Tag: politics

It seems too early to be talking about the 2018 Governor’s race. However, people are politically active and there is a gaggle of candidates.

I have no preference today and assume they are all serious about their campaigns. Here’s my first look at the race.

I favor Corbett over Reynolds on the Republican side because I know and worked with him during my transportation career. I heard him speak in 2015 at the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Cedar Rapids. He did some good things after the 2008 flood devastated downtown Cedar Rapids. Because he’s still got an R behind his name, that pretty much disqualifies him for me in the general election.

On the Democratic side I’m not sure who’s who. Here’s the ones that are running or considering a run in no particular order.

I know the two women best.

This is Andy McGuire’s second bite at the gubernatorial apple (2006 being the other). Her recent tenure as chair of the Iowa Democratic Party should disqualify her for two reasons: over reliance on national campaigns for funding IDP operations, and for running an imperceptible 2016 campaign in my precinct and the ones around me where Trump won. She seems a bit tone deaf to be running again.

I like Cathy Glasson from past associations, mostly with John Edwards’ 2008 campaign. She is like most SEIU leaders I’ve met in that when she gets behind something she puts her all into it. When she says something, she means it and her policies have a lot to like. Mostly she is about the struggle working people face — with a asterisk next to “working people” indicating “strong union” in the definition. I imagine she was pissed when Governor Chet Culver would not support the union agenda. Women I know tell me they don’t see any Democratic women being able to win as governor. I don’t know, but I like her.

There’s also some men.

John Norris has the resume to be governor, but I’d rather his spouse Jackie were the nominee. I suspect his political chops will play well in the areas Chet Culver won.

Jon Niederbach’s campaign tagline is “Bold New Leadership Not Beholden To Any Special Interest.” He’s been president of the Des Moines School Board, and a former board member of Proteus, an organization that provides medical services to migrant workers. Proteus gave me a lot of insight when I was on the county board of health. I’m not sure people outside Des Moines have heard of him, so he will need to work hard on a steep hill to gain name recognition.

A number of Iowa legislators support State Senator Nate Boulton in the primary. First elected to the legislature in 2016, he’s a political newcomer who gained prominence in the first session of the 87th Iowa General Assembly. He argued diligently for Democratic positions and the governor’s office needs that kind of person. Just because he’s popular among legislators, doesn’t mean he’s ready for prime time.

Todd Prichard is from my home town and is now a state representative from Charles City. He announced for governor May 16, then last week headed for Bulgaria in the National Guard. Other than his military service, I’m not sure what distinguishes him from the pack.

Fred Hubbell is a retired business executive whose family founded Equitable of Iowa. If any among the candidates is a household name, he is. The Hubbell family donated Terrace Hill to be the governor’s mansion, and his family have been significant donors to numerous causes, including the 2008 flood recovery, United Way, Planned Parenthood, and the Iowa Democratic Party among others. He announced last week and hasn’t held political office. Hubbell is expected to have few financial hurdles in the governor’s race. Rep. Mary Mascher’s endorsement of Hubbell means a lot.

Finally, former Iowa City Mayor Ross Wilburn is exploring a run for governor. He lives in Ames and little has been posted in media about the progress of his candidacy. Wilburn’s name recognition is less than Niederbach.

A lot is at stake for Democrats in the 2018 governor’s race. Here’s what Johnson County’s Sue Dvorsky had to say:

“We will be a dangerous group of people with nothing to lose. We will be unleashed,” Dvorsky told the Des Moines Register. “We’re gonna win this time, or we’re going down for 40 years.”

Truer words Ms. Dvorsky has never spoken.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette was sitting on the break room table last week at the home, farm and auto supply store, open to an article about IPERS, Iowa’s public employee retirement plan.

Written by Matt Sinovic of Progress Iowa, the first sentence asserted more of the usual fare from the progressive group, “Once again, Republicans in the Iowa Legislature are inviting an out-of-state attack on the economic security of Iowa families.”

Thanks, but I’d already had my allowable dose of confirmation bias that morning. I closed the paper and started my shift.

That would have been that, except my state representative, Bobby Kaufmann, raised the article in a July 21 update to his legislative newsletter list.

