Iowa caucus could cut presidential field before Missouri primary

DES MOINES, Ia. (KMIZ)

Missourians may only see some of the Democratic presidential hopefuls campaigning by the time the state votes in the March primary.

The field of nearly a dozen candidates for the Democratic Party's nomination for president made another pitch to Iowans on Sunday afternoon ahead of Monday night's caucus. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders met with volunteers and workers in an Iowa City field office, while former Vice President Joe Biden held a rally in Des Moines alongside former Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

Monday's caucus will most likely thin out the crowd of Democrats by the time Missouri voters attend the primary on March 10 said University of Missouri political science professor Peverill Squire. The results will help define who the top two to four candidates are, Squire said, but the level of support and money many candidates have may help bring a bigger field of candidates to Missouri than in years past.

"We will see a number of candidates on the air for a brief period," Squire said. "It won't be like Iowa, where they've been inundated by ads for months. We'll have probably a week of ads and that'll be it."

Unique to Missouri's primary will be in the inclusion of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to the field. Bloomberg skipped the first two voting states, Iowa and New Hampshire, to focus on the slew of states voting in March. That includes the 14 states voting on March 3, or Super Tuesday, which doles out more than a third of the delegates a candidate needs to become the party's nominee.

Bloomberg has already started to advertise on television in Missouri. Sanders surrogate and Ohio state senator Nina Turner told ABC 17 News that she did not think the head start in TV ads gave Bloomberg an advantage over Sanders.

"The senator has really been on a mission since 2015, he really never stopped," Turner said. "And although he was not successful in the primary of 2016, he continued to organize. And it really is his message that animates the entire Democratic debate right now, the entire Democratic platform is based on what Senator Sanders was a champion of in 2016."

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren opened a Missouri field office in Kansas City in December.