On Friday afternoon, Sean Bagniewski, the chair of the Polk County Democrats, paced the grassy sprawl of the Water Works Park, in Des Moines, in anticipation of his party’s famed steak fry. His volunteers had sold more than twelve thousand tickets, surpassing their record, from 2007, when Barack Obama arrived at the annual event with a local drum line and more than a thousand supporters chanting “Fired up, ready to go!” (His former Vice-President has since adopted a version of the slogan with the last word changed to “Joe.”) “That was a big deal,” Bagniewski recalled, of Obama’s operation. “It gave people permission to think he was their guy. Everybody’s looking for that kind of a moment.” This year, seventeen of the remaining Democratic candidates were slated to speak—the entire field, with the exception of John Delaney, whose daughter’s wedding happened to fall on the same day. By Wednesday, organizers for most of the front-runners had already staked out territory across the park. A few of them conducted test runs of their entries, some of which would involve step teams and marching bands. Bagniewski suggested, though he couldn’t confirm, that I might see a blimp. “People are calling this the Coachella of the caucuses,” he told me. “Some kid said that on Twitter, and we’ve been using it ever since.”
Part of the significance of the steak fry, which ranks among the largest events on Iowa’s primary calendar, is that it approximates the mob mentality of the caucuses themselves. On caucus night, Iowans crane to see where their neighbors congregate; at the steak fry, they pay attention to which candidates have the largest crowds, the snappiest chants, the best signs, the longest march lines, and the loudest applause. In previous years, Bagniewski has learned “the hard way” to expect right-wing demonstrators as well. Earlier this summer, Trump’s Iowa spokesperson, Tana Goertz, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” tried to book part of the park to protest the “Democratic circus.” Bagniewski, who had rented out the entirety of the venue eleven months earlier, outmaneuvered them. The Trump contingent, he told me on Friday, would be “way over by Gray’s Lake,” more than a mile down the road. “Bless their hearts.”
In the lead-up to the event, Cory Booker’s volunteers scouted out space for a stage. Kamala Harris’s people claimed a tract by the main entrance, and Beto O’Rourke’s team, who planned to camp out, constructed a raft to float onto the gray water beside the grounds. No campaign had permission to advertise outside its designated territory until five o’clock on the evening before the fry, when, as is tradition, Bagniewski assembled the campaign volunteers for “Sign Wars.” Hundreds of organizers lined up, like grade-schoolers at a field-day race. At the sound of a whistle, they swarmed the gates and walkways, leaving behind miles of signage on the roads leading into the grounds. “I need a zip tie!” one organizer could be heard screaming near a stretch of chain-link fence. Bernie Sanders’s camp was one of the few to refrain from the display; instead, they left a white door at their volunteer stall: “Out door-knocking—be back later!”
The candidates themselves had other plans. That evening, ten of them were in Cedar Rapids for a forum focussed on the interests of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. The event’s host, Angelica Ross, of the FX series “Pose,” framed the night as a sort of reality show, welcoming attendees to the first-caucus state, where “the road to the White House will begin for one of these candidates.” Karamo Brown, of “Queer Eye,” made a surprise appearance, to urge the L.G.B.T.Q. community, the black community, and “those Americans like me, who live at the intersection,” not to be silent. “We need to be loud and proud,” he told the crowd. The Democratic hopefuls had ten minutes each. Joe Biden, replying to a female moderator who pressed him on his record—including past votes for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and for the Defense of Marriage Act—called her, quite dryly, “a very lovely person.” Marianne Williamson defended controversial passages of her book “A Return to Love,” in which she describes AIDS and other serious illnesses as “physical manifestations of a psychic scream.” Booker hoisted his moderator, Zach Stafford, off the floor in a bear hug. “A man picked me up on national television,” Stafford said. “That’s a first.”
The forum managed to produce its share of moving moments, too. Elizabeth Warren responded to the opening question asked of every candidate—what should L.G.B.T.Q. Americans expect from your first hundred days in office?—by producing a handwritten list of the names of the eighteen transgender women of color who have been murdered so far this year. “It is time for a President of the United States of America to say their names,” she said, before affirming her intent to end the epidemic. Pete Buttigieg fielded an early question about federal restrictions that prohibit men who have sex with men from donating blood. As the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg recalled, he wasn’t able to partake in a blood drive sponsored by his own office. “We still do it, and it’s a good thing, but it’s one of many examples of the exclusions that continue in this country,” he said. Later, as Buttigieg left the venue through a back door, he planted a kiss on the cheek of his husband, Chasten Glezman. Outside, a young student stopped the couple for a photograph and then confided to them about the cruelty of some of his classmates. Glezman, who teaches drama at a junior high school in South Bend, told him, “I know it can be very tough. I always find that the majority of things kids say at that age, they’re saying about themselves, not about you.”
After their panel appearances, a few candidates welcomed more questions from the press backstage. Since the end of June, the top ten contenders have spent more than twice as much money on Facebook advertisements in Iowa than in any of the other early-voting states. Harris’s campaign, in particular, has poured more than a hundred thousand dollars into Facebook ads targeting Iowans. (By contrast, she has spent less than three thousand dollars targeting voters in New Hampshire.) One of the reporters brought up a recent comment that Harris had made to a colleague, Senator Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii: “I’m fucking moving to Iowa,” Harris had joked, unaware that a reporter was in earshot. After the reporter posted the quip to Twitter, Harris’s campaign embraced it as an occasion to announce the candidate’s commitment to the first-caucus state. She plans to double the size of her sixty-five-person ground operation and make weekly visits through Halloween.
