John Minchillo/AP Photo

Sherrod Brown is on his way to Iowa

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Sen. Sherrod Brown is going to the Super Bowl this week.

No, not that Super Bowl in Atlanta. Instead, the long-serving Ohio Democrat is venturing to Iowa for a different kind of competition.

Five years ago, the thought of Brown running for president was unlikely, bordering on absurd.

While consistently rated as one of the most liberal senators in the country, his populism and antipathy toward trade deals were something of a throwback to the neo-liberalism that dominated the upper echelon of the Democratic Party. His plain suits and Velcro shoes screamed “middle management,” not “leader of the free world.” He was considered a potential vice-presidential candidate, mostly because of his roots in battleground Ohio and his potential appeal to the more-marginalized, progressive wing of the party.

But with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders breathing life into Democratic Party populism and Republican President Donald Trump upending conventional political wisdom in 2016, Brown is gearing up for a 2020 run.

Before he officially declares, he’s taking a swing through the first four states in the primary process as part of his quasi-campaign.

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First up: Iowa

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The Des Moines skyline.

Pat Hawks/Des Moines After Dark

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To the outsider, Iowa is an easy state to politically stereotype: Des Moines is the urban center with farmers everywhere else. But just like anywhere, it’s a much more complex ecosystem of voters.

And it’s a caucus state, a somewhat archaic, more complex election akin to a town meeting.

Most importantly, it’s the first state in the nation to vote in the presidential primaries.

“This is kind of our Super Bowl,” said Jeremy Dumkrieger, chairman of the Woodbury County Democrats in Sioux City, a town in the northwest that borders Nebraska and South Dakota. “Nobody else has it, and we take it seriously.”

Assessing Brown’s chances in Iowa more than a year out is a futile exercise. Politics are dynamic and with the possibility of 20 or more Democratic candidates aching for a chance to challenge Trump, the nomination is very much up in the air.

He starts out with some clear disadvantages. Nearly seventy percent of voters in Iowa haven't heard of him.

He hasn’t toured the state like his more well-known peers, and he just got done with a costly re-election campaign, leaving him at a fundraising disadvantage. He’s also a white male candidate in a party that’s rapidly diversifying.

Dave Heller, a national political media consultant who lives in Davenport, Iowa, is familiar with Brown. Heller, a Cleveland native, worked on Brown’s first congressional race in 1992.

The demographics of Iowa, the populist bent in the Democratic Party and the state’s status in the process make it a place where Brown can – and must – do well, Heller said.

“It’s a state that is really teed up for Sherrod,” Heller said. “It’s a state where he matches up well with not just Iowa’s demography but also ideology.”

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A wide open field

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A selection of the potential Democrats running for office in 2020. (AP Photos)

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Brown would normally be a marginal candidate in the presidential race. He’s too unknown.

But he has the luxury of running in 2020, where there is no real front-runner on the Democratic side.

Steffen Schmidt, political science professor at Iowa State University, said Brown also has geography working for him.

“He is an anchor for the Democrats in the Midwest in a crucial state,” Schmidt said. “And also he’s got a nice little thing going for him. He likes to get small amounts of money from small donors, and he’s got a ton of small donors. Every candidate has to have their little spiel for Iowa voters, and I think those both work.”

But Schmidt said the wide-open primary has its disadvantages, especially since Brown is a white man who could end up running against a plethora of women and minority candidates. Brown is traveling and campaigning with journalist Connie Schultz, his wife who has a dedicated following of her own.

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The state

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Screenshot/NationalAtlas.gov

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At nearly four times the population of Iowa, Ohio might seem like it doesn’t have much in common with the Hawkeye State.

Iowa doesn’t have multiple metropolitan areas. The Des Moines metro at roughly 645,000 is only the 88th largest in the country.

But there are some striking similarities between Iowa and Ohio.

Regional differences permeate Democratic politics and the electorate as a whole in Iowa. Des Moines – a city of 217,000 – is the epicenter, but in a state of more than 3 million people, urban liberals might not be the bedrock of a Brown coalition.

More than 425,000 people live in suburban Des Moines – many of them voters who fled the Republican Party in 2018. Brown made similar gains in 2018 in suburban Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

Iowa City, Ames and Cedar Falls boast the three largest universities: the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa, respectively. Enrollment is around 80,000 students altogether. Student voters can be a political force in Iowa. They flocked to then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, boosting him to victory in the state and jumpstarting his successful campaign for president.

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Downtown Ottumwa, Iowa. (Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

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The eastern half of the state, especially along the Mississippi River, is rife with old manufacturing communities that have suffered from outsourcing and economic contraction. Iowa is a so-called right-to-work state, but union membership and activity is still significant in these areas.

“The river communities all along eastern Iowa from Dubuque and Cedar Rapids down through the Quad Cities to Burlington and Keokuk,” Heller said. “I think that whole Eastern Iowa swath of land is very fertile territory for Sherrod. It is much more of a midwestern focus than it is a prairie focus.”

The western half is predominantly rural and dominated by the prairie populists – the farmer community, New Deal-type Democrats who closely resemble the populists from President Franklin Roosevelt’s era.

If all of these communities sound familiar, it’s because Brown has done well with precisely those types of voters.

The industrial parts of the state are his bread and butter. Brown consistently outperforms other Democrats in rural Western Ohio. Both voters with a college degree and without a college degree voted for him by a majority in 2018.

“Ohio actually has a large agricultural community like Iowa,” said Aaron Pickrell, a Columbus-based consultant with roots in Iowa who served as John Edwards’ Iowa political director during the 2004 election. “Sherrod can speak well to people in small towns. Sherrod grew up in a small town. I think that will really resonate.”

