May 2007 - Posts
May 7, 2007
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- Joe Biden came to see us this morning.
By us, I mean the Cedar Rapids Gazette. He spent an hour and 10 minutes giving very long answers to very short questions from the editor, the vice president/general manager, the political writer, and the newsside columnist, who also has a role in the paper's editorial department. Oh, and there was me, the dilettante.
"My only shot is you guys grilling me and making conclusions if I should be hanging around," Biden said, "because it sure won't be the money."
Meaning, the Democrat U.S. Senator from Delware who is running for president isn't playing in the Clinton-Obama league when it comes to fundraising.
So he, like most of the presidential candidates seeking to attract as much possible attention in Iowa, Biden pays visits to local television and newspaper people in Iowa when the opportunities arise. The most obvious benefit: He'll get a story and a photograph in tomorrow's Gazette, and the same on Gazetteonline.com and its Iowacaucus.com site. In turn, the newspaper can say it hosted Biden, asked him direct questions on the public's behalf, looked him in the eye.
Mike Deupree, the aforementioned columnist, challenged Biden on a couple of his remarks, one being a comment he made last week to a citizen at a South Carolina political event. It was later broadcast on C-SPAN.
Asked by a voter what Congress will do if President Bush vetoes the Democrat-backed Iraq funding bill as expected, Biden said he would move immediately to secure money for armored vehicles with raised, V-shaped hulls that deflect the force of homemade bomb blasts.
"The idea that we're not building new Humvees with the V-shaped things is just crap. Kids are dying that don't have to die," Biden said, adding "Second thing is, we're going to shove it down (Bush's) throat."
Biden told us the proper context of the "shove it down his throat" remark wasn't conveyed on the broadcast. The clip can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB2tcKt-Pgk
Deupree did what good journalists do. He asked a legitimate question about a serious matter. Though he vigorously defended and explained his remark, Biden didn't seem offended by the question.
A free press met someone running for president who was willing to be questioned by it. Few others among the busy people in the Gazette's downtown offices were even aware Biden was in their building. But in one the newspaper's conference rooms, the democratic process was in session.
May 5, 2007
WEST LIBERTY, Iowa -- In most Iowa communities, Cinco de Mayo might seem like St. Patrick's Day in El Paso. An excuse to drink, but without much apparent local relevance.
According to 2005 U.S. Census estimates, 2.3 percent of Iowa's population was of Hispanic or Latino descent. Nationally, it was 12.8 percent. Iowa's population of whites who aren't Hispanic is 91. 5 percent. Nationally, it was just 66.9 percent.
Perhaps the biggest complaint from non-Iowans about Iowa's first-in-the-nation status when it comes to holding its January presidential caucuses is the state's lack of demographic diversity.
"Tell them to come to West Liberty,'' Sen. Chris Dodd said here Saturday afternoon as he dropped into town for an hour to visit a Cinco de Mayo celebration in Ron-De-Voo Park.
There, in a small open space between two old brick buildings downtown that house a pharmacy and a movie theater, Dodd met about 100 people in this working-class town of 3,600. Directly across the street from the park, Hawkeye Pizza and Steak is between La Mexicana Restaurant and Buelitos Mexican American Food. Around the corner, American Legion Post 509's next-door neighbor is Acapulco Mexican Bakery.
West Liberty is 40 percent Hispanic. Over half of the students in kindergarten through eighth-grade here are Hispanic. The town's newspaper, the West Liberty Index, prints its stories in English and Spanish. The first Hispanic graduate of West Liberty High School was Manuel Sebot in 1929. For a century, people of Mexican descent have lived in this town, 18 miles from Iowa City and the University of Iowa. Many came to work for the railroad. For the last several decades, many have worked for what is now West Liberty Foods, a turkey-processing plant that employs 900.
Rod Perdue, a self-described "Caucasian with some Heinz 57 mixed in," called the plant "an 800-pound gorilla." Formerly owned by General Foods, it's the town's dominant structure.
Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, didn't encounter any sort of similar diversity in his previous campaign stop in Burlington, or in the one that followed in West Branch, the birthplace of former U.S. president Herbert Hoover. That town of 2,300 is 95.7 percent White Non Hispanic. In other words, it's typical Iowa.
Dodd gave a very brief speech to the gathering here. Several audience members were small children far more interested in their blue balloons. Dodd gave some of his remarks, including the closing ones, in Spanish. Those of Mexican descent in the audience acted as if he was fluent in the language. Dodd said he learned Spanish in the language in the late 1960s while he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Domincan Republic.
