Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Mason's Masterplan

Today's excellent IowaWatch story by Lu Shen is more than just a good look at the struggles of international, particularly Chinese, students at the University of Iowa.

While it's very illustrative of cultural barriers and ill-informed nativism, It's revelatory in ways it doesn't try to be.  It's the clearest outline yet of the University's long range Masterplan, launched almost simultaneously with Sally Mason's arrival, to change the shape and nature of the student body.

As a state university, catering to the needs of in-state students will always be a big part of UI's role. But as a relatively small, and population stagnant, state, those in-state students are not enough bodies and dollars to keep Iowa as a national class or world class institution. We need to impost some students, and with them some revenue in the form of higher out of state tuition.

The traditional source of those out of state students has the metropolis to the east, Chicago, and more accurately the suburbs of Chicago. Iowa was long an academic bargain, with out of state tuition competitive with Illinois in-state tuition.

Something happened along the way. We got a reputation as a fun place to be, which is good. Some people got carried away, which is not. But the reputation for "fun" of a very specific young person variety grew, and became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Get tagged as "party school," and people who are looking for that will come here.

The civic establishment started wrestling with this about a decade ago. Some of them fixated on the bar admission age but after several hundred students packed a 2004 council meeting, they backed off a bit, raising the age from 18 only to 19 and not to 21.

The University stayed very hands-off on this one. It was an era of leadership transition. Mary Sue Coleman left on no notice, so they hired UI lifer David Skorton figuring he'd stick around...  and a couple years later, with President now on the resume, he left too.

Enter Sally Mason in the fall of 2007, just as self-appointed morals guardian Rick Dobyns, fresh off a city council defeat, was pushing the first 21 Bar vote. Everyone expected it would pass. No one expected students would get out to vote in a local election...

So Mason got a very fast civics education. And the bar owners who ran the winning anti-21 campaign, not getting that they'd dodged a bullet, continued on as they were, and Iowa started to show up on Top 10 Party School lists. My sense is that this immersion experience turned what had been a vague notion, as noted by the 2007 date that international recruiting stepped up, into a grand Masterplan.

It's never addressed openly as such. That's entirely against Mason's nature. She seems like the type of person who never wants to talk to anyone except a high-level administrator or five-figure donor. The first instinct is always to stonewall or no-comment.

But the Masterplan is clear.


Since Party School had become self-fulfilling, the UI higher ups decided that to change the reputation, they needed to change the students. Not persuade the students to change, though there were certainly efforts at that. No, the idea was to change the people who come here in the first place.


The idea: Change the "party" reputation into a "tough" reputation, so that big brother Bluto gets arrested, he goes back to Aurora or Schaumburg, and warns little brother Flounder not to go to Iowa City.

The plan began with downtown crackdowns in 2008 and 2009. Things really got moving after the 2009 city election when council turnover created a majority in favor of an admission age of 21. It was one of the first things the new council passed, they knew they'd have to defend it in an election, and they threw the whole weight of the university and the civic establishment into keeping it.

Sure, the parties moved elsewhere, away from the downtown core and into houses, but the Scene started to fizzle, and the scene was the draw for the Blutos and Flounders. The bar owner who knew how to win (in 2007) or almost win (in `10) got driven out of business and out of town. Just before the fall 2013 semester started, we finally hit Number One on a party school list, but that survey was a lagging indicator, probably never true and certainly not true any more.

The repeat attempt at repealing 21 in 2013 was half-assed and half-hearted. By that time, in year 5 or 6 of the Masterplan, a majority of the undergrads had never known The Scene as it had once been, and 21 successfully got framed as a feminist issue.

So where do the international students fit in? They're the ones who replace Bluto and Flounder. They're still paying the hefty out of state tuition, they're not drawn here by the social life, and they're spending their own money or their government's. And, it seems from the article, either insular or isolated and either way invisible, unlike Delta House. (It also explains the demolition of the admittedly slumlike but cheap old Hawkeye Court and its replacement with new Hawkeye Court that will charge market-rate rents. More international married students, bringing in revenue but never setting foot in Brothers or the Field House.)

I absolutely love living in a place that's both a small town and a globally diverse community. Don't get me wrong. And the Masterplan is working well - if that's what you're looking for. In a couple years the party school rankers will catch up to the reality of the new order and UI will drift down and out of the rankings. The academic underachievers of the Illinois suburbs will take their parties elsewhere (my bet is on Madison).


My problem here is in the WAY all this has come about in the Mason era: the lack of openness, the interference in local politics, the seemingly contemptuous attitude toward their own students. Maybe I'm just a product of a bygone era, when "Animal House" was a COOL thing and not a cultural pathology. (Oh, the horrible influence that movie had on my life...)

But I'm still hung up on that apparently quaint notion that 18 year olds are adults and should have full adult rights. And anymore I seem to be the only one.
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Saturday, June 21, 2014

O'Malley Campaigns for Hatch and Maybe For O'Malley

It was overshadowed a bit on an extremely busy weekend for Iowa politics, but Iowa Democrats may finally have seen the first rumblings of 2016 caucus activity. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden send video tributes to Tom Harkin... but Martin O'Malley showed up.

The official reason for the Maryland governor's visit to Iowa was to campaign for Jack Hatch. But as the saying goes, no politician ever accidentally goes to Iowa, and while an aide noted that the term-limited O'Malley was also campaigning for gubernatorial candidates in other states, no one's denying that the man has other ambitions.

"Our government is affected by too much ideology and anger. We need to decide whether ideas move us forward, not left or right," said O'Malley, describing Hatch but also describing himself. "Mayors and governors get things done by building a common platform and being collaborative."

In Maryland, O'Malley said, "we've held down tuition not by wishing and hoping but by acting." He also cited marriage equality and gun safety legislation as accomplishments in his two terms.

Hatch said outreach to local government would be a big goal of his administration. "We'll ask you what you need, you tell us, and we will help you," he said, directing the remark to Iowa City mayor Matt Hayek in the crowd. "We're going to be problem solvers."

Also on hand was former governor Chet Culver, who introduced O'Malley. Hatch described Terry Branstad's 2010 campaign against Culver as "myths, close to being lies. The Democratic legislature and Democratic governor made the hard choices" in the tough economy and flood recovery of 2009 and 2010.

Flood recovery was central to the remarks of Monica Vernon, Hatch's newly chosen running mate, who first met Hatch when he helped develop post-flood affordable housing in Cedar Rapids after the 2008 flood.

Hatch referenced Vernon's just finished congressional campaign, where she fell short of Pat Murphy in the primary. He said he'd privately hoped Vernon would finish second, "because I needed her." (Unrelated post-primary note: The 1st CD's last-place finisher, Dave O'Brien, looks likely to land on his feet, with Tom Harkin slating him for a federal judgeship.)

Vernon described the nomination following a year long congressional bid as "lean in, then lean in again." She said her goal as lieutenant governor would be to "use my business background to get diverse groups to the table to solve problems."

So those were the speakers, in an unusual order of big out of town guest first followed by nominee followed by running mate, but it seemed to work for the crowd of 50-ish, mostly  donors (but they let me in anyway). Jim Hayes' home is a frequent and beautiful setting for fundraisers, and it has history, too. Grant Wood lived in the house during the last years of his life.

