Feel the churn: On the campaign trail with Ben and Jerry

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield at a presidential campaign event for Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., in Winchester, Iowa, on Jan. 26. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

DES MOINES, Iowa — Two of America’s most famous ice cream makers are trying to help Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., scoop up all the support he can ahead of the Iowa Caucus on Feb. 1.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, came to Iowa to support Sanders in the last week before voters in the state kick off the presidential primary process. On Tuesday, Ben and Jerry drove more than 300 miles to appear at three different events across the western half of Iowa. Yahoo followed along to get a taste, and along the way we discovered the pair’s favorite flavor and learned about the surprising ice cream concoction that Donald Trump’s team wants Ben & Jerry to make.

Their first event on Tuesday was in Winterset, in the heart of Madison County and its famous covered bridges. They met a small group of Sanders fans who gathered in a small one-story house that serves as the campaign’s local “field office.” Ben and Jerry walked in to cheers and shouts of “Feel the Bern!”

“Thank you, Bernie people!” Ben whooped.

The pair were childhood friends and have been in business together for just shy of 40 years, so, naturally, they finish each other’s sentences.

“I’m going to take off my jacket,” Jerry said revealing a light blue “Bernie” sweatshirt.

“I’m going to keep mine on,” said Ben.

“I’m the Jerry, that’s the Ben,” Greenfield clarified for the crowd of 20 or so fans of Sanders, ice cream or both. He was holding a “Bernie” sign illuminated with purple Christmas lights.

Though the Sanders supporters in the room might not have known which one was which, Ben and Jerry are clearly recognizable as a duo. They still resemble the iconic black-and-white photo that has adorned many of their ice cream pints. Their hair has gone grey and some of it has disappeared, but they still retain their affable shagginess.

Their hair isn’t the only sign of Ben and Jerry’s hippie Vermont roots. After the introductions, they began the stump speech that they would deliver at each of their three stops on Tuesday. It was an impassioned defense of Sanders’ populist democratic socialist ideals.

“I always heard when I went to school … that it was government of the people, by the people, for the people. It’s not that way any more. What we have now is an aristocracy,” Ben said. “If we want to bring it back to a democracy, it’s, as they say, not a spectator sport. It’s something that we have to keep on maintaining and keep on tuning up. And, you know, capitalism is an economic system. Democracy is a governmental system. Democracy is the government that is supposed to control capitalism, not the other way around.”

Jerry pointed out that the pair have known Sanders since the early 1980s when he became mayor of Burlington, the Vermont city where they first set up shop in 1978.

“We’ve known Bernie for over 30 years. He’s been consistent with his message. He has never wavered. He’s working for veterans, for seniors, for working families, for students — working on income and wealth inequality, working on the rigged political system,” Jerry said.

Jerry also recounted comments Sanders made on Monday when he met with supporters at a watch party following a forum with the Democratic candidates that was broadcast on CNN.

“You know what Bernie said to us was, if there’s a really good turnout for the caucuses, he’s going to win, and if there’s kind of an OK turnout for the caucuses he probably wont,” Jerry explained.

Indeed, Sanders has gone from a long shot to a real threat to Hillary Clinton in recent weeks. A year ago, the RealClearPolitics average of polls showed Clinton had more than a 55 point lead on Sanders in Iowa. Now, Sanders is behind by just 14 points. In New Hampshire, Sanders has had a steady lead since last month and is now up by 14 points. Though the primary calendar then moves to states far more favorable to Clinton, the latest polls have led her supporters to worry that Sanders could have the momentum coming out of the first two states. Iowa is crucial to his plan.

Ever the entrepreneur, Ben took advantage of the Bernie phenomenon to honor the candidate with a new flavor. Because the pair’s company has been owned by Unilever since 2001, Bernie’s Yearning is packaged under the Ben’s Best label and is being distributed for free to promote Sanders’ candidacy. In Winterset on Tuesday, Ben told the crowd he had made 40 pints of it in his home kitchen.

He explained how it happened: “You know, every time I go out and speak on behalf of Bernie, people say, well, ‘What’s the Bernie flavor?’ … So, I came up with this flavor called Bernie’s Yearning, and what it is is, you take the top off the container and what you see is this huge disk of solid chocolate. And underneath the huge disk of solid chocolate is just plain mint ice cream,” Ben said. “That huge dIsk of solid chocolate represents all the wealth that’s gone to the top one percent since the end of the recession. And the way you eat it is that you take a soup spoon and you whack it, you knock that piece of solid chocolate up into a lot of little pieces, you let the ice cream soften up a little, and then you mix it all around, and there you have it.”

Ben initially discussed making a flavor called Bernie’s Rebellion last May shortly after Sanders announced his candidacy. He said that ice cream would contain “chocolate chips molded in the shape of a cap that you wear for graduation to symbolize his stance in favor of free college education and reduced student loan rates” and “equal numbers of peanuts and pecans to symbolize his initiatives to reduce economic inequality.”

In a phone conversation with Yahoo in between his appearances on Tuesday, Ben explained that he scrapped the first flavor because “it needed to be worthy of Bernie.”

“You know, I wasn’t that happy with Bernie’s Rebellion, you know, as Jerry can tell you, I’m really never satisfied and I’m always trying to improve. Bernie’s Rebellion was just a regular ice cream that had particular chunks in it that looked like different things,” Ben said. “I didn’t feel like I had really hit the right note. I didn’t feel like I had done as good as I could do. I hadn’t lived up to the potential of a Bernie flavor.”

