Brianne Pfannenstiel | The Des Moines Register

Des Moines Register

Troy Price resigned his position as chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday as the organization grapples with the fallout of a botched caucus process that has left the party and state reeling.

In an interview Wednesday evening with the Des Moines Register, he said there was a lot for Iowa Democrats to be proud of, but that the failures on caucus night were "heartbreaking."

"I believed that we were in a good spot," he said when asked whether there were warning signs that should have been heeded. "(I believed that) we were prepared. And we had worked closely with our partners — not just us, but with the DNC and with our tech partners — to make sure we were in a good spot. And I felt that we were.”

Price said he will call for an emergency meeting of that committee for 1 p.m. Saturday to elect an interim chair.

He told Iowa Democratic Party's State Central Committee in a letter that his presence as chair made it more difficult for the party to "begin looking forward."

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“Whomever is elected will oversee the completion of the recanvass and recount process and begin the process of healing our party,” he wrote in the letter.

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Photos: Iowa Democratic Party chair Troy Price discusses caucus updates

An Iowa native, Price worked as political director for Barack Obama's 2012 Iowa campaign and Hillary Clinton's 2016 Iowa campaign. He served as executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party before being elected its chair in July 2017. He was re-elected in 2018.

More than a week after the party's Feb. 3 caucuses, final results from the night are still not available. Results from Tuesday's New Hampshire primary have already been called, and Democratic presidential campaigns have moved on to focus their campaigns' efforts on Nevada and South Carolina.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have separately called for recanvasses of 143 Iowa precincts, including all of the party's in-state satellite precincts. Party officials said those audits should start on Sunday and conclude two days later.

The party also reviewed results from 95 precincts independent of the campaigns' recanvass requests.

The Associated Press still has not called a winner in the race.

Preliminary results show that Buttigieg holds a slim lead over Sanders in state delegate equivalents, the traditional measure of success in Iowa. Sanders had more individual support at the caucus sites, a metric he aligned with a traditional primary election.

The unprecedented delay in reporting follows an organizational collapse on caucus night. Problems with a new cellphone app used to report results were rampant; chaos enveloped a call center that should have acted as a fail-safe backup; and the data presented to the public even after days of "quality control" checks remained riddled with errors.

Price said he was told they'd be seeing results at 7:45 p.m. on caucus night. When nothing had been posted at 8 p.m., it was his first inkling that something was going wrong.

"It was shortly after that that someone came in and said there was — I believe it was characterized as 'a bug in the system,'" he said in the Register interview. "So that’s when I realized we have a problem. From there on, we were hoping that we could get it unclogged and we could get it fixed and get the results out quicker. But we realized that it wasn’t. So we kept waiting, kept hearing about every 15 minutes that they needed another 15 minutes or so to figure it out. ... But at a certain point we decided we had to call it. That’s when we said we wouldn’t be releasing results that night.”

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Iowa caucus: Photos of caucuses, candidates at watch parties

Price previously announced Democrats would commission an independent investigation of "what went right, what went wrong, from start to finish" with the entire caucus process.

Tom Perez, the Democratic National Committee chairman, has taken to publicly criticizing the Iowa party's handling of the caucuses. Though he said he shares some responsibility for the meltdown, he said he would "absolutely not" step down from his role.

"I'm frustrated. I'm mad as hell. Everybody is," Perez said during a recent appearance on CNN. "And I think what we're going to do at the end of this cycle ... is have a further conversation about whether or not state parties should be running elections."

Asked whether leadership change is needed at the DNC as well, Price deferred Wednesday, saying he would leave that decision up to Perez. He said the DNC's role in the caucus process would likely be considered in the course of the review process.

“They were partners with us right up to Caucus Day, on Caucus Day and in the days after Caucus Day," he said.

With Perez among those leading the call for reviewing review the presidential nominating process, calls to replace caucuses with primaries and remove Iowa from its coveted first-in-the-nation status have grown increasingly forceful.

Concerns over diversity and inclusion have risen to the forefront this caucus cycle as a presidential field that was at one point the most diverse in history has winnowed to a nearly all-white pool of candidates. The problems with this month's results have shifted the focus back to Iowa's arcane rules and complex process and will undoubtedly have repercussions for future election cycles.

But Price said he remains confident in the caucuses as a process and said both that Iowa should not switch to a primary and that it should remain first in the nation.

"I think there’s a lot to unpack," he said. "Obviously, conversations about this will take place, just as they do every four years. And we’ll see how those conversations progress. But I do think that folks saw over the course of this year on the ground that Iowans take this role seriously, that Iowans are not afraid to ask hard questions, and that this has made candidates stronger and better for what comes next."

He said he expects a conversation about the future of the caucuses to begin in earnest after the election. He said he plans to regroup and continue helping the party to grow.

“I’m going to spend some time with my husband," he said. "I’ve been running pretty hot for the past two and a half years. I’m looking forward to having a break to figure out what comes next for me. One thing I’ll tell you, one thing I’ll tell everyone, is my commitment to making this state better has not changed at all. My commitment to making sure that this party grows has not changed all. My commitment to making sure we have leaders who actually are fighting for the people of this state and this country has not changed at all. Whatever I do is going to help achieve those goals.”

Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.