Citizens Election Project – Voices of the People, Iowa

s this heaven?” asked Shoeless Joe Jackson in the movie, Field of Dreams.

“No,” replied Ray Kinsella, the farmer who built a ball park in his corn field while friends and family scratched their heads in dismay, “this is Iowa.”

I remembered that scene and chuckled as I gripped the steering wheel one cold, snowy day in January and crawled north on Highway 218 between Waterloo and Mason City. Following a snowplow at 25 m.p.h. and losing sight of the road in blustery whiteouts was definitely not my idea of heaven. But it most definitely was Iowa.

In Field of Dreams, Kinsella was mysteriously advised: “Build it and they will come.” That was also the spirit behind “Voice of the People, Iowa,” sponsored by the Citizens Election Project and affiliated with the Citizens ’96 project of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Our partners, including five Iowa newspapers, three Iowa television stations, the Iowa Associated Press and a flagship Iowa public radio station, figured that if we conducted a series of town hall meetings and a nationally televised forum in advance of the Feb. 12 Iowa presidential caucuses, citizens and candidates alike would come to talk about real issues.

We were mostly right.

The citizens certainly came. Billed as “citizen caucuses,” a neutral, facilitated forum where people of all political stripes could talk about issues, our six town hall meetings in late January and February attracted some 300 Iowans from all walks of life. They came out on snowy nights, bitterly cold nights, even nights on which the state’s Number 1 boys’ high school basketball team was playing, to talk about issues that were on their minds as the 1996 presidential election year began. These citizens deliberated among themselves, set priorities and crafted questions in hopes of bringing them to the attention of the Republican presidential candidates in a national telecast over the Public Broadcasting System.

Then, just three days before the Iowa caucuses, about 250 citizens arrived at the Iowa Public Television studios in Des Moines for a chance to put their questions directly to the candidates. 

Disappointingly, only four of the nine Republican candidates showed up, even though all but two had indicated strong interest – even given firm commitments – in the weeks prior to the telecast.

In other words, we built our civic journalism project – our Field of Dreams – from the ground up, but a few of the major candidates, including Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan, didn’t come. It was an exciting yet nerve-wracking lesson in what happens when journalists aspire to rewrite the rules of the campaign game in hopes of giving citizens an election-year voice that is at least as loud as the voices of the political insiders.

What worked in the “Voice of the People, Iowa” project and what fell short of the mark? As project coordinator and someone who first envisioned emulating Wisconsin’s successful “We the People” civic journalism project in Iowa, my 20/20 hindsight tells me that more things worked than not. The best proof I can offer is that “Voice of the People, Iowa” partners want to continue their civic journalism efforts into the fall of 1996 with a series of town hall meetings built around the U.S. Senate race between Democrat Tom Harkin and one of three challengers seeking the Republican party’s senatorial nomination.

Here are the successes we recorded in Iowa:

Our town hall meetings were, with few exceptions, well attended and vibrant.

These two-hour sessions, held mostly at community colleges or other public buildings, attracted a cross-section of citizens who checked their partisan labels at the door so they could join in a conversation on the issues. 

Although the list of “most important” issues varied a bit from city to city, Iowans were clearly concerned about the federal budget deficit and the national debt, were anxious about their jobs and wages, and were fed up with a political system that seemed to put confrontation and divisiveness ahead of problem-solving. Those same Iowans were also troubled by the tone of the campaign in their state – which, while they watched, was disintegrating in a war of negative television ads – and displayed outright contempt for politicians who abuse their office. 

Journalists who listened carefully to these town hall meetings could hear the stirrings of Buchanan’s populist revolt – and could predict that Buchanan’s message would resonate with Iowans. Whether it was in Davenport, Muscatine, Ottumwa, Mason City, Waterloo or Des Moines, citizens consistently voiced concern over deteriorating social or “American” values and threats to their jobs and wages. Many of those Iowans saw an economic threat from abroad in the form of unfair trade practices. Others lamented U.S. corporations that “downsized” inhumanely or exported jobs to countries where they could find cheaper labor. And they saw a connection between many social problems – crime, drugs and welfare, for instance – and a high level of economic insecurity. 

These Iowans may or may not have been the “peasants with pitchforks” that Buchanan later exhorted after his victory in New Hampshire, but they clearly were in a mood to respond favorably to his message. And knowing that gave reporters, editors and news directors in Iowa a chance to get a jump on the news that Dole’s support was stronger among party insiders than among voters.

“We probably didn’t believe it until it actually happened,” recalled Deb Brasier, editorial page editor of the Quad-City Times, “but were able to understand why Buchanan could finish a strong second.”

The total of our partnership was much greater than the sum of its parts.

