Please get rid of Steve King

Tuesday can make all the difference
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, November 2, 2006 – Page 3

This upcoming Tuesday is going to be interesting, to say the least, for political news junkies like me. I may have to take my radio along when I take my daughter to dance class so that I can listen as the returns come in.

The fact that there are three candidates, two independents and a Democrat running against Fifth District Republican Congressman Steve King suggests that people are tired of being represented by him. Unfortunately, it also probably means that the traditional conservatives, moderates and what few progressives there are here will have their votes split three ways, so the radical neoconservatives will be able to get King reelected.

One of the independents is Cheryl Broderson, a nurse at Crawford County Memorial Hospital in Denison.

She believes that representatives need to be accountable to their constituents, not a political party. She’s for reducing the deficit (that kind of thing used to be conservative) but also for health care reform (something often thought of as traditionally liberal idea). She’s also concerned about alternative fuels and national security (who isn’t?).

Another independent is Roy Nielsen, an Orange City small businessman and had been a Republican.

Nielsen told the Sioux City Journal recently that he kept waiting for some other Republican to challenge Steve King for their party’s nomination. When no one did, he decided to step up and run himself as an independent. I guess I don’t understand why Nielsen didn’t just oppose King for the Republican nomination himself in the first place, but whatever, he’s running now.
Nielsen, like a lot of moderates and traditional conservatives, feel like King, like the Bush Administration have abandoned the needs of families and the middle class.

Like Brodersen, he feels that the Republicans currently in power have been fiscally irresponsible, turning a surplus into a massive deficit. He also thinks that current tax policies favor the “investor class.”

He also thinks that the situation in Iraq has gotten out of hand and while he supports securing our Southern border, he fears that Steve King’s plan for hundreds of miles of electrified fencing may replace the statue of Liberty in many peoples minds as a symbol of a less welcoming America.

Finally there’s the Democratic alternative, Joyce Schulte. I suspect that people write her off as unviable just because she ran against King before and lost. Of course, the fact that she doesn’t have access to massive amounts of money from Republican PACs like King probably doesn’t help her either.

Schulte is the Director of the Student Support Services program at Southwestern Community College in Creston, Iowa. She’s been a farmer and educator and the widowed mother of two.
Schulte is concerned about the message having King as our congressman sends. Verbally demeaning people, discriminating against minority groups, and reinterpreting history are just some of the ways she thinks he’s been irresponsible.

Her priorities would include reauthorizing the Farm Bill, reforming immigration, addressing the Mideast , including Iraq, and health care as well.

She’d like to have “Iowa Produced” marked on food products grown here. She also supports the development of alternative fuels including wind and ethanol.

Like Nielsen, Schulte believes that the tax system needs to be reformed to favor families and the working and middle classes instead of corporations and the extremely wealthy.
The oldest of the four candidates, she’d like to see a repeal of the Medicare bill that charges more prescription drug programs for seniors. She’d rather have the government negotiate with drug manufacturers to achieve acceptable prices for medication.

She also believes that health insurance plans should regard mental illness and chemical dependence on an equal footing with all other physical conditions.
She supports small and medium sized businesses and family farmers.

Schulte would like to increase Pell grants and other forms of financial aid and student assistance to make the dream of higher education a reality. She also thinks that it would be important to try to find funding for Head Start, Special Education, after school programs, and teacher recruitment and training programs.

I said it before and at the risk of offending anyone, I’ll say it again. We really have an opportunity to make a difference by replacing Steve King. I consider him a loose cannon on the sinking ship of state.

With the vote split four ways, maybe his seat is safe, but at least we can send him a clear message that we’ve had enough of his radical, ultra right-wing bombastic rancor. If he returns to Washington with a small enough plurality, maybe it will be a wake-up call for him to start paying attention to the real needs of real Iowans, not just wedge issues and National Republican rhetoric.