Iowa Caucus Guy’s Presidential Election Blog

Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann made news in November when he said essentially we are looking forward to seeing everyone at the Caucuses, and you can support any candidate that you want as long as it's Trump. Kauffman's quotes over the last couple of years include "We love Donald Trump! And if you don't love him (Ben Sasse), I'd suggest you stay on your side of the Missouri River." and "Quite frankly, if Iowa wants to retain our first-in-the-nation caucus status we can't have people wandering off and supporting all these other fringe candidates." It's clear the chairman who has said he's 1000% behind Trump isn't looking for competition. However, even in November, he stopped short of cancelling the Straw Poll. Now, that California has made it known that they are holding a primary in March of 2020, all bets are off. Iowa is fiercely proud of it's first-in-the-nation status, and it is something that may even tru...

It's been two months since my last blog post about the election. We had just seen a flurry of potential candidates make trips to Iowa. Since then, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have visited, because when you are the 11th richest person in the world and have billions of dollars, time and means, there's no place you want to be in December than Iowa. A younger blogger me would have wrote posts about these visits, but let's be fair, there's a lot of candidates and a long ways to go. The Register lists 20 possible candidates, and that looks to be a good working number, but feels infinitely expanding. (I suspect 20 was arbitrarily selected as there is no Martin O'Malley, Terry McAullife, or Sheryl Sandberg to name but a few). The Register last week ran a front page story about the 50 Most Influential Democrats in the states, which seemed rather pointless (particularly at this point in the cycle), but g...