Political Baptism II

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Marty Ryan

1987 was a busy year for me in politics. Not only was I the Secretary-Treasurer of the UFCW Iowa Branch and the Secretary-Treasurer of the local union, UFCW Local 440, I was the Chair of the Crawford County Democratic Party. I had contact with most of the Democratic Party presidential candidates that year.

The Iowa Caucuses were scheduled to occur in February of 1988. In the late months of December 1987, I received a call from Denny Colvin, the President of the UFCW Iowa Branch. He told me that Louie DeFriese, President of UFCW Local 431 in Davenport wanted a meeting of the PAC. So, Denny scheduled a meeting of all Iowa Branch local representatives to meet at the union hall in Cedar Rapids, Denny’s local union. I thought it was odd that someone who is not the president would want to schedule a meeting, but then, I didn’t know who Louie DeFriese was. Before I left on a drive to Cedar Rapids, I was informed that Louie was a longtime union organizer/president and a huge donor to the Democratic Party and many of its candidates.

I arrived in Cedar Rapids and learned that the International Union’s political vice-president from Washington, DC, was also invited. The purpose of the meeting was to endorse Michael Dukakis. I said, “wait a minute! I have polled my membership and discovered that ‘undecided’ is the preferred choice of our membership, with Jesse Jackson coming in second.” I may have been naïve, but I could see that DeFriese was looking for some sort of position in the Dukakis White House. We didn’t have a considerable amount of money in the PAC, maybe a few thousand dollars, but I convinced a majority of the other representatives that our money could be better spent on statewide candidates like Dale Cochran for Secretary of Agriculture, Elaine Baxter for Secretary of State, and Jo Ann Zimmerman for Lieutenant Governor.

That summer I received several telephone calls from Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.) My daughter, Sara, answered the phone in our house – she was a teenager. Sara and Senator Simon became familiar with each other to the point of talking to each other on a first-name basis. Senator Simon impressed me so much when I was at the IFL Convention in Waterloo. I was walking down a hallway in the hotel, and Senator Simon was walking with an entourage toward me. He asked me how Sara was doing. It blew my mind.

I received a FedEx overnight letter from Governor Dukakis asking for my support. Congressperson Gephardt asked my daughter, Erin, to come stand by him during a speech at Cronk’s Café to emphasize the importance of children in the race, and U.S. Senator Joe Biden did the same. I had lunch with the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Cronk’s Café in Denison where he autographed his book for me. He was wearing a bulletproof vest.

The County Democrats had a fundraiser at Yellow Smoke Park, northeast of Denison, and seven candidates showed up: Dukakis, Simon, Jackson, Gephardt, Biden, Arizona Governor Babbitt, and U.S. Senator Al Gore. It was a warm summer day, and more than one candidate quietly told me that Gore was a fool to speak while wearing his wool jacket. The rest had gone as far as rolling up their sleeves and removing their ties. It was a great honor to individually introduce each candidate.

I was politically confirmed at that point in my life. I became the County Chair of the party because I did something no one else had done. At a central committee meeting, the current chair asked if anyone wanted to be in charge of the GOV (Get Out the Vote) Campaign. I volunteered. I didn’t know that previous campaign leaders took the computer printout and did nothing with it. I recruited several people to help me, phones were installed in the union office, and every person on that list was called. On election day, Democrats had won seats in every office of the county, from sheriff to auditor, to county attorney, and supervisor. Crawford County had one elected official that was Republican. We even had a Democratic state senator and representative. Unfortunately, our congressional representative was a Republican (Jim Ross Lightfoot), and so was our governor (Branstad). I was shocked when I was nominated to be the chair, but I also accepted the challenge to keep the county blue. Today, it is bright red! There is one Democrat serving as a county supervisor.

Governor Dukakis was third in the Iowa Caucuses with 22.3 percent. I doubt $2,000 was going to help him win the Iowa Caucuses. Congressperson Gephardt won the Iowa Caucuses that year with 31.1 percent, and U.S. Senator Simon (Ill.) came in second with 26.5 percent.

I wound up caucusing for and being a delegate for “undecided” because there were no other candidates in my caucus who were viable.