With guidance from experienced “We the People” media partners in Wisconsin, the Iowa newspapers and broadcast stations quickly learned how to work together on promoting the town hall meetings and spotting campaign trends. One of the most successful print-broadcast partnerships was in the Quad Cities area of eastern Iowa, where KWQC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Davenport, teamed with the Quad-City Times and its sister Lee Enterprises paper, the Muscatine Journal. The combined partnership was able to provide joint, in-depth analysis of a statewide poll and follow up with issue-based stories that broke the usual “horse race” mold of election-year journalism. Iowa Public Television, KUNI radio in Cedar Falls, and KCCI-TV in Des Moines also combined to air poll results, examine focus group findings supplied by The Harwood Group, and drum up interest in the town hall meetings. “We really did everything we could to prime the pump,” said Rusty Cunningham, editor of the Ottumwa Courier. “Our partners really tried to work together.”

Hard-bitten reporters and editors gained an appetite for civic journalism after they witnessed, first-hand, what happens when citizens engage in conversation and bring their concerns directly to the candidates.

“We won a lot of converts in our newsroom, although certainly not everyone,” said Brasier, who spearheaded the project for the Quad-City Times in Davenport. “Some people still think [civic journalism] is today’s fad, but others saw how happy and how enthused our readers were to have been given that chance to connect with the political process. Those members of our staff came to realize what a valuable reporting resource [the project] was.”

Many citizens who took part in “Voice of the People, Iowa” town hall meetings and the Feb. 9 “Iowa ’96” broadcast came away feeling better about their role in the political process – and the media partners who organized the forums.

“We heard nothing but good things from people who showed up,” said Gary Sawyer, editor of the Mason City Globe-Gazette. “In fact, the only complaint was that the meeting was too short.” Echoed Brasier: “We heard a lot about it for weeks to come. The people who went [to the town hall meetings] felt good about it, and they connect us with that opportunity.”

Ottumwa’s Cunningham said he’s optimistic the next round of town hall meetings will produce larger turnouts, because his readers are now more familiar with how the process works. “I was heartened by the number of people who took the time to show up, and those who did stuck very closely to the issues,” Cunningham said. “I suspect that a lot of people didn’t come because they weren’t sure what the presidential race really meant to them. I came away believing that the closer you can get to the issue, the more interest you get.”

Here are some negative lessons we learned:

You can lead political candidates to water, but you can’t make them drink.

The pull-out of major candidates in Des Moines took place on a Thursday, one day before the “Iowa ’96” forum was scheduled to air. The candidates offered a number of excuses – fund-raising events elsewhere, the format of a preceding “Washington Week in Review” special that featured the governors of Iowa and New Hampshire, both Dole supporters – but the only real explanation was that Dole didn’t want to risk taking questions from citizens on a live program three days before the caucuses, and the other front-runners weren’t interested if Dole wasn’t. David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register, who has covered lowa’s caucuses since the 1970s, later suggested that an earlier broadcast date might have enticed some candidates to attend.

So many details, so little time.

The bulk of the logistical support for “Voice of the People, Iowa” came from Wisconsin, where partners in the “We the People” coalition had four years of experience in running town hall meetings and using other civic journalism techniques. Although there were several planning meetings in Iowa, a number of conference calls and an avalanche of faxes, distance made it difficult to tie together all the loose ends. The size of the partnership was simultaneously a blessing and a problem, because there were times when key partners didn’t get the word about critical aspects of the project. For example, KWQC-TV had planned to air the Feb. 9 forum live until its news director learned belatedly of public television’s plan to end the “Washington Week in Review” special on the quarter hour. The resulting impact on the program schedule made it virtually impossible for a commercial station to cover the forum.

Don’t count on any favors from your media brethren.

Even though the broadcast of the “Voice of the People, Iowa” forum originated in suburban Des Moines, local advance coverage was sparse and, at one critical point, damagingly inaccurate. 

After leading candidates pulled out on Thursday, the Des Moines Register published a brief wire-service story incorrectly reporting that the forum had “collapsed.” The forum’s organizers had pledged from the start to go ahead regardless of candidate participation. As it turned out, the forum attracted four candidates, 250 citizens and a media response panel that featured some of the nation’s leading political writers and commentators. On Saturday, the day after the forum, the Register carried no story to indicate that it had taken place.

Little things can count.

The Davenport town hall meeting, attended by about 85 people, was broadcast live on KUNI. Thousands tuned in – but the presence of TV cameras in the hall also encouraged some participants to make speeches rather than engage in a conversation. The “talk radio” syndrome may have been due, in part, to the placement of microphones in the aisles. 

Attendance in Ottumwa was dampened because the town hall meeting was held on a Wednesday night, which is “church night” in that city of 21,000 people and 75 churches.

Despite these factors, the “Voice of the People, Iowa” project was, overall, a success. It showed editors and reporters a different way of covering politics and campaigns. It allowed them to reconnect with their readers, viewers and listeners in a way that otherwise would not have happened in Iowa’s horse-race atmosphere. Finally, it planted the seeds for more civic journalism in Iowa – journalism that puts the focus on citizens and the issues they regard as important. 

< Introduction | Table of Contents | Iowa: “Students and the Caucuses” >

By Thomas W. Still