Opinion : Out of Bounds

Being the political animal that I am, I am naturally following all of the activity as the Democrats position themselves for the Iowa Caucuses early next year. There’s a lot of intrigue and daily ebbs and flows of how the candidates line-up against each other with the voters; brings back some great memories. And it makes me wonder something…where the heck is everybody?

In the summer of 2007, when Angie and I owned the Vinton Eagle — despite what you may have been led to believe, that did actually happen — a six-month long parade started through Vinton that at times made you think we were a political empire. It began with a visit to the Vinton Library by then Senator (later disgraced) John Edwards and that set off a blur of campaign visits that at first seemed unreal, then seemed exciting, then moved to commonplace before settling at “is it over yet?”

From Memorial Day through the caucuses, every one of the candidates vying for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President made at least one stop in two and several of them two. And being a newspaper publisher at the time, I got access not everyone got. I had coffee downtown with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and Subway with the late Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. I helped Cate Edwards scrounge up a sled and show the Secret Service how to get to the sledding hill. I even took pizza over the kids at Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in downtown Vinton when they were on their third day of Ramen.

It got to point where I was getting a call a day from one campaign or another. At one point was interviewed by an XM station after we’d been the first Iowa paper to make an endorsement. I had a miserable cough and cold and when I heard a recording later I sounded like I belonged in a horror movie. There were so many moments but these were among my favorites:

— When then-Senator Clinton came for her first visit — a rally in the Tilford Elementary Gym — I was waiting for a one-on-one interview with her in Kim Isbell’s classroom. At one point a Secret Service agent came in the room, checked my credentials, then started to leave the room before noticing there was a Native-American teepee set up across the room. The agent looked at it, then looked at me and sighed. He moved back toward the teepee and reached for the flap that covered the opening. As he did, I could see his hand reaching into his inside jacket pocket. He pulled the flap open, glanced inside then closed it, withdrawing his hand as he headed out of the room. I suddenly had an image of him speaking into his cufflink saying “Teepee is clear!”

— Senator Dodd left the Kirkwood Center after his rally and lunch with me and went to get into a silver van to go to his next stop. Problem was that it wasn’t his campaign van; it belonged to someone in the Kirkwood building and set off the car alarm.

— During a visit at Windsor Manor, then-Senator Joe Biden (after a question about health care in which I used Sage’s autism diagnosis as an example) came back to where I was to talk to me for a good 15 minutes about Sage and family and things like that. At one point one his campaign team came over to tell him they needed to go. He turned to them and said, “We’re talking family here! Later!”

— I got to interview soon-to-be President Obama on his campaign bus in the high school parking lot one night while the guys from CNN were impatiently milling around waiting to get him on the air.

— Elisabeth Edwards spent a half-hour talking to me about the autism research center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina which really seemed to honk off the electronic and national media since I’d just asked her one question about it.

There are a lot of others but those are the ones that stand out the most. The sad thing was that while the Democrats seemed to live here, the Republicans seemed to ignore Vinton. Sam Brownback — then a senator from Kansas — came in the summer. Hardly anyone went to the rally, but I got to ride to Cedar Rapids on his campaign bus. We didn’t really talk about politics, mostly about Kansas events since Angie and I had just moved back from there a few years earlier. And Mike Huckabee was here in November and I found him a lot more interesting then than I do now. But that was about it for the Republicans, which was really too bad.

The Iowa Caucuses give us this amazing opportunity to participate in what is called “retail politics”, those moments when the candidates show up in our parades, our schools, our businesses. They stop for coffee and shop in our local stores; they talk to US. We see too many sound bites and analysis on the news; Iowans — Vintonians — want that personal touch; if you want our vote, talk to us over breakfast at the Koffee Haus or lunch at LaReyna. Come visit the middle school for our Veteran’s Day assembly. Show up for the Homecoming Parade and run the ball into the stadium with the cross-country team. Be a real person.

There are still months to go before the caucuses and a lot of things can happen, but I hope the more of the candidates will make a trip to town. We have a lot to brag about, a lot of questions to ask and just want to get to know you!