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At least three Cedar Rapids-area Republican candidates for state office have been snubbed by GOP leadership in an opportunity to share the stage with Arizona Sen. John McCain Thursday, according to one of the candidates.
Republican Iowa House candidate Kathy Potts (Photo: peopleforpotts.com)
Kathy Potts, Republican candidate in Iowa House District 33, said she has been excluded from the event. She said Emma Nemecek, Republican candidate in House District 29, and Joe Childers, who is running in Senate District 18, had also been told that they would not get to appear with McCain.
“Christopher [Rants] and Kraig [Paulsen] are in charge of the event tomorrow with McCain,” said Potts. “They do not want me on stage. They said that I and Emma Nemecek and Joe Childers are losers and that they only want Renee [Schulte] and Nick [Wagner] on stage.”
Rants, a Republican from Sioux City, is House Minority Leader. Paulsen, a Republican state representative from Hiawatha, is Minority Whip. Schulte and Wagner are both Republican candidates for Iowa House.
Nemecek confirmed to the Iowa Independent that her party planned to deny her a prominent position at the event, but said she was able to convince the campaign to give her a seat on stage. Rants, Childers, and Paulsen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Potts said she contacted Gentry Collins, the McCain campaign’s Midwest regional director, to ask to participate in Thursday’s rally.
“Gentry e-mailed me late last night that he was trying to get me on the stage at the event,” she said. “He told me that Kraig and Chris didn’t want him to put me there. I wrote him back and said that I thought McCain was running his own campaign.”
From Collins’ e-mail, which Potts read over the phone:
“The initial schedule was set according to local event protocol, where the national campaign refers to the legislative leadership on candidates whose campaigns will be most positively impacted by the limited speaking slots available.”
According to Potts, while she would have liked to speak at the event, she mostly just wanted to be recognized on stage with McCain and Palin as a local Republican candidate. “I did fuss enough that I was told that maybe they would put some bleachers behind the stage,” she said, but the campaign did not make any guarantees.
“It comes down to the fact that those two boys — Christopher Rants and Kraig Paulsen — don’t like me at all,” she said. “There was even an article in the [Cedar Rapids] Gazette where Rants said that I didn’t have a chance [of winning] and that I wasn’t popular and that I haven’t lived here long enough.”
Potts said the rift between herself and Republican leaders began when she was elected as chairwoman of the Linn County GOP. After looking over the party’s books and getting unexpected calls about the party’s unpaid bills, she ultimately filed an ethics complaint alleging misconduct.
“Sure, they praise McCain and Palin for being mavericks,” Potts said. “But look what happens when Kathy Potts in Linn County speaks up and tells leadership that there’s corruption in Iowa. Then all they can say is, ‘Sit down. Shut up. We need unity.’”
“This is all just unbelievable,” she said. “The Democrats don’t have to fight us — the Republicans themselves are doing a good enough job.”
When Nemecek heard that she, too, would be excluded from the rally, she said that she lobbied the campaign to obtain a slot.
“I called up the folks in charge and made a case for myself and my campaign,” Nemecek told Iowa Independent by phone Wednesday night. “I told them that leaving me out would be wrong because my race is equally important as all the other races.”
Nemecek, who is seeking a vacated seat in the legislature, knows she is being outspent by her Democratic opponent Nate Willems. She also knows that when she pursued the seat in 2006 against then incumbent Ro Foege, she garnered 40 percent of the vote.
“I am working hard — really working hard,” Nemecek said. “I’ve been working with my supporters to publicize and build participation for this event. Given how hard I’m working both on my race and on this event, I should be there. That was my argument, and I plan to attend and be on stage.”
Nemececk said she does not know whether she will have a chance to address the crowd.
Update:
Iowa Senate candidate Joe Childers sent the following message via e-mail at 1:33 p.m. on Thursday:
“Please correct your article I was invited to and did speak at the MCain [sic] rally.”
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