Democrats get fair dinkum in race for presidential nomination

The Iowa State Fair signals the race is on for the party’s presidential hopefuls.

Pete Buttigieg speaks in Tipton, Iowa. Picture: Scott Morgan

South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, one of the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination, is moving through the crowd at the Iowa State Fair surrounded by a scrum of television cameras and reporters.

“Go Pete,” shouts Emily Newton, a mother of two who lurches forward to shake the candidate’s hand. “You are genuine and you speak from the heart,” she tells him.

The 37-year-old Buttigieg smiles and pushes his way towards the Iowa Pork tent, where he will flip giant pork chops alongside a young woman wearing a crown and a sash stating she is the “Iowa Pork Queen”.

For the next three hours Buttigieg keeps a fixed grin as he carries out one of the more bizarre rituals of the US presidential campaign. In blazing heat, he walks through the fairgrounds greeting people, many of whom don’t know who he is, while variously eating a pork chop, a bacon ball and fried Oreo cookies. He takes a ride on the giant slide and visits the famed Butter Cow — a life-size cow made entirely of butter. Every moment and every word is recorded by more than a dozen cameras.

Buttigieg flips pork chops the newly crowned Iowa Pork Queen at the state fair. Picture: Cameron Stewart

Fellow Democratic frontrunners Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris went through virtually the same ritual at the fair several days earlier. In 2015, Don­ald Trump famously buzzed the fairgrounds in his helicopter while his rival Hillary Clinton was giving a speech there.

In fact almost all of the 24 Democratic presidential candidates have visited this famous state fair in the past week to impress the people of Iowa who, on February 4, will cast the nation’s first votes in the Democratic presidential primaries.

The candidate who wins Iowa often goes on to win the nomination and any candidate who fails to finish in the top three rarely recovers. Barack Obama overcame a double-digit deficit in national polls after winning in Iowa in early 2008, a victory that propelled him to the nomination and then the presidency.

Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden has described Iowa as crucial to the nomination, saying it holds “the keys to the kingdom”.

The state fair in Des Moines marks the unofficial start of the Democratic presidential race — a six-month sprint to the so-called Iowa caucus on February 4, to be followed in quick succession by primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

During the past two weeks all of the leading Democrats have been crisscrossing this conservative rural farming state to argue why the party should choose them to challenge Trump in next year’s presidential election.

Biden spent four days touring Iowa — a visit that began with a stirring speech about saving “the soul of America” from Trump and ended with a series of gaffes that once again raised questions about whether the 76-year-old was up to it. Biden said in a speech that “poor kids” were “just as talented as white kids” before he corrected himself to say “wealthy kids”. He also wrongly claimed that when he was vice-president he had met students who had survived last year’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people died — a massacre that took place more than a year after he had left office.

Then in a speech on the soapbox at the state fair, Biden bungled his lines, saying “we choose truth over facts”. Trump immediately jumped on the gaffes to fuel his claim that Biden is too old for the job. “Joe is not playing with a full deck,” said Trump. “This is not somebody you can have as your president.”

Biden has a smaller lead in Iowa than he does nationally and has fared poorly here previously, polling less than 1 per cent when he ran for president in 2008.

Polls currently have Biden leading in Iowa with 25.3 per cent support from registered Democrats — five points lower than his national support of 30.4 per cent, a fact partly explained by the relative lack of African-Americans in Iowa, a group that strongly supports Biden.

Polls show that in Iowa, Warren is polling second with 16.3 per cent followed by 14.3 per cent for Harris, 12.3 per cent for Bernie Sanders and 7 per cent for Buttig­ieg. None of the other 20 Democratic candidates is polling higher than 3 per cent.

For many of these 20 other candidates the campaign blitz through Iowa is a matter of survival. Within months it is expected that many of these lesser-known candidates will be forced to withdraw as they run out of money.

Of more immediate concern is their ability to qualify for the next Democratic presidential debates on September 12 and 13. The lower-tiered candidates are desperately trying to meet the requirements that they have 2 per cent of voter support and donations from at least 130,000 people — a threshold set by the Democratic National Committee — to qualify for the next debate.

Any candidate who fails to qualify for the televised debate is unlikely to survive in the race.

So far, only nine of the 24 candidates — Biden, Warren, Harris, Sanders, Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang — have qualified.

In Iowa, Warren’s visit garnered the most headlines and the largest crowds, further evidence that her highly organised, policy-heavy campaign is making inroads among Democrats in the state.

Warren’s speech on the soapbox at the state fair drew chants of “two cents, two cents” from the crowd, a reference to her call for a 2 per cent wealth tax on America’s ultra-wealthy.

Warren was mobbed by large crowds wherever she went, including by one woman who asked her to sign a copy of the report of special counsel Robert Mueller. “I read this report,” Warren wrote alongside her signature.

