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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Posted August 03, 2022in Political Mercury
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 is consistently at the forefront of that effort. “The Supreme Court’s greatest moments have come when it allows America to
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Posted July 06, 2022in Political Mercury
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, know this ugly brew we are collectively stirring is as exhausting as it is unsustainable. They long for optimism, an Iowa they
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Posted June 01, 2022in Political Mercury
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 who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Iowa and law degree from Catholic University. He has a long history
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Posted May 04, 2022in Political Mercury
Buoyed by his political companion for the day, the popular west-central Iowa congressman Randy Feenstra, former Vice President Mike Pence delivered a fierce defense of long-held conservative values to Iowa’s 4th District Republican Convention at Carroll High School April 23. More than 400 people, including about 250 district convention delegates, mingled
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