DES MOINES, Iowa -- Hillary Rodham Clinton returns to Iowa this weekend for the first time since her loss in the 2008 presidential caucuses, arriving as the undeclared frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination but still trailed by criticisms about her first campaign.
The former secretary of state and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will be in Iowa for Sen. Tom Harkin's, D-Iowa, annual steak fry Sunday. Harkin is retiring after 40 years of elective office in Washington.
"I don't expect her to talk about her future decisions," said Harkin's wife, Ruth, who is a longtime Hillary Clinton friend and supporter. "They're going to be announced next year. But this is a very significant moment for her to greet Iowa voters."
Clinton's 2008 effort in Iowa was plagued by startup problems and affected by the overall dysfunction of her national campaign team. By the time she corrected her course, Barack Obama had moved ahead of her on the ground.
But it was more than staff problems that hurt Clinton in 2008. As a candidate, she often chafed at the demands of the caucus process, including the time required to court individual activists across the state. She disliked traveling too far from Des Moines and certain friendly hotels.
Added to that are questions raised by this summer's book tour about whether her campaign instincts have dulled. Clinton's time since leaving the Senate has been devoted to foreign policy discussions inside the administration, interaction with world leaders and more than a year of lucrative speechmaking as a private citizen -- rather than being in more regular contact with everyday Americans.
At this point, Clinton has no strong challenger in Iowa, a contrast to eight years ago when she faced then-Sen. Obama and a well-entrenched John Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee.
Nonetheless, she won't have Iowa totally to herself this weekend. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is contemplating running for president, will appear at several events, while Vice President Joe Biden, who was the featured speaker at last year's Harkin steak fry, will be in the state this week.
Anticipation of Clinton's appearance (as well as her husband's), and the fact that this is the last of Harkin's 37 steak fry events, will draw a large crowd at a balloon field in Indianola on Sunday afternoon.
Walt Pregler, the Democratic chairman in Dubuque County, called Clinton "a lead-pipe cinch" if she runs for the nomination, though he has long been a supporter of Biden and would back him again if he were to run in 2016. "There's a great deal of support for her in Dubuque among my central committee," he said. "They like her, and they like Bill."
But many of these same activists say Clinton needs to learn from the mistakes of her last campaign, which drew criticism for not understanding the culture of Iowa's caucus politics and because the Clinton entourage often got in the way of her ability to connect more effectively with voters.
Julie Stewart, Democratic chair in Dallas County outside Des Moines, said her personal experience with Clinton has been always positive, but she was critical of the Clinton national team of 2008. "She brought people from New York and that just didn't work," she said. "Obama hired Iowans or Midwesterners. Even though she grew up in the Midwest, the people she brought with her, I don't think they connected well."
Bonnie Campbell, who was co-chairman of Clinton's 2008 Iowa campaign, said the criticism of Clinton as someone who could not connect with voters in Iowa still baffles her. "I'm mystified by it," she said. "I attended many events where she stayed till the last hand had been shaken. ... There was a really strong, important give and take. I just don't know. I don't think that's accurate."
But Campbell acknowledged the challenges Clinton would face trying to run a campaign close to the ground, given her stature and the security protection that accompanies her. "The hardest challenge of all is putting together a strategy that's true to her personality and style, which I do think the one-on-one is," she said. "Thinking about how you do retail politics when you are such almost a larger-than-life figure is a real challenge."
Neither Clinton nor most of her national staff understood the intricacies of the sometimes-arcane caucus process. By the time the 2008 campaign here ended, both she and her husband were left with a sour taste about the caucuses, which they saw as undemocratic. Caucuses require voters to show up at a specified hour and stay for an extended period, unlike primaries that allow someone to vote at any time during the day.
The former president also was new to the caucus process in 2008. He never had to compete in the caucuses during his campaigns for the White House because he and others ceded the state to Harkin in the 1992 nominating contest, and he faced no primary competition in his re-election campaign. Even now, he is still fixated on what he thinks are the flaws of the process.
This time around, Clinton's allies, with the help of some of those who ran Obama's 2008 operation, are busy trying to avoid the problems of the past. Some are assembling a grass-roots network here that her eventual campaign could inherit while the state Democratic Party is moving to address some of the criticisms of the caucus process.
Ready for Hillary, a pro-Clinton super PAC, began organizing in Iowa in January and has been signing up supporters at fairs and political gatherings in all 99 counties.
"It's just like a campaign, absent an announced candidate," Campbell said.
A Section on 09/14/2014