DES MOINES, Iowa -- It appears that Hillary Rodham Clinton will soon be going to Iowa. Martin O'Malley already has beaten her to the early-voting state.
The former Maryland governor, a Democrat who is considering entering the 2016 presidential race, was in a Des Moines tavern last week, playing guitar and singing Irish folk tunes. He had lunch with Democratic activists in the college town of Ames and spent Friday night talking up his populist economic message at a banquet in the capital.
For months, O'Malley has largely had Iowa to himself as Clinton slow-played her entry into the 2016 race.
O'Malley is likely to have some company on the campaign trail after today. Clinton indicated last week that she'll make her presidential-nomination announcement today. It will be her second. She fell short in 2008 against now President Barack Obama.
"I think the people of Iowa wake up every morning looking toward the future, and they believe inherently that we're served by new leadership," O'Malley said Friday night in Des Moines.
Technically, Clinton would be the first Democrat to enter the race. Others, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and former Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, are exploring a run.
O'Malley has reached out to Iowa for the past three years, first meeting with the Iowa delegation at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 before speaking at then-U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin's annual picnic fundraiser that fall.
On Friday, O'Malley called for renewing the American dream based on time-tested Democratic principles.
"To make the dream come true again, we must fight for better wages for all workers, so that Americans can support their families on what they earn," he said at a party dinner in Des Moines.
O'Malley has visited Iowa six times since the start of last year. "The great thing about Iowa and New Hampshire is that people insist on meeting all of the candidates before they make a decision," O'Malley said.
That's not just O'Malley's line, either.
Even with Clinton in the race, many of the party loyalists who will go out on a winter night in Iowa in February to choose a candidate at caucus sites say they want a contest, not a coronation.
"I'm going to see what they all have to say," said Geri Frederiksen of Council Bluffs. She waited three hours Thursday to see a flight-delayed Webb at the western Iowa city's public library.
Frederiksen said she is worried that a perfunctory nominating contest might not stir enough enthusiasm among Iowa Democrats to power a victory for the eventually nominee in November 2016.
O'Malley is keeping up a schedule of meetings with state lawmakers, lunches with activists and city officials, and speeches at fundraisers such as the one he headlined Thursday at a winery in the hills south of Des Moines.
About 50 people heard O'Malley promote his Maryland record and the preview of his likely 2016 message: executive experience, combined with progressive economic policies such as raising the minimum wage, taxing the wealthy and regulating banks.
So far, Webb has not spent as much time in Iowa. After delivering a talk that focused on social justice and a bipartisan foreign policy Thursday to an audience of only a dozen or so, he was asked directly if he has any kind of chance in a race against Clinton.
"Are you a viable candidate?" asked Democrat Jamie Lakers, who drove two hours from Des Moines to see Webb at the library in Council Bluffs. "Because from the news media, Hillary Clinton's already been elected."
"Can we do this? We will make that decision in fairly short order," he said. "I wouldn't be standing here if I didn't think I had a shot."
On Saturday, Obama said he thinks Clinton would be an excellent successor.
"She was a formidable candidate in 2008, she was a great supporter of mine in the general election, she was an outstanding secretary of state, she is my friend," he said during a news conference in Panama after a meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders. "I think she would be an excellent president."
Information for this article was contributed by Toluse Olorunnipa and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 04/12/2015