Iowa critical to a victory for Bernie Sanders, backers say

On one recent Iowa visit, Bernie Sanders showed he's the kind of presidential contender who is perfectly comfortable speaking at a podium that's actually an overturned milk crate on a tabletop.

Sanders, a no-frills man of the people, will be welcome in the presidential race becaucharse he's so sincere about his ideas for making working-class Americans' lives better, some Iowa Democratic activists said Thursday. It's possible the Vermont second-term U.S. senator can become a real contender here — and peel away votes from frontrunner Hillary Clinton — if he can explain himself to enough voters, they said.

Instead of dwelling on "Canadian birth certificates and pants suits," Sanders gets to the heart of problems that bog down the national economy, said Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa AFL-CIO.

"All the labeling about, 'Oh, he's a left-wing person' — if you just set that aside for a second and listen to him talk about the issues, a lot of the stuff he talks about is pretty important," Sagar told The Des Moines Register Thursday morning. "If you're a Republican, you have kids who have student loan debt, too. If you're an independent, you're worried about retirement, too."

Sanders, who announced in an overnight email that he intends to seek the White House, will focus on three issues, according to his political strategist Tad Devine, a longtime campaign operative who guided Al Gore and John Kerry's presidential bids.

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Sanders will talk about how to fix the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, and argue that few people benefit from the way government is currently structured, Devine told the Register.

He will detail the necessity of dealing with climate change in a comprehensive way. And he'll describe why campaign finance laws need to be changed after the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling green-lighted unlimited amounts of money in elections.

Sanders, who spent "not a dime" on TV advertising in his 2012 re-election race in Vermont, will hire Iowa staff and will personally devote time to talking with Iowans, his aides said.

"Iowa is critical to a Bernie Sanders path to victory," Devine said. "It's really where the process begins."

On May 26, Sanders will do an official kick-off event in Burlington, Vermont, then travel to Iowa, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said.

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Sanders has already made several trips to Iowa this election cycle, doing 22 events over 11 days. That ranks him sixth among all the 2016 contenders for most time invested in the state. He held meet-and-greet events in university communities, delivered speeches to progressive advocacy groups and met privately with some of Iowa's most influential liberal activists.

Twenty-four-year-old Evan Burger, a political organizer who lives in Slater, met Sanders last fall.

"Blown away is the term I would use. This is someone who's not afraid to speak truth to power," Burger told the Register Thursday.

Young people will be a key constituency for Sanders in the Iowa caucuses, Burger said.

For his generation, Burger said, "the disconnect with electoral politics is that most politicians are afraid of taking bold stances, like on student debt, same-sex marriage, taking on Wall Street. They want to focus-group every single thing they say in public. Their message switches depending on what will get them ahead."

Iowa activists noted that Clinton is so popular with Iowa Democratic likely caucusgoers, it will be hard for Sanders, who is far less well known, to overcome her lead.

In a January Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, Sanders ranked fourth in the Democratic horserace, after Clinton (top choice of 56 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers), Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (16 percent) and Vice President Joe Biden (9 percent). Sanders was the top choice of only 5 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers. A majority, 51 percent, didn't know enough about him to form an opinion, while 37 percent viewed him favorably.

A Public Policy Polling automated survey of Iowa Democratic primary voters April 23-26 found Clinton with 62 percent and Sanders in second place with 14 percent. Warren and Biden weren't listed as choices.

Despite Sanders' gap in the polls, he's competitive because "he's so clearly out in front on so many issues, which Iowans respect," said Adam Mason, state policy director for the CCI Action Fund. "Already we've seen Hillary Clinton hedge on a number of issues, including the (Trans-Pacific Partnership)."

Mason argued that there's a progressive base in Iowa that Sanders can tap into. In the 2006 Democratic primary in the governor's race, progressive leader Ed Fallon claimed 26 percent, and 38,000 votes. In the 2008 presidential race, Clinton rival John Edwards, who was considered more progressive, outperformed her in the Iowa caucuses that year, although by less than 1 percentage point.

Sanders could pick up Iowans who consider Warren their favorite, if she stands by her vow to not run for president in 2016.

"That's a natural base for Sanders," Mason said.

In the 2008 presidential race, most Iowa union members aligned with Clinton, but Sanders is known as a true friend to labor, as is another potential Democratic 2016 candidate, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, said Charlie Wishman, secretary-treasurer for the Iowa AFL-CIO.

The race to win over union activists is wide open, Wishman said. "I think anybody right now can certainly appeal to the hearts and minds of union members in Iowa," he said.

In his own words

Here are some of the points Bernie Sanders, the intense change-minded U.S. senator from Vermont, has made to Iowans in recent months:

"We need a political revolution in which we involve millions and millions of people – working people, young people, low-income people, people of color – who are not now involved in the political process. We're not going to make the changes we need if pundits are right and voter turnout in this coming election is 40 percent. If that's the case, the Koch brothers win. We've got to figure out a way to galvanize millions of people whose lives depend upon what happens in Washington to get involved in the political process."

"If we don't get our hands around this issue, an issue in which the wealthiest people in this country are getting richer while the middle class is disappearing, and while we have more people living in poverty than any time in the history of America, if we don't deal with this issue, we are not going to have a middle class in this country."

After calling for more government spending on public infrastructure such as roads and schools, an increase in the minimum wage, reversing climate change, and bolstering Social Security, he said: "These are not utopian ideas. They are not radical ideas. They are fairly common sensical ideas that can happen when you have a government that is directed by the people themselves and not by wealthy powerful corporate interests."

"You're not going to have a democratic form of government when the Koch brothers and others are able to buy elections by spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in campaigns supporting candidates whose sole purpose is to make the wealthiest people in this country even wealthier. ... We've got to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and ... move toward public funding of elections."