In addition to all the governors past present and future, others on hand included legislators Mary Mascher, Joe Bolkcom, and Bob Dvorsky (along with former Iowa Democratic Party chair Sue Dvorsky, who was also mentioned for lieutenant governor before Vernon got the nod). County attorney Janet Lyness and supervisor candidate Mike Carberry also attended.
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Thursday, June 19, 2014

A Clinton Conversation

My morning Twitter war re: Hillary Clinton's troubled relationship with Iowa and the caucuses was good enough to compile into blog post format. For the record, I didn't start it.










































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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Cantor's Loss and Weimar America

Last night's defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor, the biggest primary upset since... well, look at this list and the answer is pretty much EVER - is finally enough to shake me out of my writer's block.

More than BLOCK, really. More of a paralysis, as I've stared at blank screens and tried to formulate a thought longer than 140 characters. Lots of thoughts, mostly about the personal cost and impact of the just-past primary, but none I've felt like sharing in public.

My pet theory has long been and remains: The chunk of the Republican base that uses "Rule Of Law" as a codeword, like "State's Rights" used to be a codeword, wants nothing less than mass deportation. They seek a monocultural America that never was, a de-Hispanicized nation where no one is allowed to habla Espanol in front of them in the Wal-Mart line.

In an alternate, non- winner take all political culture, we'd have a nationalist party. Look to the recent elections to the European Union parliament, where the UK Independence Party and its equivalents in other countries scored big gains. (Also note that UKIP is un-represented in the UK Parliament, which is winner take all single member district as opposed to the proportional system used for the EU Parliament.)



Of course, the most important Parliament story of the week: the Mothership at the Smithsonian.

I'm nervous about going too far down this road because of Godwin's Law and all that. I'll just quote David Brat himself, the patron saint of Some Dudes everywhere, the David who knocked off the Goliath last night:
"Capitalism is here to stay, and we need a church model that corresponds to that reality. Read Nietzsche. Nietzsche's diagnosis of the weak modern Christian democratic man was spot on. Jesus was a great man. Jesus said he was the Son of God. Jesus made things happen. Jesus had faith. Jesus actually made people better. Then came the Christians. What happened? What went wrong? We appear to be a bit passive. Hitler came along, and he did not meet with unified resistance. I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily."
This... doesn't sound entirely disapproving. And a little ominous from the guy who beat the last Jewish Republican in Congress. Especially when you throw in some of Brat's writings on the "Protestant ethic."

Granted, virtually none of the Virginia 7th CD voters had read any of these obscure academic papers.  But as I look at the American political system today I'm more than a little reminded of late-era Weimar Germany.

Back up a minute, we don't have the armed Stormtroopers and their Communist counterparts the Rotfront warring in the streets. But we're verging on the "negative majority" that the Reichstag saw in the final free elections, when a polarized majority of Nazis and Communists opposed the system itself, and a coalition of the pro-democracy parties of the middle was numerically impossible.

In February, Politico's Raymond Smith wrote that the "Tea Party" - I've never liked that term, especially capitalized, as it implies more structure and organization than actually exists - the "tea party" contains the seeds of its own destruction. There's no end game. And he offers, or borrows, an excellent analysis.
This kind of counter-establishment movement is common enough that comparative politics has a term for it: the “anti-system party”—a group that seeks to obstruct and delegitimize the entire political system in which the government functions. As explained by Giovanni Sartori, the Italian political scientist who coined the term in 1976, an anti-system is driven not by “an opposition on issues” but “an opposition of principle.”

“An anti-system party would not change—if it could—the government but the very system of government,” Sartori wrote. “[A]n anti-system opposition abides by a belief system that does not share the values of the political order within which it operates.”

Sartori had foremost in mind the various communist parties active in Western Europe during the Cold War, but the concept has been applied to movements as varied as right-wing nationalists, radical libertarians and ethnic separatists all across the world.

Without adopting the phrase itself, the Tea Party in both words and deeds has positioned itself as America’s newest anti-system party. Claiming the mantle of patriotism, Tea Partiers say they love the United States while hating the U.S. government—its practices, its rules and especially its procedures for achieving compromise and consensus.
Anti-system. I'll just note that None Of The Above won the Democratic primary for governor of Nevada last night.

The successes of the near end of the far right are a rejection of American pluralism. Given the demographic shifts that are too far along to change, it's a long run losing game. But based on last night's Virginia result and based on our pendulum electoral cycle - to the left in leap years, to the right in off years - we have several rough elections ahead.
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Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Random Late Election Night Thoughts: Local Edition

First off, congratulations to the candidates I backed, Janelle Rettig and Janet Lyness. Congrats also to Mike Carberry who I'm glad to support this fall. Thanks also to Lisa Green-Douglass who fell just 126 votes short, a strong showing that leaves her in good shape for a future effort. That's our closest primary since 2004 when Rod Sullivan narrowly led Mike O'Donnell for the third supervisor seat.

The Johnson County Democrats have a "unity picnic" coming up at our monthly central committee meeting Thursday, and that'll be a critical start to the fall campaign. Tempers were hot, accusations were many and tensions were high. But it sounds like the concession and congratulation calls are happening.

The Democratic ticket of Rettig and Carberry may seem uneasy for now but they start with a several thousand vote edge over Republican incumbent John Etheredge just on straight tickets and general party leaning. A general election with a top tier US Senate race is a VERY different climate than the low turnout special that Etheredge won in an upset in March of 2013.

Rettig led the field by more than 1000 votes, much of that lead coming from Iowa City and absentees. She also led Coralville and was second in North Liberty.

Green-Douglass led her base in North Liberty, but turnout was low and a lot of voters chose GOP ballots rather than Democratic ones.  She finished second behind Rettig in Coralville and just 78 votes behind Carberry in Iowa City.

Newport Township turnout was down dramatically from 2006, when over 500 Newport Democratic voters put Larry Meyers over the top. This year turnout was less than half of that, at 204. Carberry carried Newport with 69% but Rettig, the supposed "enemy," was second at 42%.

The decisive factor in Carberry's win? Early votes. Green-Douglass led Carberry on Election Day by 54 votes but lost the early vote by 180. Carberry's higher profile early in the race, and the shift toward earlier early voting (a month out instead of a week out) may have been the difference. My initial read on this race - that it was Vote Against Carberry or Vote Against Rettig and that Green-Douglass would get votes from both, proved wrong. As I realized when the finance reports came out, there were a lot of Rettig-Carberry supporters.

As for also ran Diane Dunlap, she trailed nearly everywhere save for a couple low turnout rural precincts that trended Republican this year. The rationale for her candidacy - if you can call it that - is still unclear.

Bullet voting - voting for just one candidate instead of two - is harder to track here. The average voter cast 1.67 votes for supervisor, meaning roughly a third of the supervisor ovals were blank. But it seems likely - anecdotally and statistically - that many voters drawn by the county attorney race skipped the supervisors entirely.