Californian senator Harris also drove across Iowa for five days in a bus emblazoned with a giant KAMALA in an attempt to garner attention in a state where she was a virtual unknown until several months ago.

Her campaign bus carried cookies in the shape of Iowa with “Kamala” written on them.

“There are people in this race that have had national profiles for many years,” Harris said. “I’m still introducing myself to people.”

Harris’s campaign has 50 full-time staff in Iowa across seven off­ices, similar to the resources being poured into the state by the other frontrunners.

Harris has pitched herself in Iowa as the middle ground between the far-left views of Warren and Sanders and their Medicare-for-all stance and the more moderate centrist policies adopted by Biden. “I can also flip Republicans,” Harris quipped as she tossed pork chops with a spatula at the fair.

So far Sanders has been less well received in Iowa than other Democratic frontrunners and is running fourth in a state where he almost toppled Clinton in 2016.

Sanders, who dislikes mingling with people, strode through the state fair eating corn dogs and other fried foods but did little more than wave to people. His strength as a campaigner is delivering firebrand speeches to sell his left-wing agenda but, unlike in 2016, Sanders now faces a raft of progressive liberal rivals, most notably Warren, vying for the same voters.

Apart from Warren, the candidate who generated the most buzz in Iowa this week was Buttigieg, the gay former military combat veteran and South Bend mayor.

Inquirer followed Buttigieg across Iowa this week as he made his pitch to voters on a progressive policy platform that includes gun reform, Medicare for all, a higher minimum wage, cancellation of some student debt and more aggressive climate change policies.

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“I really like Pete and we want to hear his plan for rural America so I thought I would come along today and listen,” says 39-year-old Rach­el Antonuccio as she cradles her four-month-old baby, Nina, in the small farming community of Tipton in eastern Iowa.

Buttigieg arrives on the stage at the Tipton showgrounds to loud cheers from about 400 Iowans who have come to this remote location to hear him talk. Some are unabashed fans of Buttigieg, but most appear to have come along to learn more about this candidate who emerged from obscurity this year after several breakout television appearances.

“We are lucky in Iowa because we get to see all the candidates and decide who we want,” says Antonuccio, a public defender.

Rachel Antonuccio and baby Nina at the event. Picture: Scott Morgan

“I still haven’t decided who I will vote for. I think Pete is where we are but I also like Elizabeth Warren and I like (businessman) Andrew Yang, even though he is not going anywhere.”

Standing nearby waiting for Buttigieg to take the stage is local truck driver Jim Mills and wife Adrienne, who arrived holding a piece of cardboard with nine anti-Trump badges attached to it.

“I am here to hear what Buttig­ieg’s stance is on immigration and gun laws,” says Jim Mills, who was a Republican voter until the day ­George W. Bush invaded Iraq.

Jim and Adrienne Mills just want someone to defeat Donald Trump. Picture: Scott Morgan

“But I am leaning towards Biden only because he is the most likely person to beat Trump, in my opinion.”

Standing under a nearby tree, Chris McCleary says he has yet to decide which candidate he will vote for. “I am keeping an open mind but I think we need a candidate who is going to shake the status quo,” says the 35-year-old, who owns a construction company.

“We need to vote for real change this time,” he adds, citing Warren, Harris and Buttigieg as the sort of candidates who could deliver that change. “I am scared for this country if Trump gets another term. Our country is divided like never before and so many people, minorities especially, no longer feel safe here.”

After greeting Buttigieg with cheers, the crowd listens in silence as he delivers an upbeat stump speech devoid of detail about his promise to deliver a safer, fairer, more decent and more prosperous America.

“We see demonisation of immigrants who are our friends and who fuel our economies especially in rural parts of the country,” Buttigieg tells them.

A crowd in Tipton listens as Buttigieg makes his case. Picture: Scott Morgan

“This generation is the first in American history that is headed to doing worse economically than our parents, which is why we need to do something different.”

At the Iowa State Fair the previous day, 27-year-old Caitlyn Reinders has just watched Buttig­ieg cast his “vote” by placing a corn kernel in a glass jar with his name in it. It’s a hokey unscientific poll that is highly popular with fair­goers, who queue up to drop a kernel into the jar of their favourite candidate.

When it comes to her turn to cast her kernel, Reinders looks across the 24 glass jars ranging from near-full ones for Warren, Sanders, Biden and Buttigieg to almost empty ones for candidates such as New York mayor Bill Blasio. “I like Pete and I like Beto,” says Reinders, who works with a local Lutheran church. But eventually she drops the kernel into the Harris jar. “Harris has shown the most strength and the most fight of all of them. But who knows, I might change my mind before February.”

For the next six months the Democratic contenders will dedicate themselves to changing the mind of voters such as Reinders, knowing victory in Iowa offers them their best chance to win the right to challenge Trump for the White House.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.