Cedar County

Tonight I went to the Cedar County Central Committee meeting in Tipton. Before the meeting I met with the other two 2nd District Central Committee members, Trudy Caviness and Emily Lofgren. We looked online for a restaurant and decided on Subway.One of the other choices was Rhino's Grill in this age of cell phone cameras, and YouTube — I did not think it wise for the three of us to be seen coming out of Rhinos ;-)

I think I have been to three Cedar County meetings and at every one they talked about pie — some day I have to come to Cedar County for pie. Their recent pie auction fundraiser was a record breaker and they have a pretty substantial war chest for the general election.

It was a very encouraging. In the room we had a county supervisor, two supervisor candidates, the sheriff, the auditor, the county attorney and the recorder. Cedar County has done a great job of electing Republicans. The turnout was good and they were going about the business of electing Republicans. They were getting volunteers for the Cedar County Fair and preparing for their get-out-the-vote effort.

Kudos to the Cedar County GOP Central Committee under the leadership of Chair, Velma Huebner, with Co-Chairs Sally Miller and Allen Kroeger, Secretary Fritz Drexler and Treasurer Dan Boddicker. You guys are getting the job done!

Mariannette Miller-Meeks

I was wrong, I thought that the 2nd CD race would go to convention. But Mariannette Miller-Meeks pulled of a convincing win with over 50% of the vote. This was a tough race for me for two reasons. First, I know all of the candidates and second, I promised not to make a public endorsement.

I would like to congratulate Mariannette on a great victory and offer her my support in the campaign to come. I would also like to thank Christopher, Steve and Rob for participating in the race.

After M-cubed won people have been asking for my opinion on the race. I think that Jan Mickelson of WHO Radio summed it up best this morning when he said:

She is really good on free market and medical funding issues ... She takes a free market approach ... She is a limited government specialist ... She advocates budget cuts ... She was against TARP and all the associated nonsense in the last few months ... She has taken a strong stand on illegal immigration control ... She is pro-family and can define family the way you are supposed to be able to ... She is pretty decent on the life issue ...

So, on the issues I'd consider that a strong win — and beside that, I like her!

I agree with Jan 100%.

Memorial Day

My mother is basically a pacifist. As a youngster, she lived on the island of Guam. She was 4 years old on December 8th 1941 (Guam is on the other side of the International dateline) when the Japanese invaded. She was practicing for a Christmas program in church wearing angel wings when her parents grabbed her and took her home. My grandfather was a part of the Guam guard, he about 160 other marines, sailors and Guam guardsmen were no match for the 5500 Japanese invaders.

My mother spent the next 4 years living under Japanese occupation. Understandably she learned to hate war. But along with her feelings about war, she taught us a profound respect and gratitude for those American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who liberated Guam. My younger brother was an Army officer and my oldest son is on active duty in the US Navy. My second son returned to Afghanistan to finish his tour this week, he is currently serving with the storied 82nd Airborne — hooah! 

My mother taught me to hate war, and for good reason. But she also taught me that freedom is not free and to honor those who have make the ultimate sacrifice to win and preserve that freedom.

The State Central Committee

Yesterday, the 1st and 4th districts held their conventions. As I suggested before, the SCC has a different look. Of the fifteen seats (not counting our national committee people) only 5 incumbents return. If you count me that makes 6. Here is your new state central committee: (incumbents are marked with an asterisk (*))

1st District

• Chelle Adkins
• Jerimiah Johnson
• *John Ortega

2nd District

• Trudy Caviness
• *David Chung
• Emily Lofgren

3rd District

• *Wes Enos
• David Fischer
• *Gopal Krishna

4th District

• Drew Ivers
• *Bill Schickel
• AJ Spiker

5th District

• Tim Moran
• *Monte Shaw
• Craig Williams

In addition to these district representatives, the voting members include Steve Scheffler and Kim Lehman, our national committee representatives. Current treasurer Matt Randall did not seek re-election so the SCC will need to elect a treasurer soon.

Chung for SCC Robocalls

In may last post I noted that there were robocalls for State Central Committee candidates in the 3rd and 5th districts. I joked that:

If I run again for SCC in 2012, perhaps I will buy TV time ;-)

This afternoon I stopped by a Renee Schulte fundraiser between work and my kids' concert. I enjoyed some of Tim Palmer's awesome barbecue and got to see some old friends. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that someone had been doing robocalls in the 2nd District promoting my candidacy for SCC. I have not heard a recording nor seen a transcript but I am told the caller only promoted me.