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Political Baptism

Posted on July 19, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Naivety has always been one of my strong traits. Almost forty years ago, I was elected as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Iowa Branch for the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW). I was also the recently elected Secretary-Treasurer of UFCW Local 440 in Denison, Iowa. I had very little idea of what my responsibilities, duties, or expectations were in either position. I soon found out.

The UFCW Iowa Branch was the Political Action Committee for UFCW unions in Iowa. At one time, there must have been close to twenty different locals in Iowa. Today, there are about eight.

I had the checkbook for the PAC, but that’s about it. I couldn’t write a check unless a meeting was held, and the member locals voted on it. I presumed that much. That didn’t stop State Senator Leonard Boswell from calling me and inviting me to breakfast at Cronk’s Café in Denison before Iowa’s Fifth Congressional District primary in 1986. He was a candidate for that seat in Congress and he had a primary opponent. It was a pleasure to meet the senator and his wife, Doty. As we were finishing breakfast, Leonard asked if I was the secretary-treasurer of the Iowa Branch. I told him I was. “And how much money do you have in the account?” He asked. I told him that we may have had close to two thousand dollars. “I want it.” That’s all he said. I looked up at him from my plate and said “NO!”

I didn’t like the way he ‘asked’ me for the money, but I had to be truthful. I told him that I didn’t think the Branch members were capable of handing money over to a candidate until the candidate was endorsed. I knew nothing about policy, but it seemed reasonable. Besides, I could not make that decision on my own. What was he thinking?

Boswell didn’t get endorsed by Labor, and that was my naivete getting in the way again. His primary opponent in that Congressional race was an attorney from Council Bluffs, Scott Hughes. During the primary season, Boswell was rarely, if at all, in Crawford County. And he certainly wasn’t talking to union members. On the other hand, Hughes was in Crawford County continuously and asked to speak at a union meeting.

On the morning of the Iowa Federation of Labor’s convention to endorse candidates, I met with UFCW delegates individually and asked each if they would cast a vote for “no endorsement” in the Fifth District. I had to get back home that Saturday afternoon and could not stay for the vote.

The following morning, Sunday, I was out mowing the yard when my wife came out and told me that Jim Wengert, Iowa Federation of Labor President, was on the phone. I told her to tell him that I would call back later. She came back out in less than a minute and told me that Jim said, “to shut that fucking mower off and get on the phone!” I complied.

I respected Jim more than any other Labor leader, past or present. But he was not going to get by with bullying me. He told me that I obviously didn’t understand the procedure of the endorsement process[1] and that I had screwed things up. I responded by telling him that I obviously did understand the process and it worked. There was no endorsement for candidates from the Fifth District by the Iowa Fed. Jim told me that Boswell had a Labor record and Hughes didn’t. I could see Jim’s face get red when I told him that Leonard’s Labor record was shitty.

Scott Hughes wound up being the Democratic candidate for the Fifth Congressional District of Iowa that year. He defeated Boswell in the June primary. In November, Hughes would get smeared by incumbent James Ross Lightfoot with fewer than 40 percent of votes cast. Boswell was saved from the embarrassment. I take credit for that.

When I began lobbying the Iowa Legislature in 1992, I met Senator Boswell in the Rotunda. I introduced myself to him and he said, “I know who you are. You jumped ship on me in 1986.” I attempted to discuss it with him, but he walked away.

My relationship with Leonard improved over the time he was a senator at the Iowa Capitol.

Boswell finally made it to Washington, DC, but he had to wait until Lightfoot wasn’t running as an incumbent. Lightfoot was popular in that district. Boswell won the district as Lightfoot took on Tom Vilsack in the governor’s race. Lightfoot’s terrible campaign against a qualified candidate was his last ticket out of politics.

Naivety showed up as a strong personality trait once more when I was an alternate delegate to the Polk County Democratic Special Convention a few years later. The Convention was called to select a candidate for the Democratic ticket to run for Polk County Supervisor. The Iowa Federation of Labor was supporting a person who was a small business owner. He was running against Representative Tom Baker. Tom Baker’s record with Labor over the years in the Iowa House of Representatives was impeccable. When I was asked to support the business owner, I said I was confused. Didn’t Baker have a Labor record as opposed to his opposition? I remained an alternate delegate.

