My own ‘Fair-Side Chat’ with you readers
Let’s talk about the Iowa State Fair, Gov. Kim Reynolds, presidential candidates Nikki Haley, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & others.
DES MOINES, Iowa – On Saturday, I got both the 2023 Iowa State Fair and the 2024 U.S. presidential election started up – or at least my own participation in both.
And as I did so, it occurred to me this is my 50th state fair, or close to that, and my 15th presidential election.
Let’s talk.
You probably have read or heard that Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is conducting “Fair-Side Chats” with Republicans who are running for president. They are launching their campaigns in this state, which will offer the first public preference test during the Iowa Political Caucuses early next year.
(These “Fair-Side Chats”? I probably should explain that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was famous for his “Fireside Chats” with the public on radio 80 and 90 years ago. So it’s an old idea, but still a good idea.)
A big crowd as Gov. Kim Reynolds begins her interview Saturday with Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley outside JR’s Southpork Ranch restaurant at the Iowa State Fair.
Another look at Reynolds and Haley at the fair.
I saw that the governor had a couple prominent candidates – Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – scheduled for chats at hours Saturday morning before the big heat was going to descend upon us, and I wanted to 1) hear what they had to say, and 2) see how the governor does as an interviewer.
Let me address the second point first: She’s pretty darned good. She could host a TV talk show, and there are a lot of people in this state wishing she would – full-time.
Saturday morning, there were probably 1,000 people, maybe more, nearly all of them happy Republicans, packed around Reynolds and her interview subjects. It was clearly her kind of crowd.
Two other things occurred to me as I watched.
The 64-year-old Reynolds, now in her seventh year as governor, is much more comfortable in public than earlier in her tenure. She seems more real. She laughs easily and naturally. She carries on a chat very well. She dances when the “walk-up music” plays. She jokes with her husband Kevin Reynolds, sitting a few rows back in the audience, introducing him and telling the crowd, “Give it up for the First Dude!”
The other thing I see: She has indeed become a very powerful political force in this state. And I think that’s surprised almost all of us.
I saw and listened to three presidential candidates Saturday – the Republicans Haley and DeSantis that the governor interviewed, and then Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spent 90 minutes Saturday night talking to 300 or more people who packed Smokey Row Coffee just northwest of downtown Des Moines. (I skipped former President Donald Trump, who was meandering the fairgrounds Saturday afternoon; I’ve heard enough from him.)
My quickest impressions:
--Nikki Haley, 51, the former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, impressed me most. The daughter of immigrants from India is the personification of the American dream. And she had me leaning her way after, early in her chat with Reynolds, said, “We need to have a new generational leader.” Period.
Nikki Haley as she leaves the interview with Gov. Reynolds.
--Ron DeSantis, 44, the current governor of Florida. He seems to me to be a lower-voltage Donald Trump.
--Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 69, who is challenging incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden. RFK Jr. is a brilliant lawyer, writer and environmentalist with a checkered personal history of addictions, tragedy in his marriages, his nutty campaigns against COVID vaccinations, and his allegations about conspiracies in healthcare. Saturday night, columnist Doug Burns, of Carroll in western Iowa, and I were pondering whether RFK Jr. is more like former marginal presidential candidates Ron Paul or Ross Perot. I was frankly shocked at the big crowd Kennedy drew at Smokey Row, and that I recognized only a couple of people there. There seemed to be a lot of political newcomers from across the ideological spectrum.
Of course, the political heritage that RFK Jr. has is huge, and surely heavy at times.
His father was a legendary American who was a U.S. Senator, U.S. Attorney General and candidate for the presidency who was assassinated during his 1968 campaign. His mother Ethel Kennedy, now 95, is still one of the country’s greatest advocates for human rights and justice. He is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., campaigning Saturday night at a packed Smokey Row Coffee.
Being able to see, hear and meet RFK Jr. on Saturday, when I had decided to start paying more attention to the 2024 presidential race, was in a weird way like completing a political circle for me.
