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Posted March 01, 2023in Political Mercury

Is Kari Lake a 2024 presidential candidate?

The Republican candidate for governor of Arizona in the last cycle, Kari Lake, an embattled and ascendent conservative with a rocketing national profile, pulled a crowd in Ankeny on Feb. [...]

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Posted February 01, 2023in Political Mercury

How Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds could become president

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds insists a life in Washington is not for her. I believed her when she told me this near the shores of Black Hawk Lake in Lake [...]

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Posted January 04, 2023in Political Mercury

Resilient, relentless C.J. Petersen should be Iowa Democratic Party chair

The Iowa Democratic Party, in a little more than a month, will elect a new state party chair. A leader poised for the position is rural Iowan C.J. Petersen, the [...]

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Posted November 30, 2022in Political Mercury

Challenges, resilience in a rural Iowa newspaper’s last stand

The talented and intrepid reporter Dave Hoekstra, a former 30-year writer with the Chicago Sun-Times, spent the better part of three years chronicling the struggle of independent newspapers like my [...]

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Posted November 02, 2022in Political Mercury

Will Iowa’s silent majority choose Mike Franken?

Admiral Mike Franken, the most senior retired military officer to seek office in Iowa, has barnstormed the state for months, hitting his native rural western Iowa on repeat with a [...]

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Posted October 05, 2022in Political Mercury

Harkin says maybe it’s time for Grassley to retire

Iowa Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has served in public office since the Eisenhower administration, should perhaps “retire” or “step aside.” This is the sense his former colleague Tom [...]

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Posted August 31, 2022in Political Mercury

What it’s like being falsely tagged as a child molester

A head-spinning, bizarre twist to one of the ugliest political episodes in these most uncivil of times is that the Michigan state legislator, Republican Lana Theis, falsely accused her Democratic [...]

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Posted August 03, 2022in Political Mercury

What Reynolds said about abortion penalties when she hit the statewide stage

Republicans, with a generational win in hand with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, are looking to ban abortion at the state level across the nation. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds [...]

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Posted July 06, 2022in Political Mercury

Takeaways from the Iowa Democratic Party State Convention

Deidre DeJear can win the governor’s race. Cocooned in angry social media corners, divided by geography and race and tribal fractions large and small, most Iowans, either consciously, or in spite of themselves, [...]

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Posted June 01, 2022in Political Mercury

It’s common sense, non-partisan Iowa group says of reforming cannabis laws

Political Mercury’s Douglas Burns recently conducted an interview with Bradley Knott, the founder of the Campaign for Sensible Cannabis laws. This week, Knott and his team launched the website FreetheweedIowa.org. Knott is a veteran political consultant [...]

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