NORTH LIBERTY — John Kerry, the former secretary of state and presidential nominee, had just ticked through Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s record and his character as he urged Iowans to caucus for his longtime Senate colleague. Then he closed with a rhyme of sorts about Mr. Biden’s ability to defeat President Trump.
“He’s going to slice him and dice him,” he said. “He’s going to whack him and smack him. He’s going to mush him and crush him. He is going to beat him like a drum until this nightmare is done.”
NORTH LIBERTY — Mr. Biden has been leaning heavily on a stable of surrogates to boost his message in the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses. In attendance at his first event of the day here: Representative Abby Finkenauer, Democrat of Iowa, who helped kick off the event, and former Secretary of State John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee who won the Iowa caucuses.
“We have got to do everything we can to make sure Joe Biden is the top of that ticket,” Ms. Finkenauer said Saturday morning as she introduced the former vice president.
Ms. Finkenauer represents a battleground district here in Iowa, and Mr. Biden has been pitching himself as the candidate best-positioned to aid candidates running in tough races further down the ballot.
Mr. Kerry, who spoke after Mr. Biden — an unusual set-up for a surrogate to serve as the closer, but one Mr. Biden has employed nonetheless — also urged the crowd to support “a candidate who has coattails.” He also colorfully defended Mr. Biden’s age, observing, “Nancy Pelosi is 79.”
“Seventy is the new 50s!” Mr. Kerry claimed. Mr. Biden is 77 and one of the biggest reservations voters raise about his campaign is his age.
INDIANOLA — In the crowd at Bernie Sanders’s first event of his final swing through Iowa at a college here in Indianola, there were some unlikely attendees: More than two dozen Australians.
The Iowa caucuses typically attract international interest, and this year has been no different. Leading up to Feb. 3, members of the foreign press descend on the state alongside national reporters. But civilians from other countries want to see the action, too, drawn to the American electoral process and the opportunity to see presidential candidates.
Some of the Australian contingency was part of a program run through the University of Adelaide. Several said they couldn’t believe how transparent and public the presidential campaign was, especially compared to their own elections.
“Back home, selecting leaders happens behind closed doors,” said David Cannon, who was helping to lead the trip.
There were other non-Iowans in the audience, too. Carl Nelson, 35, said he was from Seattle and had come to Iowa to volunteer for Mr. Sanders. He estimated he had knocked on 120 doors since he arrived a few days ago.
BETTENDORF — Senator Amy Klobuchar again called for any new evidence to be released in a 2002 murder case that was prosecuted while she was a county attorney, as civil rights activists and black community leaders in Minneapolis continue to call for her to suspend her campaign after a report raised questions about whether a black teenager was wrongly convicted.
“We did a D.N.A. review of all of our cases, this wasn’t one that involved D.N.A.,” Ms. Klobuchar told reporters after her campaign event here.
“But we looked back because you always want to make sure that you do the job right. So that’s going to mean if there’s new evidence in this case, it’s got to come out.”
Ms. Klobuchar’s handling of the case, which involving a conviction of a black teenager, Myon Burrell, has come under renewed scrutiny after The Associated Press published an investigation this week detailing what it said were numerous flaws.
It was a case Ms. Klobuchar often pointed to during her campaign, as evidence of both being tough on crime and seeking justice for minority communities rocked by gun violence. But the A.P. report found that one of Mr. Burrell’s co-defendants has said he was the one responsible for the murder.
My colleague Matt Stevens has more here.
NORTH LIBERTY — A heckler interrupted former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his event here, comparing him to Hillary Clinton and urging the crowd, “don’t settle for Joe.”
In response, Mr. Biden suggested that the protester was one of the dozens of pro-Trump Republican surrogates who had deployed to Iowa this weekend.
“I’ll tell ya what, man,” he said. “I thought they were exaggerating when they said that, Republicans said that they were sending out 80 people to participate in the Democratic caucus.”
“Hey by the way,” he added, “give us back your Joe shirt.”
Watch below:
DES MOINES — Top strategists for Pete Buttigieg said they needed a top finish in Iowa on Monday and in New Hampshire the following week, but that first place was not a make-or-break deal for the campaign.
“We’re going to have to do well, there’s no question about that,’’ said Hari Sevugan, Mr. Buttigieg’s deputy campaign manager, speaking at a press breakfast with other senior campaign advisers.
“But that does not necessarily mean we have to win.” He and the others — Lis Smith, Mr. Buttigieg’s communications adviser; Michael Halle, a senior strategist; and Mike Schmuhl, the campaign manager — said that Mr. Buttigieg’s ongoing viability would depend on the order of finishers and the spread between candidates.