Finally, I want to address the conversations being had regarding IPERS. I want to ensure (sic) everyone that your retirement is safe and will continue to be. There was an unfortunate editorial in the Gazette. I am being complimentary when I call it misleading and partisan. Every two years a committee meets to ensure our retirement fund is solvent. That is all that is happening. Every two years members of both parties get together and examine our retirement system to make sure our promises can be kept. I have said it before and I will say it again: I am a HELL NO on any bill that would negatively impact the retirement promise that has been made to you.

“Sh*t,” I said to myself. “Now I gotta go read that stinkin’ article.”

A long-standing complaint of Blog for Iowa is the legislature does little to address long term plans for IPERS.

“As it stands, there is no long term plan for educational financing, Medicaid, IPERS or property tax reform,” Chad Thompson wrote May 24, 2005. “What we did get was some reshuffling of bank accounts and a further drain on the reserves we do have.”

When Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds brought up the idea of a task force to evaluate modification of IPERS last January, my nerves tensed.

Reynolds, who soon will become the state’s governor, said in remarks at a Scott County Republican Party fundraiser Jan. 26 (reported by Ed Tibbetts of the Quad City Times), that commitments already made to IPERS members would be honored. “I feel very strongly about that,” she said. However, she also raised the possibility of moving toward a “hybrid” system that would include the current defined benefit pension arrangement as well as a defined contribution component. The latter is akin to a 401(k) system that is common in the private sector.

While Reynolds’ statement garnered attention, IPERS did not seem like a high priority on its own.

Iowa Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald was quick to respond to Reynolds.

On January 30, 2017, I issued a statement telling IPERS members they should be concerned about the future of their benefits.

Since that time, my concern has continued to grow. After witnessing how quickly the legislature and governor were willing to move without input from the people would privatize the investment of employees’ and retirees’ pensions. Individuals will pay more and private companies will reap the benefit.

We have made adjustments over the years to ensure the success of IPERS. We do not need to tear this plan apart, but rather continue to manage it well.

In the context of Governor Reynolds’ and Treasurer Fitzgerald’s January statements, Kaufmann’s assurances raise a flag.

I read Sinovic’s article and one of his issues is the Reason Foundation will be involved with the biannual review Kaufmann referenced.

What should we care who reviews IPERS?

The Reason Foundation, established in 1978, is part of a dark money network of wealthy libertarians that has been at work in our recent elections, according to Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. “Reason Foundation advances a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law,” according to their web site. Their tagline is “free minds and free markets.”

Fitzgerald and Sinovic are saying the cake is baked regarding the IPERS solvency review. We don’t know the result, but can get a taste of what to expect by reviewing the law Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed this month. Here are some key features of the new Michigan public pension plan reported by the Reason Foundation:

1. New hires will be auto-enrolled in a defined contribution retirement plan (DC Plan) that has a default 10% total contribution rate. DC Plans inherently have no risk of unfunded liabilities, and the maximum employer share for the plan (7%) is less than what employers should be paying for the current plan.
2. However, if new teachers would prefer a defined benefit pension plan (DB Plan), they will have the choice to voluntarily switch to a new “hybrid” plan that, unlike the current “hybrid” plan offered to teachers, uses very conservative assumptions and short amortization schedules and splits all costs 50-50 between the employee and employer.
3. Uniquely, the hybrid plan will have a safeguard mechanism that would trigger closure if the funded ratio falls below 85% for two consecutive years.
4. And to top it off, the reform design improves certain actuarial assumptions and infuses the plan with $250 million in additional contributions to chip away at the pension debt.

Sound okay? Obviously any change will be viewed with suspicion by IPERS participants. I don’t agree with Sinovic that the Reason Foundation’s involvement is an “attack on the economic security of Iowa families.” What will annoy people is if Republicans try to slam through a hybrid plan similar to Michigan’s as Fitzgerald feared they might.

If, as Rep. Kaufmann indicated, the biannual review is simply to produce solvency, then good job for relieving unnecessary worry. As Fitzgerald indicated, “as state treasurer, an IPERS board member, and trustee of the Fund, I can tell you that Iowa has worked hard over the years to ensure IPERS is on solid ground. And we are.”