And county attorney was definitely the big draw. John Zimmerman's one real victory was that he defined the terms of the debate. Unfortunately those terms did not favor him and also gave Janet Lyness a chance to talk about the actual work she is doing on diversion and alternatives.

The biggest lesson here, as we move forward to a courthouse expansion vote this fall and as we look back at the failed justice center votes, is a number. We has 2280 Democratic primary voters, just under a third, willing to reject a highly qualified and experienced attorney with strong feminist and party credentials in favor of a legal novice simply over the drug war issue. (Because as often as Zimmerman tried to pivot to race issues, his supporters invariably pivoted back to pot.) And many voters heard "just passed the bar" and crossed him off the list when they might have considered, say, someone like Rockne Cole.

So they needed a stronger candidate - and a weaker opponent. Janet Lyness was the all-time record vote getter in a contested Johnson County primary in 2006, and she has now won her second two to one primary margin.

A smarter Zimmerman campaign strategy - targeting actual likely voters rather than random Facebook readers and downtown denizens - may have also done better with the same message. From the beginning, Team Zimmerman seemed ideologically committed to an Expand The Electorate strategy that has only ever worked for Barack Obama and the Iowa City tavern league.

As I noted yesterday, student early voting was better than most primaries but FAR below the 21 Bar levels that actually won elections in 2007 and came close in 2010.  And today student turnout was, as usual on June 3, non-existent. Southeast side turnout was low as well. Zimmerman won a couple student precincts, but lost a couple too. But in an electorate of 7580 Democrats, do scores like 13-2 or 8-4 even matter? Yes, every vote matters. But before that last 1 vote or 10 votes win it, you have to get within the next 100 or 1000.

So the Zimmerman camp knew, or should have, from Day One of voting that the massive student numbers weren't there. Yet they didn't adapt. For weeks after the students left, they kept with the same day-long Ped Mall music events which sounded fun but reached the same few dozen people over and over, not the 3791 he needed to win.

In contrast, Janet Lyness was winning high turnout east side precincts with percentages in the high 60s to low 80s and vote totals in the hundreds. She won 75% in North Liberty and 78 in Coralville. Zimmerman's only strong precinct with significant turnout was lefty bastion Iowa City 18 (Longfellow) where he trailed 56-43%.

The legislative surprise for Democrats was David Johnson's narrow win over Dennis Boedeker in House 73. Like Green-Douglass, Boedeker led election day but lost on the early vote. Boedeker was a highly touted recruit but his campaign effort seemed lacking. Johnson, however, has some serious fence mending to do with House leaders and needs to significantly step up his fund raising if he wants his challenge to Bobby Kaufmann to become a targeted race.

That's not a problem for Kevin Kinney, a three to one winner over Richard Gilmore in the Democratic Senate 39 primary. The open swing seat is a must-win for both parties.

On the Republican side of that race, Bob Anderson had a big lead in Johnson County, but was swamped when Mike Moore's vote came in from Washington and Keokuk counties. Moore was a poor third here in Johnson. Royce Phillips had scattered spots of success.
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Random Late Election Night Thoughts: Top of Ballot

You could just feel the ground shifting to Joni Ernst the last couple weeks. Convention? The swine snipper wins with a clear majority in a 5 way - well, four way plus Schaben - field. Epic contrast in an epic race this fall.

I'm sorry but I can't get excited about the idea of Congressman Another Old White Guy. Waiting to see how Pat Murphy reaches out to people who backed other candidates. Will he call and seek support, or like Chet Culver will he keep score on who was with him or not in the primary?

Murphy barely cleared the 35% bar despite a months-long head start and calling in all his chips from a quarter century in the legislature. 57% of 1st CD voters backed women candidates. But Monica Vernon and Swati Dandekar split a Linn county base and kept Anesa Kajtazovic from making any inroads there. Vernon seemed to be getting momentum but too little too late. Still no idea why Dave O'Brien ran.

Still proud to have backed Anesa. She's been through far worse in her life than losing an election, and at 27 years old she. will. be. back.

Steve Rathje's losing streak in GOP primaries continues, with his third or is it fourth loss. Officially graduates to Perennial Candidate.

Miller-Meeks wins with less than 50% as the weak-seeming Mark Lofgren overperforms. With two open seats and fundraising star Jim Mowrer taking on Steve King, MMM's third challenge to Dave Loebsack is likely to be the afterthought race.

3rd CD frontrunner Brad Zaun goes into a convention with a far weaker hand than Steve King held in 2002, the last such convention. Only 9 points separating 1st place Zaun from 5th place Young. Nomination goes to whoever can be everyone's second choice.

One of six GOP voters flip a middle finger at Terry Branstad with vote for Some Dude. Means pretty much nothing.

Look for more drama in Senate 17. Tony Bisignano has a 13 vote lead over Nathan Blake. Ned Chiodo played the bad guy, challenging Bisignano's right to be on the ballot, and paid for it by finishing third.
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Monday, June 02, 2014

Johnson County Early Voting: Strong Opinions, Normal Voters

All the early votes are in the box waiting to get counted and Johnson County saw high early turnout - but not as high as it looked early on.  What do the numbers tell us?

The Dems were the draw.  2875 Democrats cast early ballots, ahead of the 2467 from 2006, the party's record turnout year here. In contrast, Republicans saw 584 early voters, down from the 955 in the 2010 governor primary, their second biggest primary here trailing only the epic 1994 "Gopher" primary between Terry Branstad and Fred Grandy. Mark Jacobs did an absentee mailing but the response paled compared to Terry Branstad's 2010 effort.

The Democratic courthouse primaries for supervisor and especially county attorney were a bigger crossover temptation than the GOP's top ticket races. 327 no party voters crossed over to the Democrats vs. just 55 voting Republican ballots.


Strong Opinions = Early Voting Earlier. Early on in the 40 day absentee window, Democratic early turnout was running at more than double the 2006 pace, even if you exclude the first-day satellite site (more on that below.) But by the end, the pace had dropped off to just above the 2006 level.

Opinions were strong, especially in the county attorney race, and my pet theory is that voters who used to vote, say, the week before the election were voting three and four weeks early.

Republican turnout started extremely slow; voters kept their powder dry till a couple weeks ago when the Senate race started to take shape with Joni Ernst as the likely frontrunner. (I saw my first Ernst sign in Johnson County only this weekend).

Normal Demographics. The other precincts showing high turnout were mainly in the usual places on Iowa City's east side: precincts 6, 16, 17, and 23. Progressive mothership precinct 18 (Longfellow) also voted heavily, as did the near west side areas of precinct 2 (includes Oaknoll) and University Heights. There was also a spike in Union Township, likely driven by Kevin Kinney in the State Senate 39 race. (That district is more likely to vote Election Day than early.)

County attorney challenger John Zimmerman heavily targeted students and other non-traditional voters, If he pulls off an unlikely upset over Janet Lyness, it won't be because of that strategy.

The Zimmerman campaign focused a weeks long effort on a first-day early voting site at the Old Capitol Mall. They drew 200 Democratic voters (padded by a specific effort to vote all their core supporters at that one site that one day.)  Not bad numbers for a campus oriented site 40 days before election day, compared to 32 voters at a 2006 primary site at the pre-flood IMU.

