Linn County Democrats brace for engagement drop after DNC denies caucus bid

The Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee denied Iowa Democrats' bid to reclaim the first-in-the-nation caucus position in late July, cementing a new calendar that puts South Carolina first, followed by Nevada, New Hampshire and Michigan.

For Linn County, the decision means presidential candidates will no longer barnstorm the area early in the cycle, said Bret Nilles, the county's Democratic chair since 2013 and re-elected in April. "Those presidential candidates, they attract people in terms of getting involved, and getting engaged, and hearing new voices and new messages, so we are unfortunately going to be missing out on that," Nilles said.

Nilles pointed to past visits by President Barack Obama and Sen. Bernie Sanders as events that brought thousands of new members into the Iowa Democratic Party. Without the early contest, he said, "If we don't have the ability to do a presidential preference early, we're going to have a challenge in terms of getting people out to our caucuses and participating."

The chair also referenced a recent New York Times report indicating the DNC is struggling financially, adding: "When the pool gets smaller there's going to be less of it to come to the state of Iowa."

Iowa Republicans will continue their caucus process unchanged. Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann said Democrats should have resisted the DNC earlier: "The bottom line is the time when you should have stood up to the Democratic National Committee was at the last caucus."

Nilles said he is still waiting for the state party to detail how the caucus process will function going forward. The DNC's initial calendar overhaul took effect in 2024; Nilles said he has already noticed fewer people attending caucuses since those rules went into place.