Hawaiians for Hillary...in Iowa
Claudia and Rob Host have taken their political devotion a step further than most, bidding aloha to Hawaii and moving thousands of miles to Iowa - just to live the caucus experience and get out the vote for Hillary Clinton.
"It is kind of a bucket list item in conjunction with the opportunity to support Hillary again," Rob says, explaining that they were both Clinton supporters in 2008.
Claudia and Rob changed their voter registration from Hawaii to Iowa, and already they talk fluently about the campaign's "ground game." They've taken note of Clinton's shift from doing smaller meet-and-greets to the larger events, and they watch for shifts in her messaging.
For instance, Claudia finds it interesting that Clinton is talking less about her granddaughter in her stump speeches than she did at the beginning of the campaign. Rob thinks he's seeing that Clinton is now really asking Iowans to vote and get involved in her campaign in a way that she hasn't before.
During lunch last Sunday, they began to plot out their week. Claudia's glasses fell low on her nose as she texted a Clinton organizer about working the phone banks.
Rob checked the Des Moines Register candidate tracker app for all of the candidates' stops - because, in addition to their Clinton advocacy, they are also driving around the state so that they can see all of the candidates, Republicans and Democrats alike.
Later in the day, they went to buy one item of clothing they never needed in Hawaii: long underwear. January in Des Moines is the coldest time of the year - usually between 14 and 24 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 78 degrees in Hawaii.
Monday brought a two-hour drive north to see Clinton speak at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.
Tuesday was their day to phone bank. Claudia uses a campaign flip phone because she says that most people don't pick up her Hawaii number with its (808) area code. Rob says that only about 15 percent of the calls go through. The rest don't pick up or he gets dead ends or wrong numbers. But they are never discouraged.
Claudia holds the phone with an aggressive grip as she makes calls and jumps to her feet when someone picks up. On Tuesday night, she called 99-year-old Viola Brown Allen, who thought Claudia was her niece, calling her to wish her a happy birthday. Still, she told Claudia she would caucus for Clinton.
"That was a good one," Claudia said as she hung up. Then she had an idea. "Do you think we call her back and sing Happy Birthday to her?" Claudia asked the Clinton organizer. "Whatever you think, Claudia," he said with a laugh. She then recruited all the phone bankers to call Allen back. They sang twice at Allen's request. Claudia was moved to tears.
Wednesday brings letter-writing responsibilities for Clinton.
"This is just perfect. Before this we knew nothing," Claudia said of the political process in Iowa.
The Hosts have liked the way Hillary Clinton talked about health care since she first ran in 2008. When Rob contracted melanoma while they were living in Hawaii, the couple relied on healthcare from their jobs. The Hosts had to put off retiring and moving to the mainland because they feared his preexisting condition would eliminate their chance of getting health care.
The Affordable Care Act changed that.
"Even though they call it Obamacare and we are grateful for the ACA coming into effect, in our minds Hillary is the one that really put it on the table when she was first lady," Rob explained. And they told Clinton so when they met her for the first time in Ames, Iowa, in July.
Originally from New York and Los Angeles, the Hosts lived in six different states. She was a nurse, and he sold Johnny Rockets franchises before they bought the "Sea Host," a 44-ft sailboat they could sail down to the Caribbean and South America.
"I wasn't that political until I got on the boat and saw the U.S. from a different perspective," Rob says of the sailboat that they ended up living on for almost a decade.
In harbors and in small towns across South America, they swapped stories with people from all over the world. They were on their boat when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. They were also on the boat when the U.S. invaded Iraq. That was the day they were going to pick up their renewed passports at the American consulate in Quito, Ecuador.
Tanks were parked in front of the building while law enforcement officials tried to control the protests. The Hosts weren't allowed into the consulate.
"The guard lifted his gas mask and said, 'Bush bombed Iraq.' That is how we found out - we were staying on the boat and in hostels. They don't have TVs," Claudia explained.
Being at sea for all those years changed the way they viewed the U.S. Rob says income inequality, the tenet of Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign, is his own main focus.
The Hosts have seen the Sanders crowds in Iowa grow from a few hundred to a few thousand. The Sanders voters they've met seem energetic and passionate to them. One of them is Claudia's new dentist.
"Don't you feel the Bern? Don't you want to come over to the Bernie side?" the dentist asked Claudia when they ran into her at a Sanders event.
Claudia and Rob marvel at how much politics comes up in Iowa. Even at the doctor's office, strangers ask who they're voting for. "That would never happen anywhere else!" Rob exclaims.
Would they be disappointed if Clinton loses in Iowa? "Yes," they told me in unison.
The Hosts have also been saving all kinds of paraphernalia from their time in Iowa- they even have Trump bumper stickers, anything they can save to remind them of this experience. "This is my political year," Claudia says.
The Hosts had planned to stay in Iowa through the caucuses in February and then head to Thailand. Now, though, they may stay through the general election, since Iowa could go either way.
"I want my vote to matter," Claudia says.