But not winning numbers. The only local election that's ever been won on the student vote was the 2007 21 Bar vote (2010 came close). That election saw 444 at the UI Library (instead of the 35 who showed up this year), 524 at Hillcrest, and 945 voters at Burge. That's what winning numbers look like, and the opportunity to catch those votes is past. Granted, June 3 is an awful election date for students, but the state sets that.

The southeast side didn't show up either, with just 10 voters at a Broadway Neighborhood Center site. Early voting turnout was 7 percent on the southeast side precinct 15, compared to 12 to 15 percent in the east side precincts. Both in the normal range for those areas.

Newport spike smaller. That 2006 record Democratic primary was, like this year, driven by county attorney and supervisor races (and boosted a little by the less significant post of governor). Development in the Newport Road area, then as now, was an issue in the 2006 supervisor race, where Larry Meyers defeated incumbent Mike Lehman.  Newport Township had 153 Democratic early voters that year.

This year, that dropped to 95. In terms of percentage turnout, Newport is still on the top tier, but not leading the pack by a wide margin like in 2006. And the absolute numbers aren't big. The bigger question is: how many urban allies do they have, and how important is that one issue in the big picture?
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Thursday, May 29, 2014

A Second Choice

Sometimes you write, and you reach your intended audience. Sometimes you don't.

Last Friday, the last time I wrote something longer than a tweet, I offered some background on the local zoning fight in the Newport Road area, and the vitriol that faux-environmentalists have launched at incumbent Janelle Rettig.

My key point in that whole discussion:
Is it fair to evaluate a candidate by the behavior of the supporters?  If the candidate accepts the support, repeats the mantra of the key code words, shares and retweets and says nothing when the supporters cross the line, they accept a share of the responsibility for the content.

How big a share? Does this make a vote for the candidate an endorsement of the supporters, the tactics, and the rhetoric?

Mike Carberry is a better person that the attacks his supporters are launching at Rettig. He's a strong enough candidate without those attacks. He's a big-picture enough environmentalist that he shouldn't need to depend on small picture messages from this small segment of his supporters. Sure, he can accept the votes. But it's time to reject the over the top rhetoric.
That section had an intended audience of one: the candidate. And I know he read it because he told me so.

I've noticed that most of the letters in support of Janelle Rettig have been about Janelle Rettig. And most of the letters for Mike Carberry have been about... Janelle Rettig. Carberry had been a little too willing to uncritically pass along some of the nastier attacks.

So my hope was that Mike would distance himself from some of the harsher attacks and focus on his own case. Unlike some of his narrow niche supporters , Mike is the real thing. Yet he's been too eager to embrace the vilification spewing from a tiny handful of self-interested neighbors.

Wednesday. there was another letter attacking Rettig from Laurie Tulchin, the single most adamant member of the narrow-interest Newport Roaders. It also took some cheap shots at former House candidate Dick Schwab and unsuccessful supervisor candidate Terry Dahms. There's a tacked-on conclusion urging a vote for Mike.

Mike had an opportunity to let this letter speak for itself without endorsing it by sharing it further. He didn't take that opportunity.
Friday I asked: "Is the most effective tool to denounce the tactics a vote for a different candidate? I don't want to vote against Mike Carberry. But I'd sure like to find a way to vote against some of his supporters."

Sure, Mike has some good supporters, and many are also supporting Janelle.

But I'm voting against Laurie Tulchin. And Jim Glasgow. And Jutta Rubright. And most of all Tom Carsner.

I'm voting for Lisa Green-Douglass.

I'm voting for Lisa on her own merits, not just to Vote Against. She brings a different perspective to the Board table, a different kind of experience: training, education and outreach. She's smart and deeply involved in the community. The party activists don't know her as well as they know Carberry, an immediate past party chair. Lisa took some time away from the partisan stuff when her children were young, but she's back now.

Lisa Green-Douglass knows all about urban sprawl. She used to live way out in the country, but fast-growing north Liberty - an area not represented on the board in a long time - is rapidly approaching her door. She was also brave enough not to kowtow to the single-interest Newport Road group when she met with them. (They appear set on wasting their second vote on no chance, no clue Diane Dunlap, who parroted a couple of their buzz words at her dismal debate performances.)

There's another thing here and maybe I shouldn't say this but I'll include myself:

Diversity matters. Other factors, skill and experience, can make up for it. But all other things being equal, men of my generation, of Pat Murphy's generation, us 50something straight white guys, need to think long and hard about setting aside our own personal ambition until the gender playing field is more level. That line of thought seems to bother Mike Carberry.

I'm a proud partisan. A "hack" I've been called a lot lately. (Still wondering in what possible universe I'm "the establishment.") It's a badge I wear with pride. Party hacks built FDR's America. I believe that political parties are a valuable institution of democracy. I've found them to be a meritocracy; if you have a skill set and are willing to work hard, you get taken seriously. And increasingly in our polarized age they MEAN something. The Democrats aren't perfect, but they definitely stand for something different than the Republicans and to argue otherwise just shows you aren't paying attention.

I also believe that when you buy into a primary process, as a candidate or as a voter, you buy into the outcome. There was one time I couldn't support the ticket, and the biggest regret of my adult political life is that I didn't resign my party post because of it. (But I didn't write editorials bashing the nominee I didn't support, either.)

If Mike Carberry is nominated, I'll gladly support him. But I expect the same from him and I expect him to get his supporters to do the same, for Lisa or Janelle or, should he lose, both. I expect the same from perennial candidate David Johnson in House 73 should he lose to Dennis Boedeker. The Republicans have the right to expect the same of their candidates.

That will be challenging for Carberry, probably too challenging. His willingness to embrace the worst of the rhetoric makes me wonder how hard he'll try - as long as HE holds those votes. The Newport Road mafia - where have I heard that word lately? -  has directly cost the Democrats two key elections. Dick Schwab and Terry Dahms should be running for re-election right now. I think they're willing to scuttle yet another race, and a divided local party in the most Democratic county in the state has statewide, even national implications.

So I think Lisa and Janelle, together, are the strongest possible ticket to work together to beat the one real anti-environmentalist in the race, the Republican.  And they're the strongest ticket to work together as supervisors the next four years.
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Friday, May 23, 2014

Big Picture Environmentalists


What's a "progressive" in local politics anymore? I'm not sure which argument in the Johnson County primary is more insane: calling Janet Lyness a "conservative" or Janelle Rettig "anti-bike."

Increasingly, a small faction in local politics is defining "progressive" narrowly, in terms of single issues or even single votes. The coalition is loose and ever-shifting but there's a few key players at the core.

Their actual numbers are small. Their motivations vary: sincere impracticality, personal grudges over past legal woes or primary losses, rigid old-left ideology, desires for jobs or other personal benefits. They have more in common with the narrow mind of the fundamentalist than the open mind of a "progressive." Far too often they resort to below the belt personal attacks, against the candidates they hate AND their supporters.

Alone, they have the power to achieve nothing. They can only win in alliance with others: conservatives or libertarians, or liberals who are misled by the code words.