Sadly for the Sanders supporters in Winterset, Ben didn’t have any pints of his Bernie-inspired creation with him at the event. However, he didn’t show up empty handed.

“I’m sorry that, you know, ice cream is a difficult product to bring around because it melts, but I do have here within me some of these pint certificates that turn into pints of ice cream when you bring them in to the local supermarket,” said Ben.

Jerry also brought some souvenirs — Bernie signs that can be fitted with Christmas lights. He told the group in Winterset that he has poked the holes in many of the signs personally. The signs are being sold on Etsy, but Jerry also brought several on the road with him in Iowa.

“I’m like a used car salesman,” Jerry quipped. “I’ve got a suitcase that I’m dragging around that’s got my lights and my signs.”

Most of the people who came to see Ben and Jerry in Winterset were Sanders diehards. However, there was one person who walked in undecided. Before the talk, Jason Warren, a burly local resident, talked to a Sanders staffer named Toby who was supervising the event. Warren told Toby that he identified as an independent and hadn’t made up his mind. Toby pointed to the fact Sanders was not a member of the Democratic party for the majority of his congressional career.

“Bernie’s not a Democrat. He’s an independent,” Toby said. “He was the longest serving independent. He’s just running as a Democrat because he has to.”

Toby declined to comment when Yahoo asked if Sanders staffers regularly make this pitch to voters.

The argument about Sanders not being a Democrat didn’t sway Warren.

“It doesn’t matter to me that he’s independent or he’s a Democrat or if he’s Republican. It doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s about what are they going to do,” Warren said, later adding, “I can tell you who I don’t want voted in. I don’t want Hillary in there, and I don’t want Ted Cruz in there. I think they’re both blowhards. … I know I don’t want Hillary to win and so, if caucusing for Bernie is what it’s going to take to make sure she’s not on the ticket, I’m all for it.”

Though Sanders is running to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, he identified as a member of the party only recently, after running as an independent for 25 years, since his first election to the House of Representatives in 1990. Although elected to the Senate in 2006 as an independent, he caucused with the Democrats, and after filing to enter the New Hampshire primary as a Democrat in November, he said he planned to remain a member of the party.

After speaking and taking pictures in Winterset, Ben and Jerry headed to their next stop, Clarinda, which is about 90 miles away. Ben and Jerry were being driven from their hotel in Des Moines in a rented sedan by a young Sanders staffer named Morgan. They teasingly referred to her as their “handler.” The schedule was tight, and keeping up with them required breaking a few traffic laws.

Their second event was inside a “pizza and steakhouse,” where they delivered their spiel in a long wood-paneled dining room to about 20 people. It was a quick talk and then they departed for Council Bluffs, which was a brisk 75-mile drive away. The finale of their day on the trail was a caucus training session in a coffee shop.

Iowa’s Democratic caucus doesn’t simply involve casting a ballot; it’s a complex process requiring voters to assemble into different preference groups based on the candidate they support. After the initial separation, everyone is counted up. If the number of people in any group is less than 15 percent of the total, those people are generally given the option to leave or to join one of the remaining groups.

Because the process is rather complicated, campaigns host training sessions where they do mock caucuses. Naturally, at the training Ben-and-Jerry-hosted on Tuesday in Council Bluffs, the crowd caucused for ice cream flavors rather than candidates. The Sanders staffers said 51 people participated. Americone Dream, a blend of vanilla, fudge, caramel and waffle cone pieces that Ben & Jerry’s made in honor of television host Stephen Colbert was victorious. With 20 supporters, it earned two mock delegates. Chocolate had 15 backers and one delegate. Peanut butter also earned a delegate, with 14 supporters. Vanilla was not viable at the Sanders campaign caucus training.

Both Ben and Jerry gave their support to Americone Dream.

“Americone Dream is my No. 1 flavor,” Jerry explained. “And here’s the thing about it, I don’t pay for my ice cream. I get any Ben & Jerry’s flavor I want. I can eat this. I can eat that. Whatever. So, I’m a guy that I know them all, and I’m Americone Dream.“

“I just follow him,” Ben said.

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield at a caucus training for Bernie Sanders in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Jan. 26. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

In his phone conversation with Yahoo, Ben indicated he is brainstorming other potential Sanders flavors.

“I’ve been thinking of some other flavors that I might make for Bernie,” said Ben. “You know, also, the only reason I became an ice cream man is because I was a failure as a potter. I was trying to become a potter and people wouldn’t buy my pottery. And I was thinking that maybe the follow-up is to make Bernie’s Ice Cream Bowls, or Ben’s Bernie Ice Cream Bowls, or Bowls By Ben for Bernie. I don’t know. Something like that.”

Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, has some other thoughts about political ice cream Ben and Jerry could make.

On Wednesday, the morning after Yahoo spent the day with Ben and Jerry, we ran into Lewandowski as he ate breakfast with other Trump staffers. He asked what we had been up to, and when he heard about Ben and Jerry, Lewandowski joked that their Sanders flavor should simply be called “Nuts.”

Then Lewandowski had another great flavor idea for Ben and Jerry.

“They should make one for Trump,” he said.

We asked what Lewandowski would call the Trump ice cream. He didn’t hesitate.

“Big Balls,” Lewandowski said.

George Gigicos, who leads Trump’s advance team, was also sitting at the table. He immediately suggested some key ingredients.

“Two big strawberries,”Gigicos said, nodding approvingly.