The Johnson County League of Women Voters is hosting a public forum with the candidates on Wednesday, April 27. I plan to attend and listen to what each has to say.
Pat Heiden is a blueprint candidate for 50-50 in 2020, a non-partisan group whose mission is to achieve political equity for Iowa women. Heiden said she was inspired politically when her parents hosted candidates like the late Harold Hughes at their home.
She seeks to give back to the community by running for office. This seems a tangible goal after more than 30 years working at Oaknoll Retirement Community.
Heiden is well connected and has a natural constituency. She has the support of former supervisor and state representative Sally Stutsman and retiring supervisor Pat Harney. She also has behind the scenes support from the significant political players who associate with 50-50 in 2020. Having three of five supervisors being female would not be a bad thing. Heiden has not been politically active.
The other leading contender for my third vote is Kurt Michael Friese, a local businessman and author. He chose not to run in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Terrence Neuzil. Lisa Green-Douglass won that election.
The strength of Friese’s campaign is his endorsement list. Some people I respect and know reasonably well, including Francis Thicke, Ron Clark and Jody Hovland, are publicly endorsing him.
At a recent event I overheard him tell another attendee he had the Laurie Tulchin endorsement. Tulchin is a member of the so-called Newport Road gang, a politically active, resource laden and well-connected group of people working to avoid development in the area around their homes. There is a conflict between the gang and the county land use plan which designated their area as open for development while preserving the farm land south of Iowa City. This endorsement will persuade some.
Friese’s name is widely recognized among city dwellers, but his universe of Iowa City is not strongly connected to mine. Despite the negatives, he is a contender for my third vote.
There are two in the also ran category, Jason T. Lewis and Mike Hull. Both are just getting their campaigns organized, so my prejudice is unfair.
Lewis works for the University of Iowa and we have enough influence on the board of supervisors from this dominating county economic engine. People I respect hold Lewis in high regard, but he’ll have to be persuasive at some level on April 27 to get my vote.
Hull is a medical helicopter pilot who got his flight training from Uncle Sam. He has been active in county veterans groups and had he inquired about or joined our chapter of Veterans for Peace, I might give him a second look. It seems doubtful a person who spends significant time with the American Legion will be my pick unless he is like Al Bohanan who served as a legion commander, is a member of Veterans for Peace and is very active in Democratic politics. Hull doesn’t appear to be like Bohanan.
My ballot in the primary looks pretty straight forward. Two incumbents plus one of two business people with a lean toward gender equity on the board. That could change by the election, and the League forum will be an important event to see how candidates handle themselves in public, and in reaction to each other.
The first two lambs were born at the farm last Sunday, evidence of spring. I’m ready to work in the garden as soon as time off work aligns with precipitation-free days — maybe Saturday morning.
Despite heavy winter precipitation it looks like the upper Mississippi River basin will be spared severe flooding this spring.
The Corps of Engineers has been lowering the water level at the Coralville Lake in preparation, and society is getting used to the threat of perennial flooding. A season without it would be welcome reprieve.
I have been getting ready for spring. Before I leave for work today and the garden tomorrow a few thoughts about political life.
We elected delegates to the district and state convention last Saturday. I stayed until all committee seats were filled and delegate and alternate names were recorded. That was my role in this quadrennial presidential campaign.
On Wednesday a group of political friends from the caucus gathered. While we are engaged, there will be a lull in political action until after Labor Day and the fall campaign in the general election begins.
As the presidential primary season finishes out, it is hard to see a path for Bernie Sanders to overcome Hillary Clinton’s lead in delegates. The fact he didn’t win a single state in the March 15 elections is the sound of the death knell tolling for his campaign.
People want this to be settled, yet the 2008 election of Barack Obama is evidence these things are never really settled. In fact, Clinton’s long history of being assailed by conservatives and liberals alike, predating Obama by decades, suggests there is no such thing as “settled” in national politics any more.