The narrow-focus "progressives" apply tests of absolute purity on their pet issues, to the point where it makes it hard for people who partially agree to work with them, and sometimes to the point where they damage their own candidates.

Sadly, some of them seem to have lost their way, lost touch with bigger picture values in their single-minded focus on narrow issues. More than one campaign has been deliberately scuttled by once prominent Democrats offering aid and comfort to Republicans, sometimes just out of sheer spite.

There's a few different single issues in this faction. We've seen this dynamic in the justice center votes and the current county attorney race, where the naysayers demand drug legalization by nullification rather than legislation, and are backing a grossly under-qualified candidate over a single issue.

But nowhere in our local politics is it more visible than in the decade-long fight over development in the Newport Road area.


To hear the neighbors and their handful of single issue urban allies talk, this is a pure and noble effort to "preserve farmland." The immediate neighbors rote repeat a few environmental buzzwords and shaky stats spoon-fed to them by some urban allies.

Eight years ago, when Larry Meyers knocked off Mike Lehman in the supervisor primary, this felt more like a big picture environmental fight. But as the years have passed, the surface, the real agenda has emerged.

If this was about "preserving farmland" they'd be fighting for the pancake plains south of town, towards Hills and Lone Tree, far better farm ground than the hilly and woody and chopped up Newport Road area. That's the overwhelming majority of the farm land, and that's what current plans protect.

The Newport neighbors always a have reason to build somewhere else: other residential zoned lots for which there's no demand, spots closer to town, ag land in other parts of the county... anywhere but here. Their oft-cited hundreds of unbuilt residential zoned lots includes places with one house on two or three lots where the owner simply wants a bigger lot. It includes people who won't sell at any price, at least in this generation. It includes non-buildable out lots and even septic fields.

No, this is about preserving farmland in this one neighborhood. They've found a little paradise that feels like it's in the middle of nowhere yet is minutes from mid-town, and they want to keep it for themselves.

At least for now. Till they change their minds. After everything else is built out, their land values will skyrocket, and then they can really cash in. (Look at the family names of the richest developers in the county. Almost all have one thing in common: an origin in family farms close to the city limits.)

That's how things have played out with the Dooley property, the current ground zero of this fight. The late Mike Dooley was one of the most adamant stop-growth people. Then he died, under sad circumstances, and for whatever reason his wife decided to liquidate the farm.

That's how land use used to work in this county, back in the 90s, back before the first comprehensive plan of 1998. The back 40 was the farmer's 401K, and you got to cash it in based on which supervisors you were friends with. I was taking minutes in those dark ages, and major zoning battles were a nearly monthly event, with development leapfrogging across the county.

Every so often, rural neighbors and urban land use activists raised enough fuss that the supervisors said no. On one occasion the county got sued: the developer met the guidelines but was told no on the grounds of "we don't like it." The county lost and the developer built about twice as many houses as he would have under the rejected plan.

Therefore, the comprehensive plan. You set rules, you follow them, the process is more fair. And the rules say the targeted area for development is the North Corridor, where the demand is high and the Corn Suitability Rating - that's zoning speak for prime farmland - is low. The rules also say development should be clustered, to consolidate services.

That's what Dooley's widow has pursued, under a "conservation subdivision" ordinance. She followed the rules as laid out. The process should be automatic. But it's political.

Could the land use plan use some tweaks? Sure, but you need a big-picture progressive Board majority to do that.  But in recent years, the Newport neighbors have been willing to support any candidate, no matter how brown, who would vote "right" on their narrow interest items.

The Dooley rezoning landed right during the March 2013 special supervisor election. Democrat Terry Dahms, in the middle of the campaign, had to deal with it as zoning commission chair, and also had to deal with disgruntled Democrats aligned with the narrow focus faction who were upset that their candidate hadn't been nominated. Republican John Etheredge, who campaigned on a "property rights" platform elsewhere, made a glaring and opportunistic exception when it came to Mrs. Dooley's rights.

Almost as soon as the Dooley zoning was approved on a 4-1 vote, with newly sworn-in Etheredge the no, the coalition vowed to "knock off" Janelle Rettig.

I've been clear from the beginning of this race, before the field was set, that Janelle had earned my first vote. Leader of the conservation bond in 2008? Service on state environmental boards? 30 years of public life with the environment as her biggest focus? Great credentials.

But to the small picture gang on Newport Road it doesn't matter. She voted "wrong" on ONE zoning.

The Rettig loathing has jumped the shark with R.E. Butler's editorial that called the godmother of the county trails system "an enemy of cyclists." Butler followed up this week with a message to members of Bicyclists of Iowa City that, along with some contemptible attacks on the Dooleys that I won't repeat, claims: 
Rettig and some of her colleagues want to claim all (sic) the farmland along Newport Road for housing development, similar to what has been done between Coralville and North Liberty... The urban sprawl into the Northeast Corridor would mean the loss of the pastoral nature of Newport Road and its loss as a prime bike route; Black Diamond and the Welsh Church Rd will follow without action by the citizenry. We urge you to vote for Carberry and against Rettig and Greenwood (sic). 

I guarantee no one is going to vote for "Greenwood," because there's no one by that name on the ballot. It's telling, though, that this group is sputtering with so much rage that they can't even slow down for a quick look at a sample ballot.

Or perhaps they think Lisa Green-Douglass is Voldemort: She Who Must Not Be Named. Green-Douglass has been a secondary target on some of the attacks, and supposedly "doesn't want to preserve farm land." Which is laughable as her land is directly in the path of North Liberty. To paraphrase Tina Fey paraphrasing Sarah Palin: I can see urban sprawl from my house.

It's not clear what the Newport gang will do with their second vote: skip it entirely, or waste it on Diane Dunlap, the Some Dude candidate in this race, who's parroted a couple of their lines but is clearly in over her head. But their priority is clear: punish Rettig for daring to defy them.


Is it fair to evaluate a candidate by the behavior of the supporters?  Some of Carberry's backers do him more harm than good. If anything, John Zimmerman's supporters have been even worse. One hijacked Janet Lyness' domain name and filled a site with scatological "humor."  When the same person pulled the same stunt in 2012 with an anti-Tom Slockett site, Travis Weipert rightly denounced it. But he still got blamed and still lost votes. Zimmerman? Not a peep of protest from him.


If the candidate accepts the support, repeats the mantra of the key code words, shares and retweets and says nothing when the supporters cross the line, they accept a share of the responsibility for the content.

How big a share? Does this make a vote for the candidate an endorsement of the supporters, the tactics, and the rhetoric? Is the most effective tool to denounce the tactics a vote for a different candidate? I don't want to vote against Mike Carberry. But I'd sure like to find a way to vote against some of his supporters.

This is a primary election. Democrats are choosing which two of the three serious candidates will be the best ticket for the party in the fall. If you buy into a primary process, you buy into the outcome. You don't look for a do-over in November. Carberry has at least talked the talk, pledging to support the primary winners at a March Democratic Party meeting, as did Rettig and Green-Douglass (and Lyness and Zimmerman). But some of Carberry's key supporters have a poor track record on backing the ticket in recent years.

