Iowa Caucus

The Iowa caucus shares with the New Hampshire Primary special status as the first major delegate-selection events in presidential election years. It ranks close to the first primary as the early maker or breaker of presidential aspirations. Yet the Iowa caucus is a relative newcomer to the important place it now holds in the nominating process.

The New Hampshire primary has been around since 1913, but the Iowa caucus as we know it today sprang from the new politics that captured the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The grass-roots activism of Iowa's precinct caucuses provided fertile ground for that new breed of politics.

For decades Iowans held precinct caucuses in January every four years to begin the process of selecting delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions. But in the old days the process was firmly in the hands of party regulars, pragmatic politicians who selected delegates to county conventions and therefore controlled eligibility for national convention delegates.

Sometimes these decisions would be made in the context of broader political deals between important state bosses and particular candidates. But often they would not have anything to do with a delegate's preference for the presidential nomination. The county convention delegates were expected to represent their localities; the job of choosing the nominee could be left to later convention delegates.

Rank-and-file voters were not involved. Typically, the county chair of a party would meet with a few political cronies to choose delegates to the county convention. Sometimes the local bosses did not even meet in caucus, because few party members were interested enough to attend. The leaders would simply run the requisite advance notice in the local newspaper, then meet amongst themselves to select county convention delegates.

All that changed with the Vietnam War. Angered and politically energized by the war in 1968, ordinary voters showed up in droves at precinct caucuses across the state. They overwhelmed the political bosses and sent their own antiwar delegates to the county conventions. Their champion was the antiwar insurgent Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota.

The politicians fought back at the county conventions and reclaimed the levers of power and decision making. But the die was cast. When Sen. George S. McGovern of South Dakota, another antiwar Democrat, headed up a commission to transform party rules for the 1972 campaign, he ensured that the bosses would never again dominate the process. The ensuing presidential selection reforms forced the regulars into retreat; the activists came into their own.

Thus was born the present-day Iowa caucus. What began as an outlet for Democratic Party activism soon became a testing ground for Republican presidential aspirants as well. Only the Democrats, however, protect the Iowa caucus's first-in-the-nation status. The Republican Party, with fewer restrictive rules generally, permits other states to hold earlier party caucuses. In 1996 the Iowa caucuses of both parties were held on February 12. But GOP caucuses had already taken place in Hawaii, Alaska, Louisiana, and Guam. In 2000 the January 24 Iowa caucus kicked off the presidential nominating process for both parties, although Republicans held their Alaska caucus the same day. Caucuses generally, however, have declined in number and prestige. Most national convention delegates are now chosen in primaries.

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