The Iowa caucus is still six months away and Democrats are already working hard to get the state to return to their side of the aisle.
"Iowa is the quintessential purple state," Troy Price, the chair of the state's Democratic party, told Cheddar. "There are a lot of swing voters in this state and that is who we are talking to."
The party has already begun employing organizers this year — the earliest it has started hiring for any election cycle in a decade, according to Price.
Democratic primary contenders also have their eyes set on re-taking the state, with several showing up to woo voters, and taste an array of carnival snacks, at the closely-watched Iowa State Fair.
Iowa voters helped elect President Obama in 2008 and 2012, but flipped in 2016 with President Trump getting just over 50 percent of votes. However, Price said he is confident the state will be blue again in 2020.
"As we go through this process, we are going to see more and more people coming to our side," he said. "And not just Democrats coming out to the caucuses but Independent and even Republicans."
Yet the confidence is equally strong within the Republican Party.
Jeff Kaufmann, the GOP's Iowa chairman, said that while the "climate was good for Democrats" in 2008 and 2012, Iowans remain steadfast Republicans and Trump supporters.
"People were fed up with Democrats and Republicans for not keeping their promises," Kaufmann told Cheddar regarding the state's embrace of Trump in the general election. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, however, won the state's primary caucus in 2016.
Aside from being the first state in the nation to select a presidential nominee, Iowa has also been at the center of recent political discourse over the U.S.-China trade war. Farmers in the agriculture-heavy state have taken a big hit as China announced it was cutting off produce imports.
Late last month, the Department of Agriculture announced a $16 billion aid package for farmers nationwide to help offset the losses.
The relief plan will "ensure farmers will not stand alone in facing unjustified retaliatory tariffs while President Trump continues working to solidify better and stronger trade deals around the globe," Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. The announcement follows another $12 billion assistance program implemented last year.
Iowa farmers "don't want bailouts, they want to trade," Price told Cheddar. "They want to have the ability to sell their products."
Yet Kaufmann — a self described "seventh generation Iowa farm boy" — claimed that farmers are not abandoning the president and are willing to endure the hardships in the near future.
"For the short-term pain that the tariffs are causing ... that is a firecracker compared to the atomic bomb of the Green New Deal," Kaufmann said, invoking a lesser-of-two-evils argument in reference to the Demcoratic proposal to overhaul the U.S. economy in order to combat climate change.
Price, meanwhile, stressed that Democrats will secure "a trade deal that's going to be able to protect our country, protect our workers, and protect our farmers."
President Donald Trump's administration is appealing a ruling blocking him from immediately firing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook as he seeks more control over the traditionally independent board. The notice of appeal was filed Wednesday, hours after U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb handed down the ruling. The White House insists the Republican president had the right to fire Cook over mortgage fraud allegations involving properties in Michigan and Georgia from before she joined the Fed. Cook's lawsuit denies the allegations and says the firing was unlawful. The case could soon reach the Supreme Court, which has allowed Trump to fire members of other independent agencies but suggested that power has limitations at the Fed.
Chief Justice John Roberts has let President Donald Trump remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission, the latest in a string of high-profile firings allowed for now by the Supreme Court.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
President Donald Trump's administration last month awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build and operate what's expected to become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex to a tiny Virginia firm with no experience running correction facilities.
Cracker Barrel said late Tuesday it’s returning to its old logo after critics — including President Donald Trump — protested the company’s plan to modernize.
Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook's lawyer says she'll sue President Donald Trump's administration to try to prevent him from firing her. Longtime Washington attorney Abbe Lowell said Tuesday that Trump “has no authority to remove” Cook. If Trump succeeds in removing Cook from the Fed's board of governors, it could erode the Fed’s political independence, which is considered critical to its ability to fight inflation because it enables the Fed to take unpopular steps like raising interest rates. The Republican president said Monday he was removing Cook because of allegations she committed mortgage fraud. Cook was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden in 2022 and says she won't step down.
Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook late Wednesday said she wouldn’t leave her post after Trump on social media called on her to resign over an accusation from one his officials that she committed mortgage fraud.
Politico's Marcia Brown breaks down the MAHA draft roadmap: industry-friendly, light on regulation, heavy on research and voluntary food policy changes.