As a former party chair, Mike Carberry knows that whichever two Democrats get through this race, they'll have to find a way to work together, as candidates and as supervisors. The real anti-environmentalist on the ballot is the Republican, Etheredge, who even voted against an Earth Day resolution because it dared to suggest that climate change is real.


I've known Mike Carberry a long time. He is a better person that the attacks his supporters are launching at Rettig. He's a strong enough candidate without those attacks. He's a big-picture enough environmentalist that he shouldn't need to depend on small picture messages from this small segment of his supporters. Sure, he can accept the votes. But it's time to reject the over the top rhetoric.

Unfortunately, the nature of this narrow-interest group is such that the likely outcome of this post will be to put me in their crosshairs. Which is fine. I've been there enough this election, and like "Greenwood", I'm not on the ballot. But that also means I'm irrelevant. Mike and Lisa and Janelle are relevant.

Mike Carberry needs to find a way in the primary's final days to distance himself from the personal and inaccurate attacks. That'll be challenging, as some of the harshest attackers are his biggest donors. He needs to prove that, should he prevail, he can move forward to the fall on a ticket with either Rettig or Green-Douglass. And he needs to show that he can get his supporters on board with either Lisa or Janelle, or both should he lose. Any of the three are far better big-picture environmentalists than Etheredge.

And environmentalism is much more than one vote.
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Monday, May 19, 2014

Campaign Finance Reports

It's deadline day for campaign finance reports and a rare opportunity for Pure Objective Journalism: How much raised, how much spent, who gave.

Local Legislative Races

Senate 39, left open by Republican Sandy Greiner's retirement, is the only legislative race in the state with primaries in both parties. Half the district is in Johnson County, and the other half is Keokuk County and most of Washington County.

Democrat Kevin Kinney started from zero and raised a formidable $20,165 by May 15, to top all local candidates in contested races. He spent $9082 leaving $11,083. Primary rival Rich Gilmore started the year with $2,524.07 and raised just $350. Gilmore spent $1,133.86 leaving $1,740.21.

On the Republican side Michael Moore narrowly leads the fundraising. He started the year with $3,785.77 and raised another $5,270.00 for $9,055.77 in all. Moore spent $3,379.18 leaving $5,676.59. Bob Anderson is close behind, starting the period with $3,375.00 and raising another $5,089.00 for a total of $8,464.00. He spent $7,411.58 leaving $1,052.42 on hand.

Without quantifying it all, looks like a friends and neighbors contest, with Moore's donations mainly from Washington County and Anderson drawing support from Johnson.

This leaves the other Johnson County candidate, Royce Phillips, a bit of the odd man out.  Phillips had $516.67 in January and raised another $1,935.00 - more than half that, $1000, from one donor, Marvel Titone of Oxford. Phillips spent $1,571.81 leaving $879.86. But there's also $2,817.38 in outstanding bills and $2,119.73 in in-kind donations.

In the House 73 Democratic primary, late starter Dennis Boedeker kicked in $1100 personally and spent $570.70 leaving $529.30. Four time candidate David Johnson, who has been running almost non-stop since the map came out three years ago, started the year with $4,362. He raised $1,942.55 and spent $3,099.59, leaving $3,204.97.

The winner of the Democratic primary faces freshman Republican Bobby Kaufmann, who hadn't filed as of noon but had $20,001 in the bank in January.

County Attorney

Incumbent Janet Lyness began the year with $1,197.23 and raised $11,890.18, for a total of $13,087.41. She spent $3,647.13 leaving $9,440.28 (but $4,089.45 goes to bills yet to be paid). Donors include a who's who of elected officials and attorneys.

Challenger John Zimmerman raised $4703 including $505 of his own money. $3,674.68 of that is spent, leaving $1,032.55. There's also another $3,648.73 in in-kind donations, $2180 of that from the candidate himself for Facebook ads.

The only elected official who shows up on Zimmerman's list is Jim Throgmorton, who also gave to Lyness. House 73 candidate David Johnson kicked in $50.

Supervisor

It's harder to ferret out who's backing who in a vote for two race with three serious candidates and a Survivor Island, who are you voting AGAINST dynamic. There's a lot of "polite" contributions from elected official types at small dollar events early in the year. Sometimes that even included opponents. I couldn't find anyone who gave to all three, but I won't be surprised if later on I do.

Incumbent Janelle Rettig started the year with $5,550.34 in the bank and raised another $8,101.05 for a total of $13,651.39. Team Teal spent $7,875.56 leaving $5,775.83 on hand.

Mike Carberry started the year with $1,788.89 on hand, raised $7,382 from January to May, and spent $8,057.33, leaving $1,113.56 on hand.

Lisa Green-Douglass started the year with $105 and raised $3,435.00 plus a $350 loan. She spent $2979 leaving $910 on hand.

I said there were three SERIOUS candidates in the Democratic primary. The fourth, Diane Dunlap, raised just 75 bucks in two contributions and spent $290 on her (non-union) yard signs, leaving her $215 in the hole. Technically, she didn't even need to file, and it might have been less embarrassing if she hadn't.

The top two will face John Etheredge, assured of re-nomination as the only Republican on the ballot. (The party could nominate a second candidate at a convention, and independents can file in August.) He has $889 in the bank to start the fall campaign.
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Upcoming Events: May 19-26

Simple math: 2 (a Monica Vernon "Special Campaign Announcement" at 10:30 today in Cedar Rapids) + 2 (with special guest Liz Mathis1) = an 11 letter word beginning with E. Mathis, who was begged to run but declines, was expected to stay neutral.

By day's end, campaign finance reports are due. Started writing that already; how soon I get done depends on how soon the last candidate does.

Joni Ernst and the Squeal Mobile - like a Votemobile only with guns and castration - will be at at Caffe Crema, 411 2nd Street, Coralville 10:15 -11:00 AM Tuesday.

The final supervisor forum is Tuesday night at 7 at the Iowa City library. A collection of environmental groups is hosting; is it a Newport Road ambush? 

If you want an old fashioned volunteer evening, Janelle Rettig is stuffing envelopes, also at the Iowa City library.

As noted earlier, law changes late in the legislative session moved the pre-registration deadline up one day to this Friday, and auditor's offices will NOT be open this Saturday. (The next weekend, they will.)

We've got more satellite voting this week: Broadway on Wednesday afternoon and the Farmer's Market Saturday morning. 

And If you're up before dawn Saturday, you might see a monster meteor shower. Hard to predict mega-meteors, but Earth will be passing through a great number of dusty trails left behind in space by a small comet (P/209 LINEAR). "This unusual cosmic interaction might result in an amazing, albeit brief, display of meteors, popularly known as "shooting stars." There could be many dozens, or even hundreds, of meteors per hour, experts say."

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Sunday, May 18, 2014

JCDems Hall of Fame Honors Six

Loebsack Endorses Lyness

The story was stepped on a bit by Bernie Sanders' visit to Clinton County, but Johnson County Democrats had their own big event last night as a crowd of 150 inducted six new members into the county party's Hall of Fame.

The biggest actual news came from Dave Loebsack. "I don't usually get involved in primaries," said the congressman, "but we need to keep Janet Lyness as our county attorney." Lyness, who was on hand, is in a noisy primary battle with John Zimmerman, who was not.

