inexperienced, or just not very good, the other campaigns will pick up a lot of votes.
Everybody talks about the surge that Kerry and Edwards had at the end in January 2004, and it's true that they both got hot at the end while Dean was taking on a little water. But both the Kerry and Edwards campaigns had brilliant Iowa organizers (Michael Whouley and John Norris for Kerry, and John Lapp for Edwards) whose leaders understood the importance of precinct captains, and their network of captains was just deeper, stronger and more experienced than Dean's. It made a huge difference at the end.
I'm not sure yet who the precinct captain factor will benefit the most this time around. Edwards has a built-in network from last time, and that's a big advantage, but both Clinton and Obama have deep, smart teams who understand how the caucuses work extremely well, and are building strong cadres of precinct captains.
One final note: one thing I do know is that the Iowa caucus system is great for both the state Democratic Party, and for making the party more progressive. Having well-trained, savvy precinct captains in 2,500 Iowa precincts has made the Iowa party consistently one of the strongest (much of the time the strongest) in the country for at least a quarter century. And it helps progressive because it's hard to recruit good precinct captains if you aren't pretty damned progressive on the issues as a candidate. The Iowa caucuses have done-in a ton of conservative Democrats since 1984, including John Glenn, Ernest Hollings, Reuben Askew, Bruce Babbitt, Al Gore (circa 1988, when he was the most conservative candidate in the race) and Joe Lieberman.
I'd love to know what the Iowans, and those with Iowa caucus experience, who are reading this think is going on in terms of precinct captain recruitment. And I'd love to know in general how people think the dynamics of this race will affect the recruitment of these captains. Post in the comments below, and if you're on the ground in Iowa, send me an e-mail at openleft at gmail dot com. |
