Jackie Norris is a former Obama/Biden administration official and experienced campaign hand. She managed Barack Obama’s 2008 general election effort in Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

Whoever wins Iowa needs to share our values, be ready to serve as commander-in-chief, and build a diverse coalition to win in November. That’s why I’m supporting Joe Biden.

All Republicans in the U.S. Senate are so far presenting a united front to defend President Donald Trump against any full examination of the charges against him. But more than most of her colleagues, Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst is becoming the public face of Trump’s defense.

She is also the leading voice in Congress for a talking point Ernst floated earlier this month: Trump has more firmly supported Ukraine against Russian aggression than did President Barack Obama.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has picked a favorite in the GOP primary to represent Iowa’s second district.

Edward Cohn lives in Grinnell and is a member of the Poweshiek County Democratic Central Committee. -promoted by Laura Belin

I’m like a lot of Democrats: when the 2020 campaign began, I loved the idea of an Elizabeth Warren presidency, but I wasn’t sure whether Warren would be a strong candidate in November. Luckily, I live in Iowa, which means that I’ve had a lot of chances to see the Democratic field in action. After seeing 47 speeches by nineteen candidates, I can confidently say Warren is exactly the leader America needs.

Dan Guild expects one of the Democratic candidates to surge in the closing days, most likely Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar. -promoted by Laura Belin

Ten days before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, I wrote a piece here entitled Front-runners Beware.

Four years later, there is not one front-runner, but four. Importantly, New Hampshire seems just as close. As I wrote last month, the winner of Iowa can expect a 12-point bounce in New Hampshire.

The simple truth is the winner in Iowa is very likely to win the New Hampshire primary eight days later. And no Democrat has won Iowa and New Hampshire when both were contested and lost the nomination.

The history with tables is below, but in summary:

When the Democratic National Committee nixed the “virtual caucus” plan, they destroyed any possibility of Iowans with disabilities participating in the February 3 caucuses by phone. Nevertheless, the Iowa Democratic Party is trying to make the in-person caucuses more accessible than in the past.

Democratic county party organizations have long been encouraged to arrange for precinct caucuses to be held at facilities that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, that doesn’t eliminate all barriers that might keep someone from fully participating in the first step of the presidential nominating process.

For the first time this year, Iowa Democrats can submit a request for accommodation at their precinct caucuses.

Republicans on the Iowa Senate State Government Committee have approved a proposed constitutional amendment that could eventually clear the way for a total ban on abortion.

Senate Joint Resolution 21 would add language to the Iowa Constitution clarifying that the document “shall not be construed to recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion or to require the public funding of abortion.”

An earlier version cleared the Senate State Government Committee in March 2019. But for reasons they never explained publicly, Republican leaders did not bring the measure to the Senate floor during last year’s legislative session.

Governor Kim Reynolds urged lawmakers to act on this issue in her Condition of the State address earlier this month: “We must protect life by making clear, through an amendment, that our constitution does not grant a right to abortion.”

The goal is to make all future abortion restrictions immune from court challenges.

One of two Democrats who had been campaigning in a top-targeted Iowa Senate district has left the race.

Charlie Hodges posted on Facebook on January 23 that he was ending his campaign in Senate district 20 because “the pathway to victory is too narrow at this point to justify continuing.” He said he is “fully supporting Rhonda Martin’s campaign to unseat Senator Brad Zaun” and encouraged those who backed him to do the same.

Tanya Keith is a Democratic activist in Des Moines and author of the recently published Soccer Stars on the Pitch. -promoted by Laura Belin

I am the Cory Booker precinct captain for my precinct in the River Bend neighborhood of Des Moines. When I heard he dropped out last Monday morning, I was gutted. Senator Booker was a unique candidate of hope in a sometimes angry field.

I was so firmly in his camp, I told people I didn’t need a second choice, I only needed to work hard to make him viable in my precinct. So after he left the race, I was lost, and I decided to go yell at a billionaire.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst told Iowa reporters in October that if articles of impeachment were referred to the Senate, she would “evaluate the facts” as a “jurist.”

Senator Chuck Grassley voted to allow deposition of witnesses in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, explaining at the time he was supporting “a tightly disciplined legal process to get the information needed to help clear up important discrepancies on the record. Witnesses will not be called simply for the sake of calling witnesses. Seeking this information is important to a process that is judicious.”

Yet Iowa’s senators joined all of their Republican colleagues on January 21 to prevent senators from examining any documents the White House is withholding and from hearing any witness testimony about President Donald Trump’s conduct.

Shawn Harmsen is a political and social justice activist in Iowa City. -promoted by Laura Belin

I believe Senator Elizabeth Warren would make the best president out of all of the candidates. So after spending more than a year carefully listening to candidates and watching their campaigns, I am excited to commit to caucus for Warren.

I have been a fan since she first appeared on the Daily Show, back when President Barack Obama reached out to her for her expertise and integrity to help save America in the wake of Bush’s 2008 recession, a recession that hit both of my parents pretty hard.

I watched as she helped put together a new agency to protect consumers, and how she got elected to the Senate after Republican senators blocked her from leading the agency she helped create.

The first time I saw her speak, and read her book, was a half-dozen years ago.  I wanted her to run in 2016.

