American eyes are on Iowa this month, as Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls do battle in the first electoral event of the 2008 US primary season, writes Anthony Glavin.
Actually, Iowa doesn't hold a straightforward primary, but instead a series of caucuses on January 3rd, at which neighbours will turn up at a local school, church, or public library to vote for their candidate.
Of course Such grass-roots politics, American style, is not limited to Iowa. I once met a future presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, at a bean supper in the small mill town of Maynard, Massachusetts back in the mid-1970s. I'd been invited to the event by a dear friend, Gerry Nee, who for years had been the heart and soul of the Democratic Party in that part of the small-town state. After a plate of beans and frankfurters, we all settled back to listen to then Governor Dukakis - or "the Duke" as he was known.
The governor was the featured speaker at the annual Maynard bean supper that year, but I'd really come to see Gerry Nee. Though never elected to high office, Gerry was for me a walking, talking chapter of American history. The son of first-generation Irish Americans - his father's family from Spiddal, Co Galway, and his mother a Leyden from Cavan - Gerry was born in 1909 in Maynard, where for years he only ever saw his father on weekends. "He worked from 6am until 6pm," Gerry explained, "and as a kid you were already put to bed that early - for two reasons. One, you're a nuisance, and two, it was the only way to be warm."
Gerry had taught himself to read before he went off to primary school - which was just as well, for, as he recalled, "we were given red and green pegs to play with for most of the first year, and I didn't get hands on a book until near the end. There were 50 kids in the class, half of whom couldn't speak English, the children of Poles, Lithuanians, and Italians."
His elder brother went off to Harvard on a scholarship, but Gerry, every bit as bright, went off to the mill after high school, unlike his father who had started working there at the age of 12. His first political campaign came the following year, on behalf of New York governor Al Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated for president. When his boss contemptuously tossed the 10 dollars he'd lost to Gerry in a bet on Smith's nomination on to the mill floor, Gerry knocked the foreman down alongside the money and lost his job. Not long after, he joined the union struggle, and ended up on the steering committee which established the AFL/CIO in Massachusetts.
In 1960, 32 years after Al Smith's candidacy, Gerry Nee helped to elect the first Catholic, Jack Kennedy, to the White House. And when Jack's brother Bobby entered the 1968 presidential race, the Kennedy campaign sent Gerry out to the West Coast to help organise the blue-collar vote in Portland during the critical Oregon primary. In 1970, however, Gerry informed Senator Ted Kennedy, an electoral shoo-in, that he intended to work that year for Father Robert J. Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-Vietnam War candidate, who was running for Congress in Maynard's 4th Congressional District.
When I was hired as towns co-ordinator by the Drinan campaign shortly after, I was warned straight off to have the returns for the last three 4th Congressional District races off by heart before I even thought of meeting Gerry, a seasoned political pro whose impatience with the electoral naivety of Drinan's young and idealistic campaign staff was already legendary. Accordingly, I sat in my car around the corner from Gerry's house one June evening, memorising pages of figures, before ringing Gerry's doorbell. However, it happened the Boston Red Sox were on the telly, and batting averages and pitching percentages were the only statistics that Gerry, who as a kid had seen baseball-legend Babe Ruth playing catch in a Maynard field, was interested in that evening..
That autumn, Gerry Nee delivered the town of Maynard for Father Drinan, who was elected to Congress against all odds. And, two years later, in 1972, Gerry co-ordinated five towns in his corner of Massachusetts for George McGovern, a Democratic presidential candidate who was nearly as radical as Gerry in his desire to see the poor and people of colour inherit their fair share of the American Dream.
Ronald Reagan's presidency greatly depressed Gerry, who died a year after Reagan's re-election in 1984, and before the Iran-Contra scandal, which would have come as no surprise to him. On one of my last visits to Maynard, I found Gerry dressed as usual in a shirt, tie, suspenders, cardigan and slippers, seated as always in the rocking chair in his sitting-room with its framed, autographed photos of all the Kennedys. On that visit, Gerry told me he thought it stupid to have lost his job in a fight over Al Smith, "who after all only won eight states". Yet backing sure winners was never what Gerry Nee was about.
He would certainly be supporting whoever emerges as the Democratic contender next year; but had he been around to organise this year's Democratic supper in Maynard, I'm dead certain Gerry would have loved to bring on Barak Obama after the beans and frankfurters.