Author: Paul Deaton

Every farm kid knows you should card wool before spinning it into yarn.

Joni Ernst’s campaign has spun some yarns about Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield and it’s clear they didn’t get things straightened out beforehand.

They don’t intend on getting the story right. They cast aspersions on their opponent’s character with disregard for facts and reasonable discourse.

On Monday, Aug. 24, Ernst released this statement on her campaign website:

“The American Dream is to own a home, which is why it’s so sad that while she was the President of Rottlund Homes, real estate executive Theresa Greenfield’s company was sued in Polk County for fraud, negligence and reneging on property purchase agreements,” said Joni Ernst spokesperson Melissa Deatsch. “For Greenfield, it’s always about looking out for herself. Once Rottlund Homes went bankrupt, Greenfield quickly jumped to Colby Interests and continued to put herself before others.”

Deatsch is saying: 1. Greenfield “quickly jumped” from Rottlund Homes to Colby Interests, and 2. she is implicitly guilty because Rottlund Homes was sued.

That’s a lot to swallow. Let straighten this the way we would card wool.

Let’s start with the LinkedIn profile Ernst wrote they accessed May 14, 2019. Here is the relevant part:

Greenfield wrote she was unemployed from December 2011 until March 2012. She has been quite open about her experience with Rottlund Homes and how she lost her job during the real estate crash of the Great Recession. She told me earlier this year,

“From there I went into home building and eventually became the president of a small home building company in Iowa. That was fun through the recession, until it wasn’t any more fun. We sold the assets at the end of 2011. I became unemployed like a lot of people in the recession, then hired on with a commercial real estate company.”

For Deatsch to say Greenfield “quickly jumped” from job to job simply isn’t true. It was a recession caused in part by turbulence in the real estate business for Pete’s sake. With 100,000 Iowans out of work during the coronavirus pandemic Ernst is criticizing Greenfield for being laid off almost ten years ago? Now that Ernst is a U.S. Senator what is she doing for Iowans who are unemployed? That’s not a rhetorical question.

Let’s talk about the three lawsuits Ernst raised. It is part of business life that companies get sued. How responsible was Greenfield for these lawsuits? Ernst mentions people sued Rottlund Homes but says little else. The plaintiff is not always right and regular people know that. If you look at what happened, much of the basis for the lawsuits was out of Greenfield’s control and all three were resolved through legal process. What’s the beef?

James and Sheryl Moon: A deal between the Moons and Rottlund occurred in 2005, before Greenfield joined Rottlund Homes of Iowa in 2007. The Moons dismissed their case against Rottlund with prejudice and both parties waived claims for attorney fees.

The Villas at Berkshire Hills: The Villas at Berkshire Hills were built in the 1990s, well before Theresa Greenfield joined Rottlund Homes of Iowa in 2007. The Villas at Berkshire Hills Home Owners Association and Rottlund Homes of Iowa settled and the case was dismissed.

The Reserve Homeowners Association: The Reserve was built around 2005, and the neighborhood started to experience water pooling problems in 2006. Both occurred before Greenfield joined Rottlund Homes of Iowa in 2007. The Reserve Home Owners Association trial against Rottlund was cancelled because Rottlund was put into receivership in Minnesota to liquidate their assets and all pending litigation was stayed. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice after both parties agreed to dismiss the case.

Did Theresa Greenfield become president of Rottlund Homes of Iowa? Yes, she did, in 2007. Were there lawsuits? Yes, there were. Are those lawsuits long resolved? Yes, they are. How about we quit changing the subject by casting aspersions on Theresa Greenfield’s character and do something for the thousands of Iowans who are jobless because of the coronavirus pandemic?

While Joni Ernst claims to be fighting for Iowans, Monday’s attack shows how out-of-touch she is during the current and greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The Ernst campaign is criticizing and casting aspersions on Theresa Greenfield’s character at a time when: over 100,000 Iowans are unemployed, Iowa had record unemployment of over 10 percent in April, the GOP-led Senate, where Ernst as part of leadership, failed to renew needed extended unemployment benefits, and earlier this year, Ernst sought lower unemployment payments in COVID relief.

A person can spin from the lock but who would want to wear the garment, all lumpy and itchy? While Joni Ernst remains a Senator she should quit distracting, get to work for Iowans, and quit trying to persuade us her lockspun is cashmere.

Iowans are just going to shake it off.

In 1964 I had thoughts about politics.

