Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller says Iowa’s Caucuses fared well with a Democratic Party commission which debated how to arrange the calendar of events in the next presidential election.
“In large measure, because of the president, Iowa was in a very good situation in this commission,” says Miller, who served on the commission. “Barack (Obama) spent a lot of time here. He met a lot of Iowans. He had a great result here. He loves Iowa and he’s never going to forget us and that played into the dynamic here in a very significant way.”
Obama’s Iowa Caucus victory on the opening night of the 2008 presidential campaign punctured the notion former First Lady Hillary Clinton was invincible and the party’s inevitable nominee.
Miller was among three dozen Democrats from across the country who served on the so-called “Change Commission” that was formed to examine the timing of primaries and caucuses in the 2008 campaign. The commission has signaled Iowa’s Caucuses, along with the New Hampshire Primary, should be the led off events of the next presidential nominating season, although the commission members are recommending to the Democratic National Committee’s Rules Committee that those events — along with contests in South Carolina and Nevada — be held in February.
As you may remember, other states moved their primary and caucus contests forward in 2008, prompting Iowa’s Democratic and Republican Parties to schedule the 2008 Iowa Caucuses on January 3. Miller says the “core” of the commission supported Barack Obama “to the hilt” and were supporters of the first-in-the-nation position for Iowa’s Caucuses.
“Five or six or seven of the commissioners actually worked in the Iowa campaign. As you may remember, a lot of people came in the last two weeks of the (Iowa) campaign and worked a single precinct those two weeks and a number of them ended up on this commission,” Miller says. “So it was pretty clear sailing for us in terms of maintaining Iowa first.”
Miller publicly endorsed Obama in February of 2007 during Obama’s first campaign rally in Iowa.
Click on the audio link below to listen to all of what Miller had to say about the status of Iowa’s 2012 Caucuses and the Democratic Party’s national “Change Commission.”