des moines register

The Culture of Activism in Iowa

[courtesy of Blog for America]

DFA-endorsed candidate Ed Fallon, who is running to unseat Bush-Democrat Leonard Boswell in Iowa's 3rd Congressional District, was today endorsed by Iowa's largest paper, The Des Moines Register.  This is a great development and speaks volumes of the dynamic, people-powered campaign that Ed Fallon is running.  From the endorsement:

After interviewing both candidates and reviewing their records, the editorial board can no longer embrace the congressman as the best person to represent Iowa in Congress. Fallon is running under the slogan "new energy for Iowa." On June 3, Democrats in the 3rd District should give Fallon a chance to unleash some of his ideas and energy in Washington.

Check out the full endorsement at the Des Moines Register.

Danny
Communications Director

My Iowa Pet Peeves (They’re Not What You Think They Are)

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

As the results begin trickling in, it would be easy for me to join the insistent chorus of critics today who are ridiculing the Iowa caucus as a quaint anachronism and the state itself for being too white, too rural and too parochial (and not a very effective bellwether given that, since Iowa’s rise to political prominence in 1972, only one winner of the Caucus has ever gone on to become President –- the sublime George W. Bush in 2000) to wield so much electoral influence over the next leader of the free world.
 
But what’s the point? No less than the legendary Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen admits today that 2008 might be Iowa’s last hurrah. And, besides, as a Midwestern expat who cut his political teeth on the mean streets of Indiana, who am I to cast corn?
 
No, my friends, I have two Hawkeye state-related pet peeves of far greater urgency...

Kucinich Barred From Iowa Debate

by Kevin Shaw [courtesy of Blog for America]

From USA Today's OnPolitics blog:

By: Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence

Six-term Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich is crying foul over tomorrow's Des Moines Register debate for Democratic presidential candidates. The campaign today issued a lengthy protest against his exclusion from the debate, the last before the Jan. 3 caucuses.

The newspaper's standards for participation include at least 1% in its statewide poll and an office and paid staff in Iowa. Republican Alan Keyes, who has not been in any debates this year and has done little if any campaigning, has made the cut for today's GOP debate,...

Kucinich's campaign said today he has been excluded because "his Iowa field director operates from a home office rather than a rented storefront." The campaign quoted newspaper editor Carolyn Washburn as saying, "It was our determination that a person working out of his home did not meet our criteria for a campaign office and full-time paid staff in Iowa."

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