I honestly have no idea who made the calls. Interestingly, Lisa Smith and I have always worked closely together and whoever did the call selected me and not her. I have been having trouble even speculating who might be behind this.

At the convention and when I wrote my blog post my friends just assumed that I was responsible for the call so no one mentioned it to me — I really had no idea.

Curiouser and curiouser ...

SCC Robocalls??? Really?

I just read the Iowa Republican's coverage of the 3rfd District Convention. Craig wrote that all the delegates received robocalls on Friday supporting the three incumbent SCC members, Gopal Krishna, Wes Enos and Eldon Pals. Krishna and Pals won re-election and Pals did not.

If I run again for SCC in 2012, perhaps I will buy TV time ;-)

Second District GOP Convention

I have to admit that I love GOP conventions. I get to see many old friends and make new ones. The conventions really are like a big family reunion. Of course every family has its own little eccentricities. Our 2nd District GOP family is in the middle of a hotly contested congressional primary, add in the governors race and their is bound to be tension.

State Representative Tom Sands chaired the convention. I thought he did a good job. Usually the convention chair is a ceremonial position and involves little controversy. Tom definitely got a workout as chair Saturday.

This year there were more speakers than usual.Now, this is a good problem to have because I cannot remember the last time we have had a full slate of statewide candidates. From a logistical point of view it was challenging, we had our 4 congressional candidates, 3 gubernatorial candidates, Senator Grassley, Auditor Vaudt and Ag Secretary Northey. We also had Brenna Findley for Attorney General, two Secretary of State candidates and two candidates for state treasurer. Add RPI Chairman Matt Strawn and you can see the logistical problem. The speeches took a couple of hours. But again I want to stress that this is a good thing. It means that we have challengers up and down the ticket, but it does make the convention planning difficult.

After the speakers we had nine candidates run for three State Central Committee positions. Since winning required a majority, it took 8 ballots and a couple of hours to finally get all three elected. In 2008 we went from 7pm to 1am trying to elect our 3 delegates and 3 alternates to the National GOP Convention so this is probably not a surprise. If my memory is correct, in 2008 we were unable to come up with a mechanism to drop the low vote getters from the list so it took several ballots to get our delegates selected. I chaired the  Rules Committee and we adopted a rule that called for the candidate with the least votes to be dropped after the second and all subsequent rounds of voting. There were a couple of attempts to suspend the rules to either accept a plurality instead of a majority of drop the bottom two candidates rather than the bottom one — neither attempt to speed up the process succeeded.

I think it was about 3pm when we finally had our 3 SCC members. At this time, delegates became aware that we only had the facility until 5pm. As Representative Sands was preparing to hand the convention over to the Platform Committee chair, Don Racheter, a motion was made to suspend the rules and accept the proposed platform as submitted by the Platform Committee. This motion passed by a 2/3 majority and then things went crazy.

The motion essentially ended any possibility of discussing the platform. There were over 20 proposed amendments that had received enough signatures and had been accepted by the Platform Committee. Several delegates were upset and a number of points of order and other forms of objection were raised but to no avail. The motion was in order and passed appropriately.

There are three primary items of business at our district conventions: 1) Giving our district and state-wide candidates an opportunity to address district activists 2) to elect SCC members and committee persons for state convention committees 3) to finalize a platform.

It is my view that different people come for different reasons but for some reason it is always the platform that gets short shrift. I hope in the future we can come up with a way to do all three of these things in the time we have for our convention. I am open to suggestions.

The State Central Committee

I want to start this post by thanking the Republicans of the Second Congressional District for once again placing their faith in me and electing me to the State Central Committee. For the last 11 years, I have had a job that required me to travel over 100 days a year. Therefore it was difficult for me to get out to events and meetings within the district. Since I have recently taken a normal job I will be able to get out and interact with Republicans across the district on a more regular basis.

The State Central Committee will have a decidedly different face this year. In the 2nd District I was elected along with Emily Lofgren of Muscatine and Trudy Caviness of Ottumwa. Emily is a sophomore at Drake University and Trudy is a long-time county chair from Wapello County. I am looking forward to working with both of them.

