Hall of Fame Speech

Editor’s Note: On Saturday, May 10, 2025 I was inducted into the Johnson County Democrats Hall of Fame. These are my remarks, prepared for delivery.

Thank you for the warm welcome into the Johnson County Democrats Hall of Fame. This recognition means a lot.

I queried myself using artificial intelligence and the result came back: “Paul Deaton is a long-time Democratic activist and commentator based in Johnson County, Iowa.” I do comment on things. People take issue with some of my comments. In particular, Jeff Kaufmann used to contact me when I wrote about him on Blog for Iowa. After a couple of times, I explained to the Cedar County Republican he was a public figure now and subject to criticism. That was the end of that.

For the rest of my time, I have a few stories.

My father got me interested in politics. During the 1960 election, his union asked him to organize our neighborhood for John F. Kennedy. We moved there the previous year, and didn’t know many people. He did what he knew best and went to his basement workshop to get out his drafting tools. He drew a prototype city block. When he was satisfied with it, he took it to the union hall where they mimeographed copies using that stinky purple ink that was common back in the day. He introduced himself to every person on our block and continued until he had everyone’s information handwritten on his map. While Richard Nixon won Iowa that year, JFK won the general that was enough for our family to celebrate.

During the 1964 election I had a newspaper route. Each week I took the city bus to downtown Davenport to pay my bill. Our family was for Lyndon Johnson. I noticed there were campaign buttons that said “LBJ for the USA” on them. One Saturday after paying my bill, I went to the Democratic Headquarters and asked for one. They said no, you must do something to get one of those. Undeterred, we negotiated and agreed I would stuff envelopes, then they would give me a button. Thusly, I worked on my first political campaign. When LBJ won in a landslide, I just figured Democrats would prevail the same way in every election thereafter.

I was not a fan of Jim Leach. After his House Banking Committee convened Whitewater Hearings in 1995, I was outraged after watching the proceedings on television. The more I watched, the madder I got. Leach was the worst for overseeing that sham inquiry.

When I reactivated in politics during the 2004 election, I felt Leach had to go. In 2006, Dave Loebsack announced for Congress and I wanted to help. One night a week I drove from work in Cedar Rapids to Iowa City to do whatever was needed to help Dave win. Typically, Tyler Wilson was there alone when I arrived in the dimly lit office.

I’d ask, “What can I do to help?” Wilson would point at a tall stack of paperwork and say, “These people need to be called.” I called until it became too late to call any longer. I learned from these phone calls the worm was turning on Leach. I didn’t need to do any convincing. Most people to whom I spoke felt like I did and some were switching their vote from Leach to Loebsack. As we all know, Dave won the election. It was a big deal.

During Loebsack’s first campaign I got involved with something called “Rapid Response.” Trish Nelson and Ellen Ballas recruited me to join them. They are here tonight. Coming out of the Howard Dean campaign, the idea was to read the news and quickly respond to Republicans using letters to the editor as our medium. We latched onto an issue which Ellen dubbed “faux headbands.” These were made of a single feather and a headband, what white people conjured as representing “Indian.” We wrote letter after letter about Jim Leach’s use of faux headbands in district parades. Clearly, we embarrassed Leach into stopping his racist practice and that was our goal all along. His campaign responded to our relentless barrage of letters: “In respect to your concerns, we decided not to distribute them in the future.” Can you trust Republicans? Our friend Dave Bradley recounted a story about the 2006 Wilton parade at the end of summer.

Leach had said they would no longer hand them out, but they did. They were behind us in the parade, so we had no idea what they were doing. When we got back to the staging area, I walked a block or two to see if there were any headbands. I found three right away, picked them up, and returned to help take our float down.

Just then the Republican float rolled into the staging area. They saw me with my feathers and scattered like chickens in a thunderstorm. Leach, State Senator Jim Hahn, Jeff Kaufmann and all the others running like they had seen a ghost. One guy saying he was going to beat the hell out of me, but he was running away. What a memory.

One last story.

The town of Stanwood, population 673, was in our district in 2012. If you’ve never been there, it has a post office, a library, a school, a manufactured home transporter, a pallet supply company, and Ditto’s Family Restaurant. If you are a doomsday prepper you would fit right in as some houses had firewood stacked to the second story. If you are into the Confederate flag, one was displayed in Stanwood, which no one seemed to mind. It was a picture of a newly emerging America. It was and likely still is a rough place like so many small Iowa cities.

When the next person on my walk list was an octogenarian Democrat I felt we would have a good conversation. I knocked on the door and the voter rushed out on the porch and without acknowledging me said, “Did you see what Obama just did?” No, I hadn’t. He told a lengthy tale of woe before I determined he must have been watching FOX News or listening to Rush Limbaugh. I don’t recall what upset him, yet I assured him what he heard was not true. The moral of the story is right wing media was affecting voters in a way I couldn’t counter at the door. I realized then how important media reform was to our political movement. Much more important than door knocking friendly neighborhoods.

Thanks again for the recognition. I am slowing down a bit these days yet will always be looking for something useful to do.