As Iowa Caucuses Draw Near, Chicago Campaign Volunteers Hope To Make Early Impact On 2020 Election

by Todd Feurer, CBS Chicago web producer

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CBS) -- Sunday is not just the biggest night of the year for the NFL and football fans, it's also a vitally important day for the candidates for president and their campaign volunteers, as it's one of the last chances to sway voters in Iowa, who will make the first official choices for who will face off against President Donald Trump in November.

Sam Roth and more than a dozen other students with the University of Chicago Democrats were in Iowa over the weekend to campaign for several of the Democrats seeking their party's nomination.

"Paul Tewes, who managed President Obama's Iowa caucus operation in 2008 told us in a student session last year that basically Iowa is the Super Bowl of politics, which is funny because today is Super Bowl Sunday," Roth said.

Roth, a graduate student, has volunteered on campaigns in Iowa before, and says more than in years past, Democratic voters seem focused not simply on which candidate best shares their views, but who can win the general election.

"You have to choose one candidate from your party to represent you in the general election, so there's always this consideration who's the most likely to win, but voters are thinking about that more than ever before, because Democratic voters are just so afraid of Trump winning again," Roth said. "There's much more concern about those things than I think there would be in another year."

Even though President Trump's impeachment trial won't have officially ended before the Iowa caucuses, and the 2020 election will undoubtedly be a national referendum on the president, Roth said Iowa voters have largely been focused on other matters.

"Most people on the ground are very disconnected from it [the impeachment]. So people are more interested in what's going on in their lives, and how the voting process is going to touch them after the next election. Obviously, if we get a new president, it won't be the issue. It will be what they're going to do about the day-to-day issues that they're facing," he said. "This weekend, I've heard about gun violence, I've heard about health care, I've heard about the environment, I've heard about corruption or frustration with the political system as a whole with the Democratic Party process."

Illinois won't cast its votes in the presidential race until March, so many campaign volunteers from Chicago see the Iowa caucuses as their opportunity to make an early impact on the 2020 elections.

"It feels like a place where we can make a real difference, and obviously the Iowa caucus is really important, and it's only three hours away," said Carrie Shemanski, a Chicagoan who was volunteering for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign in Iowa this weekend.

Even though Iowa has only 3 million people, and a voting population of about 2.3 million, it has an outsized impact on the race for president, as the first state in the nation to vote. As a result, Iowa tends to set the stage for the rest of the election, which proves appealing for many young campaign workers.

"I wanted to come out and talk to people who had a chance to make a huge difference," said University of Chicago student Daniel Green.

With Iowa using a caucus process to vote for candidates, with voters publicly showing their support for a candidate and trying to sway others to join them on Election Night, rather than a more traditional primary system with people casting secret ballots, campaign volunteers have the opportunity to make an impact even with voters who are already supporting a specific candidate.

"One thing that we have to do, is we have to be conscious of some people's first-choice candidates might not reach the viability threshold at a caucus location. So you need 15 percent of the people who show up to any one site in order for your candidate to get any of the votes from that site. So it matters who people's second choice is," Roth said.

Green, a native of Washington, D.C., said Iowa voters are not only friendly and willing to talk to campaign volunteers, but are engaged in the issues.

"I think the people of Iowa take their job really seriously," he said. "They're really passionate about their issues, and I think that's really important, and they do a good job of that."

Roth said voters in Iowa clearly appreciate being front-and-center at the start of the voting season in presidential races, and tend to welcome the opportunity to talk about the issues, even when someone doesn't have a lot in common with a particular candidate.

"People in Iowa are so used to this kind of door-to-door, intensive campaigning. They're used to retail politics from the presidential candidates. So people are very comfortable and familiar with talking about candidates and political views," Roth said.

Iowa voters will begin the caucuses Monday night at 7 p.m., and with at least 11 Democrats to choose from, it could be several hours after that before the nation finds out who won the first vote of 2020.

In:
• Iowa
• University of Chicago