Iowa Dispatch - Caucus Day

Diners, Dives, and Don Jr.

Our Monday started with an early visit back to the Drake Diner, where Nikki Haley stopped in to say a quick hello to diners and then bolted out of there. Asa Hutchinson then stopped in and worked the room for over an hour. I give him credit for being incredibly congenial in the face of very long odds.

We then had the privilege of being joined by NPR’s Don Gonyea for breakfast. He had all sorts of stories to tell about covering the caucuses, being embedded in presidential campaigns, and more. Rachel Paine Caufield of Drake University, who graciously helped arrange our visit and who has forgotten more about the Iowa caucuses than I’ll ever know, joined us for a while, too.

Oh, were you watching CNN Monday morning? They were filming in the Mars Cafe and we were wandering around in the background. Dana Bash and Jeff Zeleny came over to meet with some of the students.

And then it was caucus time! We observed the caucuses at Franklin Junior High in Des Moines — five different precincts were meeting there, and a number of candidates and reporters descended on that one. Hans Noel and his Georgetown students also observed with us. Donald Trump, Jr., came in to speak on behalf of his dad, and Nikki Haley spoke on behalf of herself. Several very inexperienced public speakers spoke on behalf of Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy. There was very much an “only in Iowa” feel to it, with a range of amateurs and pros, people trying to figure out voting and counting rules, the microphones working intermittently, a Trump fan repeatedly yelling “bullshit” at the DeSantis surrogate, etc. My students got a real show.

Unlike the Democratic caucuses, which involve multiple alignments and people negotiating with each other, Republican caucus voting is pretty quick. People write their candidate preference on a slip of paper, and those figures are tallied up at a table for all to see. My students’ impressions of this process ranged from finding it charmingly personal and community-based and also saying “That was it?”.

And then it was off to the Vivek Ramaswamy Raucous Caucus. Confession — it’s been a lifelong dream to be at a post Iowa Caucus event where a candidate drops out and endorses another. I lived that dream.