‘A Fever In The Heartland’
Twenty one years ago, Chuck Offenburger and I had ringside seats for a rare and fascinating journalistic forum: the now late George “Lefty” Mills, the legendary Des Moines Register reporter, the late [...]
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Posted July 05, 2023in Political Mercury
Posted May 31, 2023in Political Mercury
Council Bluffs’ Turek in conversation as ‘next Tom Harkin’
There is, of course, only one Tom Harkin, a retired U.S. senator who constructed a legislative and political legacy few Democrats in Iowa — and indeed the nation — have. [...]
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Posted May 03, 2023in Political Mercury
Obama Presidential Center should establish Iowa satellite branch
Hawaii is Barry Obama’s home state, and Illinois is Senator Barack Obama’s home state, but Iowa is President Obama’s home state. One of the last questions I asked President Barack [...]
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Posted April 05, 2023in Political Mercury
Workplace law changes would exploit children, labor leaders say
Labor leaders, parents and Council Bluffs community members say proposed radical changes to Iowa’s child-labor laws would redefine what it means to be a kid in the state, placing young [...]
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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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