Posted May 31, 2023in Political Mercury
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. For two generations in Congress — 40 years in the U.S. Senate and House — Harkin, always mindful of his
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Posted May 03, 2023in Political Mercury
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 Obama during an interview in his first term was this: Would he consider locating his presidential library and museum in
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Posted April 05, 2023in Political Mercury
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 people in jeopardy while driving down wages for adults amid the tumult of a worker shortage. From Keokuk to Council
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Posted March 01, 2023in Political Mercury
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. 11 that had the feel of a White House-run event. The former Iowan said she’s not running for office, but
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Posted February 01, 2023in Political Mercury
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 View before the governor announced what became a successful re-election bid for Terrace Hill. At the time, speculation emerged, prior
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Posted January 04, 2023in Political Mercury
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 chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Stonewall Caucus, a leader on LGBTQ issues, and the former communications director for U.S.
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Posted November 30, 2022in Political Mercury
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 family’s to survive amid a perfect storm of challenges and attacks that have shuttered thousands of locally owned papers or
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Posted November 02, 2022in Political Mercury
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 message and Navy bearing that will cleave enough Republican votes in this decidedly red region of the Hawkeye State to
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Posted October 05, 2022in Political Mercury
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 Harkin says he gets when traveling the state, talking to Iowans — including political independents, a voting block Harkin thinks
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Posted August 31, 2022in Political Mercury
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 colleague, Mallory McMorrow, of wanting to molest children. Theis had spoken with McMorrow weeks before the fundraising email about having
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