Swati Dandekar

With State Senator Swati Dandekar as head of presidential candidate John Kerry’s Iowa campaign, this caucus comes home for local Indian Americans wanting to make their presence felt.
The upcoming Iowa Caucuses are the epitome of grassroots politics in the United States ----- the one place where ordinary Indian Americans can meet up with neighbors and friends to discuss anything from local politics to the presidential nominee and see their preferences possibly transformed to a national decision on who will lead the country come November 2004.
With State Senator Swati Dandekar as head of presidential candidate John Kerry’s Iowa campaign, this caucus comes home for local Indian Americans wanting to make their presence felt.
A caucus meeting could be held anywhere including someone’s home, and Democrats and Republicans are encouraged to attend these rather informal but extremely important party gatherings. To find out where your local meeting is being held, call the local party office.
This Jan. 19, the Democratic caucuses in Iowa will begin at 6:30 p.m. and will be the most-watched event because so many Presidential candidates are vying for party nomination, and historically, Iowa Democrats have their finger on the nation’s pulse and have pretty accurately predicted who could emerge as a leader at the party conventions later this year.
At your precinct caucus, neighbors and friends will meet to elect delegates to county conventions. The county conventions elect delegates to district and state conventions. And there the national delegates to the main party convention are chosen some time in the Spring. While caucuses take place every 2 years, they gain national attention in Presidential election years. The more than 2000 Iowa precincts will hold Caucuses. David Yepsen of Des Moines Register, who has reported and written about Caucuses for the last 25 years, says people should feel “right at home” in a Caucus.
“Both parties want people to come, particularly newcomers. These people are your neighbors, so you’ll know some of them. If you are new to Iowa, it’ll be a chance to meet your neighbors. It’s also a chance to have an impact on politics ----- on what issues the party will stand for and what presidential candidate will represent it,” says Yepsen. You do need to be over 18 years old and a registered Democrat or Republican to register at the Caucus meeting. Most of the excitement will be at the Democratic Party Caucuses this year because of the number of delegates. At the meetings, groups will form based on their preferences for each presidential candidate. The delegates to the County convention will distributed proportional to the size of each “preference group.”
So if a particular precinct was sending 10 delegates to the County convention, and Howard Dean got 70 percent of the preference group, 7 pro-Dean delegates will be sent and 3 others based on the groups that selected others. The preferences are not binding and delegates could change their minds later.
According to information provided by the Iowa Democratic Party, Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Caucuses have proven to be “a crucial first stop along the great race for the American presidency.” Since 1972, the Iowa caucus has played a major role in the presidential nominating process. Every four years the national media flock to the “Heartland,” bringing the nation’s attention along with them toward the Iowa political scene.
Several backburner candidates achieved success in nationwide campaigns after doing well in the Iowa Caucuses, such as Jimmy Carter, who was hauled out of obscurity in Iowa and went to the White House in 1976.
Thecaucus and convention system of today developed from the congressional and legislative caucuses of the mid 1800s. In Iowa, as in other states, theess of the caucuses to all who considered themselves party members and who wanted to participate was subject to numerous abuses in the late 19th century. But it withstood the test of time and many changes were instituted, but it was only in 1972, after the series of reforms to the delegate selection process were adopted by the Iowa Democratic Party that it began to be heavily attended and came into the national limelight.
The reforms were the result of delegate selection recommendations made by the McGovern-Frasier Commission which was established after the disastrous and violent 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
A Caucus meeting generally lasts about 2 hours so it is not a long-drawn out affair that would keep moms and dads away from home too long. Make sure to find out about your local meetings and make every effort to attend them.