The first batch of results from the new Iowa Poll are in. Retired Admiral Michael Franken has closed the distance between him and incumbent U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley to within the margin of error, 43-46 percent.
“It says to me that Franken is running a competent campaign and has a shot to defeat the seemingly invincible Chuck Grassley — previously perceived to be invincible,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. which conducted the poll, to the Des Moines Register.
The race is closer than any Grassley faced since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980. The difference may be in so-called independent voters turning away from Grassley toward Franken.
Active voter registrations in Iowa were 1,867,161 on Oct. 3. Of these, 596,776 were Democratic, 684,800 were Republican, and 570,789 were No Party (independent), along with 14,796 others. A candidate must do well with No Party voters to win Iowa elections. In July, No Party voters were evenly split between the candidates. In the new Iowa Poll, they favor Franken by 46 to 35 percent or 11 points. The movement is substantial and important. If no party voters continue to break for Franken, Grassley’s long tenure in the U.S. Senate could be coming to an end.
The race leans Republican as we enter the final three weeks before the Nov. 8 election, with early voting starting on Wednesday, Oct. 19. A lot can happen in three weeks.
As the results of the Iowa Poll trickle out over the coming days, political activists will decide how to spend the remaining time before the election. Since the coordinated campaign was eliminated this cycle, Franken has his own operation, tactics and processes to chase and identify voters. To align with Franken now is to spend less time working on other campaigns. Yet, a race this close is encouragement enough to work to get Michael Franken over the finish line.
With ambient temperatures remaining warm there is plenty of time to get in a garlic crop. According to my long-time mentor, if a gardener misses autumn planting, it can be planted in the spring. Since I began planting my own garlic each October, I’ve had excellent crops. I watch the weather closely for a planting window beginning in mid-September.
I am taking my time this year, working three or four hours daily to strike the tomato patch, clear the ground cover, and dig up the soil. I have six shifts on six days thus far. Partly the extra time is because I’m aging. Mostly it’s because I enjoy gardening in the brilliant fall weather and don’t want it to end. It will be the last garden planting before winter.
I haven’t studied the history of garlic yet it is an amazing vegetable. The genetics of what I use came from a farm that developed it over more than 20 years. I watch for fungus and cull the best cloves for planting just as she did. 100 garlic plants will get me through the year and the seeds are ready to go into the ground.
Last night I made Guajillo chili sauce using the rest of the gleaned Guajillo chilies and smaller cloves of garlic culled from the seed selection process. I cut the chilies in three pieces, added a dozen cloves of garlic, a few tomatoes gleaned from the garden as I was clearing the tomato patch, salt, and enough tomato juice to cover the bottom of the pan. The mixture cooked down and I added home made apple cider vinegar to cover. Once the chilies were soft, I set them aside to cool on the counter while I made dinner. I blended them in my 40-year old Osterizer and used a funnel to remove the tough skin and seed. It made three pints, which, along with all the other chili sauce in the refrigerator, will last until next year.
Once garlic is planted and mulched, the rest of garden work is getting ready for winter. After that, it’s back to writing my autobiography.
On the North Shore Trail in Lake Macbride State Park.
The Des Moines Registerannounced the first installment of their annual pre-election Iowa Poll will be released at 6 p.m. on Saturday. The poll is by Selzer & Co., and is usually an accurate predictor of the results of the general election. They will begin with online release of the polling results for the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Mike Franken. Grassley is expected to lead in the poll. The question is by how much.
Hands down, the main issue among voters this cycle is the economy. Yesterday’s Consumer Price Index reported year-over-year the index rose by 8.2 percent, which number is typically used as the rate of inflation. President Joe Biden said in a statement, “Today’s report shows some progress in the fight against higher prices, even as we have more work to do. Inflation over the last three months has averaged 2 percent, at an annualized rate. That’s down from 11 percent in the prior quarter.”
Because of a higher CPI, Social Security benefits recipients will get an 8.7 percent increase in 2023. This takes the sting out of inflation for pensioners, which in Iowa are 17.7 percent of the population according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
The unknown this cycle is how overturning Roe vs Wade in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision will impact the election. There are reports of more women registering to vote, and they are expected to turn out. How they will vote is another question, except that Iowans will be Iowans with an expectation new voters will follow their party. That is, unless Dobbs changed their minds.
I’m not sure yet don’t believe women will discuss reproductive rights honestly with an anonymous pollster. The issue will be a jump ball in Iowa and elsewhere. Getting church-goers to register to vote and support anti-abortion candidates was a key characteristic of the 2016 Iowa elections when Senator Ted Cruz won the Republican caucus and Donald Trump won the state by significant margins in both 2016 and 2020. More women registering to vote could mean more support for a statewide abortion ban.
The Democratic ground game is not going as well as I had hoped. The state party eliminated the coordinated campaign this cycle and as a result campaigns are reaching out to me individually because I have been active in the past. In the last 72 hours, there have been many distinct requests to volunteer in multiple ways. I can only work on one campaign at a time.