If, as Fitzgerald and Sinovic believe, the end result will be major changes to IPERS similar in scope to the Michigan law, that’s something else entirely. Time will tell. Current IPERS participants are forewarned to pay attention.

Sinovic is free to publish his opinion about whatever he is paid to advocate. However, when he posts an article like the Gazette piece he does no favors for Democrats hoping to win back seats in the Iowa legislature in 2018. Readers can see straight through the hyperbole and associate his comments with the Democratic Party. Democrats become defenders of the status quo by default, a status quo Blog for Iowa has been complaining about for 12 years.

And seriously Republicans. You have to pick a Koch network think tank for the solvency review? One that while claiming to be non-partisan favors a certain outcome?

What’s needed in public discourse is a statement of what progressives are doing to ensure IPERS is solvent. We also need a chance to win elections, something Sinovic’s article didn’t help.

Sunday my spouse and I took the public library poster she made to the fairgrounds where the county’s seven libraries have a booth for the fair which runs Monday through Thursday this week.

We parked outside Building B, went in, and slid the foamcore board into a slot. It took a couple minutes.

A friend was there setting up an adjacent booth shared by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Veterans for Peace, PEACE Iowa and 100 Grannies for a Livable Future. We chatted for a while, about raccoons, chipmunks, single use water bottles, libraries and why I haven’t attended more events. We then went our separate ways: she and her son to Village Inn, and we to buy the first sweet corn of the season from a local farmer.

I could make similar connections with many fair booth sponsors, almost anyone could.

Last night I volunteered selling tickets at Solon Beef Days, which is the annual festival near our home. We sold about 500 tickets during my shift and had a brief conversation with each buyer.

I knew the voter registration of many who bought tickets. I remembered who they supported, which elections in which they voted, when they donated, and who lived in their households. It’s not that I’m snoopy or a gossip. It just comes with the turf of political canvassing near one’s home for two decades.

Some say we should volunteer to make phone calls and door knock on political campaigns to win elections. That may have once been true, however, the electorate is going through a profound change with the rise in importance of personal computers and cellular technology. That change is not finished.

James Carville is hard to stomach these days, but during the Bill Clinton campaign his fax machine and “rapid response” was a competitive advantage no one else had. It was an innovation that contributed to Clinton’s win.

People don’t talk much about Joe Trippi but he was one of the first to understand a virtual community and its implications for political campaigns. In his book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet and The Overthrow of Everything he points to the moment he understood it.

“I sat at my PC, crying and watching as people eulogized David (Haines) and mourned him the way you would a good friend.

And that is the precise moment that I got it.

I was attending a funeral on the Internet.

This was not a bunch of individual people sitting in front of a television alone, watching a sad program, reaching on cue for the Kleenex brand tissue. This was a rich, fully realized community, a world of real people interacting with each other, sharing their kids’ first steps and crying on each other’s shoulders when they lost someone they cared about, someone most of us had never met.

Now campaigns have IT staffs but the Howard Dean campaign had Joe Trippi.

Today, people can always be in touch thanks to mobile communications devices and cellular technology. They are also increasingly suspicious of someone or something they don’t know or understand. I suspect that’s natural human behavior writ large as a defense mechanism to easy and increased electronic connectivity.

It’s not that people don’t know or want to know what’s going on in the broader world. World events are filtered by members of much smaller social groups, taking on more specific meaning.

Confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories, increasingly plays a role in elections by drawing people into smaller, more personal networks of social relationships facilitated by electronic networking. An email, a knock at the door, or a phone call does little to penetrate such relationships in any positive way. Such personal groups may span time and distance but members are hardened into a set of beliefs that becomes resilient. That spells trouble for political campaigns trying to keep up. It deflates the value of phone calls and door knocking in political campaigns.

What to do?

My answer is pretty simple. Make friends with neighbors. Go to the county fair or a church social. Work with seniors in your community. Spend time talking to people at the town festival. Buy sweet corn from a local farmer. While these things don’t seem political, they represent a radical approach to succeeding in politics in response to the Trump phenomenon. Political operatives will adapt to the new model or hate it because small consulting firms that came up since the 2004 election may go out of business using the old one.

