Iowans bring a special-interest agenda to caucuses
WASHINGTON - New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner's decision last week to schedule the state's primary for Jan. 8, five days after the Iowa caucuses but well before the primaries of Michigan and Florida, signaled that New Hampshire and Iowa have succeeded in maintaining their special roles in choosing presidential nominees for yet another election cycle.
The two states long ago made peace with each other but have had to face down other challengers to their early-voting status. In pleading their case to the national parties, they've made some good arguments. Both are small enough to give lower-funded candidates a fair chance to build momentum. Moreover, voters in both states are committed to seeing the candidates multiple times and evaluating them carefully.
People who attend campaign events in living-room settings in the two states tend to come away impressed: It's hard not to feel protective of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary as authentic antidotes to all that is crass and manipulative in today's politics.
But for the tradition to survive, both Iowa and New Hampshire must make good on their commitments to vet the candidates without fear or favor; they must be motivated by good citizenship alone, serving as unbiased jurors.
This year, only one of the states is living up to the ideal. New Hampshirites are checking out the candidates freely and fairly, without imposing any special-interest agenda of their own. But there is strong evidence that Iowans are using their early-voting status to make the candidates pass a litmus test on ethanol subsidies.
As the capital of the corn belt, Iowa has much to gain from increases in government spending on biofuels: About a quarter of its corn crop already goes to make ethanol, a gasoline substitute, and new factories are popping up everywhere in the state. Des Moines wants to be the Houston of biofuels. A recent poll showed 92 percent of Iowans consider ethanol essential to the state's economic future.
But there are real questions about how ethanol fits into the energy mix. Some energy specialists contend that the damage done to the environment by cutting trees for cornfields and then expending energy on producing ethanol outweighs any benefits. Even some who support ethanol feel there's no need for the subsidies and trade protections that are worth an estimated $2 billion per year for Iowa alone.
Iowa, however, is fighting to maintain and, if possible, expand federal assistance to ethanol, be it through government-backed loans, subsidies to corn growers, tax breaks, or requirements that cars be equipped to run on biofuel.
In past elections, Iowans were known for quizzing candidates about their support for ethanol. But this year, the Iowa race has taken on a more relentless ethanol flavor: Almost all contenders of both parties have held events at ethanol plants, and announced ethanol-heavy energy plans.
Earlier this month, Iowa State University convened a "presidential forum" at which scientists and businesspeople involved in biofuels could hear from the candidates. A flu-ridden John Edwards dropped out. Three other Democrats spoke of the need for government support for ethanol. But Republican John McCain sang a different tune.
"I trust Americans. I trust markets. And I oppose subsidies," McCain said, making clear that he also opposes special breaks for oil companies.
McCain's resistance to ethanol subsidies was already known, though many Iowans had hoped he would change his position, as former senator Fred Thompson had done a few weeks earlier. ("It's a matter now of national security," Thompson said.)
Since the Iowa State forum, McCain has plunged even lower in Iowa polls, to just 6 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post survey. McCain has about three times as much support in New Hampshire, according to recent polls.
There could be other reasons for McCain's low standing in Iowa. But if a presidential candidate can be derailed for taking a stand against a regional sacred cow like ethanol, there's something wrong with the system.
In addition, Iowa's success in promoting ethanol probably played a role in Florida's and Michigan's decisions to push up their primaries.
Both of those states are full of special interests that make Iowa's look quaint, from Florida's desire to preserve sugar tariffs and an embargo of Cuba, to Michigan's hope of knocking down efforts to raise fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles. Many other states can be expected to try to home in on the action for 2012.
If it doesn't restrain itself, Iowa could find that its ethanol obsession brings an end to its special status in presidential elections - and New Hampshire's as well.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. 