The Scarlet & Black will host Tom Beaumont, Iowa-based reporter for the Associated Press, to speak at the College on April 9th at 4:15 p.m. in the HSSC Multipurpose Room.
Beaumont has served as the chief political reporter at the Des Moines Register before joining the Associated Press in 2011. Beaumont has reported on six Iowa Caucuses, numerous presidential elections, as well as other local and national political news in the Midwest.
Beaumont said that reporting on the 2008 Iowa Caucus was one of the most important periods of his career. The 2008 presidential election was historic for Democrats. Leading candidates in the party, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, had the chance to set new precedents in American history as the first potential woman or Black president elected. In Iowa, Obama went on to win the caucus with 37.6 percent of the vote.
“To think that it first happened in a state like Iowa, that is overwhelmingly white, makes it such an interesting story I witnessed and got to be a part of,” Beaumont said.
Beaumont has since expressed concerns about Iowa’s historic role in the election cycle as the “first of the nation,” given the Democratic Party’s choice to move the first caucus out of Iowa and into North Carolina in 2024.
“By losing the Democrats, Iowa’s overall significance is diminished by half,” Beaumont said.
Beaumont is further concerned about increasingly polarized journalism and its implications on the transparency of politics.
“A lot of Republican candidates don’t sit for interviews with the Associated Press,” Beaumont said. “Not because of what’s going on with this administration, but because of the rise of media outlets over the last decade that treat them favorably.”
Editors-in-chief of The S&B, Charlotte Krone `25 and Nora Kohnhorst `25, encourage the College’s community as residents of Iowa, to attend Tom Beaumont’s talk for a deeper understanding of Iowa’s role in U.S. politics.
“We are at a point where Iowa is at the forefront of significant changes,” Krone said.
The S&B’s professional advisor Lyle Muller, a former-journalist at the Cedar Rapids Gazette, began covering presidents elections in 1972 and said that he has long recognized Beaumont’s work for his “ability to reflect who Americans really are.” Muller describes Beaumont as “important, smart, and able to accurately describe difficult times in history.”
Beaumont will give a 30 minute talk on Wednesday followed by an audience Q&A.
