MEG WHITE writes:
I walked up to Senator Chris Dodd's Davenport headquarters as a group of young volunteers were taking a group picture in front of the door. Their office was nestled between an unused storefront littered with last season's political signs and Blue Hue Tattoo.
They were smoking cigarettes, joking around, and strategizing. I joined them in the alcove against the bitter January wind. The first thing they showed me was their socks.
Emilie Deans showed off her pair of "lucky argyle socks." Karen Polet had on a pair of Christmas-themed ones. Justin Daniels laughed.
"We're laying it all on the table," he said jokingly about the auspicious footwear.
Just inside the front door they had taped a piece of butcher paper on the wall with a wish list:
trash cans
letter sponges SHOULD BE CROSSED OUT
coffee maker SHOULD BE CROSSED OUT
mop + bucket
tea
mini-fridge
shredder
desk SHOULD BE CROSSED OUT
They may as well have put "over 1 percent of the Iowa vote" on the list.
Most of the calls placed from the office were outgoing that day. However, one call in particular caught my attention. While J.R. Cohen was running the front desk, she received a call from a Dodd precinct captain saying the Clinton campaign was planning on catering the caucus at a precinct in Davenport. She announced this to the half dozen volunteers in the office, and the response was multiple in perfect unison:
"Food is not allowed!" they said.
To be clear, food is allowed in the building but not in the actual rooms where the caucusing takes place.
"That's pretty much buying votes, which we don't do at the Dodd campaign," Polet reminded the precinct captain over the phone. She then called Scott County Democratic Chairman Susan Frembgen and left her a message.
Later that day, I ran into Frembgen at a rally for Senator Joe Biden at Mojo's Coffee House in Davenport and asked about the precinct.
"It's just another headache...another stinking situation I have to deal with," she said wearily.
Thursday night, Dodd came up with 0.02 percent support in the caucuses, leading him to drop out of the race. No doubt, the volunteers went home, Frembgen went back to her day job at the Rock Island Arsenal, and the wish list was thrown away.
Meg White is a graduate student in journalism from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
