Tag: politics

After talking with the three candidates for Johnson County Supervisor in District 2, I decided to support Jon Green in the June 2 Democratic primary. All three would make great supervisors, but Jon, the incumbent, is the person who worked to gain consensus among board members on building a new jail. That was difficult work, and I support his re-election so he can finish it.

It’s no more complicated than that.

The Republican in this race is Phil Hemingway. When I was covering Iowa City Community School District board meetings for the North Liberty Leader, I listened to him ask questions — often multiple ones at each board meeting. He was engaged and once won election to the school board.

I looked at historical voting numbers in the precincts that make up new District 2, and the votes are there to defeat Hemingway resoundingly in his sixth bid for supervisor — badly enough that he will never run for this office again. That would free him to return to automotive work until he retires.

I am working for Green to win the primary. If he doesn’t, whoever does will have my full support.

With the county convention in the rear view mirror, it’s time to organize for the Democratic primary. Our votes are important, yet three races are at the top of the list here: the U.S. Senate race between Zach Wahls and Josh Turek, and the District 2 county supervisor race between Jessica Andino, Janet Godwin and incumbent Jon Green lead. The U.S. House race matters, yet Christina Bohannan is widely expected to win the primary over challenger Travis Terrell. It’s her third go-around, so she should. My main work this week has been organizing a supervisor meet and greet event this afternoon at the Solon Public Library. After that, it is a mad rush to the June 2 primary.

There was no competition in Johnson County to be a delegate to the district and state conventions and that’s okay. I decided not to advance to district either. There are too many other things begging for our attention to engage in rituals. The thrill is gone from Democratic conventions, and that too, is okay. Promoting Democratic policy in our communities is where most of the action will be in 2026, I predict.

What does that mean?

Partly, it means participating in campaigns. It also means talking to voters about the race and why it is important to support Democrats. The latter is not a given and this graphic of results from the 2024 general election in my precinct tells why:

Race	Republican	Democrat
President	Trump	Harris
	699	598
U.S. House	Miller-Meeks	Bohannan
	700	617
State Senator	Driscoll	Chabal
	741	526
State Representative	Lawler	Gorsh
	716	545

We voted Obama twice and Trump three times shifting from blue to solidly Republican. The numbers suggest it is possible to turn that around but not without significant work. My first order of business is to figure out which activists remain after we suffered some people becoming less active, moving out of the precinct, and dying.

Once more activists are located, the next step is finding ways to talk to neighbors and then convert them, if possible, to turn the precinct from red to blue.

There are two parts to this, in my precinct, and in the rest of the state and country. Both run through the ballot box.

The first is voting: making sure we take care of ourselves by checking our registration and then voting in person, either early or on election day. Encourage everyone we know to do likewise.

The second is changing the public narrative about life in Iowa and in the United States. We should not accept narratives being fed to us by media outlets, churches, interest groups, and political parties. Rather, we should develop our own new narratives that reflect how we live despite our differences. I predict this will change how we vote.

If we can do those things, there is a chance to make society a better place to live, possibly this election cycle.

Now it’s a matter of getting out there and doing it.

114 delegates to the Johnson County Democratic Convention gathered on Saturday, March 21, at Iowa City West High School. It was an intense day of political conversations, which physically drained me. Here are my favorite photos.

When Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 75 into law on April 1, 2025, a crowd of Republican well-wishers was present.

Senate File 75 mandates that Iowa counties containing a Board of Regents university — specifically Johnson, Story, and Black Hawk — change their county supervisor elections from an at-large to a district-based system. The law has gone into effect and we are working through the new process.

Those at the signing ceremony included one Phil Hemingway who ran repeatedly and unsuccessfully for supervisor in Johnson County where I live. Hemingway backed this legislation. This week he filed for election to the Johnson County board of supervisors again, this time in newly created District 2. His is the bellwether race to see if Republican ideas on this prevail. Can they win a seat on the now all-Democratic board?

“Important to me personally was the passage of the county supervisor election reform bill,” Republican State Senator Dawn Driscoll said, “which protects the voices of our full-time residents in counties with large student populations.”

Driscoll’s colleague Republican State Representative Judd Lawler was not far behind.

“This legislation will improve local representation and accountability at the county level,” he said. “By using districts in these counties, the law promotes a more fair representation structure. This is particularly important in areas with highly transient populations, as it allows for better representation of all county residents, particularly rural and small-town residents.”

Driscoll and Lawler both represent parts of Johnson County.