Brown is focusing on that constituency during his first trip to the state. He's eschewing the larger cities of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, instead planning stops in Cresco (population 3,776), Clear Lake (population 7,562), Perry (population 7,517), Waterloo (population 67,587), Dubuque (58,276) and Clinton (population 25,480).

He's also looking to attract voters in the areas that voted for both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Five of the seven counties Brown is visiting flipped from supporting Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.

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Populist politics

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Brown during his first congressional run in 1992 against Republican Margaret Mueller. (Bill Kennedy/The Plain Dealer)

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Part of the reason Brown is considering running is the rise of populism in American politics. Brown has long identified as a populist, holding many of the views that became mainstream in American politics beginning in 2016.

He’s been a firm supporter of labor unions his entire life. He won his first campaign for Congress in 1992 largely on his opposition to trade deals he deemed unfair to workers, particularly NAFTA.

Brown’s whole flirtation with running is based on his campaign theme of the “dignity of work,” a blue-collar economic message that he thinks will resonate with the working class.

Pete D’Alessandro, a Democratic operative who ran Sanders’ 2016 Iowa operation and has worked for Youngstown-area Rep. Tim Ryan, said Brown’s brand of populism already runs rampant in Iowa. If voters can connect the political positions they already hold with Brown, he stands a chance in the state.

“There are those prairie populists. There’s a lot of populists in Dubuque and Clinton County and the Quad Cities. There’s certainly populists in Iowa City and places like that,” D’Alessandro said.

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The Harkin factor

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U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, speaking during the 2016 Democratic National Convention. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

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Perhaps more important is the type of populist attractive to Iowans, like former Iowa U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin. Nearly everyone cleveland.com spoke to said Brown reminded them of Harkin.

Harkin is a Democratic institution in Iowa – not unlike Sen. John Glenn’s stature in Ohio.

Harkin served in the Senate for 30 years starting in 1985 and another 10 years in the House of Representatives before that. He built a reputation as an unapologetic liberal and a fighter for the working class. He consistently supported both economic reforms like increasing the minimum wage and universal health care coverage as well as social issues like same-sex marriage and access to abortion.

And Harkin was wildly popular, even as Iowa consistently elected Republicans like Gov. Terry Branstad and Sen. Chuck Grassley to office.

“Tom Harkin is so widely revered in Iowa,” Heller said. “Sherrod’s politics more closely mirror Tom Harkin’s than any other candidate out there.”

John Norris, a political operative who ran the Iowa caucus for Harkin in 1992 and managed Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, said he wasn’t completely familiar with Brown’s politics, but agreed a message in the vein of Harkin could be effective in Iowa.

“The populist message is certainly an economic grounded message and I think you’ll find it will play stronger where there’s been more suffering economically,” Norris said. “Those issues will strike a stronger chord there rather than the more successful urban areas where you’ll see a broader range of social issues.”

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The caucus

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A precinct meeting during the 2016 Iowa Democratic Caucus. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)

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Unlike a primary, a caucus isn’t about just racking up as many votes as possible. The key is securing delegates at each of the caucus sites.

Voters head to their precinct and publicly declare their support for a candidate. A head count is taken and any candidate who doesn’t reach a certain threshold of the room – known as viability – is removed from the ballot. Supporters can try and sway other people to their side. Once the final vote tally is taken, delegates are allocated based on the number of supporters in each candidate's camp.

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D’Alessandro said that requires a different approach.

In a traditional primary, name recognition is king. But a caucus requires grassroots and one-on-one interaction with voters.

“A lot of these Iowa caucus-goers are kicking the tires,” D’Alessandro said. “They plan on seeing everybody. They plan on getting a sense of where the different candidates are before they make their choice.”

Essentially, relying on big rallies and TV commercials to win Iowa is a poor strategy. The voters there take their first-in-the-nation status very seriously and try to feel out every candidate possible before making a decision.

Instead, Dumkrieger said candidates have to develop a personal rapport with the voters.

“Don’t just come to a coffee shop,” he said. “Come to our houses and meet us.”

Pickrell said that’s been a huge strength for Brown in his Ohio campaigns. Even Brown’s opponents admit he’s good on the stump and personable with voters.

“One of the things he’s got going, and it’s why he won (Ohio) by 7 points, Sherrod works really hard and I think he has the ability to connect with his constituents and voters,” Pickrell said. “That’s one of the key aspects of the Iowa caucuses, is the ability to connect with people on an individual level.”

Brown also has the luxury of a dedicated – almost to the point of fanatical – staff who truly believe in him. Chief among those is Sarah Benzing, chief of staff for his Senate office.

Benzing is a respected operative born and raised in Iowa who knows the inner workings of politics in the state. She ran his successful 2012 Senate re-election campaign.

“She knows this state better than anybody,” D’Alessandro said. “She knows it better than I do.”

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What’s at stake?

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Sen. Sherrod Brown on Election Night 2018 after securing a third term. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

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Any number of events could happen that could swing the election in the next year.

But most of the people who spoke with cleveland.com agreed Brown’s chances of facing Trump run squarely through Iowa. A common political saying is there are three tickets out of Iowa, meaning he would need to finish in the top-three in the caucus.

The thinking goes like this: A top-three finish greatly expands Brown’s name recognition. Early voting for Super Tuesday starts just days after the caucus. Brown uses his momentum from Iowa to capture other states and slowly build a populist coalition that is attractive to both coastal liberals and Midwestern Democrats.

But it all runs through Iowa for Brown, Heller said.

“It’s a place where he really does need to do well. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Sherrod finishes poorly in Iowa and runs the table in New Hampshire and South Carolina.”