I’m a precinct captain and that carries some unique requirements as well. In a coordinated campaign Democrats would all pull in a single direction, as much as we ever do. That’s not what’s going on now with campaigns competing for a limited pool of experienced canvassers.
A caller on Thursday asked me to join in door knocking this coming Saturday in North Liberty. I asked how they were approaching my precinct and the other eight rural precincts in House District 91. They had no answer. That leads me to use what information I have to canvass my own precinct apart from the county party effort. In the end, what happens close to home matters as much as the broader statewide and national results. I hope to stanch the changeover to being a solidly Republican precinct. The 2022 midterms may be my last chance.
Before the big poll I don’t see how Democrats will win any statewide races. At the same time, I’m hopeful Mike Franken will win as U.S. Senator. The Iowa Poll will show the way. I’m also hoping to elect a few Democrats locally, the ones who have the wherewithal to find enough no-preference and Republican voters to vote for them and overcome the Republican advantage. I’m not sure the Iowa Poll is relevant to that. I’ll be clicking on the link to the poll shortly after it is posted.
After dinner I put a two-pound bag of Great Northern beans in a pot to soak. The next morning, I drained and rinsed them, and covered with water to soak some more. At noon there was one more rinse, then I covered the beans with canned vegetable broth and turned on the heat.
In a separate pan I placed one large, chopped onion, the rest of the fresh celery from the garden plus three stalks from the store, and five thinly sliced medium carrots. Adding six bay leaves and some salt, I covered the mixture with more vegetable broth and turned on the heat.
Once both pots were boiling, I turned the temperature down to simmer. When the beans were cooked through, I strained the mirepoix mixture, reserved the liquid, and added the cooked vegetables to the beans. The soup simmered until dinner time. It was delicious.
There is no recipe for this bean soup. The ingredients are timeless. The process harks back to the oldest times. Times when how to cook was embedded in oral tradition and mass-produced cook books and the internet did not exist.
I made this soup many times. This time it was an epiphany representing the direction ahead for my kitchen garden.
The election will be here before we know it and voters are forming into camps. I encourage anyone eligible to vote to do so. We should participate in our country’s governance because we can.
What I can’t abide is the money in politics. It is like the wind yet what you hear is the sound of money changing hands as the wealthy try to buy the election.
Christina Bohannan is getting hammered by false ads paid for by a group called Congressional Leadership Fund Super PAC which is approved by Republican leadership in the Congress. They reported more than $109 million income this election cycle and spent more than $774,000 against Bohannan thus far, according to OpenSecrets.org. They are only one PAC.
What makes this Super PAC despicable is dark money groups, that don’t have to disclose donors, raise funds then contribute to this Super PAC that does. One might call it dark money laundering except they don’t come clean.
Super PACs shouldn’t be able to feed lies into our political discourse with impunity. A vote for Democrat Christina Bohannan for Congress is a vote for sensible campaign contribution reform, a vote for hard-working Iowans’ values.
~Published online in the Newton Daily News on Oct. 11, 2022
I occasionally hike a section of the Hoover Trail that branches from the North Shore Trail along Lake Macbride. It is a longer walk and with fall weather, I seek to spend more time outdoors. It was perfect for a long Sunday walk.
A couple of gray kittens were sunning on dirt next to the trail. “What are you doing here?” I asked. It was half a mile or more to the nearest building.
They were not just born yet still very young. I talked to them, but didn’t touch them. If I had a bag or backpack with me, I would have picked them up, brought them home, and had them checked out by a local veterinarian. Lacking suitable cat transportation, I left them where I found them, hoping for the best.
The next day, my spouse and I discussed the kittens and decided if I could find them again I would bring them home for processing and potential domestication. That is, as pets. We decided they were not yet feral cats, because if they were, they would have hidden when they saw humans on the trail. Our fear was that someone dumped them, a common occurrence in rural Iowa.
Grabbing an old moving box, I put a couple of old towels and a pair of gloves in it and walked back to the spot. It is inaccessible by automobile and took a half hour or more to make it back.
I stopped by the benches and bike racks near the pond to cool down. The sound of birds was all around. There were squirrels, grasshoppers and other insects on a bright afternoon. It was peaceful and restful. The kittens were nowhere to be found. I will assume that is good news although was a little sad when I left. The lesson is to pay attention to one’s surroundings. I doubt bicyclists noticed the kittens while they sped by.
We seek to do good in life, yet sometimes it works out differently.
DES MOINES (April 24, 2009) Rear Adm. Michael Franken, left, and Yeoman Chief Jose Soto listen as Des Moines University President Terry E. Branstad gives a tour of the school’s Simulation Lab during Des Moines Navy Week. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Devin Thorpe. Photo credit – Wikimedia Commons).
At the Oct. 6 U.S. Senate debate, each candidate had their points. Incumbent Chuck Grassley explained his daily work schedule when Congress is in session and said he would bring more of the same if reelected. Retired Navy Admiral Michael Franken brought youth, experience, and new ideas. Fans of each candidate had to find something to like.
I had more than a dozen conversations with Franken on every topic I could think of, beginning with his run in the 2020 Democratic primary. He is what he says he is. He has thoughtful, informed proposals to address many of today’s political, social, and foreign affairs problems. The smear tactics of dark money in our politics wash right off him. It is likely because he was an effective leader at the highest level of the U.S. military.
