DES MOINES, Iowa, 7:37 PM – “This is the main planning room,” Bobby Gravitz ’05 tells me as he sweeps his arm across a field of cubicles, half-eaten pizzas and young volunteers hunched over telephones. “Over on this side are most of the statewide directorial staff and over there is most of our Polk County field staff. Let’s try and find a place to sit down.”
This proves difficult. All we really need for an interview is a table and chairs – ready fare for virtually any office in the state of Iowa. But this is a presidential campaign office. Why spend valuable campaign cash on chairs when an old Culligan bottle will do the trick?
Bobby ends up leading us into a room affectionately called “The Gitmo Room.” (more…)
DES MOINES, Iowa, 7:15 PM – The floor of Senator Barack Obama’s Des Moines Iowa headquarters is soaked. Two canvassers walk in wearing thick-soled North Face hiking boots and you can see drops of water press out of the carpet around the edges of each shoe. Each volunteer that has come in out of the light snow and slushy streets tracks a tiny bit of the dreaded Iowan “wintry mix” into the office until the floor feels like what one volunteer calls it from her desk, “It’s a swamp, really.”
Matt Hasvold – an old high school buddy of mine who works for the South Dakota State University Collegian (www.sdsucollegian.com) – and I have been here two days now and have determined there are a number of minor inconveniences that come with the state of Iowa. One is the cold. You try to stand outside for 90 seconds to top off your gas tank and your fingers swell up like hot dogs when you return to the heat-blasted environs of your car. And we’re both from South Dakota. We know what it’s like to drive through zero-degree weather and shovel snow in sub-zero wind chill conditions. We can handle the cold.
YALE, Iowa, 2:21 p.m. — George Dorr has been driving tractor trailers for 60 years – “Since I was twenty-something,” he says. Now six months into his retirement, he sits at a table at Just Ethel’s, the only café in the tiny burg of Yale, Iowa. His whole life, Dorr has been leaving this hamlet in Guthrie County loaded down and bound for big cities across the Midwest. But he always comes back. “If I were to leave town, there wouldn’t be nothin’ left,” he jokes. It’s an exaggeration — but just slightly.
The 2000 census pegged the population of the town of Yale at 287. The town has one grocery store, one mechanic’s shop and one restaurant – Just Ethel’s – where owner Sue Movingo has been working for 10 years.
“Not much exciting ever happens in Yale,” she says. Asked for a run-down of the community’s attractions, she leans up against a window of the café and points across the street to the grain elevator that towers above the town. “There’s the elevator, and the Raccoon River Valley Trail, and the round gym by the old school that we’re trying to fix up.”
PERRY, Iowa, 12:32 p.m. — The back wall of a political event is a little like a fraternity. Photographers and reporters lean against the wall, usually butting up against a candidate’s posters or signs, and swap stories. Did you hear the latest one about Biden? Who’s this joker doing Candidate X’s introduction? Weren’t you in Hawaii just two weeks ago, Jim?
After the Obama event, photographer Matt Lucas and I were approached by a young man named Edward. Twenty-two years old, just graduated from Oxford in the United Kingdom. He’s been working for the Daily Telegraph – a major London-based paper – for a little over a month, now, and he is covering the American presidential primaries.
“Yeah, I’m a little bit of a political junkie,” he admits. “But not quite as much as you two, eh?”
We walked him through the basics of an American campaign event – Perry was the first stop on the trail for Edward – and how to accost (read: approach) an American voter politely. But as for how to fight off the boredom of hearing the same stump speech day after day, we had no answer.
“I watched basically this same speech on C-SPAN last night,” Edward said of Obama’s pitch. Then, pointing at the row of tables reserved for the traveling campaign press – reporters from the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Atlanta Journal-Constitution — he asks, “These guys must hate it. Day after day – how do you find something new?”
PERRY, Iowa, 12:10 p.m. — Perry, Iowa is a small town of 7,000 at the intersection of Iowa highways 141 and 144. The main drag – 2nd avenue – runs four blocks through the heart of town, lined with maybe a couple dozen storefronts. It is a sleepy little place 20 miles north of the interstate, northwest of the capital, Des Moines.
