Citizen’s Election Project – Iowa: “Students and the Caucuses”

By David Yepsen

enator Phil Gramm stood in front of a room full of high school students and smiled into a TV camera. “I see you are sitting in the front row,” he said to a young woman 200 miles away. “When I was a teacher, the best students always sat in the front row. It’s the guys in the back – y’all awake back there? – that I had to watch.”

With that, the Republican presidential candidate from Texas took his turn at talking and fielding questions from groups of Iowa high school students over the state’s new fiber-optic telecommunications network. The “Students and the Caucuses” project won good marks from teachers, students and candidates as a way to link prospective first-time voters with presidential candidates over 21st century technology.

Buchanan’s appearance was the result of a partnership formed by the Des Moines Register, Iowa Public Television, the Iowa Communications Network and the Iowa Department of Education. The nine leading Republican presidential candidates campaigning in Iowa were invited, as was Democratic President Bill Clinton. Of the ten, only Clinton, Bob Dole and Robert Dornan were unable to schedule appearances.

Appearing were former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, former commentator Pat Buchanan, publisher Steve Forbes, Gramm, former commentator Alan Keyes, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana and businessman Morry Taylor.

Candidate Steve Forbes fielded questions from students, who were linked via the state’s new fiber-optic network

Early in the project, White House officials had expressed interest, but they were unable to schedule any time. The White House offered Vice President Al Gore instead, but the project partners declined, saying they wanted only presidential candidates as part of the program. Dole’s office said he was unable to schedule an appearance, and Dornan had to cancel because bad weather grounded his flight.

The idea for the project was born during a newsroom bull session as Register Editor Dennis Ryerson pressed for innovative ways to cover the campaign and bring it home to people.

The state of Iowa is in the process of building a $300-million fiber-optic network to connect schools with one another and with universities and community colleges. This Iowa Communications Network is linked to about 100 of Iowa’s 400 school districts so far. It uses high-quality fiber-optic communications technology to provide real-time linkages.

Connecting young people and the candidates over the system was an obvious idea, and the Citizens Election Project came up with funding to hire someone to coordinate schedules among candidates, the schools and the network operators. “If young people don’t get interested in the political process early,” Ryerson said, “they may never get involved. We hope, by linking selected Iowa high school classrooms to the presidential candidates, to make the caucus process more interesting to the students. It also will give all Iowans an opportunity to hear the candidates’ views on issues of importance to youth.”

The following were some of the benefits of the project:

For students, it was an opportunity to see, hear and question presidential candidates.

For teachers, it was a resource they could use in their classrooms.

For candidates, it was an opportunity to reach many potential young voters. (Iowa’s caucuses are open to anyone who will be 18 on Election Day in November.)

For the fiber-optic network, it was a chance to try out and show off the new technology.

For news organizations, it was a chance to cover a campaign story that was a bit different from usual events.

Partners set the following ground rules:

All candidates would be invited to make one appearance before three or four classrooms over the network. ( A traveling candidate could stop at a site near his route and be connected with schools anywhere in the state.)

Schools would be selected by the Department of Education, not the candidates, to prevent any manipulation by the campaign staffs. (Several candidates wanted to appear before student bodies in heavily Republican areas, but it was made clear they couldn’t “cherry pick.”)

Iowa law prohibits use of the telecommunications network for political purposes. Educational use of the network, however, is permitted, and appearances by political leaders were deemed appropriate, provided the event was supervised by educational institutions.

All of Iowa’s high schools were told about the project, which was also publicized statewide by a Register story. High school government teachers were then allowed to sign up. After candidates agreed to appear, classes were told the time and where to be on campus to participate.

Some teachers used the candidates’ appearances as part of their classroom work on government and politics. Students were asked to read about the candidate, and the Register provided recent stories about the campaign to help them prepare their questions. Other teachers just let students show up and listen.

The Register covered each session and wrote a news story. Other news organizations covered some of the sessions. Two of the students who participated in the programs were selected by the Register to pose questions to the presidential candidates during the newspaper’s traditional candidates’ forum.

Iowa Public Television taped all the sessions and edited them into three half-hour segments, which were broadcast to a statewide audience on three consecutive nights in the days leading up to the Feb. 12 caucuses. The programs were designed to give all Iowans a sense of how the events went and what the candidates had to say. Rob Davis, a former managing editor for Iowa’s largest television station who now owns his own production company, was hired to help produce the programs.

During an appearance at one of the events, Buchanan told the students, “All of you should go out and participate in these caucuses because you are going to decide here in Iowa who goes on to New Hampshire. Some candidates aren’t going to come out of Iowa. They aren’t going to New Hampshire. So bring out a group. You will be helping to pick the next president of the United States. Your vote will count more than someone’s in California.”

Candidate Pat Buchanan told the students they would be helping to pick the next president

Alexander told them, “I hope every one of you will be involved in the caucuses. You have more at stake than anyone else. You can influence the selection more than anyone else, because it all starts here.”

Daniel Miller, the program director at Iowa Public Television, said the project “made a lot of sense. It allowed for a kind of freewheeling discussion with the students.” He said the teachers involved “were pleased with the opportunity” and candidates “seemed impressed by the questions.”

“All in all, it was a plus,” he said. “A student didn’t have to buy a thing to ask a presidential candidate a question. You could just be a kid in Peosta and ask anything you want of someone running for the American presidency. That’s what was great about this project.”

Sen. Richard Lugar was one of seven candidates to schedule appearances with the students.

“This was a real opportunity to see what this network can be used for,” Jessen said. “It’s a rare opportunity to get to ask a presidential candidate a question.”

Davis, however, made several recommendations for similar projects in the future.

“By far the biggest challenge and frustration in administering the project was working with the campaigns to find a date, time and location for the candidate sessions,” he said. “The amount of time spent cajoling the campaigns to lock up a session cannot be overestimated. We had many false starts from many campaigns.”

Campaign managers said such scheduling problems are inevitable in any campaign, especially one governed in part by events on the floor of the U.S. Senate or by unpredictable winter weather.

In the future, Davis said, teachers should assure full attendance and take care that their students are prepared. “I observed a difference in class preparation for the sessions,” he said. “Some teachers had obviously prepared their students with a ‘game plan’ for asking about certain issues, others seemed less prepared.”

The partnership’s experience also indicated that the more lead-time the students were given, the better the questions they asked. When meetings were organized hastily, Davis said, “the students’ questions were fairly predictable and led to canned answers from the candidates.” 

As project coordinator, Davis recommended that future organizers be prepared for the unexpected, whether in the area of preparations, logistics, press relations or even the candidates’ lack of familiarity with two-way, interactive technology. In Iowa, for instance, the speaker needed to press a button to activate the system.

Said Davis: “I thought some of them would be intrigued by the technology and would want to punch the buttons, but none wanted to do it. All the candidates were impressed with the Iowa Communications Network. Lugar mentioned his session during a CNN interview. After his session, Buchanan and his wife were shown a map with the locations of the schools they had just been talking to and they couldn’t believe it. Gramm said the system was fabulous and a great idea.”

Davis called the effort “a worthwhile project.” The key to its success, he said, “was having the flexibility and persistence to work with the candidates in scheduling sessions, especially on short notice.”

Project participants agreed that in the year 1999, when Campaign 2000 begins, the project will be repeated, applying lessons learned in 1996. Indeed, as more states link their classrooms with interactive, fiber-optic technology, there will even be an opportunity for students in other states to talk to presidential candidates as they campaign in the snows of Iowa.

< “Voice of the People, Iowa” | Table of Contents | Derry, N.H.: “The People’s Voice” >