Another reporter asked Booker, who has struggled more than Harris to gain traction in the polls, whether he ought to adopt a similar strategy. “Our strategy from Day One has been winning Iowa,” Booker insisted, adding that the “experience we’ve had so far encourages us to know—not to believe, but to know—that we are making progress toward winning the state.” The next morning, shortly before the steak fry, Booker’s campaign manager released a memo addressed to “supporters who like Cory but have been waiting to contribute because of an assumption that they can wait until later.” According to the campaign’s calculations, Booker needed to raise an additional $1.7 million by September 30th in order to “be in a position to build the organization necessary to continue competing for the nomination.” The disclosure was worded less as an ultimatum than as an act of vulnerability. “This isn’t an end-of-quarter stunt or another one of those memos from a campaign trying to spin the press,” the release said. “This is a real, unvarnished look under the hood of our operation at a level of transparency unprecedented in modern presidential campaigns.”
In Iowa, where candidates court residents unrelentingly, caucusgoers have the luxury of waiting to commit until they have seen their politicians in person, often several times—at the corn feed, the state fair, the Wing Ding. The steak fry, one of the last statewide events, inaugurates a new phase of the race, attracting less politically active Iowans in addition to the die-hards. “Two hundred and forty thousand people”—the caucus turnout in 2008, though some Party officials expect more this year—“aren’t reading Politico every day,” Troy Price, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, told me. “They’re not reading the political section of the Des Moines Register every day. They’re not digging deep and studying the candidates because the election isn’t for another four and a half months.” This weekend, he added, was a chance for candidates to reach a new segment of potential caucusgoers. “Spring is trying to get the groundwork together,” Price said. “Summer is where you start using the groundwork to build upon. Now is when you should have the operation in place to flex your muscle a little bit.”
On an overcast Saturday morning, the candidates arrived in a series of processions, each of which ended with candidates planted beside a grill and draped in blue aprons. Julián Castro led in a mariachi band. Harris grooved along with a step team, the Isiserettes, as they overtook the lawn. Biden brought both an ice-cream truck and a fire truck. A gigantic gavel lurched behind Michael Bennet, who plans to “pound some truth into the campaign.” Buttigieg had imported a marching band from South Bend. By noon, a crowd gathered around the main stage, which volunteers had stacked with pumpkins and bales of hay. Viewed from the press riser, the gathering was a sea of color; the bold gold of Buttigieg’s camp leached into the dandelion yellow of Harris’s faction and the pale green of Warren’s. Attendees slung ponchos and hoodies on the backs of yard chairs. Some sprawled out on towels. Others removed their shoes. A father with Biden flash tattoos on his cheeks double-fisted cans of beer. Everywhere hungry Iowans worked at tough servings of steak with plastic silverware.
Perhaps the most enthusiastic reception, during the stump speeches, went to Buttigieg, who mounted the stage to a steady chant of “Pete.” Warren, too, commanded an outpouring of support, despite the fact that her campaign had not arranged a grand entrance. (Her organizers had instead conducted a training session with volunteers, whom they dispatched into the field to mingle with caucusgoers.) Warren’s first appearance was at the lectern. As she outlined her Ultra-Millionaire Tax, a pair of supporters clad in penny costumes gyrated by the side of the stage. “Two cents on the top one-tenth of one per cent—what can we do with that?” Warren asked the crowd. “We can provide universal child care and pre-K, raise wages for child-care providers and pre-K teachers, make college free for anyone who wants to go, and we can cancel student debt for up to ninety-five per cent of people. We can do all of that for two cents on the dollar.” As she left the stage, dozens of people, including Castro, scuttled off to join her selfie line.
Earlier that week, Bagniewski’s toddler had drawn slips from a bucket to set the speaking order. Most of the front-runners ended up speaking first. By the time Tulsi Gabbard took the stage, around 4 P.M., the grill was empty and the buffet tables unmanned. A light drizzle had prompted some audience members to take off, though Gabbard dismissed it. “In Hawaii, when we get these little gentle showers, we consider them blessings,” she said. (Gabbard, who failed to make the September debate, qualified, on Tuesday, to appear on next month’s stage.) The drizzle soon solidified into a downpour. In the porta-potties that surrounded the grounds, some had reportedly resorted to using corners of campaign signs as toilet paper. Only the most faithful attendees stuck around for Tim Ryan, who spoke last, under an umbrella held by a state representative, while the weather worsened, as if to winnow the field.
A few hours after the park grounds had emptied, J. Ann Selzer, Iowa’s legendary pollster, released the results of a new survey. Selzer first rose to national prominence in 2008, when she predicted that Obama would overtake Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, in part, by inspiring an unprecedented number of first-time caucus goers. Clinton’s staff criticized her, but Selzer proved correct: Obama won by eight points, and that year marked the highest caucus turnout in history. On Saturday night, Selzer reported that, for the first time, Warren had the lead in Iowa, with twenty-two per cent of the vote, taking a two-point lead over Biden. Her findings marked a notable reordering of the Democratic field; among other things, Biden’s unfavorability rating, the same poll revealed, has doubled since March. Sanders, at eleven per cent, remained in third place. None of the other candidates cleared double digits. Selzer described it as “the first major shakeup” in a heretofore steady race, though she also pointed to the majority of respondents—sixty-three per cent—who indicated that their minds could be swayed. “The data in this poll seem to suggest the field is narrowing, but my sense is there’s still opportunity aplenty,” Selzer said. “The leaders aren’t all that strong. The universe is not locked in.”
