This op-ed originally appeared in The Hill on July 24, 2022. The following is an excerpt.
After a recent meeting of the Democratic National Committee, it appears the party is poised to end the 50-year tradition of Iowa kicking off the presidential nominating process. It’s about time.
Iowa is a wonderful state, of course. But it does not look like much of the rest of the country, where Americans — and Democrats especially — are increasingly diverse and living in cities and their surrounding areas. Iowa’s largest city, Des Moines, has fewer people than the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which also should not be the first in line to nominate a president (no matter how wisely it might have voted in 2020).
If Democrats want urban challenges to take center stage in presidential elections — matters such as reducing gun violence, improving public schools, expanding mass transportation, fighting homelessness, and tackling the pollution that falls heaviest on Black, Latino and Indigenous communities — it’s critical that the primary calendar include states where those issues are top priorities for voters.