One Saturday morning, after riding the city bus downtown to pay my newspaper bill, a friend and I stopped at the Democratic office to stuff envelopes in exchange for an LBJ campaign button. The same day, on a lark, we went to the nearby Republican office and did the same for a Goldwater button. Our family was Democratic yet I must have felt there was a choice about politics.

When Johnson won the election in a landslide I figured Democrats would prevail in all future elections. I was 12 years old.

Being a newspaper carrier was a formative experience. It taught me a lot about people, that some were honest and others would try to bilk me out of the cost of their subscription. When I threatened to stop deliveries for non-payment people would blame me when they pleaded with my supervisor to continue the paper.

People were mostly home when I made collections. When they weren’t I made a special trip later in the week. I got to know everyone on my route: who had a barking dog, who kept their yard tidy, who rented and who didn’t. Women were easier to deal with than men. A majority of households took the newspaper.

The street in front of our house dead-ended at a woods near the end of my route. Collecting from that house meant avoiding a dog and finding my way down a long driveway to the old farm house where it was hit or miss someone would be around. Collections taught me a lot about margins in a small business. If you didn’t collect, every penny came out of the margin. Today the street runs through and the farmhouse is long gone.

The years, especially the Ronald Reagan administration, removed any doubt I’m a Democrat. I’m proud to be a Democrat. Our days of landslide victories like 1964 are over so there is work to do in the remaining days before the Nov. 3 election. I plan to vote for the Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They are good people. It requires good people to effectively govern.

I’ve been in enough political campaigns to know time slips away if one doesn’t have a plan to support the election. I made a list of 12 things to do. It ranges from easy — like wearing a campaign button or t-shirt in public and installing an auto bumper sticker — to working with the campaigns to contact voters. We’re on a fixed budget yet we’ll find a way to spare a few dollars for our candidates. I’ve already been working the plan.

Why Biden – Harris? They are our party’s nominees. In addition to being good people, they have a coherent plan to address the coronavirus pandemic and the economic collapse it brought. There’s plenty more but unless we get through the pandemic and have a chance at restoring some of our previous life, our lives will become a worsening hellscape. Already it is clear there is no going back to how it used to be before the pandemic.

My life has been about people: getting to know them, working with them in a business environment, and doing things together because it is fun and rewarding. All that is on the line in the election because of the pandemic.

Yesterday CNN reported there is an asteroid heading toward Earth to arrive at the time of the election. The scientists at NASA say the chance of it hitting us is just 0.41 percent. The incumbent president has more chance of being re-elected than that. It’s time to get to work to reduce his chances to closer to zero.

The election will be here before we know it, the results known. In the meanwhile I’ll continue living — cleaning up after the derecho, conserving financial resources, learning how to cook from a kitchen garden, and doing things with people how and when I can. I’ll continue to strive to be a better writer and a decent human being. In 2020 preserving those abilities means supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for president and vice president. That’s what I plan to do.

The first thing I did upon waking was view Michelle Obama’s speech at the on line Democratic National Convention. She did her job.

Obama said just what we needed to hear: there is a different vision of the United States from that of the incumbent president.

This morning I viewed Senator Bernie Sanders’s speech. He did his job too. “Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs,” he said.

I was too tired to stay up for the convention broadcast. A day of derecho cleanup, chores and kitchen work had me tired by 8 p.m. Because of the on line format convention content was posted soon after it occurred. That’s how our politics is becoming: an on-demand, personalized experience shared with friends and neighbors. I don’t like it as well as past campaigns yet with the coronavirus pandemic what other good choices are there?

When an issue is clear, it can be resolved. It was a mistake to elect Donald Trump president because he is not prepared to do the work. People are suffering because of his incompetence. Because there is agreement about this among a significant part of the electorate, voters of all stripes can come together to elect Joe Biden the 46th president. With the problems created or exacerbated by Trump since he’s been in office it’s not that easy.

There is no consensus around our most pressing issues. We lack a plan to resolve the global pandemic and the United States is trailing the rest of the world in addressing it. Last week’s derecho is only the latest example of extreme weather events caused by climate change. Racism and social injustice revealed themselves as issues that were never resolved. Income inequality increased during the pandemic with the richest Americans doing well while the rest of us wonder how we will survive. Why is it anyone in the United States has to worry about going broke if they get sick? These issues smolder like the burn pile I made after the derecho to return minerals from fallen branches to our garden soil.

No political party is perfect and a case can be made that the success of our country relies on two-party politics. The national conventions kick off the fall campaign and it seems more people will be a part of it. I hope so. No speech is going to resolve our biggest issues. Only political action in the form of voting can do that.