Mr. Buttigieg, for his part, answered a similar question in Waterloo. “We need to do very well in Iowa — we’re in it to win it and believe that we will have a result that will propel us forward,” he said.
The strategists explained that they saw the race through Super Tuesday as a series of contests not in states, but in congressional districts, which determine how delegates to the national convention are awarded.
In recent days, Mr. Buttigieg has compared his race and his candidacy to that of Barack Obama’s in 2008, arguing that a top finish in Iowa (which Mr. Obama won) would give “everyone else permission that we can do this.’’
The inference especially is that black voters, who currently demonstrate little support for Mr. Buttigieg in polling, would follow the lead of Iowa caucusgoers and rally around him.
The Obama 2008 analogy is flawed, however, as my colleague Astead Herndon recently reported: Mr. Obama led Hillary Clinton in South Carolina with black voters well before the Iowa caucuses.
Mr. Sevugan said the top issue for communities of color was beating President Trump.
“Once we do well here in Iowa and in New Hampshire,’’ he insisted, “that sends a powerful signal across the country, including to communities of color, that this is the guy who can beat Donald Trump.’’
DES MOINES — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont remains a financial powerhouse, and the two billionaires in the Democratic primary race are spending enormous amounts of money on their candidacies, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission.
By Friday night, presidential candidates were required to report their fund-raising and spending for the fourth quarter of 2019. The filings provided a snapshot of the campaigns’ financial resources at the start of 2020 and offered a detailed look at how they have been spending their money.
Among the top candidates, Mr. Sanders raised the most money ($34.4 million), spent the most ($50.1 million) and entered January with the most cash on hand ($18.2 million). Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., had $14.5 million on hand, while Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had $13.7 million and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had $8.9 million.
The biggest spender in the quarter, by far, was one of the two billionaires in the primary race, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who spent $188.4 million. The other billionaire in the race, the former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, spent $153.7 million.
BETTENDORF — In her first event back in Iowa after spending most of the week tethered to Washington for the impeachment trial, Senator Amy Klobuchar summed up her final pitch with a geographic appeal: the path to a Democratic victory in 2020 is through the Midwest.
And, it so happens, as Ms. Klobuchar more than occasionally reminds crowds, she is from the Midwest: a senator from Minnesota who travels to her neighboring states often.
“I went on this long tour of the states that we should have won in 2016 that we did in the states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, of course, Iowa and then Minnesota, which Hillary won, but with the lowest percentage of votes that she had in any state that she won,” Ms. Klobuchar said.
“So when I went on that tour I decided, first of all, that we are going to build a beautiful blue wall of Democratic votes around those states and we’re going to make Donald Trump pay for it.”
Speaking to a crowd of 500 crammed into a local brewery, with an overflow crowd spilling into the bike shop next door, Ms. Klobuchar mixed her Midwest bonafides with her pitch to a more centrist view of the country.
She said she wanted to “build on the Affordable Care Act, I don’t think we should blow it up,” an indirect contrast to her progressive rivals’ plans for “Medicare for all.”
She said that the 2019 Democratic wins in the Kentucky and Louisiana governors races were powered by a fired up Democratic base, but “also independents and moderate Republicans.”
And she remembered fondly Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who died in 2018.
“I miss him very much,” she said, referencing the impeachment trial. “I often wondered as I often wondered as I sat there, hour after hour this week, how different things might have been if John McCain was still sitting in the Senate.”
DES MOINES — Zero Hour, the youth-led coalition that organized huge global climate marches in 2018, endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Saturday morning, citing “his radical and motivating plan to address the climate crisis and his support for the Green New Deal.”
Mr. Sanders already had the support of another powerful youth climate group, the Sunrise Movement, which endorsed him in January. The new endorsement is one more sign of progressive activists coalescing around his campaign.
Zero Hour also announced on Saturday that it was creating a 501(c)(4) branch, Zero Hour Movement, to participate directly in political campaigns; it was that branch that endorsed Mr. Sanders.
“People our age should vote for Bernie Sanders because we are the first generation to feel the effects of the climate crisis and also, unfortunately, the last generation to do anything about it,” Kaylah Brathwaite, director of operations and logistics at Zero Hour Movement, said in a Sanders campaign video.
Polls have shown that climate change is a top issue for Democrats, and especially for young voters.
WATERLOO — On the penultimate day of his Iowa caucus campaign, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., distilled his campaign message to a plea to Democrats: Let’s get over the fights that divided the party in 2016.