The potential exists for a new democratization of political campaigns but no one has cracked the code. That is, no one except Donald Trump, according to cognitive science and linguistics professor George Lakoff.

Maybe once we understand everything we like to hear on the internet is not true there will be a useful democratization of campaigns.

Until then, I’ll look forward to the next trip to the farm to get sweet corn, and my next outing tomorrow to be with people in the physical world. That’s where the action is and where the next winning campaign is being formed. Don’t get left behind.

Mitch McConnell must miss Harry Reid and Barack Obama.

Without their foil he’s got no one to blame but himself for failing to craft a legislative agenda to support the Republican president.

He tries to blame Democrats but it falls flat.

McConnell’s agenda is built on the flawed expectation that legislation can only be passed based on Republican priorities. The approach is bound to fail in a time citizens pay more attention to politics and increasingly hold members of congress accountable.

The majority leader gets credit for holding his caucus together when Senate Republicans were in the minority. His tactics were brilliant, however, since they won the trifecta in the 2016 general election he’s been like a ship without a rudder — demonstrating the craven, whining, victimized and ultimately ineffective strategy that has been present all along.

The same electorate that gave Republicans a big 2016 win will take their power away. Trouble is the corporate media narrative — that “Democrats don’t know what they stand for” will delay this inevitable outcome.

In a July 16 Associated Press article, Steve Peoples and Bill Barrow asserted the narrative in “Dems still strive to tell voters what their party stands for.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley hesitated when asked about his party’s core message to voters.

“That message is being worked on,” the New York congressman said in an interview this past week. “We’re doing everything we can to simplify it, but at the same time provide the meat behind it as well. So that’s coming together now.”

The admission from the No. 4 House Democrat — that his party lacks a clear, core message even amid Republican disarray — highlights the Democrats’ dilemma eight months after President Donald Trump and the GOP dominated last fall’s elections, in part, because Democrats lacked a consistent message.

Many of us remember Bill Clinton’s famous campaign assertion, “it’s the economy stupid.” It made for good press stories almost three decades ago. Today the Democratic Party is both more diverse, and part of a larger electorate where party registration is less important. A simplistic and all-encompassing, “core message” would be so watered down as to render it meaningless. The fact there are political parties at all is less relevant than the cultural aspects of an electorate that can turn an Obama voter into a Trump voter. The narrative “Democrats don’t know what they stand for” is fake as a three-dollar bill. Just ask a Democrat and they will tell you what they stand for.

Democrats should not hope for relief from McConnell’s craven allegiance to libertarian financial backers. The Senate majority leader is a pawn in their game, one being played in shadows by a dark money network. A media narrative about Democrats lacking a consistent message plays to dark money strengths by asserting the problem in politics is us, not them.

In response to a Republican majority, Senator Chuck Schumer has been able to hold his caucus together, at least on the first couple health care bills. As Mitch McConnell’s tenure in the minority demonstrated, such tactics may create some wins, but are no substitute for strategy.

The trouble in McConnellville is different from the media narrative about Democrats. The majority leader’s expectation Democrats should join Republicans to craft legislation is laughable. The fact of voter engagement in politics by contacting elected officials effectively shut down the first three Senate proposals for repealing the Affordable Care Act. Voters are becoming more a part of the legislative mix than any political party is willing to acknowledge. Democrats should pay attention to this dynamic and leverage it for wins in 2020 and maybe 2018.

Here’s a core message for partisan elected officials, “we’re the party that doesn’t do stupid stuff.” That’s a message that makes sense. How I wish it were true.

Last Thursday the board of trustees overseeing Social Security released its 2018 projection.

61 million beneficiaries — retirees, disabled workers, spouses and surviving children — will get an increase in monthly benefits. The forecast increase is 2.2 percent or about $28 per month on the average payment of $1,253. Not a lot, but something.