[1] The endorsement process consisted of the IFL’s Executive Board meeting the night before the convention and making recommendations for the delegates to adopt.

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Sneak Peek

Posted on July 11, 2023 by Marty Ryan

There was no better rite of passage from childhood innocence to arrogant adolescence in the 1960s than to see how many kids you could stuff into the trunk of a car and sneak into the drive-in movies.

Bub had a car in which several guys got stuffed into his trunk about a half mile from the entrance to the Denison Drive-In Theater. Bub drove and I sat in the passenger seat. The trunk was so full of bodies that the bumper was bouncing off the ground as he drove up the dirt lane to the ticket booth. As Bub and I paid to enter the movie, I could tell that the owner suspected we were sneaking in a few. Just how many, she didn’t know.

The idiots in the trunk were fighting, farting, and fidgeting as we approached the gate. Bub and I tried to tell them to shut up, but I can’t say we were very successful. At last, we pulled into the parking space and opened the trunk. The movie was irrelevant. I doubt any of us watched it.

Once the movie was over, we jammed everyone into the front and back seats and drove into Denison. At the time, the Holiday convenience store had this brilliant idea to rent Honda S90 motorcycles. A Honda S90 was about the smallest motorbike ever made. It might be able to go 60 mph down a level stretch of highway if the wind was behind you. Holiday had two available Hondas for rent that evening.

Besides Bub, Honcho and Hot Dog were the only two of our group that had drivers’ licenses. In the mid-sixties, you didn’t need a motorcycle license to drive one. Quite frankly, we didn’t even have probationary drivers’ licenses back then. Any license worked. It may have cost an insurance fee of $25 to rent the Honda, and it was refunded if the bike came back in original form. There was also a nonrefundable fee for renting the bike for an hour. Gas was no problem; you could drive for hours on a quarter’s worth of leaded gas.

Honcho and Hot Dog rented the two bikes and took off up the hill with a bit of difficulty. If you have ever been to Denison, you would know that the streets north of Highway 30 were almost 45 degrees, and these little motorbikes struggled to make it to the top.

The rest of us waited, doing whatever bored teenagers do in a gas station parking lot on a warm summer night. While we were standing around Bub’s car, the drive-in owner and a sheriff’s deputy pulled into the Holiday lot. She got out of the car, mad as hell. She started yelling at us before the deputy calmed her down.

“I know you snuck a bunch into the movie in the trunk of the car. But I’m going to turn you in to this deputy unless you give me back the speaker you broke off as you left, and also, you are going to have to go back and clean up your mess!”

About that time, Honcho and Hot Dog came down the hill, saw what was going on, and turned around to go back up the hill. The rest of us got into Bub’s car and drove back out to the drive-in, followed by the deputy. We didn’t know about the speaker. We found it a few yards from where we had parked during the movie. I’m not even sure it was our group that tore it off. I couldn’t believe the mess we made. There must have been a garbage scow of litter within several feet of where we had parked during the movie. It was obvious to the owner that we spent a considerable amount of money on hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn, candy, drinks, etc. at the concession stand.

We cleaned up the mess, handed the speaker over to whomever, and headed back into town to the Holiday station. Honcho and Hot Dog were laughing their butts off. They thought it was funny. It wasn’t. Especially for me. I was in the front seat of the car and had to pay with my own money to get into the fleapit.

The lesson learned: Next time I should be in the trunk. But I never got the chance.

*************************

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The Cost of Doing Business

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Marty Ryan

“The punishment should fit the crime” is a cliché that was popular years ago, but seems to have disappeared from today’s conversations on justice.