In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, four people have announced. I have had multiple conversations with each of them and even have a photograph of Chet Culver, Patty Judge and me at Old Capitol the night before Culver’s inauguration as governor. If you have been reading this blog at all, it’s clear why I would align with State Senator Rob Hogg, who like me is a graduate of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project.
Congressman Dave Loebsack may or may not have an opponent in the second congressional district. A physician from Iowa City has expressed interest, and they could nominate someone at their district convention. If one considers who ran against Loebsack since he beat Jim Leach, Republicans really have no one.
In the state legislature races, our State Senator Bob Dvorsky isn’t up this cycle, and Republican Bobby Kaufmann doesn’t have a challenger for his seat in the House of Representatives. There is unlikely to be a Kaufmann challenger until 2022 after decennial redistricting.
Five Democrats have announced for three county supervisor seats up this cycle. Rod Sullivan and I have a relatively long relationship, including his two votes to appoint me to the county board of health. Lisa Green-Douglass demonstrated she has political legs and is just getting started as a supervisor. I plan to vote for both incumbents in the primary.
The third choice is more difficult. Three people with careers have announced. Jason T. Lewis is a University of Iowa employee; Kurt Michael Friese is a successful restaurateur and author; and Patricia Heiden is executive director of Oaknoll Retirement Community. All live in the large urban area that includes the county seat.
When one considers the community impact of these three candidates, Pat Heiden stands out. A political newcomer, Heiden seeks elective office after 36 years at Oaknoll, 21 of those as its executive director. I’ve given three talks at Oaknoll and have known a number of its residents. It is a culturally significant social group which makes positive contributions to the growing population of 60 plus citizens of the county. Heiden shares some responsibility for this.
I met Kurt Friese at the county convention, but only briefly. Even though he purchases a significant amount of locally grown food for his restaurant, virtually no one I know in the local food movement mentions his name. I need to understand him and his candidacy better. I also plan to read his book about hot peppers.
Jason T. Lewis announced at the convention and I know a little about him. He has been following the Iowa City Community School District and ran for school board twice unsuccessfully. I need to know him better.
My initial assessment of the race is we have too much board of supervisor influence from people who live in the county seat. I plan to vote for three candidates and favor people who have worked in business over government employees. That means after casting my vote for incumbents, selecting one of the two business people, Friese or Heiden.
We’ll see how it goes as winter ends, spring arrives. I plan to set politics aside as the work to sustain our lives in a turbulent world continues.
Hillary Clinton Delegates and Alternates at the Johnson County Democratic Convention, Tiffin, Iowa, March 12, 2016
JOHNSON COUNTY, Iowa — Democratic delegates met in all 99 Iowa counties on Saturday, March 12. The day was overcast, but hopeful.
A bellwether was the fact I didn’t recognize many of the hundreds of people at the Tiffin High School auditorium where our county convention was held. Old timers are giving way to a new generation of Democrats brought in this election cycle by the contested presidential primary and Iowa’s first in the nation caucuses.
The results of the presidential horse race were similar to caucus night — Hillary Clinton had four more state delegates after the conventions than Bernie Sanders, ratifying her historic Iowa win 704-700.
The convention was about more than the presidential nomination.
With delegates intoxicated by the allure of the presidential race, Congressman Dave Loebsack and State Senator Bob Dvorsky attempted to sober them up with focus on the importance of the 2016 Iowa legislative races. For six years, Democrats have held the Senate Chamber by the slimmest of margins 26-24, Dvorsky said. If Democrats lose the Senate, Iowa could go the way Wisconsin and Kansas have.
“There are 12 Democratic Senate races this year, and we have to run the table,” Dvorsky said.
First term State Senator Chris Brase has a competitive race in nearby Senate District 46 which includes Muscatine County and parts of Scott. Since none of the Johnson County Senate delegation will be on the ballot in 2016, Dvorsky encouraged delegates and alternates to help with Brase’s campaign.
“Embrace Brase,” he said.