Across the state, in the 5th District the only incumbent running for SCC was my friend Monte Shaw. Monte was re-elected along with newcomers Tim Moran and Craig Williams. In the 3rd District Wes Enos and Gopal Krishna were re-elected and David Fischer joins the SCC for his first term.

So, if you count me as an incumbent, of nine seats elected yesterday, incumbents won four. I will be watching closely as the 1st and 4th districts hold their conventions this coming Saturday.

District Convention — yes I am running

It is District Convention time. This Saturday, April 24th,  Republicans in Iowa's 2nd, 3rd and 5th congressional districts will hold their conventions. Next Saturday, May 1st, the 1st and 4th districts will hold their conventions.

Of course I live in Linn County in the 2nd CD. This promises to be a convention season unlike any in recent memory. Two things will make our convention especially interesting: 1) it sounds as if we may have as many as 12 candidates for state central committee 2) it seems likely to me that the convention will reconvene the night before the state convention in Des Moines in order to select a congressional candidate.

As far as the State Central Committee goes this will be an interesting election not just in the 2nd District. It sounds as if several current members have decided not to run. However the elections turn out statewide there will be a massive shakeup on the committee. In the second district it sound as if there may be as many as 12 people running for three seats. Jason Hutcheson is not running for re-election but the other two incumbents, Lisa Smith of Wapello County and Joni Scotter of Linn County are running for re-election. There may be as many as 4 or 5 running fro Linn County and two from Wapello County.

I have recently been receiving phone calls and e-mails asking about my intentions for this convention. I will put the speculation to rest — I will be running for State Central Committee. 

The other thing that will affect this convention is the congressional race. With four candidates, it seems likely that no candidate will receive the 35% of the primary vote necessary to win the nomination outright. As chairman of the rules committee, I suggested that the committee draft rules not just for this Saturday but for the possibility of a nominating convention. One of the interesting twists is that the Iowa Code does not require the convention to nominate any of the declared candidates — it really is a free-for-all.

Since the delegates may ultimately select the nominee, there has been unprecedented interested in this convention. For the first time in my memory, Linn County has filled it's delegation. We have never actually had as many paid delegates as we were allotted.

Free Speech

According to CNN, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond Virginia has ordered Albert Snyder, the father of Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, a marine killed in Iraq, to pay the legal fees of the people who protested at his son's funeral. The protesters in this case were members of Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church.

Phelps' church is known primarily for its repeated anti-gay protests. Phelps' motto is "God hates Fags." He blames everything from 9/11 to soldiers' deaths from IEDs on homosexuality in America. Phelps' church protested at the marine's funeral. The marine's father sued the church alleging privacy invasion, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy and won an initial judgment of over $10,000,000. The Fourth Circuit overturned the award and ordered the father to pay Westboro's legal fees for $16,000. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will decide the case.

First, I have to preface my further remarks by saying that I am the father of two active duty US servicemen. One is currently serving in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne and the other is in a job that may also place him in harms way. So it is possible that I could someday be that father. Second, I must also say that as a Christian, a military father and an American, I find the actions of Phelps and his so-called church reprehensible.

But as an American, a patriot and a believer in the First Amendment I believe the court made the right ruling. I also hope that the United States Supreme Court upholds the Fourth Circuit.

The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

As much as I hate the way Phelps and his church have perverted the gospel of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as much as I hate the way they have attacked the Snyder family in their time of grief, as much as I hate the way they have dis-honored the memory of a young American hero — I believe that their actions are protected under the First Amendment.

In its opinion, the court said:

The protest was confined to a public area under supervision and regulation of local law enforcement and did not disrupt the church service. Although reasonable people may disagree about the appropriateness of the Phelps' protest, this conduct simply does not satisfy the heavy burden required for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress under Maryland law

Among the five freedoms of the First Amendment, is the freedom of speech. It is precisely this sort of speech, controversial, offensive, and uncomfortable speech that requires protection. My sons are fighting, and Lance Corporal Snyder died to protect our freedoms — including Phelps' freedom to spew his vitriol.

As much as I think this lawsuit is ill-advised, I understand that the Snyder family has incurred and will continue to incur significant legal expenses, If the judgment stands they will also have to pay the $16,000 in Phelps' legal fees. Therefore, I encourage my readers to join me in donating to the Al Snyder Fund to assist with legal fees.

I believe in the First Amendment, but I also believe in supporting the families of our fallen heroes. Semper fi!