“Your dad was one of my first political heroes,” I told RFK Jr. in a brief meeting Saturday night. “I hung out with his campaign a couple days in the spring of ’68. So how are you like him, and how are you different?”
He stepped back, ran his hand through his hair and said, “Interesting question.” He paused, then added, “Well, I hope there are similarities. There are probably some differences. And I hope I am living up to his ideals.”
I had hoped RFK Sr. would win that ’68 election, the first one in which I was eligible to vote. I helped the student newspaper team cover his speech at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where I was a junior. Then a week or so later, during my spring break vacation, I drove to hear him speak at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and wrote a column about that. It was a heady start for me in that political year.
So, I was crushed by his assassination in June, 1968, just as I’d been two months earlier when another of my heroes, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.
It was a rough time for all of us in America – and beyond.
A surprise to me Saturday night is that former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, 76, of Ohio, is now the campaign manager for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Here he is shown speaking for Kennedy. Kucinich ran unsuccessfully for president himself in 2004 and 2008, and campaigned in Iowa then.
When I realized on Saturday that my 15th presidential election is now coming up, I took time to do my own voting scoreboard.
While I was raised a Democrat and have registered as one for most of my adult life, I did have 13 years as a registered Republican (1999-2012), and one recent election as a registered Libertarian (to support my county attorney, who is a Libertarian).
In presidential general elections since 1968, I’ve voted 10 times for the Democratic candidate, four times for the Republican candidate. Six times my candidate won, eight times my candidate lost.
What’s your own presidential election record?
I do love Iowa having such a special place in the U.S. electoral process.
I love our Iowa Caucuses.
I love the great thrills politics can give us.
And I accept that they can break our hearts, too.
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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.
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Hi, Chuck, I've long read your stuff in the DMR, now here, first-time commentator. For background's sake, I've lived in Iowa 40-plus years and never went to the Iowa State Fair, which I am sure makes me an inadequate Iowan. I'm also an ex-journo who ended up covering portions of four Iowa Caucuses.
I also want to say I've admired your work and am a big supporter of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. I think organizations like this might be the only way we can keep local journalism going.
All that being said, I had to think at least a day before I decided to comment on this. I think the best thing I can do is go point by point through the article.
1. I'm going to be honest, I've never rated Reynolds as a governor. I think we could have a staff member from ALEC sitting in Terrace Hill in her place and no one would know the difference. I think she has done much to harm this state through her policies on education, culture war ridiculousness, and so much else. I could care less how more "real" she is in public.
2. As for your assessment on the candidates:
- It makes no difference how much of a "new generation" Haley is, she has said she would support pardoning Trump. Whatever she believes in fact, she will go along with whatever the Republican crowd wants and thus is not fit for purpose. At some point we need to say whether we believe in democracy and the rule of law or not, and she apparently doesn't.
- I think you summed up Ron well.
- You didn't go as easy as I thought you did at first with RFK Jr., but you could have also added his anti-Semitic behavior and abusive behavior toward women as well. Conspiracy theorists used to be just odd thought experimentalists until guys like RFK Jr. found out you could make money off it. I never grew up with RFK, but I was a fan too and it would have been better if he won in '68. The son is nothing like the father.
3. This might also make me a bad Iowan, but I am not a fan of the Iowa Caucuses. They are undemocratic and difficult to participate in compared to primaries. I also don't think any state (especially our state in recent years) has any right to have such power over presidential politics. The day it ends will be the day politicians in this state can better focus on issues important to Iowans.
Keep up the good work.
I am a Democrat for three reasons. Viet Nam. The Republicans and Democrats lied about the war and policy. But it was Democrats that broke the logjam and lead the parade to the exit of this immoral war that killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and 55,000 Americans. Civil Rights. The Republicans resisted and still resist voting rights, public accommodation and equal opportunity. Unions. I have been in 5 unions. Unions built the middle class. From auto workers to the steel mills to the classroom decent wages and working conditions were won by the labor movement.
And as we go on in the 21st Century it is Democrats the lead on gay rights, women's rights and sane foreign policy.