Iowa Democrats and the Democratic National Committee are on a 2028 collision course.

Fueled by a slate of competitive statewide and congressional races, Iowa Democrats desperately want back in to the early presidential primary window, after they were axed ahead of the 2024 election. If they don’t get it, some Iowans are threatening to go rogue.

State Rep. Josh Turek, who is running in the Senate primary, told NOTUS the party should run an unsanctioned caucus if the DNC doesn’t bring them back, because “it’s in our constitution.” State Sen. Zach Wahls, another Senate primary candidate, said Iowa should, “at the very least,” be in the early window. And Iowa House Democratic Leader Brian Meyer said he “triple dog dares” the DNC to not seat their delegates, should they ignore the party’s rules and bring back the caucuses.

At a campaign stop in Iowa City earlier this month, Turek found inspiration from Iowa’s most iconic movie when considering the path of future 2028 presidential candidates.

“If you build it, they will come,” Turek said. “If we do it, they will come.”

But it’s not clear if the DNC members charged with setting that calendar want them to return, after the failure and messy fallout of the last caucus in 2020. At least three DNC members, granted anonymity to describe private deliberations, cast doubt on Iowa’s chances.

“We just don’t have the votes to get Iowa into the early window,” one of those members said.

Iowa will make its case for a comeback this week in Washington, D.C., joining a dozen other states looking to gain entry into the coveted primary window ahead of the 2028 presidential race. Members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, the group responsible for setting the calendar, will meet to hear these in-person presentations after months of private lobbying on behalf of early-state boosters.

Setting the primary calendar — and determining thresholds for the primary debate stage — represent the DNC’s biggest responsibilities heading into what’s expected to be a crowded and unwieldy 2028 presidential primary. Two DNC members said they expect to decide on an early-state slate this summer, with an aim to present it to the full DNC at its August meeting, though they also warned that timeline could slip into the fall.

The early-state deliberations come at a tumultuous time for the committee. DNC Chair Ken Martin has faced calls from members of Congress to podcast hosts to step aside after the committee released, then disowned, an incomplete autopsy of the 2024 election last week. Martin’s tenure atop the committee has been marred by poor fundraising and intraparty clashes, all while Democrats are trying to regain footing this fall.

Some Democrats have fretted that Martin’s rocky leadership could threaten the calendar process. Danielle Butterfield, the president of Priorities USA super PAC, warned the party “must maintain trust” when setting the primary calendar and debate requirements, and Martin “lost trust” in his handling of the autopsy.

That could also leave an opening for Iowa, already frustrated by their 2024 elimination. In their presentation, Iowa Democrats are expected to make the case that removing Iowa from the early window left a vacuum filled by Republicans in 2024, according to talking points shared with NOTUS. Republicans, for their part, will start the 2028 presidential contest in Iowa.

“The perception of Democrats ‘abandoning’ rural America and Iowa continues to be a difficult narrative to overcome, especially when significant Republican funding continues to funnel into our state,” the memo reads.

Some potential 2028 candidates are already taking advantage of Iowa’s open invitation. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is scheduled to appear with Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, next month. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego and former Ambassador Rahm Emanuel have already stumped in the state.

Iowa lost its early-state status in 2022, when then-President Joe Biden reshuffled the lineup ahead of his own reelection bid. He eliminated Iowa, where he’d come in a distant fourth place in 2020, elevated South Carolina and added Michigan, both of which he won. New Hampshire, which lost its first-in-the-nation status by being scheduled on the same day as Nevada, opted to run its own unsanctioned primary in 2024. Iowa Democrats now say they’re taking begrudging inspiration from their early-state rival.

“New Hampshire broke the rules and got rewarded. We followed the rules and got screwed,” said Iowa state Rep. Jennifer Konfrst, who emphasized this was her position, not the state party’s. “You cannot just leave us,” she said of the DNC.

But not everyone in Iowa is on board. Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic Party chair, said she was “not sure we have the bandwidth or the financial stability” to “both rebuild our state and take on the massive lift of the caucuses.”

“To me, if I were prioritizing, it’d be to rebuild the state,” she continued.

A majority of Iowa Democratic Party members said they supported the caucuses returning, according to a survey of its own members conducted in late 2025. But if it came to it, only 49 percent said they wanted Iowa to defy the DNC and host a rogue contest.

Iowa Democrats acknowledged privately that their ability to host a rogue caucus depends heavily on their ability to win in 2026. A slate of new, Democratic statewide leaders would lend a lot more muscle to their push, but if they fail to win the governor’s mansion or other congressional races, then their plan becomes significantly more challenging, they said.

And inside the DNC, “the mood of most RBC members” is “we’re not changing unless a state can prove they can move their date and make a compelling case they should be in the first four,” a second DNC member said.

The committee’s co-chairs have emphasized that they’re focused on a “rigorous, efficient, and fair selection process,” prioritizing a slate that represents racial and regional diversity, as well as being cost-effective for presidential candidates. That’s led several DNC members to conclude that the current lineup — South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada and Michigan — would largely hold, with some potential tweaks to the order.

“If we’re going back to Iowa and New Hampshire as the first states, why did we say we wanted to change the calendar in the first place,” said a third DNC member. “I think there is more desire to make Michigan the Midwest state.”

When Martin announced his appointments to the Rules and Bylaws Committee, he added members from several of the early states, including New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Iowa’s lone representative was not asked back.

“I think it speaks for itself, unfortunately,” one Iowa Democratic operative said of the changes to the committee. “We’re going in open-minded to this process, but we’re not afraid to show our teeth, too.”