Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo
Musician Mike Posner performs at a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, who was not present, January 24, 2020, in Iowa City, Iowa.
In an echoey stairwell in the science building at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, three canvassers with the Bernie Sanders campaign are making slow but steady progress. Carlos Garrido, a volunteer, follows a student out a pair of double doors and into an adjoining hallway, where I lose their conversation. Behind him, Brock Timmons talks with two softball players about the caucus system. Half a flight down, Eddie Smith tells another student that several of his buddies on the wrestling team joined the National Guard to pay for college and now fear they could be sent to the Middle East if tensions with Iran escalate further.
This is the face of the Sanders campaign less than a week out from the first votes that will be cast in 2020. Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status is controversial not only because of the outsized influence it has on the primary, but also because of the voting system itself. A caucus is part community meeting, part public declaration of allegiance, and, often, part debate club. When caucus-goers arrive at their precinct, they stand in a designated area for their candidate. If their preferred option fails to get 15 percent of attendees, the candidate is not viable and the remaining camps try to win the newly available voters to their side.
It’s a system with clear shortcomings—people who have to work the night shift can’t attend, for instance, and mothers with babies struggle to manage—but it also relies on transforming the private act of voting into a public act of organizing. That dynamic could favor the Sanders campaign, with its heavy emphasis on grassroots movement building. “We’ve gotten more than 30 people at Clarke to commit to caucus for Sanders over the last three days,” Carlos tells me. The on-campus pitch is straightforward and tailored to the population. Sanders has pledged to make public college free and to eliminate student debt by imposing a speculation tax on Wall Street.
Carlos’s approach barely wavers from person to person. He asks if they’re going to caucus, and if they’ve settled on a candidate yet. If they’re open to talk, he—and all the Sanders canvassers—start by asking what issues are important to them. Lots of the students say they’re not political, so he asks if there’s a personal issue they’re dealing with. If they’re hesitant, he’ll offer up his own. Whether it’s the cost of insulin or crushing student debt, the point of the conversation is to let people know that their personal struggles are political, whether they see them that way or not. It’s Organizing 101, but it works.
Whether it’s the cost of insulin or crushing student debt, the point of the conversation is to let people know that their personal struggles are political.
The canvassers I spoke with said the Sanders campaign, more than any other in the modern era, is trying to fundamentally change the way people in the United States think about politics. “People are deliberately depoliticized, and we’re trying to change that,” says Carlos. The campaign is working to organize people not only through November, but beyond January 20, 2021, should Sanders win. The candidate describes himself as the “organizer-in-chief”—both architect and tenant of the big house he’s building. Unlike in 2009, when Barack Obama’s administration famously demobilized the massive network it had built during the prior year, Sanders’s theory of change depends on a level of mass politics that is impossible for most Americans to imagine.
But for the three students I’m following, it’s the only game in town. Carlos grew up in Miami, and was scouted to play baseball for Clarke. After a few injuries and an introduction to philosophy, he fell out of love with baseball and in love with leftist politics. Eddie comes from a conservative family in Wisconsin. His parents have always been single-issue, anti-abortion voters, but after Governor Scott Walker dismantled labor unions and showered corporations with massive handouts, he says they had a political awakening. “They’re both hardcore Sanders supporters now,” he tells me.
Eddie seems to have a knack for political conversion. He brought Brock onto the campaign as well, after he had previously supported Trump in 2016. “My family was conservative so that’s kind of what I thought I had to do,” Brock says. He thought Sanders was crazy until he actually heard him speak at a rally in town. “I’m a social work major, and he was just ticking down everything I care about,” he says. Now, when I ask what he’s doing when he graduates in two years, he nods in Eddie’s direction. “Maybe I’ll be running his campaign,” he says with a smile.
John Knefel
Campaign signs at the Bernie Sanders for President office on Central Ave in Dubuque, Iowa
“COME ON IN, it’s cold outside,” says an elderly man who introduces himself as Chuck. “Can I pour you a drink?”
I’m shadowing Mary Hendron, another Sanders volunteer, as she knocks on her neighbors’ doors in a working-class part of town on the west side. Chuck’s house is cozy, still decked out in Christmas decorations despite it being late January, with holiday songs playing over the stereo. On the mantel, there’s a shrine to his late wife.
Chuck is a Sanders supporter. “He’s not for the corporations, the way the current guy is,” he says, as we sit around his kitchen island. “That guy is just trying to butter his own bread.” Chuck is obviously happy for the company, and would likely talk to us for as long as we would stay. He shares a story about hiring a landscaper after his wife died. “Someone to pull the weeds,” he tells us. The contractor was a young woman who had been a drug user and had had her children taken away. “Everybody deserves a second chance,” he says.
That issue hits close to home for Mary. She got political after her oldest son died at 27 of a heroin overdose 13 months ago. Her primary issue is Medicare for All. Her son was bipolar, and was regularly misdiagnosed or undertreated as a result of poor health insurance options, or, later in life, contact with the criminal justice system. He eventually self-medicated with heroin.
The campaign is working to organize people not only through November, but beyond January 20, 2021, should Sanders win.
Chuck tells us his sons recently said the landscaper couldn’t work for him anymore. He doesn’t say what their objection was, but tells us if he didn’t terminate the arrangement they’d put him in a home. “Everybody deserves a second chance,” he repeats, this time bursting into tears. Mary says that’s what the Sanders campaign is all about, and starts crying as well. An instrumental version of “My Heart Will Go On” plays quietly in the background.
By the time we leave, Chuck has committed to caucus for Sanders. Mary reminds him of where to go and when, and gives him a sign to put in his front yard. She tells me she feels a little guilty for spending so much time there, given that there are 54 doors to knock on her list. “I think he really liked the company, though,” she says.
THE NEXT NIGHT, I’m tagging along with Evan Hudson, 15 minutes outside of the small town of Epworth. Hudson has taught seminary here for a year and a half, after a six-year stint teaching English in Vietnam. He’s headed out tonight to make second or third touches with his neighbors, but doesn’t expect much. “It’s a pretty conservative area,” he tells me as we crunch through the snow.
After a few no-thank-yous, things turn around. A family that Evan has talked to once in person and once on the phone says they’re in for Sanders. Evan does a quick dance as we leave. We talk to a country DJ out of Dyersville, who, after hearing Evan’s pitch, says, “I love Bernie!” A woman who answers the door in scrubs recognizes him from when they had a beer together a few months ago. She’s also on board. A man named Tony is on the fence between Sanders and Buttigieg. He asks where Evan lives, and when Evan tells him, Tony responds: “Oh, I know that building. I fixed your sewer pipe!” He doesn’t commit to Sanders, but Evan feels like he’s gettable.
When we finish up, Evan drives me back to downtown Dubuque. “It was so hard being abroad and watching all this exciting stuff happen, Occupy Wall Street and everything else.” he says. “Now I feel like I’m at the center of the world.”
