The campaigning will soon end and the Iowa Caucuses will begin to help determine the direction of the democratic presidentail race. Two of the campaigns have apparently struck an alliance for tonight. Supporters of North Carolina Senator John Edwards and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich are being encouraged to support the other candidate if their guy doesn’t reach that all-important 15-percent threshhold on the “first ballot” in tonight’s Caucuses. A candidate who’s under that 15 percent margin within each caucus is declared “unviable” and his supporters must align themselves with another candidate, or remain undecided. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry canceled his events today — he lost his voice after barnstorming the state for the past two weeks. During an interview with Radio Iowa, Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean issued a challenge to the supporters he’s lined up. Dean says for “two years we have built a movement to take back our party from Washington politicians and take back our country and from George Bush. We’ve worked hard. We have hundreds of thousands of people around America who are supporting us. We’ve raised more money than any other democrat. Now, they’ve got to prove on the ground that they can deliver.” Dean says the turning point in the race came last spring when America went to war in Iraq. Dean says he opposed the war when rivals John Kerry and Dick Gephardt and John Edwards all supported it and it gave him an opportunity to speak out Dean says Democrats won’t beat George Bush with a politician from Washington because they “say the right things, but they all poll for it first to make sure it’s o.k. to say it.” The candidate with the most riding on tonight’s outcome is Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt.During an interview with Radio Iowa, Gephardt said he’s excited about what’s going to happen tonight. Gephardt says he’s got a “great army” of 2,000 out-of-state and 3,000 Iowa volunteers who’re working to get supporters to the Caucuses. The one-time leader of Democrats in the U.S. House repeatedly says he has the best chance of any of the candidates to beat George Bush. Gephardt says he “feels a surge out here” and predicts — as he has repeatedly — that he’ll win tonight.Gephardt says he “always knew it would be a tight competitive race.” He says Iowans are tough judges, and were never going to hand the victory to anybody. Gephardt refuses to talk about what might happen to him if he loses tonight.Gephardt says his “assumption is that we’re going to win.” Iowa Democrats will gather in 1,993 precinct meetings tonight, and 13,940 delegates are up for grabs. The measure of who wins tonight will be which candidate lines up the most delegates.
Churches help El Salvador coffee growers
A group of central Iowa churches are doing their part to help some poor farmers get a fair market price. This effort spans the continent, as Meredith Bruns says “Our Sister Parish” works with coffee farmers in El Salvador. About five years ago the Presbyterian church in Central Iowa started a relationship with the community group and named Robert Cook, a Des Moines area minister, as their missionary. The Iowan went to Central America and helped develop the idea of selling coffee directly to consumers in Iowa, instead of going through big import companies. She says this is about “skipping the middleman” since coffee farmers get about ten cents a pound, even for coffee sold in gourmet shops for ten dollars a pound. The group pays farmers a price set at an international fair-trade price, a dollar-25 a pound. This is an Iowa project, begun by a group of Presbyterian churches hoping to help a sister parish in Central Iowa. It’s spread to Methodist and Catholic churches in central Iowa, and as word spreads, Bruns says contacts have come from other Midwestern states and as far away as New York and California. People can buy the direct-from-El-Salvador coffee at Friedrichs stores in Des Moines, place an order at “oursisterparishcoffee@yahoo-dot-com, or have their own church order in bulk and sell to church members who want to organize their own charitable effort.
Car registration set to go on-line
You will soon be able to go on-line to renew your car registration. Lana Taylor is President of the Iowa County Treasurers Association, which is running a pilot project in four counties that allows people to renew on-line. She says it’s going quite well, but they want to give it a few more months, as it just came on-line January 2nd. Taylor says if the pilot goes well, it won’t be that long before they roll it out everywhere.She says they’re looking at the end of March or early April to have “getyourtags.com” on-line to all 99 Iowa counties. Taylor is also the treasurer in Poweshiek County, and she says she’s heard a lot of interest in getting the service up and running. She says she’s had people come to her county who’ve heard about the pilot program. She says those who run trucking companies, or who have big fleets of vehicles, can save lots of cost and time by renewing their car registrations on-line. Taylor says other on-line services, like the property-tax payment system, have proven very successful and she thinks on-line car registration will follow suit.
Weather will be cold for Caucuses
The tens of thousands of Iowans heading out to take part in tonight’s caucuses will need to don their warmest winter coats, hats, gloves and scarves. National Weather Service meteorologist Brad Small says it’ll be very cold at 6:30 this evening as the key political meetings are scheduled to get underway statewide. Temperatures should be in the single digits to lower teens with wind chills in the single-digits and close to zero. Small says the weather service is -not- predicting snow tonight.No precipitation is expected, it’ll just be cloudy and cold.
Des Moines woman charged after house fire
Des Moines police are looking for a local woman on child endangerment charges after a weekend house fire. Two Des Moines brothers awoke early Saturday morning about 4, smelling smoke, and discovered it wasn’t their house on fire, but the one next door. They couldn’t rouse anyone and broke in, found five sleeping children and herded them all to safety, well before the fire department was called. Police were called too. The mother of the children, 25-year-old Delores McGregory wasn’t home when the blaze broke out. No adult was, according to police. They’ve issued a warrant for McGregory’s arrest on five counts of child endangerment. She’s already wanted on a previous warrant for the same charge.
G-O-P faithful out in Iowa too
Republican super stars like Mary Matalin and Rudy Guilianni are coming into the state today, aiming to steal some of the thunder from the Democrats. Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. Gillespie says Iowa’s a “very important battleground state” in November’s election. Bush narrowly lost Iowa — by two votes per precinct — in 2000. Some Iowa Republicans had hoped the G-O-P and the Bush campaign would be more active in Iowa the past few months as the Democratic presidential candidates canvassed the state, criticizing the President. Gillespie says the democrats “pumped a lot of poison in the well” but he says Republicans and the President will get their message out before the November election. President Bush will step into the spotlight tomorrow night when he delivers the State of the Union message in Washington. Some Democrats have suggested Bush’s trying to take the limelight away from the Democrat who wins Iowa’s Caucuses tonight.Gillespie says the “State of the Union” speech is always held in the third week of January, and the conspiracy theories are “off the mark.”
Many places still open despite MLK Holiday
Today’s a federal holiday, but a lot of stores are open, as are many libraries and even some public schools. While some holidays like the long midwinter break are common to virtually all schools, Lisa Bartusek, spokeswoman for the Iowa Association of School Boards, says local schools are mostly free to decide their vacation schedules. Setting the school’s calendar is a local decision, she says, and there are few rules about holidays and the length of the calendar, as it’s left to local discretion what will best serve communities and their students. The minimum school year is 180 days of instruction, though they can get waivers to go a little longer or hold fewer days. Bartusek says state law tells schools not to open until after Labor Day, but it’s easy and almost routine to get waivers that let them start class earlier than that — and when many started in August and a hot spell hit, last year some parents complained. Schools are looking at the needs of teachers and students in a different way, she says, giving teachers time to put together better lessons, looking at results from tests and assessments. The demands to produce “results” are higher, she says, than they’ve ever been.
