Out in Greene County, Iowa

Inside two months until the Iowa Caucuses, here’s a look at the races in both the parties

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
November 12, 2007
JEFFERSON, IOWA

With under 60 days left until the Iowa Caucuses are held on January 3, and with what are apparently very close races in both the Republican and Democratic Parties, all of us across the state are going to have chances to meet more presidential candidates than ever before.

Heck, we better start taking the names of families who’ll make a place at their Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables for a candidate.

And when the campaigns are scheduling their events, we’ve got a venue here in Greene County that I think every candidate should try – our stately county courthouse. Two Democratic candidates each had crowds of more than 200 in it on two nights last week, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in the courtroom on Sunday night, November 4, and former U.S. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina in the atrium on Friday night, November 9.


Former Senator John Edwards, a Democratic candidate for president from North Carolina, brought his campaign to the Greene County Courthouse atrium in Jefferson on Friday, November 9. More than 200 people listened to the senator, most of them on the ground floor, with others looking down from the second floor. Edwards is shown standing on the county's seal which is done in mosaic tile on the ground floor.

“What a great old courthouse!” said Randal Archibold, national correspondent for the New York Times, who was following Edwards.

Built in 1917, the building is indeed a classic. The center atrium has murals at the top that supposedly portray “progress of civilization as recorded in Iowa.” The ceiling up there is a stunning dome of stained glass, which is spectacular if you see it when daylight is reflecting through. The mosaic tile on the atrium’s floor shows Greene County’s official seal, which is a cornucopia spilling forth its bounty, surrounded by the slogan, “Land of Plenty.”

And, yet, it’s not a pretentious building at all. Can buildings talk? If so, this one seems to say, “I belong to you people, so crowd in here and use me!”


Edwards is shown here during a question and answer session with the crowd on the ground floor of the courthouse.

We seem to be getting more Democratic than Republican candidates coming to Jefferson and Greene County, as my wife Carla Offenburger mentions in her new “My View from the Porch” column posted today. I think there are two reasons for that:

-- We’re convenient on the bus route between the Democratic strongholds in Polk County and Carroll County. Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York have not been here yet, but they’ve been all around us. Most of the other Democrats have made a stop here.

-- The Republican race in Iowa right now seems to have become a duel between former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Three others who apparently are strong contenders in other states – Arizona Senator John McCain, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson – are paying the price here for having skipped the Iowa GOP’s Straw Poll in Ames in August. All three are also too old, at least for me. Here in Greene County, I think Romney has a strong base, partly because his county chairperson is Guy Richardson, the popular chairperson of our county Board of Supervisors, who by the way, is not related biologically or politically to New Mexico’s Governor Richardson. Maybe Romney’s strength here is why Huckabee has not been to Greene County. Huckabee is a fine person, and a fun candidate with his grand sense of humor, but he has veered too far right for me in this campaign, and probably too far right to be electable.


Edwards is shown here in a quick chat with veteran Bill Kendall, of Jefferson, after the program, with Edwards staff member Matt McGrath listening to them.

Of all the candidates in both parties that I’ve heard, Mitt Romney is the most visionary among the Republicans and Bill Richardson is the most visionary among the Democrats.

One reason for that is both have spent more time talking about their own vision and about what their presidencies would be like. Romney has not tried to make himself out to be the second coming of President Ronald Reagan – and really, folks, are some of you, like me, starting to wonder back about whether Reagan was as good as everybody now says? Maybe I still haven’t recovered from the Farm Crisis. Meanwhile, Richardson is not squandering a lot of time piling on President George W. Bush.

Granted, Bush is a deserving and easy target. Reasonable citizens must worry about what will happen in the final year of the Bush presidency, and hope that there are true patriots within the administration who will make a stand for the nation’s real interests if some bullheaded order comes down to send troops to Iran or Cuba. General Alexander Haig, are you still stirring somewhere? The hope is that Bush can stay healthy and find peace with the idea of spending a comfortable last year in Washington, D.C. and at the ranch in Texas, enjoying life as a lame duck and our ceremonial leader. And please, oh Lord, spare us a Dick Cheney presidency.

Romney needs no more “help” from the Bush-Cheney team, I’ll tell you that. He probably needs to keep running away from the Republican leadership that we’ve known for the last eight years. I look around Greene County, and I see good lifelong Republicans like Jane Ecklund and Jerry Peckumn supporting Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively, and I know there’s deep trouble for the GOP.

For us Republicans, Romney may be our only hope of winning the general election. His business acumen, his international experience including his salvation of the Salt Lake City Olympics, his pro-life position, even if he came to it later than some, and the way he governed with consensus in heavily-Democratic Massachusetts – all those credentials highly recommend him. I also think Romney would give us an immigration and security system that would work and would not constantly embarrass us.