Loebsack was in sync with Dvorsky, affirming his support for Hillary Clinton, saying he would support Sanders if he were the nominee. He then explained that the presidential race, even his race and the challenge to six-term U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, were less important to Iowa than the state house races.
During the caucus of Clinton delegates and alternates to elect district/state delegates, former Iowa Democratic Party chair Sue Dvorsky affirmed the strategy of the presidential campaign returning to Iowa after the Democratic National Convention. The presidential campaign will bring much needed financial and organizational resources to prop up the Iowa Democratic Party.
There was other news at the convention.
Abbie Weipert of Tiffin announced she will join North Liberty Mayor Amy Nielsen in the June 7 Democratic primary to nominate a candidate in House District 77. Nielsen was first to enter the race after two-term Representative Sally Stutsman announced her retirement last month. I met Weipert during the 2012 campaign when her now husband Travis was elected Johnson County Auditor.
There was no announcement of a challenger to two-term Republican Bobby Kaufmann who represents House District 73 with six precincts in Johnson County along its border with Cedar County. During a previous discussion with Cedar County Democrats chair Laura Twing, no challenger is forthcoming. At this writing, Democrats appear ready to cede this seat.
Jason T. Lewis announced a bid for county supervisor in the June 7 Democratic primary. Lewis joins four other candidates, including incumbents Rod Sullivan and Lisa Green-Douglass, and newcomers Kurt Michael Friese and Patricia Heiden. Heiden, until recently a registered Republican, was the only one of the five who didn’t address the convention Saturday morning. Three seats are up this cycle.
Sullivan and Green-Douglass have the upper hand going into the primary. Sullivan is arguably the most liberal of the current supervisors and has strong rural connections that are important in a county dominated by the City of Iowa City and the University of Iowa.
Green-Douglass was elected in a special election Jan. 19, however, her strong showing during the 2014 primary contest gives her better name recognition than Friese, Heiden or Lewis. Mike Carberry beat Green-Douglass 3,459 to 3,333 on June 3, 2014, which was a respectable showing for both candidates.
What likely tipped the win to Carberry was better county-wide name recognition combined with support of the Newport Road gang. Before the January election, I heard a gang member refer to Green-Douglass as “no good,” so their support may be an issue for her again this cycle. During his speech at the convention, Friese, a friend of Carberry, aligned himself with interests of the Newport Road gang with his campaign tagline, “Stop pouring concrete on good farm land!” He also parroted the Newport Road position of developing the county by filling in existing lots rather than through additional rezoning. It will take more than alignment with any one group to win the Democratic primary. According to the cowboy card Friese distributed at the convention he has a broader palette from which to paint his campaign.
Johnson County’s leaders asserted a focus more on down-ticket races than the presidential or U.S. Senate ones. It’s hard to argue with that.
Best political speech of the day, maybe of all time? Two letters, “Hi,” from County Attorney Janet Lyness who had laryngitis.
BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP, Iowa — This headline in this morning’s Boston Globe says it well, “Clinton and Trump are now the presumptive nominees. Get used to it.”
Author James Pindell attributes the appellation to math.
“They have accumulated more delegates than any other candidates in their parties for the national conventions,” he wrote. “Both won three of four early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Not a single candidate with those win records has ever lost his or her party’s nomination in modern presidential political history.”
Presumptive. Get used to it. Got it.
While few saw Trump coming a year ago, people have been saying Hillary Clinton was the likely Democratic nominee for president since before she announced on April 12, 2015. They were right then and now.
The nominating process set up by Democrats after the debacle of 1968 is working. It fielded a group of candidates, winnowed the field, and is moving rapidly toward nominating Clinton. Clinton needs 2,383 delegates to the July 25 national convention to win. After last night she has 1,001 to Bernie Sanders’ 371. With the remaining delegates, Sanders needs to do much better than Clinton. But for the details of how the race plays out, as Pindell indicated, it is over.
In Iowa the Super Tuesday result means as soon as Sanders bows out, needed revenue from the Clinton campaign can begin to flow to the Iowa Democratic Party. My quote of Iowa politico Jerry Crawford from last year bears repeating.