In low wage work world, where I spend a lot of my time, I meet sixty-somethings and we talk about Social Security. They have it figured out. They’d better take what they can from Social Security as soon as they can, because one never knows if the program will be around or for how long. The presumption is the Congress will do nothing to preserve it. I’ll tell you I’m living with a bunch of spoons. That’s to say, none of them is the sharp knife in the drawer when it comes to Social Security.

“Neither Social Security nor Medicare faces an immediate crisis — they both currently have surpluses,” Stephen Ohlemacher of Associated Press wrote. “But the trustees warn that the longer Congress waits to address the programs’ problems, the harder it will be to sustain Social Security and Medicare without steep cuts in benefits, big tax increases or both.”

Those “steep cuts” and “tax increases” need not come now, as some Trump Republicans have been suggesting. The program does need reasoned consideration about who we are as an American society and what, if anything we will do to keep people out of poverty as they exit the work force. The Congress won’t address it unless there is interest from the electorate. In a time when people have U.S. Senator phone numbers on speed dial, “interest” means often and specific contact repeated over and over.

Hillary Clinton concisely stated her position during her 2016 presidential campaign.

“We can never let Republicans cut or privatize Social Security — we should protect and expand it,” Clinton tweeted on June 3, 2016.

Clinton’s statement aged reasonably well despite other options. However, it’s useless for prominent personalities to address the long term issues Social Security faces if people who will use the program don’t speak up.

I encourage people to speak up about Social Security because its future is not guaranteed. A word of advice. Before you open your mouth and remove doubt you are an idiot, learn about the Social Security program here. No need to read all 269 pages of last week’s report, but familiarize yourself with the summary beginning on page two. Once armed with knowledge, and potential questions, contact your federal elected officials and suggest we should protect and expand Social Security now. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

I helped manage the political campaign of Democrat Dick Schwab for Iowa House District 73 during the 2012 general election. We worked hard but lost. I took the following three posts down with my entire blog Big Grove News in 2013.

They were written as a way of letting go of the fever caused by my complete engagement in the campaign. I re-publish them here as a political history lesson. They are unchanged except for some spelling errors I regret too much to let stand.

Buckshot and lessons learned, Nov. 8, 2012

One of the key lessons I learned during this election campaign was that the proper place for a barn sign on a gravel road is well off the highway on a knoll. That way, it can be seen for more than a mile and the shotgun buckshot may penetrate the plywood, but won’t obscure the message. Vandals are too lazy to climb the barbed wire fence to get off a close range shot. There were a few other things.

In 2012, the work of our campaign was mostly done by female volunteers. It is the grunt work of making phone calls, knocking on doors, preparing mailings and arranging events. Women were also more likely to sign the check for a political campaign donation. There were men involved, but fewer of them. At the door and on the phone, our voter targets were more often women as well. If politics is becoming a woman’s endeavor, then it is disheartening that there is not parity between male and female candidates.

Voter turnout was predictable in Cedar and Muscatine Counties, but more than expected in Johnson County. Before the election, I forecast voter turnout of 10,689 in Muscatine and Cedar Counties, and actual, based on unofficial results, was 10,682. This was as good as it gets in electoral politics. Johnson County was another matter. I forecast turnout of 4,519 and it came in at 5,339, or 118.2 percent. My gut feeling is that there were two factors: more people working with the Democrats and Republicans to get out the Johnson County vote, and a concerted effort by Republicans to suppress the margin in Johnson County through a vote by mail effort combined with increased, and more effective political activism. Once the breakdown of voter turnout by party is available, Johnson County voter turnout warrants additional consideration.

While Facebook and social media were abuzz this cycle, they had little impact on our campaign effort. If anything, websites, Facebook, Twitter and blogs were a distraction from the work of campaigns. We recognized this during the primary election campaign, and decided to do minimal work through these media. In retrospect, it was the right decision. It was particularly evident in fundraising where the power of personal networking far exceeded the value of posting a fundraising appeal online. Our voter support was also gained through personal contact, not through social media.

There are more lessons learned from this campaign, but only one more will fill out this post. It is the distinction between the hedgehog and the fox pointed out by Nate Silver in his book The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail, but Some Don’t.

