From dive bars to steakhouses: How Iowa caucus staffers blow off steam

DES MOINES — On any given evening, after a long day of canvassing and recruiting new volunteers, campaign staffers wander in to Carl’s Place, a dive bar where watery beer is cheap enough to fit a skinflint budget.

In the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, hundreds of staffers from across the country will pick up their lives and move to Des Moines, where they work from dawn to dusk wooing potential voters.

Just as they do in Capitol Hill, where networks of friends and professional colleagues establish a pattern of favored bars, restaurants and cafes, those who share the common experience of the Iowa caucuses build their own community, even if they are working for rival campaigns.

Carl’s is such an institution among those who have descended on Des Moines, past and present, that one front-running presidential campaign this year considered circulating a formal memo among other offices declaring the pub neutral territory, a welcome space for staffers who work for any of the two dozen contenders seeking the Democratic nomination.

{mosads}The state director for that campaign, who asked not to be named discussing drinking habits, ultimately decided not to issue it.

Intermingling between campaigns is virtually impossible to avoid. The most prominent Iowa Democratic operatives work together on congressional or gubernatorial campaigns three out of every four years, and then split themselves between presidential campaigns every fourth year. Staffers who move from Washington may not know anyone except their new colleagues and friends from Capitol Hill who now work for rival campaigns.

“Many Iowa staffers who worked together in cycles past are getting together at local bars no matter what campaign they are on,” said one Democratic operative working her first caucus campaign. She sees friends from other camps at least once a week, she said.

Des Moines has been booming after the recession, and new apartment buildings, restaurants and coffee shops have sprung up even since the last Iowa caucus fight between Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The old haunts remain — one top Iowa political analyst said she knows to book a table at Centro, the Italian restaurant downtown, when certain reporter friends of hers with expense accounts to flex come to town.

Media executives tend to favor the steakhouse at 801 Grand, which is also more popular among staffers when Republicans have a contested caucus. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) has been spotted lunching at Alba, an emerging Republican favorite, while Troy Price, the chair of the state Democratic Party, prefers Noah’s Ark, one of the city’s older restaurants.

But new go-tos are emerging, three senior campaign officials suggested in off-the-record conversations at Smokey Row Coffee Company, just off Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and a few blocks from the interstate.

Sean Bagniewski, the chairman of the Polk County Democratic Party, preferred to meet at Scenic Route, a coffee shop in Des Moines’s trendy East Village with floor-to-ceiling windows on a well-trafficked corner, another place to be seen. On a recent afternoon, as he sat down with a reporter, he nodded across the cafe at one of his own staffers, who was conducting her own meeting.

As campaigns begin to bulk up their Iowa staff — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has at least 50 aides in the state, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has 39 and former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) has fielded his own army — apartment blocks are beginning to fill up. Some favor the Sherman Hill neighborhood; most prefer the East Village, a hipster haven at the base of the state capitol where Scenic Route sits.

“Living in the East Village is like being on a college campus,” the Democratic staffer said. “You’ll see people everywhere you go.”

It’s a good neighborhood for networking, too. Some of the state’s most high-powered lobbyists and campaign consultants step out of their East Village offices and across the street for a coffee at Molly’s Cupcakes, or a beer at the Iowa Taproom, which offers hundreds of in-state choices.

By night, the East Village plays host to a quiet turf war waged between Democratic and Republican legislative staffers. When Democrats held the majority, they also controlled the barstools at Beechwood, another dive bar a few blocks from the House and Senate office buildings. After Republicans built a huge majority in the 2010 elections, they took over. Now, with Republicans clinging to narrow majorities in both chambers, the mix of staffers has evened out.

“As goes Beechwood, so goes the state,” joked Kevin Geiken, executive director of the state Democratic Party.

CORRECTION: Noah’s Ark is one of the older restaurants in Des Moines. A previous version of this story included incorrect information.