One of the projects we completed as an Iowa Caucus Project team was putting together a poster wall to advertise the caucuses. It has posters from (almost) every presidential campaign on both the Democratic and Republican sides. You can check it out here! We are very proud of this poster wall, as obtaining all the posters was a challenging feat. Our struggles in getting some have allowed me to create this definitive ranking of how hard it was to get each one.
Level One: Easy Peasy
There were five candidates, and obtaining their posters almost felt like they had fallen into our lap. As a group, we had Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Asa Hutchison posters in abundance. At some points, it almost felt like we had too many. Collected at many separate events these candidates held multiple times all over Iowa, they not only were the first to be found for poster wall, but extras of them flooded our cars, backpacks, and dorm rooms.
Level Two: Gave Me Stress
Right before the impossible level came the level at which getting the poster was harder than easy, but it did not entail an entire side mission to get it. Falling into this category was Joe Biden’s poster. This poster was not one of the first we found, and it took calling on a few separate connections to obtain one. This is likely because Biden has not spent too many days in Iowa, considering he is the frontrunner nominee on the uncompetitive Democratic Caucus side.
Level Three: Impossible
First up on the impossible level is Ryan Binkley. This made sense to me as Binkley is not necessarily the most well-known candidate, nor has he spent much time around the Des Moines area. I drove all the way to Iowa State in Ames (check out the blog post) to obtain a simple rally poster. At the event, there were only two posters- both belonging to the campaign- at the whole site, and they were only obtained after I begged and pleaded with the brother/sister campaign management duo running the event.
Next up are Chris Christie and Marianne Williamson. Bless my classmates who spent too much money buying each of these two posters from eBay. You would not believe the price these posters cost there. This, again, stems from the fact that these two are not seen in Iowa too much. Christie is putting all his eggs in the New Hampshire basket, and Marianne seems focused on states she polls better in, such as her home state of California.
When I think of the most impossible-to-get poster for the wall, the name that comes to mind immediately is Dean Phillips. I am still lamenting over it as it remains elusive for our missing-one-piece poster wall. We’ve heard of Phillips, of course, but he has yet to visit Iowa, as much as some of the other candidates. So, in his case, finding a poster is similar to finding Bigfoot.
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