The Best Iowa Caucus Story Ever Written — A Look Back

The ritual had become exhausting. Wake up, head to our run-down Iowa headquarters (that has since been demolished), log into my desktop computer, check the Dean fundraising bat, make calls, check the Dean fundraising bat, go to lunch, attend a scheduling meeting, check the Dean fundraising bat, make more calls and then check the Dean bat before heading home.

I was not alone. This was a pretty typical routine for many of the Edwards 2004 presidential campaign staff during the summer of 2003 — aka Howard Dean’s “Sleepless Summer Tour.” Dean’s campaign was on fire. His anti-Iraq message was clicking, his anti-Bush rhetoric was exciting the base, his crowds were huge and his online fundraising was revolutionary. It seemed like every day his campaign would set out to raise another million bucks by putting up a baseball bat thermometer on his website and the other campaigns would watch as they would inevitably hit their goal by mid-afternoon. Meanwhile, Edwards campaign staffers were told to take our trash home in the trunk of our cars because we couldn’t afford garbage service.

The summer of 2003 was a humbling experience, but we knew our campaign field team was talented and deep, led by the celery chomping, intimidating and brilliant Jen O’Malley (we are good friends now so she no longer intimidates me, most of the time). Our organization was a well-oiled machine that could get 75 people to show up for John Edwards in rural Iowa at a time when he lagged in single digits in the polls and a small percentage of folks who showed up at the event thought they were coming to see a popular psychic also named John Edwards.

In addition to the crowds and piles of money, Dean’s campaign prided themselves on being innovative and relying on Meetup, a new, online organizing tool that would allow activists to organize events online. Meetup was supposed to be a game-changer, and conventional wisdom quickly became that the Dean organization was far superior to the rest of the field.

December 5th, 2003 changed everything — at least for me — when then-Chicago Tribune reporter Jeff Zeleny wrote a story titled “Dean’s people call Meetup, but few show; Campaign hiccup called a dry run for the Iowa caucus.”

The first three graphs of the story read:

“The promise on Howard Dean’s Web site was clear: ‘Meetup in all 99 of Iowa’s counties.’ On Wednesday night, nearly 1,500 Iowans were to gather across the state, from P.H.A.T. Daddy’s in Marengo to the Farmer’s Kitchen here in Atlantic, to demonstrate the organizational muscle of their favorite presidential candidate.

“It was to be an impressive display of how the former Vermont governor has transformed the way people run for the White House by using the Internet not only to raise record amounts of campaign money, but also to recruit supporters whose feelings run deep enough to turn out on a cold January night to participate in the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.

“But in this western Iowa farm town, there was a hitch: Despite the Dean campaign’s bold promise, no one in Atlantic knew to meet up.”

Wait, what? NOBODY showed up? Actually, not only did nobody show up, but the owner of Farmer’s Kitchen didn’t even know the Meetup was taking place!

Zeleny and a team of Tribune reporters wanted to see for themselves the strength of the Dean rocket ship, and defying all conventional wisdom, Zeleny brilliantly noted:

“The gap between the campaign’s organizational boasts and the reality of its Meetup attendance this week illustrates the central challenge facing Dean less than seven weeks before the Jan. 19 caucuses. It also underscores the point, which the campaign readily acknowledges, that an election cannot be won by technology alone.”

Before Twitter and Facebook we had email, and I emailed Zeleny’s story to everyone I knew. For me, it was less about the Dean campaign and more of a validation of the tactics we were using on the Edwards campaign. Jen understood caucus organizing can’t be outsourced to an online platform and she forced our team to keep our noses down, keep making calls, continue having one-on-one meetings, and the results will come.

Today is no different. Yes, social media matters and it can’t be ignored, but nothing can beat a verbal commitment by an Iowan to a campaign organizer that he or she will put on a jacket, hat and gloves, warm up the car and drive to a local church to publicly support Candidate X on February 1st.

As much as we tried to push Zeleny’s story, few people were biting and the strength of our organization was not fully revealed until Caucus Day, when we surged past Dean into 2nd place behind the Kerry campaign, which also had a strong organization.

The Dean campaign was filled with talented people, many of whom have since told me they were nervous all along about the public expectations of their organization. To their credit they built an exciting, anti-establishment campaign out of nothing. Highlighting this story is merely a reminder that perception many times does not reflect reality, and smart, curious reporters will expose chinks in the armor.

Jeff Zeleny is now a CNN reporter, and the truth is I miss his print reporting. The story he wrote on December 5th, 2003 had everything — color from the restaurant owner, insight from real Iowans (“Eighty-seven billion to Iraq when we can’t educate our own children is ridiculous,” Janet Jenson said) and most important a deep understanding of what it takes to win the Iowa caucuses. It remains the best Iowa caucus story I’ve ever read.