In our political campaign there were plenty of people who wanted to tell us what to do. Typically they were people with a driving social style, with lots of information about past campaigns, who offered capsules of specific and pointed advice about different aspects of the campaign. Silver would call these folks hedgehogs. To be successful in current politics, a campaign should listen to hedgehogs, but take any advice with a grain of salt. If Democrats want to win our house district in the future, the approach of a campaign must be more fox-like. By that, I mean accepting the diversity and uncertainty of the electorate, and using multiple approaches to building the coalition to win. This is what Barack Obama’s campaign did to build a winning coalition. The partisan aspect of local politics should be abandoned going forward.

Election of a state senator or representative is a personal decision for most district voters. Successful candidates accept this and figure out a way to relate to a majority of voters, as the Republican in our race did. A fox-like approach has little to do with party affiliation and more to do with interpersonal contact.

The best example of this is the down-ticket drop off in our district, where the margin between voters who voted Democratic for Barack Obama and Dave Loebsack and those who either did not vote in the house race, or voted for the Republican, was 1,946 votes. If voters had followed party preference expressed in the top of the ticket in the house race, the margins in the election would have been reversed, and the Democratic candidate would have won.

While there will continue to be political parties, the lesson from this campaign, reflected in the national races, is that being Democratic or Republican is no longer the key factor in local politics, if it ever was.

Dunbar’s number and 10,000 doors, Nov. 9, 2012

The Republican in our house race repeated mournful lamentations about our campaign, how we were not doing the work required, and along with his supporters, attempted to smear our candidate’s character and work, both on the telephone with voters and at their doors. Such jeremiads were evident among district voters all summer and intensified during the fall. When our campaign went to voters with his record of citations and one recent probation, he initiated a series of public complaints of victimization, beginning with the League of Women Voters candidate forum in Muscatine, where he said in his closing statement,

“I’d like to spend my last minute talking about civility in politics. In the beginning of this campaign, Dick and I agreed to run a positive campaign and I was really grateful for that. Saturday morning was a sad morning because I woke up to a piece of slanderous trash that had been sent out to thousands of people in this district. Now, in full disclosure, this piece was sent out by the Iowa Democratic Party. But I spoke with Speaker Paulsen today and he said that he has never issued a piece of mail without going by the candidate to getting his approval first. So Dick, did you break your promise, or are the party bosses in Des Moines making your decisions for you? I’m here to say that I’m at the crossroads of the campaign and I’m choosing the high road. I will not criticize my opponent, I will not go negative. I’m going to continue to talk about positive issues, continue to knocking on your doors and continue to talk about issues important to residents of House District 73?”

The last three sentences of this speech proved to be blatantly false. He had been going negative throughout the summer, so his new attacks were neither truthful nor unexpected. As the campaign drew to a conclusion, the jeremiad of Republican victimization continued, as did negative attacks, with the predictable mail pieces sent by the Iowa Republican Party, using the negatives about our candidate they poll-tested shortly after Labor Day. I was there, and know the veracity of what I have written, although the Republican would likely cry foul.

The most repeated jeremiad was a version of a statement that appeared in the Nov. 2 West Branch Times,

“My brother and I have knocked on over 10,000 doors and I have been to over 200 community events. I have poured my heart and soul into this campaign. There has been a deliberate attempt to paint me in a negative light so I just want to remind you what I stand for.”

Set aside the fact that the number of asserted community events attended varied, with statements of 600 one time, 400 another, and 200 when it came time to put the number into print. He did attend a lot of events, and his unspoken criticism that we did not was ridiculous. He repeated the phrase 10,000 doors often, and the number did not vary once asserted, sometimes including his brother, and others not.

The Republican did appear to be working hard during the campaign, and his victory confirmed that he worked smart, capitalizing on his family name, when he had no substantial reputation of his own. But there is a problem with the basic premise of his campaign, and the assertion about 10,000 doors, that he would be a representative voice in Des Moines for district residents. It can be explained using Dunbar’s number.

Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist who posited the idea that there is a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. The commonly used number of relationships is 150, although the science is not exact. The simple truth is that the community of people with whom a house representative must maintain stable social relationships is small, and well identified before one knocks on the first door.

