Iowa Democrats plot 2028 comeback for caucuses

• Iowa's caucuses have propelled many candidates to the Democratic nomination, including Barack Obama, John Kerry and Jimmy Carter.
• But then-President Biden pushed Iowa back on the Democrats' calendar in 2024 and moved up South Carolina, which had sprung him to the 2020 nomination.
• The fight over Iowa's place on the calendar will provoke arguments involving race, whether the state party can recover from mishandling its 2020 caucuses, and whether Biden's preferences should remain.

Driving the news: Iowa state Rep. J. D. Scholten, who launched a campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst last month, told Axios he wants to see the early Iowa caucuses restored.

• "The beauty of the Iowa caucus is it allows anybody with the right messaging and a good and strong team to win," Scholten said. "As a party we need to be expanding the map, and if you look at the Midwest states, we aren't doing better in places like Iowa."
• Defenders of Iowa's caucuses say the in-person, on-the-ground campaigning that Iowa's system demands are testing grounds for candidates and don't allow those with the most money to simply steamroll their competition.

Brian Meyer, the Democratic leader of the Iowa State Assembly, told his local PBS affiliate recently that "we need to bring back the caucuses."

• "Iowa is the best place to sort out the wheat from the chaff and get us back to where we need to be as a party on the national level," he said. "We on the national level are missing the Midwest common sense that Iowa has brought to those caucuses."
• Meyer and Scholten are saying publicly what Iowa Democrats have been whispering since the party lost big last November.

What's next: Some Iowa Democrats are arguing for their state party to go first in primary season — no matter what the DNC does — because Republicans are set to hold their Iowa caucuses anyway. The Iowa Democrats don't want to cede the national media limelight to the GOP.

• Those Democrats note that New Hampshire decided to go first against the party's wishes in 2024 and that the DNC — which had threatened not to seat the state's national convention delegates as a consequence — allowed the delegates to be seated anyway.

Some potential 2028 Democratic candidates already are sensing that Iowa will be a significant factor again in 2028.

• In May, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg held a town hall in Iowa that focused on veterans. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz visited the state in March.
• Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to headline an Iowa fish fry in September, and Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego will visit the Hawkeye State in August.

Between the lines: Many Democrats have argued that Iowa should not go first because the state is more than 80% white and isn't a good representative of the party's diversity.

• Most Democrats have won the party's nomination by winning Black voters, especially across the South.

But some Democrats think the argument against Iowa going first unnecessarily limits the party.

• David Axelrod, who helped lead Obama's upset victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, said that "Iowa made the Obama story possible. So I find it ironic when I hear people suggest that the state's relative lack of diversity should exclude it."
• "I also think that if Democrats are going to win nationally, they had better figure out how to win beyond the 10% of [U.S.] counties Kamala Harris won in 2024."
• Iowa's Democratic Party chair, Rita Hart, added: "National Democrats let Trump get a head start in the 2024 campaign by excluding Iowa. We simply can't afford to be ignored again."

Flashback: When Biden stripped Iowa of being first on the 2024 primary calendar and moved up South Carolina, his team publicly argued that its motive was to uplift Black voters, who usually account for more than half of the state's Democratic primary electorate.

• But Biden aides privately acknowledged the main motivation was to help him avoid a potential challenger. In the early contests in 2020, Biden had finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire.
• "I do expect to have tough and direct conversations with the DNC regarding our Iowa caucuses, and the serious concerns surrounding the Biden 2024 calendar," Hart told Axios.

DNC spokesperson Abhi Rahman said the party "is committed to running a fair, transparent and rigorous process for the 2028 primary calendar."