Usually, a penalty is attached to the creation of a new law, but occasionally it’s either ignored or set so low that it becomes a gnat in the cost of doing business.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources fined an Eastern Iowa farmer $5,000 because he changed his swine Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) from pigs to a cattle feedlot operation without first obtaining a permit to do so. His excuse – he “didn’t know” he needed a new permit. The farmer agreed to pay the $5,000 penalty and to apply for a construction permit amendment. Be assured that the construction permit will be approved by the DNR. If the $5,000 fine had been a deterrent, the farmer would have ditched the plan to convert.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board is attempting to reel in thousands of dollars in fines levied against candidates that have gone unpaid. Candidates’ responses include: “I didn’t know” or “the process of filing” reports is “riddled with technical difficulties.” However, media reports seem not to follow up on whether candidates are ponying up their financial responsibilities, making the value of a potential deterrent nothing more than political capital.

Fareway Stores refuse to accept can and bottles for redemption “to minimize potential harm to the communities we serve.” Never mind that the law specifically requires the corporation to accept redeemable containers. But according to Iowa’s former Attorney General, there is no penalty for flouting the law on bottle and can redemption. Moreover, the company does not have to employ another person to maintain bottle and can redemption services, the purchase or rental of automatic recycling machines, nor provide space for redeemed recyclables. Each of those factors add up to a windfall for Fareway. As it is with many corporate decisions, the spin is in front, the reality is in the rear. Savings is the bottom line.

POET Bioprocessing, a bioethanol company based in South Dakota, has been fined the maximum administrative penalty of $10,000 by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources for ongoing violations involving failure to maintain equipment that has led to air pollution at its Iowa Falls plant, resulting in “repeatedly” emitting harmful chemicals. Recently, POET has reported $8 billion in annual revenue. The fine amounts to one-tenth of a one percent bite into the company’s profit. That’s comparable to a person earning $50,000 a year being fined two-tenths of one cent for a speeding violation. Is it any wonder why POET didn’t appeal the fine? It’s the cost of doing business.

Some penalties exist for the pure political posturing of elected officials. House File 595 increases the penalties for certain crimes involving fentanyl, sometimes doubling the prison term. Although fentanyl can be a dangerous street drug, increasing penalties to combat the manufacture, sale, and distribution of the drug is a politically practical solution that has extraordinarily little value as a deterrent. The real autocracy in the governor signing the bill is her statement where she “blamed the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border for the influx of fentanyl-laced pills.”

Anyone who believes fentanyl is being smuggled into the U.S. by individuals stashing pills into their pockets does not have a perception of reality. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is “smuggled through official border crossings, often in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens.” But Iowa’s governor wants you to believe that it is Hispanic immigrants that are to blame for the infusion of dangerous drugs in America, and especially Iowa.

Some laws fail to provide any sort of penalty. For instance, State Representative Bobby Kaufmann (R-Wilton) introduced a bill (House File 716) as Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee that requires a person participating in the political caucus to be physically present at the caucus. So, the question arises, what will the penalty be if the Iowa Democratic Party proceeds with its plan to retain “the mail-in provision in its new plan” for the 2024 caucuses? Since there is no penalty at the state level, the otherwise brilliant political tactic created by Rep. Kaufmann becomes moot.

It all comes down to this. Deterrence does not work in all cases. If money is involved, the deterrent value is equal to the cost of doing business. A decision to comply with a penalty is recommended by the legal department of a corporation discussing the potential results with the accounting department and submitting the exhortation to upper-level management to decide as to whether “the punishment fits the crime.”

Sort of makes you wonder if the slight penalties in statutes that affect the wealthy and corporations are soft on white collar crime.

*** This article first appeared in The Prairie Progressive‘s Summer edition ***

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Everyone’s Best Friend – Jim Malloy

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Marty Ryan

June 3rd is a significant date in my life. My parents, Francis Martin Ryan and Rhea Madonna Fritz were married in Breda, Iowa, on this date in 1941. Twelve years later on the same date, my brother Kevin (“Cub”) was born. I can remember June 3, 1957, when Cub sat on the bed and told our mother that he didn’t want a baby to be born on his birthday. He didn’t get his birthday wish; Joe was born that day.

On Saturday, June 3, 2023, my best friend from childhood, Jim Malloy, passed away at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown.

