Here in Iowa the fight continues

Ioh well City, Ioh well– “I can’t stop knocking on the door until I have the ultimate experience of a naked person coming to the door.”

Organizer Sharon Lake is half-serious as she trains and inspires 15 Democratic volunteers for door-to-door canvassing. At the end of their 20-minute presentation, the volunteers — mostly middle-aged women who have never knocked on doors before — storm out of Sheriff Brad Kunkel’s garage in Johnson County with clipboards and campaign lights in hand.

Lake may joke during practice (“So far all I’ve had are loosely draped towels”), but she’s 100 percent serious about organizing at the grassroots level. She started as an Obama precinct manager in the 2008 Iowa caucuses and now trains Democratic volunteers throughout eastern Iowa.

The Iowa caucus organization was strong 16 years ago, but an effective statewide structure did not exist. Volunteers were used without proper training and systematic recruitment did not begin until the late summer or fall before the elections. Lake, now retired from her job as a supply chain manager at a natural foods manufacturer, began building a team and developing a strategy focused on training (“no meetings, just training and work”) and starting early concentrated. This last election cycle, Lake’s team started a year ago and expanded its reach to Scott County, an hour’s drive away.

Dan Feltes, an Iowa native who became the youngest majority leader in New Hampshire Senate history, moved back to Iowa City with his family a few years ago and quickly became involved in local politics. He helped develop the early door-knocking plan, initially focusing on listening to voters’ concerns rather than campaigning for specific candidates. When it came time to launch persuasion and turnout efforts, thousands of voters had already been “touched” by a friendly neighbor who wanted to know what issues were important to them.

The army of canvassers recruited and trained by Lake was a key factor in the record-breaking majority of votes in the recent congressional election in Iowa’s southeast quadrant. In Iowa City alone, up to 100 volunteers showed up every day. Many of them drove to other cities in their congressional district (Iowa’s 1st District). State Senators Adam Zabner and Janice Weiner estimated that together they hit more than 4,000 doors in 10 counties (Weiner was often accompanied by Alaska, her 6-year-old granddaughter). Feltes reported that volunteers knocked on about 58,000 doors.

The results of this finely tuned ground game were astronomical in Johnson County, home of the University of Iowa and a longtime Democratic stronghold: 87,012 people voted – the highest turnout in the county’s history. Democratic candidate Christina Bohannan received a record-breaking 35,225 more votes than Republican incumbent Marianette Miller-Meeks. That margin is the second-largest for a federal office in county history, ahead of Sen. Tom Harkin’s overwhelming re-election in 2008 and behind only President Biden’s election in 2020. Although Trump increased his numbers in Iowa, Bohannan’s margin (and Kamala Harris’s) even surpassed Obama’s when he won Iowa twice. Unfortunately, her record-breaking plurality in Johnson County still wasn’t enough to topple Miller-Meeks, who won this deep-red, 20-county district by just 799 of 412,000 votes cast.

Bohannan won only two other counties in the 20-county district. Scott County, part of the once-Democratic Quad Cities, gave her a majority of 1,998 votes. Jefferson, home of Maharishi University’s transcendental meditators, gave her 227 more votes than Miller-Meeks. That was it – three out of 20 counties. The strategy devised by Lake, Feltes and Bohannan’s staff to break the bank in Johnson County (and cut Republican margins in the other counties) was sound. It almost worked, but it just wasn’t quite enough to overcome a Republican landslide in a district that, like the rest of Iowa, has become increasingly redder over the last decade.

Where do Iowa Democrats go from here? Many of the soldiers in the door-knocking army were motivated by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who cheered for the state’s abortion ban after six weeks. It wasn’t unusual for mostly older women to rush out onto the street after a Sharon Lake training session. The question now is whether enough future voters will see the connection between Trump, his U.S. Supreme Court appointees, Gov. Reynolds, the Republican legislature, and the Reynolds-appointed Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled that the six-week ban is constitutional.

John Norris, administrator of Polk County (Iowa’s largest county) and former gubernatorial candidate, agrees that the abortion ban and an extraordinary campaign game will continue to be crucial if Democrats are to recover from their recent defeat. Norris also cited an unsustainable budget due to massive Republican tax cuts and continued attacks on public education funding as other points of concern for people.

Despite the heartache this election brings, one thing is certain: Sharon Lake will continue to canvass in the next round, still hoping that a naked person comes to the door.