Crawford County Caucus Information

Little Charter Oak Iowa, population 530, has over 144 registered Democrats only two of whom attended last night’s party caucus in the Denison High School cafeteria.

County Chairman Larry Peterson welcomed participants from all over Crawford County. Democrats watched the live message from President Barrack Obama and a recorded one from former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack. Vilsack has been touring all 39 counties in Iowa’s new 4th Congressional District in hopes of unseating Tea Party demagogue Steve King. Vilsack emphasized Iowa values like civility, responsibility, and respect.

Crawford County Dems also had the chance to meet Denison native Kasey Friedrichsen, who is running for Iowa House District 18 as well as County Sheriff Sheriff Jim Steinkuhler and County Auditor Terri Martins.

Attendees were given the opportunity to submit proposals for the state party platform, volunteer to help support campaigns, and serve as delegates to conventions.

Petersen invited Central Committee members to a meeting at his home 7:00 PM, Tuesday January 10.

The Crawford County Democratic Party Convention will be held Saturday, March 10.

The District 4 Convention will be April 28 and the State Democratic Convention is planned for June 16.

New Year, New Opportunity

Recently a couple of Monona County Democrats invited me to contribute to the blog http://www.idp4.org/blog, twitter feed https://twitter.com/#!/IDP4th and facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/IDP4th for the Democratic Party of Iowa's new 4th District . I hardly feel qualified (I've only lived here for 10 years), but progressives are so rare in this side of the state that I agreed to help. I've felt strongly that the few of us here in Crawford County really need to be better about networking and communicating.

I'll add these links to the right-hand menu of this blog. I can't believe how much busier I've been this year since I started teaching 8th grade Civics, so my contributions may be few and far between, but as I told the IDP4th webmaster, at least I'm more likely to keep my posts below 700 words than I was back when I had a column in the Mapleton PRESS.

If you're of our rare breed ("Blue" in a "Red" district), I hope you'll caucus next week so that we can replace Congressman Steve King with former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack and State House (Dist.18) Representative Jason Schultz with someone like Kasey Friedrichsen. 

Who knows, I may even send up a political cartoon once in a while.