“In all the races I’ve been involved with of various kinds it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” Crawford said on Iowa Press. “Iowa, the Iowa Democratic Party, our ticket in this state desperately needs the general election assets that Hillary Clinton will bring as our party’s standard bearer. That’s the way we recover from what was a very, very tough 2014 election.”
As I wrote at the time, the coordinated campaign should be blown up and re-invented. It’s money that holds us back. Democrats are damned if we raise it and damned if we don’t.
One of the successes of the Iowa Republican Party since Jeff Kaufmann took the reins has been generating cash for operations. Democrats in a donor poor state still rely on the presidential candidate, and partly because of it, the race has focused disproportionately on electing the president. As my own data crunching during the 2012 race affirms, a winning president doesn’t have enough coat tails to carry all of the down ticket races in Iowa. If he did, my state house candidate would have won his race. This is a basic problem with Iowa Democratic politics: not enough money and too much focus on the presidential horse race. A corollary is not bringing enough new people into the party.
People suggest retaining the new people Bernie Sanders recruited to his campaign is important, and it is.
Rod Sullivan Feb. 22, 2016
At the same time, each electorate is different and there is no expectation everyone who voted or caucused for Sanders in the primary will continue to be involved in a general election campaign for Hillary. The idea we should “do things” to retain them is ridiculous and counter productive. The narrative of momentum and a linear procession from announcement to primary to election is a bankrupt one. People will make their general election decision based on information available to them as election day approaches.
The power of politics has more to do with what people we know are doing. To the extent the power and influence of national media can be mitigated, voters will make a sound decision. However, media continues to shape opinions to the extent Republicans I know are trying to accommodate a Trump vote despite his demagoguery. It’s the media that puts them in this situation.
As the case of Trump indicates, elections no longer are about logic and reasonableness. To elect a candidate we each must work to influence people in our circles. As we march to the finish of another presidential election it is important to remember we have a sphere of influence… and to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain pulling the levers.
This week, former Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge said she is considering a run in the June 7 primary to be the Democratic candidate to challenge incumbent U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. The filing period begins Monday and ends March 18.
If Judge enters the race, that would make four contenders, each of whom I know better than most politicians. Based on many conversations with all four, I plan to vote for Rob Hogg, a current state senator, author and climate advocate.
Tom Fiegen, a bankruptcy attorney, is running in the primary. Like fellow candidate Bob Krause, a former military officer and defense contractor, Fiegen challenged Roxanne Conlin in the 2010 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, placing third of three candidates with 6,357 votes. Krause was ahead of Fiegen with 8,728 votes. Both lost to Conlin, the clear leader who garnered 52,715 votes that election.
Six years later Fiegen and Krause are running again. Fiegen has become a Sanders Democrat, hitching his wagon to the revolution Bernie Sanders asserts is needed. Bob Krause is, well, Bob Krause, a man with an irresistible urge to run for office, not unlike Saul Bellow’s character Henderson the Rain King, with a personal quality “that manifests itself as an inner voice crying out I want, I want, I want.” I like them both, but as I said, will be voting for Hogg. Judge should stay out of the race unless she has something new to offer.
The discussion about a replacement for the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court of the United States has generated anti-Grassley sentiment. The general election campaign should be heated. It will be almost impossible for Grassley to avoid addressing his obstruction in this because Republicans have put the Senate Judiciary Committee he chairs front and center, saying they won’t even consider an Obama nominee.
It will take more than moral outrage to defeat Chuck Grassley in the general election. Grassley has a token primary opponent who will likely be vanquished. I don’t see much outrage directed toward Grassley in society beyond social media. Without that the race is an open question. Whether Democrats can get beyond commenting on blogs and in social media to organize is unknown at this time. I am hopeful — some, tempered with realism.
Filing closes at 5 p.m. on March 18 when the primary races will be defined. Until then, there will not be a lot of action, just work — sustaining a life in a turbulent world.
