Thursday Morning Coffee

Thursday Morning Coffee

Five days to election day and I'm slacking a bit on the writing, sorry folks. Here's the factoids you need:

Another slooooow day of voting on campus with 37 at the UI library and a mere SEVEN at Hillcrest. Today: Old Capitol Mall and Schaeffer Hall.

The PC endorsement comes tomorrow, and today they address Coralville, backing incumbents Tom Gill and John Lundell and stealth Republican Bill Hoeft.

Blatant student bashing emerges for the first time this campaign season (OK, no candidates are mentioned) in Marshall Poe's guest piece in the PC, in which he proposed the likely unconstitutional solution of "Banish these students from the university and Iowa City for a definite period." I thought exile went out of the book of punishments about the time of Botany Bay.

Over at the DI, Will Mattessich proposes a more creative solution to downtown drinking: a wet campus.

To the north, Johnson County campaign veterans will recognize the name Kirsten Running-Marquardt, who looks set to go to the Legislature after winning the Democratic nomination last night for Iowa House District 33. Republicans nominate tonight but Kirsten is heavily favored.

And one of my least favorite plays in the book is announcing that you've "invited" a speaker to your event, without any actual concept that said speaker is going to attend. Both sides have been guilty; this time it's the Iowa Family Policy Center, who got a day worth of news for "inviting" Sarah Palin. Everyone took the bait seriously enough that Palin's peeps had to deny it.