Charles Bruner was a state legislator from 1978 through 1990 and ran his campaigns as an advocate for children and families, turning his Senate district blue after two decades of Republican representation. More resources on the Kamala Harris care agenda for children are available on the Harris for Kids website.

The image above is a refrigerator magnet I created for this election. I served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990, which were “kinder and gentler” times.

Molly Ivins has said that “if the state legislature didn’t have its share of fools, it wouldn’t be a truly representative body.” Yet she also said that democracy works because there are enough decent people elected who take the time to listen and learn and act diligently to try to do what is in the public interest. Moreover, they earn the respect of their less-diligent peers and influence them. They may not always be right, but they are right-thinking and open enough to prevail.

One of the most heartening things I have heard throughout this election season is Tim Walz’s interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. It’s worth watching in full.

Charles Bruner was a state legislator from 1978 through 1990 and ran his campaigns as an advocate for children and families, turning his Senate district blue after two decades of Republican representation. He is a volunteer for VoteKids2024 which is hosting a special webinar August 15 on this caregiving agenda. A blurb about the webinar is below. You can register for this webinar at this link.

Iowa Democrats and the policies they propose do a good job of addressing the concerns of almost all the families on the list above, but too often Democrats are silent in speaking to the concerns of that first group: working class, Christian, “traditional” husband and wife families worried their way of life is no longer valued, and government is leaving them behind.

Republicans do the opposite. In her response to President Joe Biden’s 2022 State of the Union Address, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds emphasized that Republicans believe that “parents matter” and are leading a “pro-family revolution.” She, Moms for Liberty, the FAMiLY Leader, and Iowa Republicans in the state legislature and Congress have persistently promoted these families, calling for policies to focus on them and protect them from government overreach.

Polling from Parents Together clearly shows that Democrats have lost ground with parent voters. Since 2020, parents’ views have shifted; overall, parent voters now see Republicans as more aligned with parents and their rights relative to Democrats.

Charles Bruner served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990 and was founding director of the Child and Family Policy Center from 1989 through 2016. For the last six years, he headed a Health Equity and Young Children initiative focusing on primary child health care for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The movie came first (the live debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump), but I would also urge people to read the book—that is, the full CNN debate transcript.

This may do little to change the immediate impact of the presidential debate on polling and public impressions of the two candidates’ fitness, but it does tell a different story of what they said, and what they would do in office.

There was even a question about child care, as well as one about inflation, which spoke to the financial needs of American households struggling to balance their bread-winning and caregiving roles for themselves and their members.

Charles Bruner served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990 and was founding director of the Child and Family Policy Center from 1989 through 2016. For the last six years, he headed a Health Equity and Young Children initiative focusing on primary child health care for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

A child tax credit, paid family leave, child care and preschool, and home and community services—President Joe Biden mentioned all of those in his plan for a caregiving, families, and children’s agenda, which he presented in an April 9 speech.

Melinda French Gates mentioned those policies in her guest commentary for CNN on June 20, explaining why she is supporting Biden and other women should do so, as well.

According to a recent KFF poll of American women, those issues could be key to educating and energizing women to be difference makers in the 2024 presidential election.

Charles Bruner served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990 and was founding director of the Child and Family Policy Center from 1989 through 2016. For the last six years, he headed a Health Equity and Young Children initiative focusing on primary child health care for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Democrats prioritize investing in children but don’t stress the importance of parents in raising the next generation. Republicans do the opposite.

The electorate wants both.

Until we make children’s issues part of our political dialogue, we will not do either.

Charles Bruner served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990 and was founding director of the Child and Family Policy Center from 1989 through 2016. For the last six years, he headed a Health Equity and Young Children initiative focusing on primary child health care for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is working with other child policy advocacy leaders and experts in the field to raise these issues in Congressional midterm election campaigns. Find more information about their fund: www.votekids2022.com.

The Iowa Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus adopted a resolution that calls for Democrats and the state party to “reclaim” the label “pro-family.”

That resolution (enclosed in full below) is in direct response to Governor Kim Reynolds’ rhetoric implying that only the Republican Party believes “parents matter” and that Republicans are leading a “pro-family” agenda.

Charles Bruner: Taxes, inflation, and essential services … there’s an obvious solution for Democrats.

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress have done much to support essential workers and provide economic help to working and retired Americans during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several of those actions were designed to become permanent: improvements to the child tax credit, investments in child care, and expansion of home and community based services and the direct care workforce.

Established in the American Rescue Plan Act through a process known as reconciliation (which requires only a simple majority vote and therefore could be enacted without Republican support), these policies have proved both popular and effective.

Charles Bruner: Democrats need to recognize rural Iowans’ frustration with the political system and start finding common ground.

Broadly generalizing, rural Iowans are good folk. They work hard and play by the rules, care about their neighbors, and seek to leave a future where their children can succeed and prosper. If an African American family moves in next door, they welcome them with fresh-based bread or cookies. They regard a child with Down syndrome reaching the age of majority as a part of the community and look out to see that youth is supported by and included in community life. They are entrepreneurs and tinker to be good stewards in preserving the land and community, in the context of a corporate agricultural economy.