Lettuce and basil germinated in the tray planted last week, reminding me of why I garden.
It is a chance to witness life as cold sets in for one last spell. Soon winter will turn to spring. I can’t wait. For now, suffice it that the seedlings rise to face the sun through a bedroom window.
The emergence of hearty weeds among my seedlings was unexpected and easy to remedy. We all have weeds growing in our garden, even when it is planted a couple of months before last frost. I continue to pluck them out to make room for what I intended.
The death of Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday was unexpected. It sparked conversations in social media, which for practical purposes includes formal news organizations. Scalia was quail hunting at an exclusive ranch in West Texas — a place where Mick Jagger and the Dixie Chicks have hung out. The event ramped up my understanding of opinions and attitudes regarding the meaning of Scalia’s legacy and the process of choosing a replacement.
By all accounts, Scalia’s was a brilliant if acerbic legal mind.
The Congress is in recess, so President Obama has the option to make a recess appointment. That would be the cleanest way to go, with the selected associate justice serving until the end of the next session. Why would Obama forego the possibility of a lifetime appointment? As he indicated in his remarks on Scalia’s passing, he won’t. However, I pulled a Scalia and began with the text of the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. There is no time limit on gaining the consent of the U.S. Senate. They have given their advice already: “leave the position open until the next president is sworn in.”
When a nominee is presented to and blocked by the Senate, and if the Supreme Court divides evenly by ideology, the situation would contain both good and bad. There is no guarantee justices will divide by ideology. If they do, the powder keg that is the Supreme Court docket this session would sustain lower court decisions. Winners would include labor (Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association) and losers would include the TEA Party (Evenwel v. Abbott; Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting), undocumented immigrants (US v. Texas) and women’s reproductive rights (Women’s Whole Health v. Hellerstedt; Zubik v. Burwell). It seems too early to say all of this will actually happen.
With Scalia deceased, three remaining Supreme Court justices will turn age 80 by the end of the next presidential term. The stakes in the 2016 presidential election could not be higher. Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Anthony Kennedy was appointed in February of Reagan’s last year in office, so there is precedent for Obama. Precedent means little in the toxic political environment in which we live.
Life is never as simple as germinating seeds rising toward the sun on a Sunday morning. There will always be weeds in the garden, and so it is with yesterday’s news as Scalia was plucked out by God’s hand.
Last night I attended a local food exhibition at Montgomery Hall on the Johnson County Fairgrounds, hosted by the county supervisors. Lots of people I know were there, including some mentioned in my last post.
It was an hour to catch up, caesura after the intense final week of working on turnout and planning for our Iowa Democratic caucus.
The caucuses produced a maelstrom of social media commentary in both parties. Because the Democratic caucus was a statistical tie, all kinds of claims are being made. My thoughts on this tempest in a teapot is it’s over and the state party has certified the results.
Since all of the people who led the more than 1,600 caucuses reported their delegate counts to the party, it would be easy to count them again and compare them with what candidate precinct captains reported to their respective campaigns. There’s no reason not to. In my case, I listened while our caucus chair phoned in his results and they match mine. The Sanders and O’Malley precinct captains were offered the same opportunity. At the same time, it was not a straw poll or election that can be audited. There was no voting even if some in the corporate media want to characterize it as such.
I am neutral about whether Iowa is first in the nation or not. There is plenty of good work to do outside politics if we aren’t. Nothing lasts forever, including Iowa’s first in the nation status.
George McGovern did Iowa a great service after the 1968 Democratic convention when he led the effort to revise a broken nominating process. Back then, presidential candidates were decided in smoke-filled rooms. How could we forget Chicago Mayor Richard Daily’s suppression of protesters outside the convention? That was the year Harold Hughes ran for president and I’ve discussed the convention with someone who was with Hughes in Chicago. The nominating process was controlled less by votes and more by aging white men behind the scenes. Eventual nominee Hubert Humphrey was the last of the old-style nominees, and McGovern’s work produced a superior process.