Paul W. Johnson is a preacher’s kid, returned Peace Corps volunteer, former state legislator, former chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service (now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service), a former director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and a retired farmer. -promoted by Laura Belin

I have reached a point in my life journey when I often wake at night and mull over the life this world and my country have given me.

Tamyra Harrison is founder and director of Iowans For D.C. Statehood. -promoted by Laura Belin

In 1978, when Congress put what was right for the American people over party interests, Republicans and Democrats came together on behalf of a large group of American citizens.  With the required two-thirds majority, they passed a proposed constitutional amendment to give full representation in both houses of Congress to the District of Columbia.

Republican Senator Strom Thurmond said it best: “The residents of the District of Columbia deserve the right to (full) representation in Congress if for no other reason than simple fairness.”  Unfortunately, only sixteen of the required 38 states needed to ratify the amendment approved it, so it failed. Iowa was one of those sixteen states.

“They took our land, they took the grocery store, they took the community center,” Joyce Bruce recalled of a project that destroyed the African-American neighborhood anchored by Center Street in the late 1950s and 1960s. “They just wiped that whole block completely out, all, all the way down.”

Bruce’s words and other personal stories are featured in a new interactive exhibit devoted to the history of racist housing policies in Des Moines. Federal government programs and city initiatives over many decades contributed to persistent, wide-ranging racial disparities in Iowa’s largest metro area.

Dan Guild: “The modern primary schedule greatly reduces the voice of African Americans in the selection of the Democratic presidential candidate.” -promoted by Laura Belin

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let us remember the importance he placed on African American access to the ballot box. A portion of a speech he gave in 1957 is below.  The whole text is worth reading.

But even more, all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition. And so our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. [Audience:] (Yes)

Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights…

Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs (Yeah) into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.

Unfortunately, the modern primary schedule greatly reduces the voice of African Americans in the selection of the Democratic presidential candidate.

Caleb Gates lives and works in Cedar Rapids. He provides case management to new refugee families and advocates for new Iowans. -promoted by Laura Belin

When I came to bed on election night 2016 and told my wife Donald Trump had won, she cried and asked me, “Are you going to lose your job?”

I worked with refugees. In December 2017 I learned Trump’s anti-refugee policies were shutting down the program I worked for. I lost my job the following month.

I was blessed to find another job working with refugees, but many others in that field were not so fortunate. The Trump administration has stained the moral fabric of our country and decimated our global reputation. Many lives have been damaged or even destroyed as a direct result of the actions and decisions of this President. The stakes are high, and Democrats, independents, and even many Republicans feel it.

Given the stakes, priority number 1 for election 2020 is beating Donald Trump. We Iowans have a political responsibility to send a message to the country and the world, a responsibility greater than we deserve as less than 1 percent of the U.S. population and whiter and older than the country as whole. I will vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination, but I want my caucus vote to help choose the right nominee. After mulling this decision for the last year, the answer is now clear: Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who can beat Donald Trump.

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for policies that support children and strengthen families. He has endorsed Elizabeth Warren for president. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowans like to see presidential candidates in the flesh, but sometimes their surrogates offer perspectives that deserve as much attention.

In early January, Heather McGhee spoke on behalf of Elizabeth Warren to a small group of Iowans at Smokey Row in Des Moines. Her message, however, was one that deserves to be considered and heeded by Democrats and progressives more generally.

Greg Thielmann grew up in Newton and worked for more than 30 years on nuclear weapons issues in the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Foreign Service, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. He currently serves as a board member of the Arms Control Association. -promoted by Laura Belin

When I was growing up in central Iowa during the Cold War, I sometimes found myself headed west on Interstate 80, imagining the way nuclear war would be likely to arrive in Iowa – a series of Soviet nuclear ground bursts in Omaha to destroy Strategic Air Command Headquarters, bathing Iowa in a heavy dose of radioactive fallout.

Now the Cold War is over, but not the nuclear threat. The Trump administration has abandoned the anti-nuclear deal with Iran and six other states. President Trump’s efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula have fizzled. The U.S. has pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia and is dithering over Moscow’s offer to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the only remaining limit on the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration proposes spending trillions of dollars to build new strategic weapons.

Amanda Rex-Johnson is an activist in central Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

I started volunteering on presidential campaigns last year long before I had identified my favorite candidate. My goal was to support folks getting more involved in the Iowa caucuses while advocating accessibility needs directly to the campaigns.

Not all the campaigns were easy to engage with. Despite multiple efforts, I was unable to connect with a top candidate’s operation here in Des Moines. When I found out that one of his top staffers would be a guest speaker at a training I was attending, I was excited to finally have a chance to ask how to volunteer and what they were doing to make their campaign more accessible for volunteers and organizers.

Jackie Wellman is a Democratic volunteer in West Des Moines and a board member and Iowa ambassador of the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation. -promoted by Laura Belin

For years I was in denial about having a progressive, rare motor neuron disease, but the fact is that I have Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia.  Senator Amy Klobuchar is the co-sponsor of the rare disease caucus.  When someone is fighting for people like me and my son, they deserve a look. 

The senator was at my house in 2016 while stumping for Hillary Clinton.  I went to see her speak to the Asian Latino Coalition last April, walking away with even more appreciation.

After reading more about her and speaking to her, I decided she was the one I would be working for. Last June, I endorsed after trying to see as many candidates as I could.  Here are the reasons why: