20 memorable political moments at the Iowa State Fair

Twenty presidential candidates made the stampede to the Iowa State Fair for a chance to mingle with a cross-section of everyday Iowans, to grill pork and to eat deep-fat-fried junk food.

Eighteen of them (the exceptions were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump) braved The Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox, standing on a stage before an audience that, unlike at their own campaign events, was uncontrolled by their handlers.

Here are 20 of the most memorable moments:

1. Donald Trump’s high-flying antics. The billionaire Republican arrived by helicopter at a secret location shared only with reporters, then took some kids up for a free ride, circling over the crush of people surrounding multimillionaire Democrat Hillary Clinton.

2. Bernie Sanders’ one-liner on the soapbox. “I apologize, we left the helicopter at home,” said the Vermont senator, who rails against the privileges of the rich as he seeks the Democratic nomination. He drew the biggest soapbox audience.

3. The twinsies behavior of Clinton and Trump. Both picked the same busy Saturday last weekend. Both skipped the soapbox, missing a chance to address Iowans who might not otherwise show up at political events. Both had only one thing to eat: a pork chop on a stick. Both had heavy security contingents of more than a dozen. Both were encased in a claustrophobic mega blob of sweaty people, although Trump’s mob was bigger, spreading out for as much as a block.

4. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad’s intriguing choices about whom to join at the fair, in full view of the TV cameras. He strolled with just three candidates: former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds accompanied Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for part of his fair foray, and stopped by briefly to chat with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at the Iowa Pork Producers tent.

5. Kasich eating three pork chops within 30 minutes.

6. Marco Rubio speed-talking through a rain-soaked soapbox speech, ending his 20-minute allotted time after just eight minutes. Coverage of what the Republican Florida senator had to say was overwhelmed anyway by a viral video of him from the night before, when he threw a football to a 4-year-old trying to make a catch, and the football bounced off the boy’s head.

7. Clinton telling reporters at the fair who pressed her about her email controversy: “This is the usual partisanization — which I may have just made up a word — of everything that goes on all the time.”

8. Actress Ellen Page, of Juno and X-Men: Days of Future Past, confronting Cruz about “the persecution of gays in the workplace and LGBT rights.”

9. Christie dealing with protesters who jumped on stage to interrupt his soapbox speech. Before state troopers collared the three activists and ejected them from the fair, Christie patted one on the shoulder. “When something like that happens and I’m here in Iowa, man, I feel right at home,” he told the audience. “It’s like I’m back in Jersey for a couple of minutes.”

10. Walker seeming to relish the protesters who shouted at him on the soapbox. He told one, “I am not intimidated by you, sir, or anyone else out there.” The name of the book he released in 2013, before he had acknowledged he was running for president, wasUnintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge.

11. Bush’s reluctance to leave the corn dog circuit. For the top-tier presidential candidates, campaigning at the State Fair is a nonstop press gaggle, usually in uncomfortable heat, with reporters recording their every move and shouting questions at them while Iowans crowd in for a selfie or a quick chat. Bush hung on for four hours, even after his staff tried to pry him away.

12. Trump’s incongruous clothing for the ag-centric state fair, where cow pies speckle the roads near the cattle barns. In contrast to fellow Republican and former tech company CEO Carly Fiorina, who selected jeans and cowboy boots as her fair get-up, Trump wore white shoes, a starched white dress shirt with French cuff links and a blazer – on a swelteringly hot day.

13. Rick Santorum walking by himself on main fair concourses — most noticeably when the media horde was chasing after Bush, and again as the horde tailed Trump the next day. At this time in 2011 and through the fall, the former Pennsylvania senator drew small audiences. Then he came from the back of the pack to be declared, belatedly, winner of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses.

14. Cruz’s therapy joke. “There are 365 days a year, four years in a presidential term and four years in a second term. By the end of eight years, there are going to be an awful lot of newspaper editors, reporters and journalists who check themselves into therapy,” he told his soapbox audience.

15. Bush throwing a 47 mph baseball at a fast-pitch game on the midway. The record for the day at that point was 50 mph. But bragging rights among the political class for this feat go to Charlie Szold, communications director for the Republican Party of Iowa, who threw a 71 mph heater as he toured the fairgrounds with Iowa Democratic Party press secretary Josh Levitt and Register political columnist Kathie Obradovich.