Bruce Rastetter, a multimillionaire agribusiness baron and the largest GOP donor in Iowa, got almost all of the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates - at least 11 of them - to agree to come to the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Saturday for a forum on agriculture issues.
They were to sit down on stage for one-on-one, 20-minute interviews with Rastetter, discussing their positions on labeling for genetically modified food, proposed federal regulation of groundwater, foreign trade agreements - and, perhaps above all, the future of Iowa's important corn-based ethanol industry.
"We're looking to have a substantive discussion on an important segment of the economy that feeds the nation and the world," Rastetter said. "It's much broader than ethanol."
"It's still in the triple-secret archive!"