Hall of Fame night is about the inductees and the history. The names most non-Johnson County folks would recognize were David Osterberg and Joe Johnston.

Osterberg is the first Hall of Famer who's not actually FROM Johnson County. He lives in Mt. Vernon in Linn County, but the Cornell College town has sort of honorary People's Republic status and Osterberg's district included our northern tier.

After his legislative retirement in 1994, Osterberg took on the tough job of challenging Chuck Grassley in 1998 and founded the Iowa Policy Project, the state's liberal think tank. In a feisty speech Osterberg attacked Republican climate change deniers: "Facts Matter. Research Matters. Knowledge Matters."

Johnston also served in the legislature and challenged Cooper Evans for Congress in 1984. Johnston drew plenty of laughs with his self-deprecating style, and a few tears as Randy Larson described Johnston's near fatal heart attack a couple years ago. Johnston joked away the near-death experience. "I didn't see a bright light, but I saw some flames and got really hot so I thought I better go back."

"I was elected because I was too conservative and voted out because I was too liberal," Johnston said of his Vietnam era legislative service. He also credited past Hall of Famers, now departed, for educating him: "Bob Burns taught me how to be a politician, Minnette Doderer taught me how to be a legislator."

Looking at modern politics, Johnson said, "There was not the passionate partisanship in those days that there is now, I really hate to see it."

Two local labor Democrats were honored. Unfortunately the award to IBEW member Dennis Ryan was posthumous, because the always feisty Ryan would have given a memorable speech.

Iowa City Federation of Labor president Patrick Hughes was also honored. Pat has been in ill health and wasn't feeling well enough to stay to the end of the program, but was honored by Royce Peterson and Jesse Case.


Former county supervisor Carol Thompson, who served 1999-2004 and had a long human services career before that, took her turn to encourage women to run for local office. "With citizen government the group is always greater than the sum of its parts, and I know there are other women who can do it - it's the foundation for higher office."

Honoree Pat Cancilla was former co-chair of the League of Women Voters but, in a twist reminiscent of Julia Sweeney's "It's Pat" sketch, is male. "It takes a real man to join the League of Women Voters," joked Joe Bolkcom.


Two statewide candidates also spoke. There was a little grumbling about the length of the Jack Hatch speech on a night meant for the inductees, but Hatch told tales I hadn't heard before about his childhood struggle with dyslexia, tying it into the importance of funding pre-school.

Sherrie Taha, candidate for Secretary of Agriculture, said all the right things for a liberal Johnson County crowd but was hardly a spellbinder. Democrats have lost this office with "greener" contenders like Denise O'Brien and Francis Thicke, and won with people with farm roots: Dale Cochran and Patty Judge.

Plenty of the current generation of elected officials and candidates were on hand 17 days before the primary. In addition to Lyness we saw the three leading supervisor candidates, incumbent Janelle Rettig and challengers Mike Carberry and Lisa Green-Douglass. (The fourth candidate, Diane Dunlap, was not on hand, not a surprise since she had never once been sighted at a political event.) Also on hand from the courthouse were unopposed recorder Kim Painter and off-cycle officials Travis Weipert, Terrence Neuzil and Rod Sullivan, the evening's emcee and the main organizer of the event.

From the legislature, Bolkcom, Dave Jacoby, Sally Stutsman and Vicki Lensing were in attendance, along with candidates David Johnson and Kevin Kinney.

And in the night's oddest appearance, Davenport Senator Joe Seng showed up; it seems he's an old friend of Johnston's. In case you're wondering, Seng was seated FAR away from Dave Loebsack.
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Week In Review: May 11-18

Early voting is running hot in Johnson County. As of Friday afternoon we had 1107 ballots requested (920 D 187 R) and 975 returned (837 D 138 R).  And that's even before today's debut of the Votemobile at 1st Avenue HyVee.

Democrats are running way ahead of the pace set in 2006, the record turnout primary for Dems. (The Republican and overall record is 1994, the famous "Gopher Primary" where Fred Grandy almost beat Terry Branstad.)

The in-person traffic has been overwhelmingly Democratic, but Republican mailed requests ticked up this week thanks to a mailing, reportedly from Senate candidate Mark Jacobs.

But it was Joni Ernst who got the Des Moines Register endorsement last night. Whether that helps or hurts in a Republican primary is hard to say. Lots of endorsing flying around this week. Ernst also picked up the NRA, Jacobs got Ag secretary Bill Northey, and Sam Clovis gets the not from the famIlyleader himself, Bob Vander Plaats. This leaves Matt Whitaker as the odd man out.

It was Bike To Work Week and Joe Bolkcom on the bike was a narrow winner over Jim Throgmorton on the bus. In the car, GOP supervisor John Etheredge was third - an omen for the fall when the top two get elected?

Speaking of the bus, Bruce Braley was touring and touting his work on school bus safety legislation. Which, all us 70s kids remember, was the subject of the original Bill of "I'm Just A Bill" fame. Bill's full text: "School bus must stop at railroad crossing.

Congrats to all the UI's graduates. And good luck to Dave Panther and the crew at the Hamburg Inn. Fire damage last night at the iconic diner, home to countless political events and the famous Pie Shake.
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Friday, May 16, 2014

A Campaign With A Target Of One

Bernie Sanders is coming to Clinton County this week. That's a rare Iowa appearance by a leading sorta Democrat.

On the other hand, the Register's Jennifer Jacobs notes that Rand Paul has called at least one Republican county chair recently.
Has Hillary Clinton been calling county chairs in Iowa? Anyone? Anyone?



That kind of heavy top-level Republican presence is giving Iowa Republicans an organizational and motivational boost as we move into the 2014 - and 2016 - election cycles.

Oh, sure, we have the omnipresence of Ready For Hillary. But caucus Democrats aren't satisfied with staffers and surrogates. We expect the real thing.

So what is the deal with Ready For Hillary Anyway? Matt Bai has a theory:
So all of this Hillary machinery in Washington — four Washington super PACs and counting — really isn't coming together because Clinton gave the sign. It's happening because Washington insiders are trying to persuade their only towering candidate that the race would not only be winnable, but also relatively painless. That's the only way they can be reasonably sure that Clinton will enter the race — if she thinks the party has already essentially anointed her and that the only thing that could be standing between her and the presidency is Jeb Bush's giant head.

This is why operatives get so agitated when you say the primary field can't actually be cleared (because this is 2014, not 1868), or when you remind people that Clinton isn't actually the most charismatic retail candidate who ever lived. It's not the voters they're worried about; it's Clinton herself. They don't want anything to cloud their message that the White House is hers for the taking, if only she'll say yes.
Add to that Clinton's disdain for unscripted moments, especially with the press, and unwillingness to "swing down" and engage potential opponents, and none of this bodes well for the future of the Iowa caucuses.

But set aside my Iowa parochialism for a moment. I've got some substantive concerns with a Clinton candidacy. These were best summed up by Herself in a recent DC speech:
On Wednesday, she defended — through hawkish language — ongoing international talks with Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, an unpopular position among American foreign policy hawks.