Opponents, including local officials, argued the law targets specific areas and violates county home rule principles. A lawsuit filed in late 2025 challenged the law’s constitutionality, claiming it violates equal protection.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the law does not impede any voter rights and that the state has a legitimate regulatory interest in differentiating counties that host a regents-led university. The court rejected the motion.

“While the matter may be appropriate for disposition on summary judgment, the Court is not persuaded that it is the exceptional type of case that is appropriate for dismissal at the pre-answer stage of litigation. Therefore, Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss should be denied,” the ruling states.

The district court also denied the motion for a temporary injunction which would have immediately blocked the law from going into effect. A non-jury trial is set to begin on March 3, 2027, long after the first election under the new process.

The horse seems out of the proverbial barn.

Even if plaintiffs win the case at trial, what happens next? That will be up to the judge. My Kentucky windage best shot is the new law is here to stay because if they were inclined to stop it, the court would have granted the injunction.

In the meanwhile, my small group of Democrats is organizing a get to know the supervisor candidate event in the new District 2, on March 28, at 1 p.m. at the Solon Public Library. Three Democratic candidates filed: incumbent Jon Green, Janet Godwin, and Jessica Andino. The winner of the June 2, primary will face Hemingway during the November general election.

Note: This passage was cut from my current autobiographical work, so I am posting it here. It is a bit dated.

I wrote about Father’s political work and before I close, I want to write about mine. I functioned at the lowest levels of politics and got elected one time to be a Township Trustee. The word “grassroots” is overly used, but that is where I functioned.

In the political world, so many people want to be strategists and speak at a high level about what is or isn’t the best thing to do in the elements of a campaign. It is the source of the increased swarm of media pundits and poobahs. It is the lifeblood of political bloggers. Political campaigns are not only about strategy.

The tactics of a campaign matter: messaging, voter contact, fundraising and public relations. Where strategy trumps tactics in importance is in defining the playing field. Strategies are too often based on false assumptions, and ragged history. The mistake is to take the external features of campaigning as the playing field. Avoiding mistaken strategy is the key to winning elections, something I hope my candidate will do no matter upon which election I am working.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee voted to advance a series of first in the nation states for the 2024 presidential nominating calendar. Iowa was not one of them. The plan includes South Carolina first, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada the following week, then Georgia, then Michigan. The plan is expected to be approved by the DNC early the next year.

If one didn’t know Iowa were to be booted from the early states, they had not been paying attention.

Iowa and New Hampshire, both of which have state laws requiring them to go first, are considering next steps. If either state chooses to disregard DNC and changes the schedule, there are penalties, including losing delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Delegates are the whole point of the nominating process. There may be state penalties for failure to go first, but let’s face it, any state could pass such a law and who would enforce it? What will happen next in Iowa is presently unknown.

In 1968, the Democratic National Convention was a disaster in several ways.

Outside the convention hall, anti-war demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War roamed Chicago streets. The Chicago police department, under the direction of Mayor Richard J. Daly, used force in an attempt to maintain control.

During the evening of Aug. 28, 1968, with the police riot in full swing on Michigan Avenue in front of the Democratic party’s convention headquarters, the Conrad Hilton hotel, television networks broadcast live as the anti-war protesters began the now-iconic chant “The whole world is watching.”

At home, I saw televised news reports from Michigan Avenue. A friend was inside the Conrad Hilton with Harold Hughes who ran for president that year. Bill hoped the nomination of Hubert Humphrey, in a smoke filled room away from the convention, was something that would never again happen. South Dakota Senator George McGovern was assigned the task of re-designing the nominating calendar and process, which he did. We have been operating under the McGovern plan ever since.

Most Americans of voting age participate in presidential politics. Here is a brief summary of my memories. Consider it my farewell gift to the Iowa caucus.

Harry Truman: I was 13 months old when Harry Truman left office. I have no living memories of his administration.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Our family didn’t like having a Republican president yet were thankful for his plan to build the Interstate Highway System. I recall talking about how it was designed so that military vehicles hauling missiles could travel under the roads and bridges that crossed the Interstates. We didn’t like Eisenhower yet accepted his credentials during World War II yielded a competent chief executive.

John F. Kennedy: Father worked on the Kennedy campaign and shared some of that with me. If there was a Camelot, I’m over that now. I wrote previously about this. Click here to read that post.

Lyndon Baines Johnson: I stuffed envelopes for the 1964 Johnson campaign at the Democratic office in downtown Davenport. I came to expect that all elections would be like the Johnson landslide. I was young.