It was surprising that overturning Roe vs. Wade became an issue this election cycle. If you oppose government intervention between a woman and her doctor, and support reproductive freedom, Franken is your candidate.
I’m voting for Michael Franken Nov. 8. I hope you will too.
~ Submitted as a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register.
Jann S. Wenner. Photo Credit – Penske Media Corporation.
Jann Wenner’s Like A Rolling Stone: A Memoir would more aptly be titled A US Weekly Story of My Life. Its focus on his wealth, his celebrity friends and acquaintances, his wife and his husband, his Gulfstream II, his drug use, his magazine awards, his vacations in rare places, and other detritus of the self-centered rich would more appropriately appear in his publication US Weekly than Rolling Stone. I finished the book because I couldn’t avoid the mindless trappings of it: as if I were waiting in the dentist’s office with time to kill before a root canal.
Wenner’s work is evident in the book. It is competent writing yet the frequent mentions of famous people made it tedious. Why do we want to hear a person chatted with Bob Dylan about real estate? Or exchanged birthday gifts with Mick Jagger? Or vacationed with Ahmet Ertegun, a co-founder of Atlantic Records? Wenner had a substantial life yet this memoir is a puff piece. It could have been more, especially regarding the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, of which he is a member (because of his work with Rolling Stone) and past chairman.
I expected better writing. How could he have worked with and edited so many great writers — Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe particularly — and present such a dry, soulless narrative? He got a story down, yet it is not the story expected. It is largely devoid of the excitement that was San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s. It didn’t improve after the story of the magazine moved to New York in 1977 where he met and spent time with a different set of celebrities including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Bruce Springsteen.
There are a few redeeming qualities. The Rolling Stone story of Annie Leibovitz is one. The development of political campaign coverage by Hunter S. Thompson and others is another. I can’t put my finger on many more redeeming qualities shortly after finishing the book. I wish I could.
Perhaps a reason for Wenner’s lack of commitment to exceptional prose in the book can be found in this quote from page 296, “If I were asked if I could do it again would I still have used all that cocaine, I wouldn’t hesitate. No. It was a waste of money, energy, and precious time.”
I’m keeping Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir on my bookshelf as a reference for now. If I find another home for it, I’ll gladly give it away. Somebody had to publish Rolling Stone the magazine. I never figured it would be a person who came across in his writing as a dilettante when he had the capacity and interest in being deeply engaged in his work and the telling of its story.
As former Rolling Stone writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse Five, “So it goes.”
I’m slowly striking the tomato patch where garlic will soon be planted. Each beautiful, fall day is of bright sun, cool temperatures, and the promise of winter. Time spent outdoors offers a chance to clear my thoughts and commune with our patch of life. Younger me would already have the garlic in. Today I am savoring time in the garden.
I gleaned vegetables yesterday and there was a hard frost last night. It yielded tomatoes and peppers. I picked a big bunch of parsley and left the kale, collards and chard out to weather the cold. It has been a great year for bell peppers and tomatoes, for most everything.
It is time to put wool blankets on the bed and get out sweatshirts and woolen socks. Yesterday I walked on the state park trail in a t-shirt yet that won’t continue long. I’m ready for winter and it is coming.
I finished my goal of reading 40 books this year. It’s time to return to my autobiography as soon as the garlic is in and the garden prepped for winter. I’m looking forward to picking up where I left off with new ideas about approach and how to cover topics already on the outline.
I just finished Jann Wenner’s memoir and OMG! I’m not a rich guy, so I can do better than inventory all the homes, aircraft, and celebrity friendships I have. (That would take less than a page). Reading Wenner convinced me to make my story shorter. I envision the first part, up to my leaving Davenport, as chronological history. After that I expect to depart chronology to write thematic sections. I do want to finish the book so I can move on to other projects. If I keep nose to the wheel, I may be able to get a draft out to my editors by Spring 2024. I saw my medical practitioner Thursday and based on our conversation, my health should hold steady until then.
In these pre-dawn hours I’m anxious to get outdoors. If all goes well, I’ll finish clearing the tomato patch so I can prep the soil and plant garlic in the next few days.
I’ll have a fresh tomato for breakfast… because I can.
I worked for seven seasons at what is now Wilson’s Orchard and Farm near Iowa City. At the time it was mostly an apple orchard with seasonal imports of cherries, peaches, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries from other farms.
During the coronavirus pandemic they expanded their offerings and yesterday announced they bought a 115-acre farm near Des Moines as a further expansion of what is proving to be a successful local food concept.
The grand opening of the Des Moines farm is spring 2023 with the strawberry season. Paul Rasch, owner and grand poobah of the farm described his first strawberry crop in Iowa City to me as “money.”
I don’t know if the proposed transition is possible, yet it may be our best hope to break the cycle of growing row crops in Iowa. Wilson’s Orchard and Farm is an idea whose time has come.
Here is the announcement video released this week that describes Paul’s vision of an Iowa food system transformed.
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