An Odd Couple With Big Influence

The state doesn't seem to have anything like a common culture, a dominant industry or a singularly powerful political figure.

"It's a series of city-states," says Abigail Abrash Walton, who teaches advocacy and organizing at Antioch University in Keene.

In New Hampshire, a candidate will try to peel off the independent voters who can vote in either party's primary. In Iowa, candidates are more likely to play to the party base.

"You're speaking to progressive Democrats in Iowa," Vilsack said. "You're speaking arguably to the entire state in New Hampshire."

'The Epicenter'

"Iowa nice" may in fact come from "State Fair," the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which is set at the Iowa State Fairgrounds just east of Des Moines, probably the foremost photo-op location for presidential candidates.

One night this fall, the Polk County Democrats held a $25-a-ticket dinner and auction there in a nondescript building called the Walnut Center. The room was jammed with partisans, politicians, a senator, a former governor.

Everyone hit the buffet, where steak and chicken were piled high on steam trays. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) showed up, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), and various proxies of other presidential candidates. Finally, just before 9 p.m., Clinton, the national front-runner, arrived, and she could not have acted more thrilled to be back in Iowa and back at the state fairgrounds.

The senator recalled how last summer she flipped pork chops and ate a Wonder Bar and saw the cow made entirely from butter.

The Polk County Democrats, she said, are "the epicenter of the Democratic Party, therefore the epicenter of America, therefore the epicenter of the world!"