October 30, 2015

The Des Moines restaurant scene has seen an explosion in fine dining options, craft breweries and quirky specialty joints in recent years. Reporters and campaign staff traveling to Iowa’s capitol for the Iowa Caucus often come away pleasantly surprised. Sometimes, however, you can get into a rut of returning to your same favorite spots downtown…

The mood at the Democrats’ Jefferson Jackson Dinner last weekend was electric. Each campaign went all-out to provide Democratic activists an entertaining spectacle and show of organizational strength. How did it compare to the many Republican multi-candidate events that Starting Line has also attended? To use a phrase of the former GOP front-runner, those Republican…

Usually when a campaign puts together a memo for their top donors you try to highlight your accomplishments and project momentum. Perhaps that’s what Jeb Bush’s top advisers thought they were doing with the internal campaign briefing that got leaked to U.S. News and World Report yesterday, but even a brief look at their Iowa…