Feature: Political "outsiders" gain momentum in Iowa amid anti-Washington fervor

"I'm tired of politicians. I don't want to see a Bush-Clinton race," said Kurt Sherer, a 55-year-old businessman from Des Moines, on the sidelines of the 11-day-long Iowa State Fair held here, which has attracted over 15 U.S. presidential candidates.

Sherer is not the only Iowan who is fed up with Washington and politicians, and would like getting an outsider into the White House next year to change the way Washington does business.

This anti-Washington and anti-politician fervor was also clearly reflected in the "Cast Your Kernel" poll conducted at the Iowa State Fair, one of the oldest and largest agricultural and industrial expositions in the country, which runs through Aug. 22.

The billionaire mogul Donald Trump has kept his top position among the crowded Republican presidential field, with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson coming in second and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina third, according to the poll released at noon on Thursday. All these top three candidates were not professional politicians.

While the "Cast Your Kernel" poll is not the most accurate, it has been a longstanding tradition of the Iowa State Fair and a simple barometer of candidates' popularity at the fair.

Throughout the week, fair attendees can vote on who will be the next president by dropping a corn kernel in a mason jar, which is labeled with the headshot of a presidential candidate, at the "Cast Your Kernel" booth set up by WHO-HD Channel 13, the local affiliate of NBC. Results are tallied and released periodically through the day.

The 11-day fair, which attracts about a million visitors each year, has become an important and valuable stop on the campaign trail in Iowa for presidential candidates.

"We're better to make yourself known" to voters in Iowa, Gary Slater, chief executive and manager of the Iowa State Fair, told Xinhua. "There are 3 million people in the state of the Iowa, and a million people here at the Iowa State Fair. So that's 30 percent of our total population in Iowa that come to the fair."

"All the candidates want to make sure the people in Iowa know who they are, so they'll vote for them, they'll cast their caucuses' votes for them," Slater said.

Over 15 candidates have flocked to the Iowa State Fair in the past week to eat fried food, drink beer, deliver speeches, answer questions, pose for pictures and chat with voters, in a bid to gain the attention of media and the U.S. public.

New York real estate mogul Trump arrived to the fair on Saturday by private helicopter and drew large crowds there. Despite a series of highly controversial remarks made in the past few weeks, Trump kept leading in the polls among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters in Iowa.

"I think he is popular because his message resonates with a lot of people here in Iowa. The grassroots here believe a lot in working hard. Donald Trump certainly has done that," Daniel Kramer, senior vice president of marketing and merchant services at Shazam, a popular mobile app to identify music, told Xinhua.

Interest in Carson, who has no political experience, was also surging in the fair after the retired neurosurgeon performed well at the first national Republican presidential debate.

"A lot of people think he won the debate. I do, too," Randy Henriksen, a 59-year-old male from Des Moines, told Xinhua. "He is just going to be such a wonderful leader for our country when he's elected as the next president, because I really believe we need someone who is not a politician to save our country."

On the Democrats' side, Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, has become the favored Democrat among Iowa State Fair attendees, according to an informal poll posted on the Iowa secretary of State website.

The 73-year-old senator is gaining momentum in Iowa as a strong rival to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton amid concerns over her private email server and trustworthiness.

"Bernie Sanders has been consistent for four decades if you look at his website and listen to him from old tapes. He has said the same thing for years," said Mrs. Cyndi, an Iowa resident and supporter of Sanders.

"He would work to change so that the rich would not run the country," Cyndi said. "Right now the rich people are taking others' money, so the middle class and others in the country can't get their American Dream."

Several months ago, the 2016 presidential election was widely regarded as a family race between Jeb Bush, former Florida Governor and the favorite of many establishment Republicans, and Hillary Clinton, wife of former President Bill Clinton and the undisputable front-runner in the Democratic Party.

However, the unexpected popularity of Trump, Carson and Sanders in recent weeks shows that both Republican and Democrat voters have become dissatisfied with politicians and establishment candidates, who have close ties with interest groups and large corporations, and want to change the status quo.

"The biggest change for me is getting the money out of politics. That's the key," said David Johnson, a former city councilman from West Branch in Iowa. "We have a system right now (that) we are very hard to run a campaign unless you get corporate sponsorship."

"When you have a candidate that's not taking money from these large corporations, he is not beholding to any of them," he added.

Trump, who is self-financing his campaign, has called for more transparency in campaign fundraising and attacked Bush supporters for using super political action committees (PACs), which can accept unlimited contributions, to raise substantial money for his White House bid.

Bush and the groups supporting him have raised more than 120 million U.S. dollars for the presidential campaign so far, significantly more than any other candidate, thanks to wealthy donors, according to local media.

"Get campaign funds out of the political system. If you look at what each of the Bush administrations did, they left the office with deficits...If there's another Bush, it's going to be more deficits. It will hurt the country," Cyndi said.

It's not clear how long this anti-Washington and anti-politician fervor will haunt the 2016 election cycle and how much impact it would have on the election results in Iowa.

The stakes are very high in Iowa for the White House dream of any candidate, as this key midwestern state is home to the first-in-the-nation caucuses, the very first presidential nominating contest.

"We're a small state, but we're the first to have a real vote for the Iowa caucuses," set for Feb. 1, 2016, said Iowa Governor Terry Branstad. "If you want to run for the president, you would like to win the first contest." Endite