Iowa Matters Less Than Ever for Democrats, but They Can’t Quit It

When Iowa Democrats bungled the 2020 caucuses and the Democratic National Committee stripped the state of its first-in-the-nation status, there was a broad consensus that the era of the party’s presidential hopefuls traipsing to Des Moines and Cedar Rapids was over.

And yet, just over two years before the next presidential primaries begin, Democrats are once again parading to the cornfields.

For the earliest of these visitors, it seems to matter not that Iowa’s formal place at the front of the calendar is gone, and with it the state’s influence in picking the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

With President Trump in the White House dominating much of the political conversation and their party mired in the minority in Congress, Democrats in need of a national megaphone have concluded that they are more likely to be heard speaking in Des Moines than by giving another speech in Washington or to their constituents back home. A trip still signals — or shouts — bigger ambitions.

“Obviously, it’s not lost on me that Iowa has played an important role in our politics,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland who this month flew to Iowa to criticize his colleagues for their delay in endorsing the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

And in doing so, Mr. Van Hollen became the latest entrant in a very long list of Democrats being discussed as possible 2028 candidates.

Two governors, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, made trips last year even though Iowa was far from a presidential battleground. An aide to Mr. Beshear said he planned to return in 2026.

And this weekend, Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who served as the Biden administration’s ambassador to Japan, is scheduled to speak at a Des Moines fish fry in the front yard of Sean Bagniewski, a Democratic state representative.

“Whether Iowa is first or not, it has something to say and they know how to look under the hood of somebody,” Mr. Emanuel said of the state’s voters.

It is obvious why Iowa Democrats want presidential candidates to return like quadrennial migrating birds. In fact, some in the state are weighing holding a first-in-the-nation caucus whether or not their national party blesses it.

The harder question to answer is why top Democrats keep coming back.

Even before Iowa botched the 2020 caucuses, that year’s presidential candidates attacked the state and its voting process as unrepresentative of the national party. Why, they asked, would an increasingly urban and diverse party keep giving so much power to a rural, almost entirely white state whose caucus electorate was reliably more liberal than the party’s voters in presidential battlegrounds?

Once in office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. began the process of ending years of griping. In 2022, he directed the D.N.C. to make South Carolina the first state to vote in the 2024 primaries.

This summer, Ken Martin, the new D.N.C. chairman, took Iowa’s delegates off the party’s powerful rules committee, which is expected to begin debating the 2028 calendar at its meeting in Washington next month and make a final determination by next summer. So far, D.N.C. members have shown little appetite for returning Iowa to its first-in-the-nation status.

One major reason Democrats keep going to Iowa, though, is the media attention that still follows.

Like just about every politician who goes to the state, both Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Van Hollen said they accepted invitations to give speeches. But Mr. Emanuel noted that he had done three recent events for Democrats on the ballot this fall in Virginia, and “nobody covered that.”

Mr. Emanuel and others who have visited Iowa talk about the state’s importance in the midterms. It is likely to have competitive races for open seats for governor and Senate, along with two or three competitive House races.

But there is also the reality that Iowa has a political infrastructure unmatched by other early primary states. There are lists upon lists of volunteers and organizers to arrange events and no shortage of the politically inclined willing to help build crowds that will look impressive for the cameras and make enterprising politicians feel like there is organic interest in them running for president.

And then there are the Iowa Democrats who see the ambitious Democrats still coming and wondering why they should bother acceding to a D.N.C. calendar that does not include their state at the front.

This summer Brian Meyer, the Democratic leader in the Iowa House, first publicly floated the idea that Iowa should just hold first-in-the-nation Democratic caucuses regardless of what the national party thinks.

He looks at New Hampshire, which last year bucked the D.N.C. and refused to move behind South Carolina. Mr. Biden did not campaign there, but his allies spent millions on a write-in campaign to avoid an uncomfortable loss to Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota.

Mr. Meyer’s case for Iowa is that Republicans still put the state first, and the national media will be in town, so Democrats might as well have their own contest and invite candidates from what is expected to be a field of dozens running for president.

“If they’ve been mentioned as a presidential candidate, they’re going to want to be in front of the news here,” Mr. Meyer said. “It is the muscle memory.”

Mr. Meyer acknowledged that the 2020 caucuses were a disaster for the state, and said Iowa Democrats should do away with the complex system of delegate tabulations that contributed to the embarrassing meltdown. His proposal would be to just count the number of votes like Iowa Republicans do and have the caucuses function like a straw poll.

“I don’t expect Gavin Newsom or somebody who would come in as a front-runner to play — they’re not going to rock that boat,” Mr. Meyer said, referring to the Democratic governor of California widely seen as a top potential contender. “But if you’re an insurgent candidate and you’re going to use guerrilla tactics to get some leverage and traction in a place that is going to be covered by the media anyway, you have an opportunity to get the attention that a long-shot candidate needs.”

One Iowa tradition that has lived on with most of the candidates visiting years before the first primary votes are cast is the who-me response to the obvious question about their reason for visiting.

Both Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Van Hollen insisted they had traveled to Iowa because they were asked to come. In an interview, Mr. Van Hollen dodged multiple attempts to clarify his 2028 intentions. He would not rule out running for president and declined to affirm his interest in doing so.

“This was not part of any calculated strategy,” he said of his trip. “It was in no way orchestrated.”

Mr. Emanuel said he had turned down invitations to speak in New Hampshire and South Carolina, other traditional early primary states, and visited Iowa to help the state’s midterm candidates.

But he did acknowledge what Mr. Van Hollen would not. Of the 2028 race, Mr. Emanuel said: “I’m actively thinking about it. And if I have something that needs to be said that nobody else is saying, I’m going to do it.”