Jim Malloy, or Jocko as he was known to those close to him, was everyone’s best friend. He was the best friend to Honcho and Cub[1], both who have preceded him in death. He was also the best friend to Scotty, Fuzz, and his cousin Rufus[2], to his brothers Frankie, Bugs, and Goosy[3], and so many more people too numerous to continue. Smokey and Dusty Dalton[4] were also awfully close to Jocko.

Jim was two years and a day younger than me. However, we hung out a lot together and got into trouble gobs of times. I can’t write about most of them, but I’ll relate a few. There is no abacas that can calculate how many times we skipped school. I have written about it at least once in a past blog [see: Chuck’s House Party]. There were other times that weren’t as colorful. One sunny morning where you could see your breath, I met Jim and Honcho at the bridge crossing the King Creek by St. Ann’s Church. The Kuemper bus had just left without Jim and me on it. However, it was planned that way. We spent the entire day sitting in someone’s car. Farm kids drove cars to the church and parked across the street. At least one person would leave the car doors open, but none left the keys in the car. Every time a car came by, we would duck down. One of us would take a peek once we heard the vehicle drive by. As an adult, looking back on those days, I wonder what was accomplished by spending time in a car without heat, without lunch, without a bathroom, and lacking any connection to common sense. And we did it more than once.

Jocko and I were the first to dive into the new Vail Community Swimming Pool. We weren’t the first in, that honor went to a farmer who left the Legion Club one evening, drunk as could be, climbed the chain-link fence and “jumped” into the pool fully clothed. Jocko and I climbed the chain-link fence and dove into the pool, naked. That may have been one of the dumbest things we did, but it wasn’t the most dangerous – by far!

During a spring melt, Honcho, Jocko, and I were on the Boyer River. The river was straightened eras ago in an attempt to keep the town of Vail from flooding. As a result, the banks of the river were ninety degrees, straight up and down. Once on the ice, the only way to the top of the bank would be to find egress and exit at a few locations up and down the river. While on the ice, it began to break up. Laughing like it was the most fun we had ever had, and it probably was, we jumped from ice floe to ice floe to avoid falling into the river. We must have done that for over a quarter of a mile, which may not seem that far. But try it sometime; it took most of a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. It was exhausting, but in the end, only our shoes, socks, and the bottom of our blue jeans were wet.

One Sunday morning when we were adolescents, I had acquired a bottle of vodka. I have no recollection of how I got it. I purchased a couple bottles of orange Nehi soda to make screwdrivers. Jim and I found an abandoned car and drank our cocktails like we were a couple of sophisticated adults. That afternoon, several of our friends came to what we may have thought were our wakes as we laid on the cool cement underneath the railroad bridge along the King Creek. Both of us were suffering from the dry heaves. I rarely, if ever, consumed vodka after that.

Jim entered the Navy a few years after I was drafted into the Army. He received a medical discharge and struggled with severe mental health problems after that. He spent the last twenty years of his life in the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown prior to succumbing to cancer. I did my best to visit him once a month over the past decade.

Like his family who also visited him, our destination was the Perkins Restaurant on the south end of Marshalltown. “Two pancakes!” And with those two pancakes was coffee, two creams, a glass of water with ice (he added a few ice cubes to his creamed coffee), and lots of syrup. The only time we didn’t go to Perkins was the last time I went out with Jim. We went to a Dairy Queen to get malts. He ate his chocolate malt so fast I got an ice cream headache watching him.

My list of people and events to remember on June 3rd of every year gets longer. I miss everyone’s best friend, Jocko!

Related blogs:

The Green Latrine

Thank you, Sir

I Went to School – Sometimes

Midnight Savings Time

Chuck’s House Party

A Brief Tale

[1] Honcho is the late Jim Devold; Cub is my brother Kevin.

[2] Mike Scott is obviously Scotty, Fuzz is John Fasbender, and Rufus is Mike Malloy.

[3] Frankie is his older brother Joe; Bugs is Bob, and Goosy is short for the formal nickname Baby Magoosy, otherwise known as Jerry Malloy.

[4] Smokey was the Malloy’s dog; Dusty was Honcho’s dog.

