Two weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, it’s an unprecedented four-way deadlock. With so many possible routes to the nomination remaining, New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) went to Iowa for a look at the scene on the ground, talking to 2020 candidates Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, as well as top aides from each camp, including Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg’s, about what the Democratic hopefuls expect from Iowa, and what each of their campaign strategies are.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Iowa over the last few months, driving all over the state to figure out what, exactly, the candidates are seeing in the state that votes first,” Debenedetti says of the process of writing New York’s January 20–February 2, 2020, issue cover story. “The upshot: They have no idea what’s about to happen. And after all this time, neither do I.”
Meanwhile over in New York Magazine’s art department, the main challenge art director Thomas Alberty faced in turning Debenedetti’s story into a cover was creating something new out of four faces that already feel quite familiar. “We have seen these people a lot, so it was nice to caricature them in a MAD Magazine style,” Alberty says.
If you like stories like these, consider subscribing to New York.