Trump trial, storm complicate Iowa campaigning

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a campaign event, Friday, Jan. 17, 2020, in Newton, Iowa. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a campaign event, Friday, Jan. 17, 2020, in Newton, Iowa. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

NEWTON, Iowa -- As a winter storm barreled down on Iowa, Elizabeth Warren's campaign team struggled with whether to scrap a town-hall style forum scheduled at the old Maytag headquarters.

There was more than weather at play as the Massachusetts senator's campaign monitored the forecast and called expected attendees to gauge their willingness to brave the snow and whipping wind. For the Democratic presidential candidate, the event was probably one of her last chances to make a face-to-face appeal to voters in Iowa before the Feb. 3 caucus. So it went on as planned.

Warren, along with Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, is soon to be marooned in the Senate as a juror in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.

That's left their campaigns scrambling to make the most of their time in Iowa and the other early-voting states, and thinking of ways to stay on voters' radar during the trial. It's also given their 2020 rivals outside the Senate an opportunity to take advantage.

Klobuchar trails the top tier of contenders in polling and fundraising and needs a strong showing in Iowa to catapult her campaign into the next round of primaries. She insisted that the demands of the Senate trial wouldn't hurt her candidacy.

"I'm a mom, and I can balance things really well," Klobuchar said Saturday during an event in Coralville.

The full schedule for the Senate trial is uncertain, and it's possible it wraps up before the caucuses. But campaigns are planning for the prospect of the candidates being in Senate session Tuesday through Saturday this week, as well as five or six days the following week. The fourth Democratic senator still in the race is Michael Bennet of Colorado.

Well-funded candidates such as Warren and Sanders are considering putting private planes on hold so they can quickly fly to Iowa for late-night events after the trial wraps up. Sanders has already scheduled an 8 p.m. rally in Cedar Rapids on Wednesday.

Campaign surrogates are planning to headline events during the week that the candidates can appear at via livestream video.

Still, the Senate schedule has increased the pressure on the candidates to make the most of what may be their last free weekend. Warren had three events scheduled Saturday with influential interest groups. Klobuchar was headlining three town halls in eastern Iowa. Sanders was campaigning in New Hampshire, the next state on the primary calendar, before heading back to Iowa on Monday.

Recent polls show Warren, Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, in a virtual tie, with Klobuchar trailing.

Biden and Buttigieg will largely have the state to themselves once the impeachment trial begins, as they do not serve in the Senate and neither currently has any other job.

Biden has events scheduled in Iowa four out of the next five days. Buttigieg plans to be in the state nearly every day until the caucuses, focusing in particular on smaller Iowa cities and towns less often seen by his top rivals.

He said Saturday the Oval Office requires a wartime veteran, a niche he occupies exclusively among the top-tier candidates in his party's race for the 2020 nomination.

During an interview on Iowa PBS in suburban Des Moines, Buttigieg was asked if there's value in a president who had faced hostile fire.

Buttigieg, a Naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan in 2014, noted he had been present for rocket attacks while stationed at Bagram Airfield, and later faced potential danger as an armed driver in Kabul.

"This is very real for me," Buttigieg told interviewer David Yepsen. "And I do believe there is value in someone in the Oval Office understanding what's at stake, understanding at a personal level what's at stake, when decisions are made that could send people into a conflict."

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Meg Kinnard, Thomas Beaumont, Bill Barrow, Alexandra Jaffe, Will Weissert and Hunter Woodall of The Associated Press.

A Section on 01/19/2020

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