He then went from person to person slapping shoulders, shaking hands, posing for photos, kissing the occasional old woman, and using more of his Spanish when meeting the young Hispanic women selling tacos de barbacoa and nachos. Their food stand was next to the one belonging to a group of whites, who sold hot dogs, bratwursts and turkey filets. More than a few stomachs in the park were melting pots.
Dodd, said Carmen Gonzalez, "was nice," though she seemed unsure who he was or why he was visiting her town. Many of her white neighbors in the park probably felt likewise.
Most of this diverse group of people seemed far more interested in hearing a middle-aged Hispanic man strum his guitar than listen to an outsider discuss politics. It was a holiday, of sorts, after all.
Dodd and his staffers then traveled the 12 miles from West Liberty to West Branch, where he held a town hall meeting on renewable energy. Different town, different crowd, different kind of event. On this near-perfect spring Saturday afternoon, eating nachos or hot dogs and listening to music seemed preferable over politicking.
The candidate would probably have agreed.
May 4, 2007
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- As long as you have a crane and a forklift handy, you might as well use them to hold up an oversized -- and I mean oversized -- paper U.S. flag.
So it was late Friday morning in an equipment and parts shed on the grounds of Rexco Equipment, where a somewhat hastily planned Rudy Giuliani campaign stop was held. Word got out to enough of the Republican faithful in the Cedar Rapids area and beyond, and a crowd of 125 got shelter from a light rain inside the shed.
"You here for the event?" a Giuliani staffer asked a senior female as she entered the shed.
She wasn't there to pick up a rough terrain forklift.
Actually, most of the skid loaders and excavators and backhoes Rexco sells to contractors and housing developers were cleared from the shed in favor of chairs and a few small sets of bleachers for the attendees and a platform for Giuliani. A local business was hired to bring in a sound system. The music, almost all country, was selected by the Giuliani campaign. Just how much country music has the Italian-American from Brooklyn enjoyed over the years?
Amid the GOP loyalists ranging from young adults to retirees, two faces stood out. One had a thick chain draped around his neck. His hair was dyed scarlet. The other wore a corduroy jacket with a patch on its back that was attached by four safetypins and said "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols." That's the 30-year-old album by the Sex Pistols that was a punk rock celebration of disgust, nihilism and raw guitar. Rolling Stone helped me write the previous sentence.
They were Kennedy High School seniors James Woodell and Derek Hamilton, 18-year-olds. Are they anarchists? Nothing of the sort. Although, Woodell did lead a group of 20 Kennedy students last April in protesting the school's policy of mandatory attendance for its spring sports assembly. Here, however, they were attentive audience members with "RUDY" signs.
"Rudy's kind of a different face,'' Woodell said. "I think he'll be able to bring the two parties together. It's all politics, no policy anymore."
"It's the candidate more than the party,'' said Hamilton. "It's not like I think of myself as a Republican or a Democrat. I want to vote for whoever I think will run the country the best.''
"It's not about partisanship anymore,'' Woodell said. "We have to move past that if we're going to develop as a nation. Partisanship is what's tearing us apart. We've just done terribly of handling these last few years
"We're just hoping for something to change, something better, so we're trying to fight for that. We believe in voting very strongly, we believe in personal citizen action. We're just trying to get informed about the issues. I think that's a big problem. People just don't know enough anymore. We just don't care, especially the youth.''
Hamilton said his other interests included "life itself, really. I just like taking everything in, like music and philosophy. I'm into studying everything about the universe, like biology and anthropologies."
So these were two bright, engaged kids about to become high school graduates in a month. They also were skipping school.
"We probably should be in class,'' Woodell said. "But we figured it was more important to get active-learning here. This is real-world stuff, not book-learning. This is what's going to matter the next four years when we go vote. This is a big deal. Missing one day of school's not going to kill us."
What the two young men learned from the 45 minutes they spent listening to Giuliani was they weren't in sync with the candidate as much as they thought or hoped they would be. Giuliani was very partisan in his remarks, clearly portraying himself as a pro-Iraq War Republican. That played well to the majority of the crowd, but not so much to the two fellows who can attend the Iowa caucuses for the first time next January.
"Personally, I don't agree with a lot of his policies,'' Hamilton said as Giuliani posed for photos after his speech and question-and-answer session.
"I'm a little bit disappointed that he's a big supporter of the war,'' said Woodell. "He keeps talking about how he's going to cut taxes, but we spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. What else is he going to cut? Is education going to be cut? Are subsidies to farmers going to be cut? I'm just a little bit worried about where he's going to go with this.
"But he's definitely the best on the Republican side. If the Democrats don't get it together they're going to lose to him."
Then the two friends filed out of their active-learning classroom and into that light rain, still holding on to their RUDY signs, perhaps not knowing quite what to do with them.