Warren bets on a fast start in Iowa

Many of the words and phrases on the slips reflected the vocabulary of Warren’s presidential bid: Break up big tech. Ultra-millionaire wealth tax. Student debt cancellation. Impeachment. When the game ended, “Persist” koozies were awarded to the winners.

Smith is one of about 50 paid staff members Warren’s campaign already has on the ground in Iowa, far more than any other Democratic candidate is known to have hired in the state. The growing Warren juggernaut reflects a bet that rapidly hiring a large staff of organizers will give the senator an advantage over her rivals who are ramping up their efforts at a slower pace.

The strategy does not come cheap. Warren’s campaign spent more than $5 million over the first three months of the year, the most in the field, according to Federal Election Commission records. Her payroll included about 160 people during that period, far more than any other Democrat’s. Her team says its staff has grown even larger since then, to more than 200 people, more than half of whom are based in early-voting states.

Warren’s approach has the potential to pay off when Iowa holds its caucuses in February, but it is also loaded with risk. Warren needs to raise enough money to sustain her large operation and avoid the kind of financial troubles that other candidates have encountered in previous campaigns. Former Gov. Jeb Bush cut salaries in 2015 as his campaign languished, while Sen. John McCain resorted to layoffs in 2007, though he ultimately won the Republican nomination the next year.

Warren struggled in her early fundraising, trailing four other Democrats in the first quarter of the year, and she has refused to hold high-dollar fundraisers, putting her financial fate in the hands of small donors. In the first quarter, her campaign spent roughly 87 cents of every dollar it received in donations.

“It’s going to burn up cash,” Matt Paul, who was Hillary Clinton’s state director in Iowa for the 2016 caucuses, said of the Warren campaign’s sizable presence in the state. For campaigns, he said, there is a “delicate but necessary balance between cash flow and critical early voter contact.”

“The caucus is reliant upon relationships,” he added. “That takes staff and direct messaging to voters, but they need to be very careful not to burn through resources now when so few Democrats are engaged.”

For now, Warren, who won re-election in Massachusetts last year, has a financial cushion because she transferred $10.4 million to her presidential campaign from her Senate campaign account. She ended the first quarter with $11.2 million in cash on hand, trailing only Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic field.

Warren professes confidence in her campaign’s approach.

“I’m running exactly the campaign I want to run,” she told reporters during a visit to Cedar Rapids last week. “It’s a campaign based on ideas, and it’s building a grassroots movement. And a grassroots movement means person-to-person, face-to-face, community-to-community, all across Iowa and all across this country.”

Other Democrats have yet to match the Warren campaign’s scale in Iowa, based on information provided by their teams in recent days.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey has about three dozen staff members in Iowa, a spokeswoman for his campaign said, while former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, a long-shot candidate who has run since 2017, has two dozen, according to his team.

Sanders’ campaign said it had 18 staff members in Iowa, and the campaign of former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas announced an Iowa staff of 16 people last week.

Other campaigns are further behind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, whose campaign has recently taken off, has four staff members in Iowa, a spokesman said. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who entered the race last week and visited Iowa this week, has yet to announce details about his operation in the state.

The Warren campaign’s Iowa headquarters, on the third floor of an office building in West Des Moines, suggests its operation still has plenty of growing to do. Last weekend, the headquarters sat mostly empty, with just a few pieces of mismatched furniture in a large open space. A lawn game had been set up in the middle of the room.

Warren jumped into the 2020 race before most other Democrats, announcing her exploratory committee on Dec. 31. By bringing on a large staff early in the race, the campaign is trying to maximize the amount of time that is available for organizing work before the caucuses, her advisers said.

Like other candidates, Warren is also visiting Iowa frequently; this week, she is scheduled to make her sixth trip to the state this year.

“It’s evident that she is taking Iowa very seriously, and that raises the stakes,” said Kurt Meyer, the Democratic chairman in Mitchell County, a rural county along the Minnesota border where Warren is holding an event Saturday. “If you invest a lot and then underperform, there’s only so much that you can do about that.”

The Warren campaign’s outreach in Iowa extends to the candidate herself. Meyer recalled getting a call from Warren late last year before she had entered the race. Their conversation ended with the senator giving him her cellphone number and inviting him to keep in touch; he has occasionally texted her since. “She invariably texts back,” he said.

Then there is the reach of her growing campaign staff.

“Warren’s folks reached out to me really early on,” said Steve Drahozal, the Democratic chairman in Dubuque County. “They had reached out to a lot of people and they were asking, in my opinion, a lot of the right questions about detailed things. Who do they need to talk to to get input? What are some of the mistakes to avoid?”

Gretchen Eastman, 51, a middle school math teacher who came to see Warren in Cedar Rapids last week, recalled getting a phone call from a young campaign staff member whom she knew from her time making calls on behalf of a House candidate, Abby Finkenauer, who defeated a Republican incumbent in last year’s midterm elections.

The staff member was now working for Warren’s campaign, and he wanted Eastman to help out. She agreed, even though she is undecided about whom she will ultimately support. “If it had been a cold call,” she said, “I probably wouldn’t be as willing to pitch in.”

In Tipton, Suzan Erem was among those who packed into a side room of a restaurant to hear Warren last week. Erem, 55, who runs a nonprofit, had been invited by the campaign.

“I got two in-person phone calls — people, real people, on the other end — saying, ‘We’d love to have you come out for this thing,’” she said. “I was impressed. And then a text. And on the text, I responded and said, ‘OK, guys, this is your third touch, leave me alone. I’m coming.’”

The campaign is holding events all over the state. Iowans can come to a “Walk It Out for Warren” nature walk in Johnson County, a book club in Altoona and a “Woke Weekend Coffee Hour” in Ankeny. Warren has fashioned herself as the policy-minded candidate, and there is plenty of policy talk to be found, including a “Pies and Policies” gathering in Fort Dodge and a “policy chat” in Ottumwa.

There are also events like the “Persist Party” that Carrie DeVries, 41, hosted in West Des Moines on Saturday. In DeVries, the Warren campaign found an eager volunteer: She was so enthusiastic about Warren that she painted a copy of a Warren campaign sign onto her unfinished family room floor. A spread of food included blue candy and blueberry muffins, for the Democratic “blue wave.”

Smith, the field organizer, began the gathering by talking about one of Warren’s latest policy proposals, a higher education plan that would cancel student loan debt for most borrowers and eliminate tuition at public colleges. The conversation soon moved to other topics, like Warren’s plan to impose a wealth tax on households with a net worth exceeding $50 million.

Later on, after playing the Warren-themed game, Smith explained a phrase that had stumped those gathered in DeVries’ family room. Written on one of the slips was Bailey Warren.

Who is Bailey Warren? Warren’s golden retriever.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.