But inside the McCreary Community Center on Pattee Street this morning, you would think you were standing on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange — or in the White House Press Room. Of the gymnasium that local organizers had converted into a stage, fully half the floor space was devoted to camera risers, media tables and TV boom microphones.
Who would have thought Dick Cheney’s cousin could turn such a crowd?
PERRY, Iowa, 12:10 PM – Perry, Iowa is a little town of 7,000 at the intersection of Iowa highways 141 and 144. The main drag – 2nd avenue – runs four blocks through the heart of town, lined with maybe a couple dozen storefronts. It is a sleepy little place twenty miles north of the interstate, northwest of the capital Des Moines.
But inside the McCreary Community Center on Pattee Street this morning, you would think you were standing on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, or in the White House Press Room. Of the gymnasium area local organizers had converted into a stage, fully half the floor space was devoted camera risers, media tables, and TV boom microphones.
Who would have thought Dick Cheney’s cousin could turn such a crowd?
Yes, it was Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s turn to hold our attention. (more…)
Posted Monday Dec. 31 The men’s basketball team dropped another game to a nationally ranked opponent — but not without encouraging play from the Bulldog point guards.
The Elis’ 86-53 loss to No. 3 Kansas (13-0) on the road last Saturday was their second to a top-five squad this season – the first was to UCLA in November – and leaves the team with a 3-7 record with just four games to go until the Ivy onslaught.
Guard Porter Braswell ’11 and captain Eric Flato ’08 led the team in scoring, racking up half of the Bulldogs’ total points, with 13 and 10, respectively. Braswell contributed 100 percent shooting from beyond the arc (3 for 3) and another two baskets in just 15 minutes of play.
“My mindset when coming off the bench is to just let the game come to me and not try to force anything,” Braswell said. “If there is an opportunity to make a play then I’ll go for it without getting out of the pattern of the offense.”
Flato, the Bulldogs’ leading scorer this season, snuck in two three-pointers of his own but went only 3-11 overall from the field.
The Elis were overwhelmed by the Jayhawks’ overpowering defense. The home team jumped out to a 14-2 lead and the Bulldogs could manage only 19 points in the first half, falling behind, 42-19, the same 33-point margin by which they eventually lost.
Kansas held back Eli scoring for most of the game, especially from post players. In the second half, Kansas maintained a lead that never dipped below 25 and reached its apex at 40 with 1:21 remaining.
“They picked us up full-court the whole game,” guard Caleb Holmes ’08 said. “Their guards are very quick and athletic, and they play very good defense.”
Kansas’ Russell Robinson stole the ball eight times and the Jayhawks forced 27 Yale turnovers.
A high-pressure defense coupled with a quartet of players with double-digit scoring efforts pushed the Jayhawks easily ahead of the Elis.
“It is just pretty much par for the course for [Kansas],” Yale head coach James Jones said. “I thought we had some opportunities in the second half, but obviously, defensively, they do a great job.”
Still, the Bulldogs managed to out-rebound a team for the first time since a Nov. 14 game against UMass, although that effort resulted in a loss, as well.
All statistics aside, the Elis acknowledge the talent they faced on the court.
“We have now played two of the best pressure defenses in the country in UCLA and Kansas. Russell Robinson and Mario Chalmers are both very quick, long guards,” guard Nick Holmes ’08 said. “It is tough when you are playing against guards like that. We knew they were going to pressure us, but our main problem tonight was that we couldn’t get into our offense. We couldn’t execute anything.”
The Bulldogs’ trouble finding the basket — they shot a mere 37 percent in Lawrence, Kan. — may continue to plague them when they take on Ivy League opponents in January.
“It just exposes us a little bit,” Caleb Holmes ’08 said. “We know that we have to take care of the ball better and get into our offense better. We need to work on those things before conference play gets started.”
The Elis will return to the Elm City on Wednesday night to take on Portland.
Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards called attention to the growing divide between moneyed corporate interests and working man’s values at a rally in Sioux City Sunday night
SIOUX CITY, Iowa, 9:43 p.m. — Tom Petty must have been proud. And Bruce Springsteen. And John Mellencamp and John Fogerty.
Elizabeth Edwards’ introduction of her husband was almost superfluous after the battery of American classic-rock anthems that preceded it – the crowd got the message: John Edwards stands for you. And America.
The former senator from North Carolina held the floor of the Sioux City Convention Center for almost an hour Sunday night, preaching classic themes of right and wrong, good and evil and the working man against the corporation.
“My belief is that corporate greed has infected every part of the government,” Edwards said. “When you go to caucus on Thursday night, you better send a fighter into that arena.”
Edwards claims to be just that fighter. Drawing on his 20 years as a trial lawyer in North Carolina, Edwards touched on health care, college tuition fees and pork-barrel spending in his denouncement of moneyed corporate interests that he said “have a stranglehold on your democracy.”
The crowd loved it. Edwards was interrupted with applause time and time again — once by a standing ovation in the middle of his prepared remarks.
“I thought he was truthful and honest,” Sioux City resident Gary Turbes said at the end of the event. “He’s got a vision for the future.”
SIOUX CITY, Iowa, 6:09 p.m. – Delaware Senator Joe Biden is not happy with President George W. Bush.
“This president has done more to harm our national defense than any president in modern history,” Biden declares as he paces before an audience of mostly senior citizens at the Boys and Girls Home.
It was to be one of many jabs the 65-year-old senator threw at the sitting president during the course of a one-hour port of call. Biden also lashed out at Bush’s mishandling of the post-September 11th moment, accusing the president of dividing the world in a moment of grief rather than uniting it. Energy policy also fell under Biden’s harsh gaze, as he attacked current levels of alternative-energy funding and laid out a plan to raise taxes on individuals making more than $435,000 a year to fund investment in alternative energy.
But it was style more than substance that set the Biden stump apart from others – for me, at least. Biden ditched the podium after minute four of the speech, opting instead to pace in front of the assembled crowd of about 150. Time after time, he paused to lecture a voter like a stern schoolmaster, explaining just how dangerously unstable the status quo is and talking about the need for someone to “right the ship.” Biden is a man not afraid to raise his voice, not afraid to show the passion beneath the policy positions he espouses. At times it can come across as patronizing or frustrated, at others as imminently necessary.
Delaware Senator Joe Biden talks with supporters at an event at the Boys and Girls Home in Sioux City, IA.
SIOUX CITY, Iowa, 5:14 p.m. — Walter and Elsi Carranza have never voted in a caucus before.
In the basement of the unheated Mount Olive Baptist Church, they hunch down in winter coats and listen quietly for 45 minutes as Obama volunteer Carlos Odio translates caucus-trainer Rick Mullin’s lesson on how to caucus: arrive on time, go to your candidate’s corner, switch candidates if yours is unviable. Occasionally, Walter tosses a question at Rick.
What happens if my name isn’t on the precinct list? What happens after the initial caucus tallies are taken? What if I don’t speak English? Can I still caucus?
Only four potential Hispanic caucus-goers attended a training session for first-time voters held in Sioux City, IA on Sunday afternoon. The low turnout added to Democratic concerns about the political apathy of the growing Hispanic population in Iowa.
LE MARS, Iowa, 12:54 p.m. — Come west of the Mississippi and you can kiss your beloved Phish Food good-bye. The Midwest and the Plains are Blue Bunny territory, a vast steppe unclaimed by boutique ice cream makers like Ben & Jerry’s or Haagen-Dazs. Since the founding of Wells’ Dairy by Fred H. Wells, Jr., in 1913, Le Mars has been home to the company’s flagship ice cream brand.
“Today, more ice cream is produced in Le Mars, Iowa, by a single company than in any other city in the world!” reads the town’s Web site.
So it’s no surprise that we caught the Dodd bus pulling into the shop, factory and museum complex just off Le Mars’ main drag, Iowa Highway 75. Rocky Road, Senator?