First, a house representative’s community includes members of their family. With this Republican there is a long lineage and a large, extended family. There was no discussion of his personal relationships during the campaign, as we considered that to be out of bounds. If there is a significant other or any children, he did not say, but family relationships all take up part of Dunbar’s number.

Second, the party caucus will include the most important social relationships a representative has. It appears there will be 53 house Republicans during the 85th Iowa General Assembly. The essence of political power in the Iowa legislature is bonding with one’s caucus. When house Republicans were in the minority, they stuck together, and exerted power to prevent the majority party from getting bills passed. When they were in the majority, they passed almost whatever bill they would, with little consideration of the fact that ours is a bicameral legislature, and consent of the Iowa Senate was a prerequisite to passing legislation. The 2012 property tax reform is a good example of this. House Republicans asserted that the bill had bipartisan support, but the failure to pass property tax reform rested on the fact they did not have bipartisan support in the Iowa Senate.

Third, there are the people who helped the candidate get elected. There is a deep pool of financial donors, who will be needed in future campaigns. There are notable party members that include Chuck and Barbara Grassley, Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds. There is also a legion of volunteers who also must be heard and respected. So how much of Dunbar’s number is left for everyday people in the district? Far less than 10,000.

Now that the campaign is over, district residents are relegated to constituent services. The Republican said he would listen, and I believe he will try. I also believe he will try to respond to each constituent request, as his father dutifully did. But the exigencies of life in the legislature are that votes need to be taken in the present, and there is little time to solicit broad voter feedback on most of them. His social circle of a Republican caucus, family members and supporters will hold the biggest influence as the bills move and he makes his decisions. I don’t like it, but to the winner go the spoils, and this is the most fundamental aspect of partisan politics. Regardless of the assertions of bipartisanship, a state representative votes with his or her party, on most issues.

I hope my new state representative serves us well, and I will pray for him. I will also pray that I can remain open minded about his potential for efficacy with constituents who hold diverse and often opposing views. As they say, the proof will be in the pudding.

Throwing in with the boss, Nov. 10, 2012.

While Tip O’Neill wasn’t the first politician to say “all politics is local,” his words were relevant during the 2012 general election. The future of the top three candidates on the ticket, Barack Obama, Dave Loebsack and ours would depend on voters’ reaction to our campaigns as they played out in their communities.

I began running the numbers for our house race in late September, and over a two week period, ran more than 35 computer models, failing to find a winning scenario. This is when denial can set in, that all the hard work could not have been in vain. Shortly after the redistricting plan was approved, we heard the Republicans had developed a winning scenario, but in early October, we had come too far to do anything but press on.

We had done polling after Labor Day and were 22 points down in Cedar County, but solid in Johnson. At least we knew where we stood, and could design the rest of our campaign around the polling results. We concentrated our voter contact in Cedar and Muscatine Counties, virtually abandoning additional work in Johnson.

I rigged up a winning scenario as a goal for our efforts. We focused on West Branch, Gower/Springdale, Linn/Pioneer, Wilton and Tipton during the final five weeks of the campaign. The hope was that by having a candidate through the end of the race (something Democrats in Cedar and Muscatine Counties did not have in 2008), the percentage yield for our candidate would improve across that part of the district, and with work, we could win these targeted precincts (excepting Wilton) and Johnson County.

The election results showed we improved Democratic margin over the 2008 house race in Cedar County precincts by an average of 5.5 points, in City of Wilton by 15.0 points, and in Johnson County we lost margin by an average of 5.5 points. After the election, someone texted me that “the cake was baked before we had a candidate.” Knowing what we knew, I don’t see any other game plan we could have run, other than the one we did.

When a person talks to voters across the district, in rural and urban settings, one gets a sense of the electorate for which there is no substitute. We had this before the primary, when most targeted voters knew neither Democratic candidate, and to win, we focused on where we had the votes identified for our candidate. It proved to be a successful strategy.