Mr. Buttigieg, as he’s been doing since Thursday, drew a gentle contrast with the Iowa front-runners, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But his invocation of the bitter 2016 fight between Mr. Sanders and Hillary Clinton was a warning to not let a binary Biden-Sanders battle to overwhelm the party’s broader goal of removing President Trump from office.
“We’ve all seen some of the tensions that are emerging from some of those who share the same values,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “The less 2020 resembles 2016 in our party and our country, the better. It’s time to do something different.”
Mr. Buttigieg elaborated later in response to questions from reporters. “I think no matter which side of the fighting in 2016 you were on, there was a tremendous amount of frustration about what it led to and where we are and a sense of awareness that at the end of the day we’ve got to be united, not only around what we’re against but what we’re for,” he said.
“The vision, not just the philosophical vision, but really the policy vision of the different folks competing in this campaign is much more aligned than you would think based on the tone that in particular the online political space has taken,” he added.
At the National Cattle Congress Electric Park Ballroom, a classic Iowa venue where Buddy Holly once played before his fatal plane crash just west of here in Clear Lake, Mr. Buttigieg and his surrogates argued that the 38-year-old was both a change agent with “new ideas” and a throwback to a time when politicians of opposing parties worked together.
“Those were times when people got along they listened to each other, things weren’t so polarized,” Bill Dotzler, an Iowa state senator, said of Mr. Holly’s time. “Mayor Pete is a person who can bring us back because he listens to everyone.”
DES MOINES — Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a prominent supporter of the Bernie Sanders campaign, apologized on Saturday for urging a crowd the night before to boo Hillary Clinton.
“I am so incredibly in love with the movement that our campaign of #NotMeUs has created. This makes me protective over it and frustrated by attempts to dismiss the strength and diversity of our movement,” Ms. Tlaib said in a series of tweets. “However, I know what is at stake if we don’t unify over one candidate to beat Trump, and I intend to do everything possible to ensure that Trump does not win in 2020.”
She added: “In this instance, I allowed my disappointment with Secretary Clinton’s latest comments about Senator Sanders and his supporters to get the best of me. You all, my sisters-in-service on stage, and our movement deserve better. I will continue to strive to come from a place of love and not react in the same way of those who are against what we are building in this country.”
The incident happened Friday evening at an event in Clive, Iowa, after the moderator, Dionna Langford, brought up Mrs. Clinton’s recent assertion that “nobody likes” Mr. Sanders. When some people in the audience booed, Ms. Langford tried to quiet them: “No, we’re not going to boo,” she said. “We’re classy here.”
Ms. Tlaib then cut in, saying: “No, I’ll boo. Boo! You all know I can’t be quiet. No, we’re going to boo. That’s our right. The haters will shut up on Monday when we win.”
BETTENDORF — An overflow crowd in a bike shop greeted Senator Amy Klobuchar Saturday morning on the first day of her jetsetting trip around Iowa, powered by a chartered plane to get to the four corners of the state.
The senator diverted from her small stage in the brewery to separately address the overflow room, giving a (very) condensed version of her stump speech. But part of her pitch to Iowans was a look ahead, past the caucuses.
“I’ve got the endorsement of every single major newspaper in New Hampshire that has put out an endorsement,” she told the crowd, while also proclaiming that this January was the best fund-raising month of her entire campaign.
Taking note of the surroundings, with dozens of bikes hanging from the ceiling and bike racks offering a place to lean for the waiting crowd, Ms. Klobuchar spoke of an old hobby.
“I used to be a big cyclist,” she said from a set of stairs leading to a second floor showroom.
She spoke of one bike trip that she took from Minnesota to Wyoming. But the nostalgia quickly turned to a pitch to voters.
“That just shows you the grit I bring to this stage,” Ms. Klobuchar said.
NORTH LIBERTY — Last fall, Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign aides insisted that he didn’t need to win the leadoff caucus state. Amid a major winter press here, Mr. Biden told reporters, “I’m running to win.” And on Saturday morning, in the final push before the caucuses, Mr. Biden’s campaign aimed to set a fresh set of expectations: He’ll be “competitive,” and he’s not going anywhere, whatever happens in Iowa.
“The VP remains in a strong position to perform well in the first four states and on Super Tuesday, but we’re also planning for an extended process into the summer,” read a fund-raising email. “As we’ve said for several weeks, we see a tight race in Iowa and New Hampshire. With a small number of delegates awarded in those contests, it’s highly possible there will be a small delegate differential among the top candidates on February 4 and February 12.”