“I personally am skeptical that Iranians will follow through and deliver,” she said. “I’ve seen many false hopes dashed over the years. But nonetheless, [talks are] a promising development. We need to test it to see what can be achieved. This is the time to give diplomacy space to work. If it does not, there will be opportunities in place for additional sanctions in the future, with the important requirement that the international support necessary to ensure enforcement will be forthcoming.”

“No deal is better than a bad deal,” she said, to applause. “From my perspective, we cannot and should not accept any agreement that endangers Israel or our own national security.”

Clinton’s speech also came in the wake of the collapse of the latest round of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

But instead of dwelling much on any missteps the Israelis might have made, she talked about the “hard choices” that will be required to reach a peace deal between the two parties, and talking more generally about the need to help leaders “carve out political space to negotiate with each other.”

“America’s commitment to Israel’s security will never waver,” Clinton said, adding with a smile: “That is not a hard choice.”
Would be nice to ask some follow up questions at an Iowa town hall, wouldn't it? Any way she can route the book tour through Prairie Lights?
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Key Lyness Backers Undercut Zimmerman Case

A couple local leaders are undercutting the argument by county attorney challenger John Zimmerman that the ONLY way to fight the drug war is the prosecutorial equivalent of jury nullification: just don't enforce laws you don't like.

Sure, they're both elected officials, which in Zimmerman World makes them part of the "wealthy local establishment." But as someone who's actually campaigned outside the progressive protective bubble of Iowa City, I'll tell you it's easy to forget just how liberal some of our elected officials are.

Supervisor Rod Sullivan endorsed incumbent Janet Lyness some time ago. This week in his newsletter he questions the "logic" of Zimmerman supporters that Lyness and her office should be the point of attack:
If the group that supports Mr. Zimmerman really got focused, they could easily tip the balance in local races. In a typical year, 3,000 votes will get a person a seat on the Iowa City Council. 2,000 votes used to get you a seat on the ICCSD Board; it might require 3,000 now. 800 votes will usually get it done in Coralville. Only 500 votes are necessary in North Liberty.
Let’s say you are concerned about racial disparity in the criminal justice system. Let’s say you want to change the way police deal with small amounts of pot. Does it make more sense to take on the most liberal County Attorney in Iowa, in a Democratic Party primary, or to try to win a couple Council seats?
Last year's city election was a positive step forward with Kingsley Botchway replacing Connie Champion. And 2015 is a big opportunity. Rick Dobyns lost once before he won, Michelle Payne barely won, and Matt Hayek is leaving. It's not too soon to think ahead...
 
Further undercutting the drug war focus of the Zimemrman campaign, the state's leading legalization advocate came out for Lyness yesterday. Senator Joe Bolkcom spent the end of the session dragging a kicking and screaming legislature over the line to pass a very limited cannabis oil bill that had been declared dead on arrival early in the session. Bolkcom writes:
The county attorney is the county’s top lawyer. This person advises the Board of Supervisors on every contract the county enters into. This includes 28E agreements with other local governments, right of way acquisition for road improvements, capital projects and labor agreements to name a few. The county attorney also advises the supervisors about open government issues, land-use decisions and any dispute a citizen has with Johnson County.

The debate surrounding the campaign thus far has focused on whether marijuana laws should be enforced. The obvious failure of the war on drugs is a central issue in this discussion.

I share people’s frustration with draconian federal and state marijuana laws that have ruined too many families and are costly for taxpayers. These policies have been unfairly applied in the appalling tradition of Jim Crow. Ending this immoral, expensive war and creating sensible marijuana policies will take us all working together. The responsibility for action rests with our congressman, governor, state legislators, mayors, city council members, city managers, police chiefs, county supervisors, sheriff, county attorney and the public.
Unfortunately, crimes are committed by people with real substance abuse and mental health issues. They need our help.

Janet Lyness has been instrumental in establishing a successful drug treatment court and family court that works with families and individuals to help them get back on their feet and succeed. She deserves to be re-elected.
And in another bad omen for Team Zimmerman, weed-themed sub shop Cheba Hut closed this week.

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Labor's Contested Primary Picks

This isn't writing as much as it's reformatting. Blog For Iowa has a good overview of labor's endorsements for the June 3 primary across the state. It's organized by central labor body and includes courthouse races (like Iowa City Federation of Labor's support for Janelle Rettig and Janet Lyness). I've reshuffled it by district, tossed out the unopposed folks, and focused in on just the contested races.

THE legislative primary this cycle is in open Senate District 17 in the heart of Des Moines. Three big forces are backing three different candidates. Labor is sticking with Tony Bisignano, whose candidacy was challenged by Ned Chiodo over Tony's past legal woes. Tom Harkin has endorsed Chiodo, while Attorney General Tom MIller has endorsed his won staffer, Nathan Blake. The survivor is a sure thing in the safe seat Jack Hatch is leaving. There's not a Republican in the race yet.

Ottumwa-based Senate 41 is one of the best bets for a Democratic gain. Labor endorsed county supervisor Steve Siegel former Ottumwa superintendent Tom Rubel. The primary winner is a favorite over GOP incumbent Mark "Chickenman" Chelgren, a ten vote fluke winner in2010.

In Senate District 7 labor endorsed Jim France over Maria Rundquist in Sioux City. The winner takes on Republican freshman Rick Bertrand in a top tier race.

In Ames-based Senate District 23, labor is staying with incumbent Herman Quirmbach over serious challenger Cynthia Oppedal Paschen. Republicans are making an active effort with ex-city council member Jeremy Davis.

Labor is also sticking with the two other incumbents with primaries: Wally Horn in Cedar Rapids district 35 and Joe Seng in district 45 in Davenport. Both their challengers are nuisance Some Dudes who've run prior races as Republicans.

The only contested Democratic senate primary with no labor endorsement is District 39, where Republican Sandy Greiner is retiring. Kevin Kinney, a Clear Creek Amana school board member and deputy sheriff, is a favorite over Washing County party activist Rich Gilmore. Republicans have a three way primary; this is the only seat in the state with primaries in both parties.

The other primary that covers part of Johnson County is in House 73, where labor made no pick between Dennis Boedeker, an ex-Cedar County supervisor, and four time candidate David Johnson.

Labor also took a pass on open House 99, the Pat Murphy set in Dubuque. Contenders there are Abby Finkenauer and Steve Drahozal (a one-time Libertarian candidate here in Johnson County in 2000).

In another seat opened up by the 1st CD race, labor is supporting Timi Brown-Powers  to replace Anesa Kajtazovic. The other two Dems are Andrew Miller and Brad Condon.

Cedar Rapids school board member Gary Anhalt got the union endorsement over Liz Bennett in House 65, the open Tyler Olson seat.

Jay Saxon got the endorsement in open House 97, a swing seat where Republican Steve Olson is retiring. The other Democrat is Carl Boehl of LeClaire.

And two challenger races: Kim Robinson of Clive is endorsed over Nicholas Dreeszen of West Des Moines (for now; heard rumors he district-shopped and not just in Polk) for the right to face Chris Hagenow. And in Boone-centered House 47, now held by Republican Chip Baltimore, Hans Erickson is endorsed over Mark Trueblood.
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