I don’t think the Iowa caucuses are broken, as some have asserted. Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan suggested people don’t understand the process, and I agree. As a precinct leader for Hillary Clinton, I must have explained parts of the caucus math and delegate process to people in our corner a dozen times. They still didn’t get it. The tactics of caucuses require a bit of arcane preparation and execution, as I described previously. Most important to party building is getting the turnout and having the conversation.
The close result between Clinton and Sanders this cycle, combined with consistently great Democratic turnouts in 2008 and this year highlight a need for the Iowa Democratic Party to fix its outdated process. Caucus yes, but continue to make the process more accessible and less byzantine.
Party leaders should focus on party building. That means continuing to bring people into the Democratic party, a purpose the caucuses are serving well. It also means developing funding streams less reliant upon the presidential nominee and grounded in the people in Iowa. The latter is tough to do in this donor poor state, and tough to do with the rise of the paid political class of organizers, consultants, advertising agencies, data crunchers and logisticians wanting compensation.
Can volunteers drive the election of a president, federal offices and governor? I’m not sure if that is a nostalgic filter on life, taking the current reality out of focus, or a real possibility. In any case, I continue to believe the coordinated campaign, in which presidential resources come to Iowa to prop up the donor poor Democratic party should be blown up.
I know change is possible and needed. I also know I’m not the only one in the party that thinks so.
Iowa Democrats did their job at the Feb. 1 first in the nation political caucuses.
The field was winnowed from six candidates (Chafee, Clinton, Lessig, O’Malley, Sanders and Webb) to two (Clinton and Sanders), giving Hillary Clinton a narrow, historic victory.
Our precinct played a role, and not an insignificant one, in producing that victory.
Hillary Clinton was the first woman to win the Iowa caucus — another glass ceiling broken. The caucus results are close. How close? It’s a matter of a couple of delegates with all but one of the state’s 1,683 precincts reporting, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. It is unclear whether the Sanders campaign will request a recount, but I doubt it. There are bigger fish to fry.
Iowa also played a role in setting which issues would be front and center in the 2016 presidential election. Even the anti-billionaire money in politics candidate Bernie Sanders gave an unintended nod to billionaire Tom Steyer’s advocacy to put climate action on the front burner of the contest. While issues aren’t the same as the horse race, they matter and Iowa matters in defining them.
The caucuses will be analyzed in great detail in the next 48 hours, so I have only a couple of things to add.
I begin with the lesson learned while attending the Democracy for America training in elections: winning an election is getting 50 percent of the vote plus one. The DFA method puts what happened in our precinct into higher relief, as through planning and competent execution of the tactical plan, our team for Hillary turned out more voters than expected, and provided Martin O’Malley his only delegate from Johnson County, and one of the few he got in the state. By giving O’Malley a delegate, it was taken from the Bernie Sanders group, giving Clinton a 2-1 victory over Sanders in Big Grove precinct. In a tight race, that one delegate mattered.
Here are the numbers.
Big Grove turned out 165 voters this cycle. We turned out 92 people for Clinton, the same number Obama had in 2008. In 2008, there were 75 Clinton supporters, a tie with John Edwards, and Clinton won the second delegate that year with a coin toss. For perspective, we turned out 242 during the six-way race Obama won in 2008. Our turnout last night was 69.2 percent of 2008’s record. Clinton had 56 percent of people at the caucus last night compared to 38 percent for Obama in 2008.
At the first alignment I reported these numbers to the Clinton campaign:
This count would split the delegates two for Clinton and two for Sanders, with O’Malley not being viable. At the second alignment we sent our negotiating team to talk to O’Malley, with the Sanders representatives standing next to ours.
To get a third delegate we had one option. We needed to take people from Sanders and they were holding firm except for three people who moved to O’Malley. I did the analysis, ratified it with our team, and determined that by giving O’Malley 12 people their team would be viable and the delegate would come from Sanders.