 

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The fine art of negotiating

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Marty Ryan

The recent negotiations between the White House and Republicans in the House brought back some fond memories. During the 1980s, I participated in several union negotiations. Most of the corporate negotiators were mid to upper management employees. However, when negotiating with Farmland Foods, the lead negotiator with the company was a gentleman lawyer from Kansas City, Sewell Couch.

Mr. Couch liked a drink or two after work. His usual hangout was a bar in uptown Denison called The Lounge. Several times during the negotiation season (about every 3 years), I would drive by The Lounge to see if I could spot Sewell’s brown four-door Chevy Cavalier. If he parked anywhere nearby, I would stop in and find a seat next to him. If there wasn’t a seat next to him, I would stand behind him and order a beer. After a couple of sips and striking up a conversation with Sewell, a person on either side would move and offer me the chair next to Sewell. The first thing I did was count the individual single dollar bills, lined up in a layer so they could be easily counted. It didn’t take long to figure out that each bill represented a drink. If five one-dollar bills were neatly layered in front of him, I knew that Sewell had five drinks. If he bought me a beer, he would not add a bill to the pile, but if I bought him a drink, he would add a dollar bill. I learned later from a bartender that the dollar pile ended up as a tip.

I wouldn’t initiate shop talk until Sewell had at least three bills in front of him. He was careful, sober, or not. As we came to know each other, which was in the end very little, he began to call me a latrine lawyer. I accepted that title with pride. We never settled on an agreement with any issue facing the negotiating teams, but our conversations did lead to some persuasive discussions with our respective negotiating teams.

Sewell had a process for presenting the corporation’s proposals, one that I adopted because of its practicality. If the company had sixteen separate proposals, Sewell would present each member of his team, and each member of my team, with sixteen sheets of paper. Each sheet of paper had one explicit statement typed neatly on it. If that issue was taken off the table, everyone threw that sheet of paper away. I didn’t. I often wrote notes on the proposal and kept it for future use. I didn’t invent that procedure. I saw Sewell doing it, and he may have mentioned it at The Lounge during one of our early evening chats.

He told me once that the trunk of his car had a box with several different brief cases in it. As he went from one union workplace to the next, he just shuffled one brief case for another. It was another practice that I adopted for the convenience of being as organized as possible, keeping paperwork separate.

At the end of a negotiating session, everyone pulled out their calendars/planners to agree on a date for the next session. I was the only one without a calendar or planner. He mentioned that I must have a photographic mind because I didn’t need to check future dates to make sure a proposed meeting didn’t run into another. I told him he was correct. “You just wait, mister smartass,” he would say. “Someday you won’t even know what day you’re in.” I laughed. Now, I know what he meant. And I’m laughing again.

A union steward on light duty because of a work-related injury was assigned to clean up detail in the Carroll, Iowa, plant. He was emptying trash in the office when he saw a letter from a vice-president of the company. On top by the letterhead was a statement: “How to get rid of the union.” He turned it over to us and we called a meeting of the vice president, two plant managers and Sewell in Omaha. Each of the four was given a copy of the memorandum. Sewell said, “this is the first I’ve seen this.” When confronted with the memo, the vice-president said, “I’ll turn this over to my legal counsel.” Sewell promptly tossed the letter onto the table and said, “no, you won’t. Without these guys I don’t have a job.” It wasn’t long after that, the VP was fired.

One weekend I had plans to go to Kansas City with one of my co-workers in the packing plant. We intended to golf at a couple of courses in St. Joseph and Kansas City, and take in a Royals baseball game on Sunday before heading back. The night before the baseball game, we couldn’t decide where to eat. We had KC BBQ for two consecutive days and nights and wanted something different. I called Sewell. He recommend The Savoy. If you’re ever in Kansas City and want a high-end dinner, this is the place to go. I have never had a better steak, service, or ambiance. Sewell didn’t hesitate when he suggested it. We beat each other up during negotiations, but respect was paramount between the two of us.

When I graduated with a degree as a paralegal, he was the first person I called. “It’s official, Sewell. I now have a degree as a shithouse lawyer.” Neither of us got the last laugh. We laughed together.

 

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