DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The Latest on the Iowa caucuses (all times local):
12:30 p.m.
More than 100 supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg have crowded into the backroom of his West Des Moines, Iowa, headquarters before heading out to knock on doors as the hours tick down to Iowa’s caucuses.
The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor popped in Monday to thank the precinct-level volunteers. Many of the volunteers are sporting the telltale blue and gold borrowed by the campaign from Buttigieg’s hometown University of Notre Dame.
Buttigieg says his campaign and volunteers are exactly where they need to be “to astonish the political world.”
Buttigieg was little known a year ago when he first appeared in Iowa as a presidential prospect. He’s now among a pack at the top of the field in Iowa.
Anthony Elarth traveled from Seattle to help train Buttigieg volunteers in Iowa. He says volunteers engaging voters at their doors “want to have a conversation, not a debate.”
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10:45 a.m.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is reacting to a Trump campaign Super Bowl ad about criminal justice reform as the Iowa caucuses are set to kick off.
Buttigieg says it’s one of the handful of things the Republican president has done that he agrees with. But the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor said Monday it “doesn’t change the incredible cruel and divisive racial rhetoric that comes out of this White House.” Buttigieg tells Fox News Channel that’s one of the many reasons he’s been meeting Democratic and Republican voters who tell him “they struggle to look their children in the eye and explain to them how this is the president of the United States.”
By Monday’s end, tens of thousands of Iowa Democrats will have decided the results of their presidential caucus in the contest to challenge Trump. Buttigieg is among the top four candidates, along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The Trump ad features a first-time nonviolent drug offender named Alice Johnson, who was given clemency by Trump shortly after Kim Kardashian pleaded Johnson’s case in a meeting with him. Johnson thanks Trump in the ad.
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10:30 a.m.
Elizabeth Warren says that taking months of questions from people all over Iowa has made her a strong candidate as the state’s lead-off caucus begin the Democratic presidential primary.
The Massachusetts senator held a Monday morning telephone town hall with Iowans from Washington, where she will be in the Senate for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
Warren has thanked the other Democratic presidential candidates who entered the race, many of whom have since dropped out. She says those White House hopefuls, and the questions from ordinary people at town halls, made her a better campaigner and will ensure she’s a better president.
Warren also says it is time for her party to unify and defeat Trump in November’s general election.
Polls show Warren among the front runners in Iowa along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
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