Booker, Buttigieg, Khanna are connecting here
9/30/2026U.S. Sen. Cory Booker — a potential candidate for the presidency in 2028 — is keeping in touch with at least one influential Iowa supporter.
Does Booker’s check-in one recent weekday with Nancy Bobo of Des Moines mean Booker sees Iowa as filling its historic role in the presidential nominating process? Is that why he is calling Bobo, 73, the founder of Des Moines-based Women For A Stronger America, and an active Iowa Democrat, a Polk County Democratic Party Central Committee member?
Here’s a read: If he is calling Bobo, Booker thinks Iowa could or should be a key state — perhaps the first state — as former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin and other top Democrats insist.
“I think that’s a little bit of a stretch, but I think what it says is that he’s got Iowa on his radar,” Bobo said.
Bobo, who posted about her call with Booker on Facebook and then talked with Political Mercury about it, said she and the Democratic senator from New Jersey talk periodically, and that she knows his family and he knows hers. Booker stayed with Bobo and her husband, Melvin, during the 2020 presidential election cycle. This could be just a congenial call between friends, but it’s fair to ask if Booker make a go of it for president, and campaign in Iowa.
“I don’t know that; we did not talk about the caucuses,” Bobo said. “I said, ‘Well, Cory, you are everywhere.’ That night he was going to be on MSNOW and CNN again. He just said he had a lot of faith in Iowa turning things around.”
Bobo said she hopes Booker runs for the presidency, and she joins Harkin in thinking Iowa should hold first-in-the-nation caucuses.
“I wish we would,” she said. “They all say we don’t have the diversity and we don’t have this and we don’t have that. Right now, there is no rural state that is in that early mix. I just think there are so many reasons Iowa is helpful in that process.”
Just weeks earlier. …
Likely 2028 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, through the implicitness of his presence in Altoona and earned connectedness to Iowa, made it clear he thinks the Democratic Party should launch the next presidential nominating contest in its historic setting — Iowa. Eschewing hints and subtlety in favor of unbridled advocacy, Buttigieg described the Iowa Caucuses’ role in shaping presidential fields in both soaring and practical terms in a major speech in the state.
Buttigieg, the former U.S. Transportation secretary and 2020 presidential candidate who burst onto the national scene in Iowa, and continues to maintain a network here, keynoted the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration at Prairie Meadows in Altoona.
“I am very proud of the fact that I was forged in the political furnace of the Iowa Democratic caucuses,” Buttigieg, now living in Michigan, said in his speech. “Only in Iowa could a young Indiana mayor enter a field of literally 20 men and women competing for the American presidency, governors and senators and experienced presidential contenders, and earn one vote at a time and wind up winning.”
I interviewed Buttigieg for the first time in early 2019 after randomly spotting him walking into the Marriott Hotel in downtown Des Moines. Few people recognized Buttigieg, then 37, as he entered the busy hotel lobby. I approached him, and in a few minutes, we sat for an unscheduled interview as he ate a cheeseburger and drank a beer in the lobby restaurant.
With a field of Democratic White House aspirants likely to stretch to at least 20 viable candidates in 2028 — or even larger as social media influencers, sports and entertainment celebrities, and other notable figures with no political experience enter in the era of Trump — expected candidates like Buttigieg who have bases of support in Iowa, and start-up campaigns today like the one the then South Bend, Indiana mayor ran in 2020, could decide to compete in Iowa in a “first” caucus even if the national party sanctions these candidates.
They would have to weigh the options, the costs and benefits of competing in Iowa. Buttigieg knows a lot of Iowa media members by name and was approached often in Altoona by steadfast supporters who want to see him run again for the Oval Office. Media attention, the content diets of voters more precisely, are fragmented, so the legacy lane for political profile building in caucuses and primaries in 2028 will be attractive to a range of candidates, meaning there is no reason Iowa should not go first, no matter what the national party says. Let the haters hate Iowa all they want. The nominee will emerge from Iowa. Who cares what national Democratic leaders who despair that rural American even exists think? Go first. Power is taken, not given.
To be fair, Buttigieg never flatly said that Sunday that Iowa Democrats should go first, but he made a better case for it than even the most stalwart advocates.
Asked directly if Iowa Democrats should hold the caucuses first no matter what national leaders dictate, Buttigieg offered a clear endorsement of the state.
“What I would say is that being here made me a better candidate, a better public servant, and that process where people, whether they’re a former vice president or a sitting vice president, all the way to a total unknown, have to be there in the diners and the backyards and convince people to stand up in front of their neighbors and say why you ought to be the pick,” Buttigieg said in response to a question from Political Mercury in a news conference following the Liberty and Justice event. “I just think there is incredible value in that process.”
And in early October. …
Potential White House candidate Ro Khanna, a high-profile congressman from California, will headline Des Moines legislator Sean Bagniewski’s annual Fish Fry fundraiser in Des Moines on Sunday, Oct. 11.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Congressman Ro Khanna back to Iowa,” Bagniewski said. “He’s shown immense courage in leading the bipartisan fight to force the release of the Epstein files. He’s been a forward-thinking voice on technology and the American economy. And he’s shown a commitment to Iowa and the Midwest for years.”
The event now in its fifth year serves as Bagniewski’s annual fundraiser and has previously featured guests like Ambassador Rahm Emanuel and former lieutenant governors Sally Pederson and Patty Judge.
Held at Rep. Bagniewski’s home, the Fish Fry draws on his Midwestern roots and serves freshly caught and fried fish picnic-style to hundreds of guests.
Khanna represents Silicon Valley and what is arguably the most financially muscular and cultural defining district in the history of the nation, a region that is home to household-name companies.
Khanna has been a frequent visitor to Iowa, and the congressman worked directly with economic development leaders in Jefferson, Iowa State University and at Des Moines Area Community College. He shepherded a Google-backed initiative at DMACC from concept to classroom reality.
Khanna has said that the wealth and optimism that collects in his district has to river out to the rest of the nation, especially reaches of rural America and de-industrialized communities, through what he calls a “New Economic Patriotism.” ♦
Douglas Burns of Carroll is fourth-generation journalist and founder of Mercury Boost, a marketing and public relations company.