I explained our proposal to the Clinton group and it was easy to get 12 volunteers to go to the O’Malley camp, since they understood the logic, if not the byzantine methodology. We executed the tactic, producing the following report to the Clinton campaign.
Standing next to my neighbor and caucus chair, he phoned in two delegates for Clinton, one for O’Malley and one for Sanders to the state party system. This was our fourth presidential caucus working together and we were the last to leave the Middle School.
I haven’t digested everything that happened last night, although I was proud of the effort team Hillary put forward in our precinct. We ended up door knocking our entire precinct on Sunday, and that last minute extra effort had to have made a difference in turnout and the final result.
From here, let the pundits, bloggers and news reporters tell their story. The 2016 Iowa caucuses are in the books, and it is up to the remaining 49 states to decide who our Democratic nominee will be.
Whoever that is, I’ll feel comfortable going back to this year’s caucus attendees to ask for help in the general election campaign. No unity party needed here.
Saint Mary’s Church, Newport Road, Johnson County, Iowa
There is plenty of time to think about things when door knocking a rural precinct. Houses are spread out, and typically there is a long walk from the road to the dwelling. Sometimes you can’t even find where people live on a farmstead, or the family moved away.
I had a finger wave and waved back.One couple stopped to ask me what I was doing at a friend’s house. Society is palpable even if there aren’t many people around. Politics here is more about the county than the president.
Rural Newport Township
One woman saw me coming from the street and said to the elderly man sitting on the front porch, “tell him you can’t hear.” Turned out I’d bought straw from this farm several years ago and we had more in common than expected. We had a good chat although I never got to speak to my target, the octogenarian mother inside. “We’re not caucusers,” one said. They dislike the party business part of the caucus and would likely vote in a primary if there were one.
Everyone has made up their mind on this walk list. I’m glad I went out. What I thought about most is how personal politics was to most of the people I met today. It’s like fresh cut firewood one person was burning in an open pit, the smell permeating my clothing and getting into my lungs. It would be a mistake to say we aren’t all connected. And that’s a hope we should share for getting through these turbulent times.
Stuff is getting real as we enter the last days before the first in the nation Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1.
The Democratic race has been somewhat dull and uninspiring. Set aside the hubris-imbued early drop-outs (Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb), those in the race, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders, bring little we don’t already know to the political discussion.
Although there are differences between the candidates, the 2016 election is about one thing: retaining a Democrat in the office of president. Err… two things… funding the Democratic campaign effort with cash in donor poor states like Iowa being the other. People tend to forget the latter because by and large few engage in party work other than during the final days before elections.
The good news is recent analysis showing Iowa is expected to retain four congressional seats after the 2020 census. The other news is our races for congress will continue to be competitive. With three of four seats being held by Republicans, 2016 will be pivotal in determining whether Democrats can retain the second district and maybe pick up first and third if the planets align, we recognize the opportunity, and execute upon it. Democratic chances to pick up a seat or two diminish outside the presidential election years. We will have to work smart and hard to keep what we have and maybe add one or two Democratic congress members in 2016.
The U.S. Senate? Unless incumbent candidate Chuck Grassley does something radically different for him, he holds the upper hand before the November general election. A well financed insurgent campaign could end his too long run. State Senator Rob Hogg offers the best hope for doing that among the three current contenders in the June 7 Democratic primary. Retreads Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen are also running with little change since they were last defeated in their primary with Democrat Roxanne Conlin. Fiegen has gone all in trying to grab the coattails of Bernie Sanders. Whether that will work, whether more detailed positions than appear on his website, especially his position regarding a woman’s right to choose, would gain traction among voters in the general election is an open question.
Eight days from the Iowa Caucus, the Democratic presidential race is too close to call.
This is a season of pollsters, and clouds have risen above the two leading Democratic candidates for president. Like with our warming planet, the political atmosphere absorbs more moisture because it is warmer, and when turbulence and precipitation come, it may be a gully-washer, clearing the field.
