The contrast between the 2020 Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee and this year’s convention in Chicago could not be greater. In Milwaukee, activities were kept to a minimum and social distancing between participants was the rule, due to the then-poorly controlled COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the floor of the United Center is packed, and the enthusiasm of the delegates is palpable, even while watching it on the normally sedate C-SPAN.
Those visible displays of joy and enthusiasm for the ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are real, according to Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart, and inspiring delegates to work hard during the remaining weeks of the campaign.
“As is typical with conventions, the excitement is building, but I don’t know how much higher we can go,” Hart told Little Village from Chicago via Zoom on Wednesday morning. “The excitement in the room is already at a very, very high level.”
Convention organizers even found a way to make the roll call of the states, when the head of each state’s delegation announced its votes for the candidate. The roll call is typically tedious — it hasn’t mattered for decades because the nominee is known well before the convention begins. This year, it wasn’t even necessary, because in order to ensure the Democratic nominee would appear on the ballot in every state, the actual voting by the delegates took place online, starting at the end of July and concluding on Aug. 5.
Vice President Harris received the votes of 4,563 of the 4,615 delegates. The votes of the remaining 52 delegates were recorded by the DNC as “present.”
Instead of seeming like a long slog as it usually does, this year’s roll call of the states had a party atmosphere, with an onstage deejay playing a song selected for each state before the delegation’s vote was announced. Some states got music from one their own (such as Indiana’s “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson, who was born in Gary) or had an obvious connection to the state (Idaho’ got ‘s “Private Idaho” by the B-52s). As Rita Hart, the leader of the Iowa delegation, prepared to announce its votes, DJ Cassidy played “Celebration” by Kool and Gang.
In its story explaining the musical selection for each delegation, all the Associated Press could say about Iowa’s was, “The band may have been from New Jersey but everyone likes to celebrate good times, c’mon.”
As the sound of Kool and Gang’s 1980 hit faded, TV cameras focused on Hart. Behind her, delegate CJ Petersen from Audubon County acted as an interpreter for the hearing impaired, using American Sign Language to share Hart’s words.
“The Tall Corn State of Iowa, the state that launched Barack Obama on his way to the presidency, the state that put ‘Education’ on its state quarter, and the state that feeds and fuels the world casts one vote absent and 45 votes for the next president of the United States of America, Kamala Harris,” Hart said.
She meant to say “present,” not “absent.”
“Something about being on national TV with all those people hollering and shouting, I just couldn’t even think of the word ‘present’ for some reason,” Hart recalled with a laugh on Wednesday morning.
That vote total differed from the unanimous vote for Harris following a Zoom meeting of the Iowa delegates, announced in a news release on July 22, the day after President Biden withdrew as a candidate and endorsed Harris for president.
“I asked on the Zoom session, ‘Is there any objection to us saying that we are unanimously in favor of Kamala Harris?’ and there were no objections to that,” Hart said when asked about the one dissenting vote. “But then there was an individual vote taken and that’s the results that came back from that. That’s all I know.”
It’s likely that the vote, like other present votes in the final tally, was cast to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, and the Democratic Party not taking strong actions to push for a ceasefire even after more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll.
There have been protests calling for a ceasefire and for the Biden administration to stop supplying arms to the Israeli Defense Forces outside the convention this week. On Wednesday night, a sit-in at the convention was organized by Uncommitted, a national movement that encouraged Democrats to vote “uncommitted” during primaries to protest the Biden administration’s continued support for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to push for an immediate ceasefire. The sit-in was launched in response to the DNC’s decision not to have any Palestinian-American speakers at the convention.
DNC attendees cover their ears as the names of dead Palestinian children are read as they leave the convention pic.twitter.com/9bueCbFeEr
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) August 22, 2024
The protests have been confined to the edges of the convention activities in Chicago, and appear to have done nothing to change the position of the party’s leadership or attract the attention of the vast majority of delegates, though Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib joined Uncommitted’s sit-in.
Some Iowa Democrats were energized by the vice president becoming their party’s nominee well before the convention began on Monday.
“Kamala Harris’ candidacy has brought an explosion of new energy and enthusiasm,” Iowa Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum told her fellow Democrats at the party’s annual Liberty and Justice Celebration on July 27.
Two weeks before the convention kicked off, Iowans for Kamala organized an online event that attracted over 700 supporters, and raised money for both the Harris campaign and party-building work here in Iowa.
The event wasn’t organized by the party, although it featured Democratic lawmakers and IDP county chairs, and its lead organizer was Deirde DeJear, the Democrat’s 2022 candidate for governor. DeJear also served as the state chair for Kamala Harris presidential campaign in 2020, when the then-California senator was running in the Iowa Caucus.
DeJear told Little Village she believed the energy being generated by the Harris/Walz campaign could help with efforts to rebuild the Democratic Party in Iowa following several dismal election cycles.
“Kamala supporters are really, really excited about helping Democrats across this state,” she said. “The big question I’ve been hearing is, ‘What can we do and how can we get involved?’”
Hart is also hopeful enthusiasm for the top of the ticket will help with party-rebuilding efforts in Iowa. Reviving the party’s electoral prospects has been Hart’s primary focus since becoming chair a year-and-a-half ago, she explained on Wednesday.
“We had just come off of a 2022 loss that was very discouraging, and we looked at the reality of how many Democrats simply didn’t make their way to the polls,” Hart said. “As I went across the state and looked at the job I had ahead of me as the chair of the party, there was a lot of disillusionment from county party chairs and county party organizations, which are the backbone of the party itself. I knew that is where the work was, that’s what we have to turn around.”
The Harris campaign does not have an office or any official presence in the state — the Biden campaign didn’t, either — and Hart doesn’t expect that to change. But even without Harris or Walz campaigning in the state, Hart still expects them to have an impact in Iowa.
Nationally, polling has shown that the switch from Biden to Harris has dramatically boosted the Democratic ticket’s appeal to young voters, Black voters and Latino voters, all of whom are vital to the Iowa Democratic Party’s future, according to Hart.
And Harris’s selection of Tim Walz as her running mate added an important element, Hart said. The Minnesota governor is someone “who understands the Midwest, understands the challenges that face us in the farm community,” and the unique challenges of adding and retaining jobs in rural America.
As important as those factors are, Hart contends, so is the fact the unprecedented change to the Dem ticket happened at a time when polls show Iowa Republicans are out of touch with the public on important issues, from the value of diverting money from public schools to private school tuition, to abortion rights. Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, was willing to listen to public concerns about his candidacy and step aside after securing enough votes to the nomination — something no president has done before — while Republican leaders in Iowa remain intransigent.
“That makes the case that change is possible in a short time,” Hart said. “That is going to be good for Iowans, good for Americans and good for democracy.”
Our delegation is soaking up every moment of the Democratic National Convention! It’s inspiring to hear from so many incredible leaders, but the best part is being surrounded by fellow Democrats who are just as excited as we are to send @KamalaHarris to the Oval Office! #DNC2024… pic.twitter.com/u5KP2gCUWk
— Iowa Democrats (@iowademocrats) August 21, 2024