And I personally think his strong Mormon faith is another reason to support him. Devout Mormons, and he is one, live their faith a helluva lot better than most of the rest of us do. I think his faith has helped Romney maintain a strong moral compass, a deep concern for the poor, and a respect for other cultures and nations. As persecuted and put-down as Mormons so often have been and still are, they have empathy and compassion for people who are getting beat up in life.


Edwards listens as Ruby Stevens, of Jefferson, tells him something must be done about the soaring costs of higher education, now a huge problem for her grandchildren.

And the Democrats?

The polls all say it’s a three-way race – Clinton, Obama and Edwards – and it has become Clinton’s race to lose. She might, too.

As Obama and Edwards continue to turn up the heat on her, and as she seems not to handle that well, I keep hearing the words of Audubon grocer Mike Fassino when we were talking politics one day at Sam’s Barber Shop in that southwest Iowa town: “Don’t you just feel like you need a shower after all these years of Bushes and Clintons?”

Obama, at 46 years old, may be the fresh face that many Americans yearn for, a standard bearer for the next generation now stepping up for leadership duties.

Richardson, the most visionary one, so far is just an also-ran and may not have enough money to go beyond Iowa unless he makes a big jump into the top three by Caucus night. There is speculation he is positioning himself to be Clinton’s runningmate, or a Cabinet member in any new Democratic administration. But if none of that happens, life as a very popular governor in Santa Fe can’t be all bad.

Senators Joe Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut are too old for me. But thank you, Senator Biden, for the best discussion of the abortion issue I’ve heard by any candidate in either party this year. And thank you, Senator Dodd, for bringing singer Paul Simon to Iowa.

That leaves Senator Edwards, the most recent visitor to Greene County among the candidates, and thus the one you are seeing in our photographs here. I did find myself wondering why he spoke for less than 15 minutes and then took questions for another 20 minutes, instead of going a bit longer. But we learned from the news the next day that he had hurried on to Des Moines to be introduced on stage by singer John Mellencamp, who was doing a concert at Wells Fargo Arena. The news story said Edwards spent less than a minute up there with Mellencamp, then split.


Ankeny teacher Teresa Lawler, who lives in Jefferson, is shown here with Edwards on the right and one of his staff members, Matt McGrath, on the left. Behind them to the left, in the striped shirt, is Randal Archibold, national correspondent for the New York Times. Bending over and visiting with someone on the right is Iowa Senator Daryl Beall, of Fort Dodge, who introduced Edwards.

I’m getting the feeling that Edwards is the Lamar Alexander of the 2008 race. Before I continue, let me remind you how much I admire Alexander, the former two-term Republican governor of Tennessee and now a U.S. Senator from there.

In the 1996 presidential campaign, Alexander showed very well in Iowa before running out of money in New Hampshire. But that good start made him look like the natural front-runner among potential Republican candidates for the 2000 campaign. Who was even thinking back then in ’96 about a presidential candidacy by Texas Governor George W. Bush? But in 1999, a lot of Republicans were looking for a fresh face, and you know what we got. Instead of entering the Iowa Caucus campaign as a front-runner, my man Alexander had to start running for his life in Iowa, and he was flattened by the Bush steamroller at the Straw Poll. Oh, if we’d all known then what we know now!

Skip forward to the 2004 race. On the Democratic side, Edwards seemed to be a bright new face on the American political scene. His success in Iowa helped drive Governor Howard Dean of Vermont out of the race, but Edwards didn’t get strong enough early enough to topple Senator John Kerry of Masachusetts. Later when Kerry had become the Democratic nominee, he chose Edwards as his vice-presidential candidate – and that made Edwards a natural front-runner looking ahead to the 2008 race. But, in 2004, who was really thinking that Clinton and Obama would launch presidential campaigns for ’08?

It’s wound up making Edwards seem like “so yesterday,” as the young people say, even though he is only 54 years old. I think he is being forced to run a more negative campaign than he’d really like. He’s just brutal on Bush. And he has to try to persuade Democrats why they should pick him over Clinton and Obama, so he winds up having to be critical of his party’s two front runners all the time. Meanwhile, what he really needs to be convincing Democrats of is that this is his time. That’s a tough sell, you know?

As I wrote back in the summer of ’99, when I was putting my red-and-black checkered shirt into storage, getting involved in these Iowa Caucuses is a whole lot of fun, but they can break your heart, too.


You can reach the columnist by e-mail at chuck@Offenburger.com.