Yale on the Trail

DES MOINES, Iowa, 7:37 PM - “This is the main planning room,” Bobby Gravitz ‘05 tells me as he sweeps his arm across a field of cubicles, half-eaten pizzas and young volunteers hunched over telephones. “Over on this side are most of the statewide directorial staff and over there is most of our Polk County […]

[Read more →]

DES MOINES, Iowa, 7:15 PM - The floor of Senator Barack Obama’s Des Moines Iowa headquarters is soaked. Two canvassers walk in wearing thick-soled North Face hiking boots and you can see drops of water press out of the carpet around the edges of each shoe. Each volunteer that has come in out of the […]

[Read more →]

YALE, Iowa, 2:21 p.m. — George Dorr has been driving tractor trailers for 60 years – “Since I was twenty-something,” he says. Now six months into his retirement, he sits at a table at Just Ethel’s, the only café in the tiny burg of Yale, Iowa. His whole life, Dorr has been leaving this hamlet […]

[Read more →]

PERRY, Iowa, 12:32 p.m. — The back wall of a political event is a little like a fraternity. Photographers and reporters lean against the wall, usually butting up against a candidate’s posters or signs, and swap stories. Did you hear the latest one about Biden? Who’s this joker doing Candidate X’s introduction? Weren’t you in […]

[Read more →]

PERRY, Iowa, 12:10 p.m. — Perry, Iowa is a small town of 7,000 at the intersection of Iowa highways 141 and 144. The main drag – 2nd avenue – runs four blocks through the heart of town, lined with maybe a couple dozen storefronts. It is a sleepy little place 20 miles north of the […]

[Read more →]

PERRY, Iowa, 12:10 PM - Perry, Iowa is a little town of 7,000 at the intersection of Iowa highways 141 and 144. The main drag – 2nd avenue – runs four blocks through the heart of town, lined with maybe a couple dozen storefronts. It is a sleepy little place twenty miles north of the […]

[Read more →]

Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards called attention to the growing divide between moneyed corporate interests and working man’s values at a rally in Sioux City Sunday night
SIOUX CITY, Iowa, 9:43 p.m. — Tom Petty must have been proud. And Bruce Springsteen. And John Mellencamp and John Fogerty.
Elizabeth Edwards’ introduction of her husband was almost […]

[Read more →]

SIOUX CITY, Iowa, 6:09 p.m. – Delaware Senator Joe Biden is not happy with President George W. Bush.
“This president has done more to harm our national defense than any president in modern history,” Biden declares as he paces before an audience of mostly senior citizens at the Boys and Girls Home.
It was to be one […]

[Read more →]

SIOUX CITY, Iowa, 5:14 p.m. — Walter and Elsi Carranza have never voted in a caucus before.
In the basement of the unheated Mount Olive Baptist Church, they hunch down in winter coats and listen quietly for 45 minutes as Obama volunteer Carlos Odio translates caucus-trainer Rick Mullin’s lesson on how to caucus: arrive on time, […]

[Read more →]

LE MARS, Iowa, 12:54 p.m. — Come west of the Mississippi and you can kiss your beloved Phish Food good-bye. The Midwest and the Plains are Blue Bunny territory, a vast steppe unclaimed by boutique ice cream makers like Ben & Jerry’s or Haagen-Dazs. Since the founding of Wells’ Dairy by Fred H. Wells, […]

[Read more →]

LE MARS, Iowa, 12:29 p.m. — “This has to be about something more than celebrity,” Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd told a crowd of 30 as he stood atop two stacked forklift palletes. “This has to be about something deeper, much deeper – about substance and about who has the ability to lead this country.”
This week […]

[Read more →]

NORTH SIOUX CITY, Iowa, 10:29 a.m. — I-29 crosses the Big Sioux River at North Sioux City, South Dakota. Just across the river and down an exit ramp is the Seargant Floyd Iowa Welcome Center staffed by Mark and Sharon, who moved to the state just a few years ago and will caucus for the […]

[Read more →]