First stop, Iowa The story of how a small state came to have a large say in who becomes president of the United States

DVD - 2009

First stop, Iowa! is a grassroots film about a grassroots campaign. It takes an outsider's look at US Presidential nominating politics in an attempt to figure out how it works, and why on earth Iowa has such a big say in deciding who becomes the next leader of the free world. The Iowa Caucus dates back to the violence and bloodshed of 1968; the year civil rights leader Martin Luther King and Presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy were shot and killed, and the Democratic Convention in Chicago degenerated into a riot. That year led to a change in the way Democratic nominating politics was conducted: Control of the selection process was wrested away from party leaders in smoke-filled back rooms, and handed to ordinary Americans in an attemp...t to increase the party's diversity. The Iowa Caucus emerged from the shake-up in 1972 as the first vote in the nation. Including interviews with the likes of George McGovern, Jody Powell, Joe Biden, Maxine Isaacs, Robert Shrum and volunteers for Barack Obama, the documentary follows the campaigns from Iowa to New Hampshire, to South Carolina and New York, and finally on to Chicago. more