Members of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Caucus Committee drafted potential changes to the 2020 caucuses earlier this month.
By Madeleine Neal
For some Iowa Democrats, hindsight is 2020.
By 2020, nonpresent participation may shift the long-kept requirement of physically attending a Democratic caucus, officials said. Some Democrats hope that change may bring more blue to the state.
Mail-in ballots are a new suggestion being discussed for the next Democratic caucuses, said Trent Seubert, a precinct captain for 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“Keep the actual day of the caucuses to allow for the debate, party building, and just general feel and process the same,” Seubert said. “But allow the mailing in of ballots the week leading up so people can still vote without being impacted by jobs, school, weather, anything.”
But when it comes to winning elections, Seubert said, he thinks it will take better candidates for Democrats to take back Iowa.
“A lot of the candidates since 2014 have been a lot of ones that were either uninspiring or lost to the same person the election prior,” he said. “Stay strong on the message and how our policies will benefit each family. Have conversation with people all across the state and remove the ‘stigma’ around being a Democrat that for some reasons seems to exist in rural places.”
Dave Nagle, a former representative from Iowa’s 3rd District and current chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Caucus Review Committee, recommended similar changes to the 2020 caucuses earlier this month.
“We’re under a lot of pressure from the [Democratic National Committee’s] unity commission that we’ve got to increase participation,” Nagle told the Des Moines Register.
Nagle also told the Register that 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters, who are convinced that Sanders would have won the 2016 election if the second-shift workers who had supported Sanders had been able to get to the caucus sites, are exuding pressure on Democratic leaders.
Zach Meunier, the campaign manager for Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, said Loebsack is interested in seeing suggestions to improve the caucuses.
“Dave [Loebsack] was pleased to see folks get together to make the caucus process as open and transparent as possible,” Meunier wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan. “He is looking forward to seeing the details of the proposals that are out there.”
Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, said he knows how seriously Iowans take the start of the presidential nomination process.
“The caucuses allow candidates to compete in a state where grass-roots politics and citizen participation is still possible and expected,” Hogg said in an email to the DI.