The note went on to stress Mr. Biden’s strengths in the diverse later-voting primary contests, including South Carolina and states with significant African-American populations — a core part of Mr. Biden’s base — that vote on Super Tuesday. Yet privately, some of Mr. Biden’s allies have acknowledged the threat that former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York could pose in Super Tuesday states, where he is concentrating his campaign with virtually unlimited resources.
On Friday night, as he campaigned in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Mr. Biden acknowledged to a CNN reporter that the margins here will matter, as he competes in an uncertain and fluid race.
“Let’s say everybody comes out of here with, you know, 19, 20, 21 and 22 percent,” he said. “Well, it’s essentially a tie. And so everybody goes to the next stop. If you come out here, somebody’s 25 and you’re at 12, you know, well then you’re done — in terms of Iowa.”
Then he laid out his own view of his path, saying that he has a “great firewall in South Carolina. I think we’re in a position where I think we’ll do very well in Nevada, I think it’s gonna be a real uphill race as it always is for a non-New Englander in New Hampshire. And I think it’s gonna be just a toss-up here.”
Privately, his team had been more upbeat in the first weeks of January here than they had been for much of the fall. Yet on the ground, Mr. Biden still appears to face organizational challenges and smaller crowds than many of his rivals, even as he has led some polls here in the final weeks, setting up a highly uncertain final stretch for his campaign.
DES MOINES — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts rallied supporters at a local Des Moines brewery late Friday night, in a surprise visit only possible after she arrived late from Washington and the Senate impeachment trial.
Ms. Warren’s campaign schedule had been upended by the impeachment proceedings, and she could not attend an event earlier that evening. Instead, her husband announced at the event that Ms. Warren would take pictures with rallygoers across the street at a local bar, if supporters were inclined to wait. Hundreds packed the brewery in anticipation.
When Ms. Warren arrived, she addressed the crowd in short remarks, before holding the selfie line that has become a staple of all of her events.
“Over this year, you’ve made me a better candidate and you’ll make me a better president,” she said.
Ms. Warren thanked her campaign co-chairs, Representatives Deb Haaland of New Mexico, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts, and Katie Porter of California.
The women have been among Ms. Warren’s chief surrogates as she’s been stuck in Washington, and they headlined the event earlier in the evening, which took place across the street.
“They prove kickass women win,” Ms. Warren said to cheers.
CLINTON — Every so often, Pete Buttigieg gets an out-of-left field question from an Iowa Democrat that’s not about how he’d beat President Trump or what he’d do to improve people’s health care.
On Friday afternoon at the Clinton Masonic Center, at the third of his four town hall events of the day, a man stood up and asked the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., to look inside himself and reveal “a moment that you felt vulnerable or you felt exceptionally human.”
“Well, it’s a really profound question,” Mr. Buttigieg replied. “The funny thing about being a candidate is it can really inflate your ego and cut you down to size, sometimes in the very same day.”
He then told a story that began, he said, about 10 months ago when he was first transforming from an also-ran to a first-tier candidate in the crowded Democratic presidential contest.
“People started to come up to me in airports and on the street,” he said. “I was on a flight, heading for somewhere in New Hampshire, and a lady standing next to me waiting to get on the plane looked at me.”
The woman, Mr. Buttigieg said, said she recognized him from somewhere. He wanted to help her remember, he said, but stopped himself.
“Then she said, ‘I know, you work for CNN!’” he said, to much laughter from the Clinton crowd of about 300 people.
Mr. Buttigieg said he replied: “I said, ‘Well, not quite. I’m running for president.”
The woman from the story, Mr. Buttigieg said, came to one of his New Hampshire events a few months later and is now a devoted supporter of his campaign.
DES MOINES — The Iowa caucuses are only two days away, and with the Senate impeachment trial adjourned for the weekend, the top candidates are all on the ground, sprinting to the finish line.
Here is a sampling of the events the candidates have planned:
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Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be holding “community events” in North Liberty, Cedar Rapids and Waterloo.
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Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will be holding a rally in Indianola and a concert in Cedar Rapids.
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Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has rallies scheduled in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Davenport. Two top surrogates — Representative Ayanna Pressley and the former presidential candidate Julián Castro — will join her for part of the day.
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Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., has rallies in Waterloo, Oelwein, Dubuque, Anamosa and Cedar Rapids.
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Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is holding “get out the caucus” events in Bettendorf, Sioux City, Cedar Falls and Des Moines.
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The entrepreneur Andrew Yang has town hall-style events in Fort Dodge, Carroll and Boone, a couple of canvass launches, and an evening rally in Des Moines.
The Times has reporters and photographers at most of these events. Check back here throughout the day for updates from the trail and other developments in the race.