Hubert Humphrey: Based on conversations with my father, I felt the Humphrey nomination was tainted. Partly, I didn’t understand how the convention got so out of hand. I resented the corruption evident in Chicago Mayor Daly. Richard Nixon won in 1968.

George McGovern: My main memory of McGovern’s campaign was a rally before election day at the University of Iowa Pentacrest. I don’t remember if I voted. I wrote more extensively about the 1972 election here. Richard Nixon won reelection.

Jimmy Carter: I was in between finishing Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia and traveling to my first assignment in Mainz, Germany during the 1976 presidential election. After Nixon’s resignation in disgrace, I literally didn’t care who was elected president that year.

Ted Kennedy: Turns out I didn’t care for Jimmy Carter enough to support him for a second term. I caucused for Ted Kennedy in Davenport and he wasn’t viable. I declined to join my union friends with the Carter group and went home.

George McGovern: My spouse and I caucused for George McGovern in 1984. We attended a forum in Des Moines where he, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, Fritz Hollings, and others appeared. At the precinct caucus, I joined the platform committee and was selected to go to the county convention as a McGovern delegate. It was my first taste of Johnson County politics.

Michael Dukakis: We lived in Lake County, Indiana in 1988. I remember saying to myself during the June primary election, “Who’s bright idea was running Dukakis?” He lost to George H.W. Bush.

Bill Clinton: Still in Indiana in 1992, I supported Bill Clinton. I took our three-year-old daughter into the voting booth so she could press Clinton’s name on the touch-screen voting device for me. I didn’t devote a lot of time to Clinton’s campaign or to politics. Back in Iowa for the 1996 election, I continued to be inactive in politics. I judged Clinton could be nominated without my help and didn’t attend the precinct caucus. Clinton won Iowa 50.26 percent to Robert Dole’s 39.92 percent.

Al Gore: I skipped the caucuses in 1996 as I believed Al Gore would win the nomination without me. He did, and as we know, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped ballot counting in Florida during the general election, giving the win to George W. Bush.

John Kerry: I quickly came to believe the George W. Bush administration was the worst. In the first days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, I rallied around the president. It didn’t last long. I wrote about my transition here. All three of us attended the 2004 precinct caucuses in Big Grove Precinct together and caucused for John Kerry. I helped run the caucus as secretary that cycle. I joined the Democratic central committee again and worked on the Kerry campaign. I also decided that after his performance in the White Water controversy, long-time U.S. representative Jim Leach had to go. In 2006 we elected Dave Loebsack to the Congress.

John Edwards: Despite all the negativity that came out about John Edwards after his last presidential campaign, I have no regrets having worked to make him the Democratic nominee in 2008. I spent time with him, his wife Elizabeth, and their children. This precinct caucus was the best attended in my almost 30 years living in Big Grove Township — about 260 people. I served as caucus secretary again and it was challenging to make a count. There wasn’t enough room in the school cafeteria and some of the voters stretched out into the hallway. I recall Edwards had a contingent from the care center in wheelchairs and on gurneys. In the end, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards tied and Clinton won the coin toss. Barack Obama got the most delegates and won the general election.

Barack Obama: During the 2012 precinct caucuses I led two precincts other than my own: Cedar and Graham. The caucus began with live video of Obama, then we broke into precinct groups. There wasn’t anyone willing to lead the caucus among the eight people in each group. I convinced a friend to be secretary. Obama’s reelection was not a given yet his campaign was thorough enough to win a second term.

Hillary Clinton: I led the Clinton delegation to the 2016 precinct caucus. We had so many delegates we could send some to the Martin O’Malley group to make them viable and deprive Bernie Sanders of a delegate. I decided being a Clinton leader took precedence over running the caucus. It was a good decision. As we know now, Clinton won the nomination and lost the general.

Elizabeth Warren: I led my own caucus for the second time in 2020, supporting Elizabeth Warren for the nomination. I was well organized and the process proceeded smoothly. We split our four delegates with one each to Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. Biden placed fourth in Iowa. It wasn’t until South Carolina that the Biden train started to roll out of the station. Buttigieg won Iowa by a small margin yet any momentum was halted by a computer failure in the application we used to report our results. This disaster was likely a prime catalyst for removing Iowa from early in the nominating process this week.

Joe Biden: Joe Biden hasn’t announced whether he will run for president in 2024. One assumes he is in good health and will live long enough to serve a second term. If the DNC is successful in removing Iowa from the early states, as it appears they will be, presidential politics will be a lot different in Iowa. I hope it will be better.

It is recent enough as I type, we all know what happened next. I supported Kamala Harris for president.