Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Mitt Romney’s strong – and surging – campaign for the Republican presidential nomination received a warm welcome from strategically important northwest Iowa on Saturday morning, drawing 130 people in Cherokee and roughly 500 people at the Clay County Fair.
Romney was scheduled to shake hands with voters at a booth on the fairgrounds. But as 25 supporters waited in the exhibition hall, a crowd jammed into a pavilion, expecting a few words from the former Massachusetts governor. Earlier in the day he held a question and answer session in Cherokee. He was also scheduled to appear at an ice cream social in Sanborn and a rally in LeMars.
Campaign officials insist that the impromptu remarks weren’t planned (and any journalist who covers politics understands that you never know when a speech might break out) but the spontaneous rally seems telling during a big week in politics in Iowa.
That’s because former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, characterized as a sleeping giant during the weeks he spent flirting with a run, limped into Iowa on Thursday to announce his presidential bid. Most political observers expected a big welcome for Thompson when he made his first official appearance in Iowa as a declared candidate.Reporters at the Des Moines event who have covered literally dozens of similar announcements by presidential candidates over the years expressed surprise – in print, on the web, and amongst one another – in the surprisingly low turnout of voters. The Thompson campaign says 500 people turned out but others estimated the crowd at 250 to 400.
The New York Sun’s Ryan Sager of the New York Sun, called the event “A whimper of a start.”
He also wrote: “The verdict from the grizzled and cynical Des Moines press corps is harsh: `pathetic’ was the word used by one vet. “Small” and “low energy” were the words used to describe the crowd. It’s hard to disagree with that general take. The campaign – as campaigns do – deliberately chose a small room to amplify the size of the crowd. But even the small room was a good deal less than full.” (Link: http://time-blog.com… )
Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen, considered by many to be the dean of Iowa political reporters, expressed disappointment in Thompson’s speech.
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