It's the Brian Mayer Show on WNYC.

Good morning everyone.

Welcome to this kind of weird confluence

of Martin Luther King Day and the Iowa Caucasus,

right?

The first voting day in this presidential election year is today.

It's a Republican voting day specifically.

As you know, Trump and his various challengers.

So I was reading up this weekend because I was curious on how this confluence came to be because my

first impulse would be to think, well, wouldn't they avoid King Day out of respect for the National Holiday and

Dr King's legacy? The Iowa Caucasus are usually on Mondays, not Tuesday, like

most other elections, but usually a few Mondays later in January or early

February. In 2016 they were Monday February 1st, in 2020 they were Monday

February 3rd.

So why not keep putting the Caucasus around there

and let people do MLK events today?

And yes, there are King Day events scheduled in many places in Iowa. I looked it up. Don't just write it off as flyover country.

And here's what I've found as to why in an Associated Press article from last July which is when they set today's date.

The AP quoted State Party Chairman Jeff Kaufman saying committee members hadn't considered

the possibility of the contest

falling on the federal holiday. So that's a little vague, that's the language from

the AP story, the party chairman of the GOP in Iowa said committee members hadn't

...