Edwards Eyes Hawkeyes
For thirty-five years now, the Iowa caucus has stood as the first major electoral event of U.S. presidential primaries. As such, the state draws quite a lot of attention, particularly from outsider candidates looking to create momentum with an early splash. Nobody is looking at Iowa more intently than John Edwards, who lost the state narrowly in 2004 and hasn’t shut down his operations there since. Real Clear Politics’ poll average puts Edwards just a hair ahead of Hillary Clinton, with 23.8 percent of the state’s Democratic vote to her 23.5 percent—though the same polls also show Edwards’ numbers having fallen in recent months.
Perhaps what’s most interesting about these numbers is what they imply about the direction Democratic campaigning may take as candidates scramble for advantage, particularly with respect to trade policy. Iowa is the Hawkeye State but it is also the Corn State (the state even has a corn song). Needless to say, the state’s corn farmers are partial to farm subsidies, as Iowa’s own Des Moines Register notes. Between 2003 and 2005, Iowa’s fourth and fifth congressional districts—two districts of 435 total in the United States—received nearly $2.5 billion in federal crop subsidies, 7 percent all U.S. crop subsidy spending. In a recent Online Debate, Bob Young of the U.S. Farm Bureau defends these subsidies, while Daniel T. Griswold of the Cato Institute says their potential to undermine trade deals poses a substantial long-term threat to the U.S. economy, even if they benefit the country’s farmers in the short term.
It remains to be seen whether Edwards, who many analysts say is running on a platform of new American populism, can please both farmers and trade hawks. This CFR.org Issue Tracker on candidates’ trade policy notes that Edwards has been “increasingly critical of free-trade policies,” even criticizing NAFTA, the longstanding North American Free Trade Agreement. Still, the creating-a-splash-in-Iowa strategy is not without its risks. The New York Times notes Edwards may yet fail to get union endorsement in the state, and a disappointing performance could spell disaster for his campaign.