Those qualities may not distinguish them greatly from city folk, but rural Iowans frequently have much more sense of and hands-on involvement in community life.

They also are older, whiter, and less likely to have college degrees than their urban counterparts. In 2008 and 2012, nearly half of Iowans outside large metro areas voted for Barack Obama for president. But a third of those who had voted for Obama switched away from the Democratic candidate for president in 2016. Donald Trump received about two-thirds of the rural Iowa vote in 2020.

Democrats have been wringing their hands over this shift – and the change in the county coffee shop conversations that must have occurred in small-town and rural Iowa.

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for policies that support children and strengthen families. -promoted by Laura Belin

About this essay

I studied political science at the beginning of the 1970s at one of the elitist of universities, Stanford University. My graduate school class, if not all radicals, shared a serious critique of American government and the military-industrial complex, the Vietnam war, the academic privilege and not freedom that embodied the Stanford administration, and the failure for society to listen to youth and follow-through on the vision expressed in the decidedly liberal document, The Port Huron Statement.

I returned to Iowa in 1975 feeling alienated and full of angst at my better understanding of the darker side of American politics. But I had no clue how to contribute to changing it. Fortunately, I found a group of 20-somethings in Iowa – largely through the Community Action Research Group (Iowa’s Public Interest Research Group) – doing that work in the policy field on the environment. They connected me to a job at the Iowa Welfare Association funded by the Compensatory Education and Training Act, the federal jobs program that provided nonprofits with funding to create jobs. It gave me space to learn and grow, as it did for others in my group.

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for policies that support children and strengthen families. -promoted by Laura Belin

Relational campaigning is back. Out of necessity, campaigns have had to adapt to the strictures of social distancing. 2020 has not been a year for mass gatherings, nor for packed party headquarters of volunteers to disperse leaflets door-to-door or operate phone banks. Instead, much of the volunteer work has relied upon people in their own homes and with their computers and cell phones doing what they can.

The plus side of this has been an increased emphasis upon “relational campaigning,” asking volunteers to reach out to the people they know best about issues that matter to them.

Charles Bruner: Joe Biden’s plan to improve the caregiving and education workforce is “every bit as ambitious as the New Deal at the time of the depression or the New Frontier/War on Poverty/Great Society efforts of the 1960s.” -promoted by Laura Belin

It may or may not receive the media attention or the public dialogue it deserves during the campaign, but presidential candidate Joe Biden’s “Plan for Mobilizing American Talent and Heart to Create a 21st Century Caregiving and Education Workforce” represents the type of bold vision that has the potential to reshape and fundamentally improve our society.

It opens with a recognition of the critical role caregivers and helpers play in our society:

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for policies that support children and strengthen families. -promoted by Laura Belin

Possibly the most important five minutes of the eight Democratic presidential debates happened when candidates answered the last question–on child poverty–in the recent New Hampshire debate.

It was not that the candidates differed in their approaches, but they all saw this as a critical issue and provided important reflections on what is at the heart of a fundamental challenge to American prosperity — the future of our diverse next generation.

First Focus has done a valuable service by putting the clip on You Tube.

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for policies that support children and strengthen families. He has endorsed Elizabeth Warren for president. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowans like to see presidential candidates in the flesh, but sometimes their surrogates offer perspectives that deserve as much attention.

In early January, Heather McGhee spoke on behalf of Elizabeth Warren to a small group of Iowans at Smokey Row in Des Moines. Her message, however, was one that deserves to be considered and heeded by Democrats and progressives more generally.

Charles Bruner has been involved with the Children’s Policy Coalition over the last three decades and led in the design of both the 2015 and 2019 Iowa Voter Survey conducted by Selzer & Co. -promoted by Laura Belin

For the first time in our country’s history, children face the prospect of growing up less healthy, living shorter lives, and being less prepared to compete and lead in a world economy.

This is not a matter of a few children. One-fifth of America’s kids are struggling and already face sober futures; another one-third definitely are not doing as well as they could to prepare themselves to be adults. These statistics hold even if we are able to address global climate change and its adverse impacts.

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for “policies that support children and strengthen families.” He posted this reflection on Facebook following the passing of his friend, a former legislator and founder of the State Public Policy Group. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Thanks to Facebook friends Angie Slater, Mark Lambert, Jodi Tomlonovic, Tom Jochum, Christopher Slater, and I am sure others for their reflections on Tom Slater, who died on St. Patrick’s Day after a life much longer and enriching than 72 calendar years.

To add to these reflections, I first met and talked with Tom over thirty-five years ago, in 1981. He was a state senator and I was a lowly state representative, trying to figure out whether I should run for re-election to the House or go to, in Don Avenson’s view, the moribund and dreaded Senate. I contacted Senator Slater, the closest thing to a Young Turk the Senate had, to seek advice. Tom took me out to lunch – at one of the greasiest of greasy spoons I thought could exist, which made Iowa State Fair food seem health-giving.