Howard Butler, who writes Fanning Mill, has a nice piece that brings some tone to the voice of Iowa..
“My perspective of what is going on politically in Iowa….I see
Howard Dean bumper stickers pasted over Bill Bradley stickers on
Volvos. Gephardt seems to be on the local news more than Dean or Kerry.
None of them seem to rise above the din of the war and Bush’s
gut-the-government agenda. I suspect things will really start up after
the New Years’.
“Some information about Iowa…It is the Hawkeye State, not the Buckeye State. It is the oldest state
(agewise) in the nation. Its population has declined in the last two
censuses. Young people are educated here and then leave for cities like
Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kansas City. RAGBRAI
is the biggest party and most culturally significant event of the year.
Iowa voted for Gore in the last election, but not by much. There are
twice as many hogs in the state as there are people. Iowa is a large
consumer of migrant (illegal and otherwise) labor.
“Ames and Iowa City are really the only bastions of liberalism in Iowa.
This is because they are heavy education and government towns. Ames is
more conservative than Iowa City (all the hippies live there 
. In my
opinion, Iowa is a really conservative state, especially compared to
Minnesota where I came from, which now went all Republican for some
reason.”