I don’t want to be dismissive of O’Malley, but what else is there to do? The gent has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination for president. I expect him to drop out on or before Super Tuesday. Prove me wrong on that, maybe say a prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe for a miracle.
Hillary Clinton’s main challenge is whether or not voters find her trustworthy. Along with that is the unspoken (at least in public) issue of her female gender.
As the Des Moines Register pointed out in yesterday’s endorsement of Clinton, “no other candidate can match the depth or breadth of her knowledge and experience.” This harkens back to September when I decided to support Clinton for president, in part because of her knowledge and experience. Along with her global advocacy for women and children, and the potential to appoint multiple Supreme Court Justices, my decision was practical: pick the candidate with the best qualifications for the job. As others have pointed out, the practical vs. idealistic discussion is one voters are having. Based on people I talk with, the number of realists and idealists seems about even today.
We won’t hear so much about the fact Clinton is female, but opposition to a female president runs deep, not only near where I live, but across Iowa and the country. Expect this to come up during the general election, but whispering has already begun.
As far as being trustworthy, WYSIWYG with Clinton. She is unlike the Republican field in the Greek Drama politics has become in the corporate and social media. She wears a complex wardrobe of masks asserting her policy positions. If one looks behind the masks, at her core she is a Democrat, and likely a better pick than her husband was back in 1992.
What about Bernie Sanders? When I met him at a Johnson County Democrats event in 2014 I liked everything I heard. The Des Moines Register endorsement of Hillary Clinton lays out the case against Sanders — the unanswered question of how he might gain traction for his policy ideas in the stalemated political partner that is the U.S. Congress. He has had no answers to this criticism other than the need for a political revolution.
Like with Clinton, a whisper campaign about Sanders has begun, and can be expected to increase should he win the Democratic nomination. There are two things: “he’s a socialist,” and “he’s a Jew.”
Sanders describes himself as a “Democratic socialist,” but expect this to get morphed into “socialist” or the more disparaging “communist” in the general election. This is less whisper campaign than a reflection of Sanders unwillingness to embrace conventional politics. I believe we can weather the storm on this one should Sanders be the nominee. I’d like it more if he signed up for the Democratic party other than as its potential nominee, but elections are about compromise. I’ll let go of that one.
What has been written about less than I am hearing is American antisemitism that has been problematic since the nation’s inception. Wikipedia characterizes the current issue as follows:
An ABC News report in 2007 recounted that about six percent of Americans reported some feelings of prejudice against Jews. According to surveys by the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitism is rejected by clear majorities of Americans, with 64 percent of them lauding Jews’ cultural contributions to the nation in 2011, but a minority holding hateful views of Jews remain, with 19 percent of Americans supporting the antisemitic canard that Jews co-control Wall Street in 2011.
Wall Street and campaign finance reform have already become a topic among Democrats, and is expected to remain through the November election. Canard or no, if 19 percent believe Jews co-control Wall Street, the question is what percentage is in play regarding a specific vote for president. Antisemitism is real, and may be a factor if Sanders is the nominee. I’m already hearing talk about it.
As recent polls have indicated, Sanders, like Clinton, is electable against a Republican opponent. What those of us who can remember know is the margin of victory will be close in the 2016 presidential race. If the Anti-Defamation League’s analysis is accurate, Sander’s religion may come into play enough to swing the election. For me, it’s not an issue in the caucus, but then politically active Iowans are more open minded than in other states, especially in the electorate for the general election. Democrats are already talking about Sanders’ religion as a liability.
I’ve been fighting the good fight for Hillary Clinton and will until the tally is made at our caucus. I’ll support the Democratic candidate nominated July 25 in Philadelphia. Some questions will be answered Feb. 1 and eight days out which ones they are is obscured by noise in the corporate and social media.
Pat Heiden is a blueprint candidate for 50-50 in 2020, a non-partisan group whose mission is to achieve political equity for Iowa women. Heiden said she was inspired politically when her parents hosted candidates like the late Harold Hughes at their home.
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