Plant Dirt, Harvest Mud

Let me get this straight- a Senatorial candidate held a private strategy meeting where he and his supporters were venomous, angry, and full of malice toward his opponent. It’s a shame that hatred would be what motivates you to run for office, but big deal, we’d expect a candidate to be full of venom and malice toward their opponent, I suppose.

Someone secretly tape-recorded this meeting. That’s not cool. Remember all the trouble tape recorders got Richard Nixon into? Oh, and lemme see if I remember this right… some how or other a transcript of this tape recording was got into the hands of this candidate’s opponent (the incumbent Senator). Wow.

On top of all this, someone from the incumbent’s camp leaked a copy of this transcript to the press. Big surprise there. Were they hoping that the public would be outraged and offended by the things that were said at the meeting? It seems like instead focus is on how unscrupulous it was to leak the transcript and how suspicious it is that the incumbent received a copy to begin with.

At first it was thought that the person who did the recording was an invited guest, later it was suggested that the recorder was a long time friend of the incumbent.

Sound like a bad episode of NBC’s "The West Wing?" Don’t I wish. This is what’s happening right here in Iowa, between candidate Greg Ganske and Senator Tom Harkin.

Now at the risk of losing the respect of many of you I’ll admit something to you….My name is Ted Mallory, and I’m a registered Democrat. I didn’t have to say it as if I were at a twelve step meeting before George Bush Sr. made it into a dirty word back in his run for President in 1988, you know, "the L-Word."

The reason I tell you this is to lend credence to this next confession- I’ve never been a big Harkin fan. I can’t put my finger on it, there’s just something about him that doesn’t set right. Not a good reason, my fellow Democrats will probably say, but what can I say? I try to weigh information heavier than intuition when I vote, but it’s still there, and it nags at my gut.

Mind you, I in no way see Ganske as a hero or a victim in this scenario. Politics, like war, is Hell, I guess. And, like in war, both combatants are equally covered in the mud, blood, and filth. Only for one of the first times since I first cast a ballot, I don’t have a side to root for.

The gubernatorial race isn’t much better. My Republican friends had pretty well convinced me that Governor Vilsack was too urban, too influenced by partisan politics on the National level, and bad for education. Then their candidate came on TV with negative campaign commercials. What can I say about them? They’re gross. They grossly oversimplify the issues. Gross, gross, gross.

Okay, you’re right, it’s not fair to make fun of a guys name. But my point is this; We know who you’re against, but what are you for? I would have thought that of any state in the Union, Iowa would be a place where political candidates would be practical, plain spoken and positive. I consider what we’re going through a leadership drought. The field isn’t producing a decent crop of leaders. All we have are reporters dishing up dirt and candidates slinging mud.

I don’t know anything about Democratic Congressional candidate Paul Shomshor. What I know about Republican candidate Steve King is that some Republicans I respect thought of him as their second or third choice in their Primaries. It’s hard to jump ship when the gruel’s just as tepid in the other crew’s galley.

Back in June I interviewed Crawford County Democratic Party Chairman Les Lewis for a story about the Primary elections. He had high praise for our neighbor Clarence Hoffman, he said Clarence was "more of a rural representative than a Republican representative."

There’s what we need, bi-partisanship, post-partisanship, and concern for and focus on your constituents, rather than on winning at all costs. Stop the attacks and dirty tricks. Stop the negative ads. Start telling us what you plan on doing for us.