In the general election, without the ids to win, we could only pin our hopes on getting the vote out for the ticket, which we did with enthusiasm. The hope of our GOTV effort was to ride President Obama and Dave Loebsack’s coattails. As mentioned in a previous post, the down ticket drop off was the difference between winning and losing, and our campaign failed to convince enough Obama/Loebsack voters that we had the better Iowa house candidate. If we had done a better job of this, we would have won.

Yesterday, I was at the Iowa City recycling center disposing of campaign materials and yard signs. The Republicans had beat me to the yard sign recycling bin, and the bottom was lined with Romney, Archer and Kaufmann signage. I dumped the ones I had collected on top, bringing a form of closure to the campaign.

Our county party chairman happened to be there, also recycling campaign materials. He offered his appreciation for our work and condolences for our loss. We talked about politics, specifically about the justice center, who will fill Sally Stutsman’s seat on the board of supervisors, and whether it will be by appointment or by election. There is always another campaign.

For me, the 2012 campaign was life changing in a way that is hard to explain. I am a better person for the experience, and have no regrets about what we did. As Dick Schwab was quoted in the West Branch Times last Wednesday, “I would have rather won, but life goes on.”

It’s been difficult to get a grip on our 45th president.

His first six months in office have been so different from previous Republican presidents there is no comparison.

An inability to relate to this president — on any level — contributes to a type of dissatisfaction that didn’t exist among ANY of his forebears.

My living memory goes back to Dwight Eisenhower. Our family was not an Eisenhower fan because we were Democrats. At the same time, talk about World War II and his role in the D-Day invasion of France became the subject of child-like war games in the neighborhood. We cut 34 some slack despite his Republicanism.

We began to like him after the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. Our family was excited about the prospect of traveling via Interstate Highway because it reduced the amount of time it took to visit our relatives in Illinois, Virginia, Tennessee and Florida. When we visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, we drove past Eisenhower’s farm and wondered if he and Mamie were home.

Donald J. Trump is no Eisenhower. He’s not a Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush either. I found plenty to disagree with in Republican presidents but also found some common ground with each of them. It was hard with Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush. Despite the atrocities of their presidencies, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act, Reagan worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, and I was willing to give George W. Bush and “compassionate conservatism” a chance before he invaded Iraq post Sept. 11, 2001. No such commonalities exist with Donald J. Trump.

In January, I listened to a recording of 45’s inaugural address hoping for something positive to say about him. There was nothing. His assertions about “this American carnage” not only fell flat, I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about.

Barack Obama had teed up the ball for the next president to take a leadership role at home and abroad. As a golfer, 45 should have known what to do. Trump had neither interest nor the capacity to be a world leader. This was most evident during the recent G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Every participating state affirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That is, every state EXCEPT the United States. 45 is even re-defining what “American exceptionalism” is.

45’s authoritarian style seeks to de-legitimize sources of information contrary to his assertions. He has little foundation to be an arbiter of truth or reality. He’s a man who perpetrated a lie about his predecessor’s birth in the United States. He goes on the attack against people with differing opinions, including governmental agencies, public figures, and members of the media. He is a septuagenarian who gets his news from cable television, more fit to be yelling at the TV than governing. His unscripted posts on Twitter make us cringe and provide distraction for a corporate media that could be better serving the public interest.

During a recent meetup some progressive Democrats were discussing the amount of work it will take to undo 45’s legacy, hopefully by winning the presidency in 2020. I differed. There is no undoing if the Secretary of the Interior enables fracking in the national monuments. There is no undoing if Medicaid is eliminated or hobbled with lack of funding. There is no undoing the damage caused by increased oceanic acidification and extreme weather events. There is no undoing acts of violence and hate crimes perpetrated in 45’s name.

There is no normalizing this president. Those behind the scenes in corporate board rooms, in moneyed resorts, and in every executive office in the government are like termites eating away a Democratic framework created through a lifetime of effort. I can relate to that, although not in a positive way. The termites are everywhere and we lack political will to hire an exterminator.

Even if I were a golfer, it would be difficult to get a grip on this president. It’s past time to accept that and work to protect our interests in the commons, and in government of, by and for the people. Those are Democratic values that won’t go away despite the solitary, authoritarian and incomprehensible figure the 45th president has become.