Bloomfield lawmaker wins RI Award for verbal slip

Radio Iowa news director O.Kay Henderson gives an award each year to a lawmaker who’s uttered something strange, unusual or downright funny during the legislative session. This year is no exception. Last week Henderson pulled this year’s winner aside, and told him what past winners had said, then she broke the news to Senator Keith Kreiman (kry-man) that he’d won. Kreiman recently uttered the following phrase during a debate: “Iowans, in their impotent wisdom…” Kreiman gasped when she told him what he’d said. Henderson then asked if he’d watched one too many Levitra commercials. He laughed, and said “that may have been a factor.”Kreiman says “just statistically, you’re going to be saying something dumb at some point in time.” But he says “you probably hope that it’s not too often that you misspeak and say something as silly as that.” Kreiman, who’s from Bloomfield, says his “impotent” reference is “really embarrassing.” .The runner-up for this year’s award was Representative Dell Hansen of Vinton, who said: “Don’t look good, does it?” when confronted with news that he’d been fined for dumping a bathtub in a city compost pile for lawn clippings.