An 'inside baseball' look at Iowa GOP Politics
I understand that I can be controversial. But usually when I am, I know it and I am prepared for the backlash and criticism that follows. Turns out I am not as prescient as I thought. Because during the State Convention Rules Committee meeting, I proposed a rule that was passed by the committee that…
I have written two blog posts about how the Republican Party of Iowa want require candidates to fill out a declaration of candidacy form before running to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention or serve on the GOP State Central Committee. In the blog post about RNC delegates, I pointed out that not…
Readers of my blog (all 10 of you) will know that I am a frequent critic of RPI. However, in our recent district conventions, we saw RPI in action in a good way! Originally, we in the districts were told that RPI had planned on having electronic voting at the State convention but not at…
tl:dr, Our betters at RPI continue to take control from the grassroots – the 2nd district fought back and won! Last Saturday, Republicans met across the state in their newly formed districts for District Conventions. I live in Cedar Rapids so I am part of the new 2nd Congressional District comprising much of northeast Iowa….
Convention season is one of my favorite times of the year. I love the opportunity to meet with Republicans at our County, District and State Conventions. I have been involved in planning and running our conventions for about 30 years. I used to serve on platform committees. The last 12 or so years I have…
I know, I know! With WWIII starting in the Sudetenland Ukraine, this may be an inopportune moment to bring up an Article V Convention (Convention of the States). On the other hand, the Iowa Legislature is still in session and two COS bills have survived the first funnel. This is a picture of state rep…
Full disclosure: I have never watched Fox News. Actually I don’t watch much television news at all. I read news sites online and listen to news on the radio. Yes, I do read CNN.com. My issue with CNN has always been that on their front page they mix news and analysis/opinion and sometimes it is…
The Constitution and Bylaws of the Republican Party of Iowa are a mess. Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised 11th Edition suggests that organization do away with separate constitutions and bylaws and adopt one set of rules called Bylaws. The bylaws should be difficult to amend requiring a super-majority for modification. The current structure makes…
In the last few years there has been quite a bit of discussion about transgender girls/women competing in girl’s/women’s sports. [[NB by this I mean someone who was born male (biological sex) who identifies as female (by gender)]]. A star Iowa track athlete, Ainsley Ernzen, recently wrote a guest column in the Des Moines Register…
The Iowa legislature is currently considering SF2250, a bill that would allow employees, contract employees and volunteers to keep guns in their locked vehicles in their employer’s parking lots. Under current Iowa law an employer can prevent employees from storing guns in their cars on company property. Therefore many Iowans, in order to comply with…