Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

This post updates a piece I wrote in 2020.

At this moment the race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is close; you could argue it is the closest in U.S. history. To say it is unique is to state the obvious. This is the first presidential campaign in the modern era where both candidates have held the office of president. It is unique in another way too: many Americans did not want this race.

As the data below shows, incumbents typically do poorly in the first debate. If that trend holds this year, it bodes ill for Biden—but this time may be very different.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on Jan. 10, 2023—but heavily edited and with a different title (“Early remembrances of Alexander Clark”). And with the page-one teaser above. Further explanation follows the end of the column.

A celebrated 20th century humorist drew much of his material from memories of growing up in Muscatine. Ellis Parker Butler (1869-1937) struck gold in 1906 with “Pigs Is Pigs,” then kept American laughing for three decades.

He married his hometown sweetheart, went to New York, and there succeeded as a publisher and banker. Always a part-time author, he wrote at least 32 books and more than 2,000 stories and essays.

Muscatine Journal and News-Tribune (September 14, 1937): “The pen, with which he brought smiles to brighten the faces of countless readers from coast to coast, will write no more. The clean humor he created however, remains. He scattered sunshine while he lived.”

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

The people called “leaders of the free world” and some 4,500 of their citizens gathered on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, on June 6 to mark the 80^th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. D-Day is often considered the beginning of the end of World War II.

The annual rites of memories, mourning, and hope had a special poignancy this year. It was clear this would be the last time many of the few hundred remaining D-Day veterans would visit their place of nightmares, where they scrambled to establish a beachhead to bring the battle home to Hitler.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Attorney General Brenna Bird continues to ignore her critics, doubling down on actions that have drawn criticism. Unfortunately for Iowans, she’s picked a bad model to imitate.

This shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy had worked so well for Donald Trump that Bird seems to figure, “Why not give it a try?”

And she’ll likely continue that style, despite the unanimous verdict(s) against Trump in the one trial he has not managed to delay.

Former President Donald Trump marked Memorial Day on May 27 by ranting on his social media platform about “the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great County,” the “Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York,” and “the N.Y. State Wacko Judge,” among others.

In contrast, Iowa politicians from both parties embraced the spirit of the holiday originally known as Decoration Day by honoring Americans who died during military service. Governor Kim Reynolds attended Memorial Day events at the Iowa Gold Star Museum in Johnston and Iowa Veterans Cemetery in Adel.

In that spirit, Bleeding Heartland remembers the Iowans killed in military conflicts, from before statehood to the current decade.

Writing under the handle “Bronxiniowa,” Ira Lacher, who actually hails from the Bronx, New York, is a longtime journalism, marketing, and public relations professional.

Imagine, for a moment, you have fallen on hard times. You’ve lost your job, you’re being evicted or foreclosed, and you have nowhere to go. However, your parents, who built a rich, prosperous life out of their meager immigrant beginnings, invite you to stay with them, for as long as you like. And you breathe a welcome sigh of relief—you’re not going to have to sleep on the street!

But little by little, you discover some excruciating and unsettling facts about the people who are beckoning you home.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Where does your primary loyalty lie: as a citizen of America, or as a citizen of Iowa?

Probably seems like a meaningless question. But around the nation, more and more states these days are enacting laws in opposition to those of the federal government, placing the loyalty question front and center. And a growing number of U.S. residents are declaring a preference to honor their state laws above those of the United States.

ORIGINS OF THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE

In terms of settled law, there’s no real dispute: federal law outranks state law. The U.S. Constitution leaves no doubt. Article VI, Clause 2 (the “Supremacy Clause”), reads as follows:

Rev. Cathy F. Young of Waterloo is a retired pastor in the Presbyterian Church. The following is an abbreviated version of a sermon about Christian Nationalism.

My father, who served as a Naval officer in the South Pacific, shared fascinating World War II stories with me. With ensuing history classes I became troubled by America’s slow response to Hitler’s atrocities in Europe and incredulous that Christians in Germany blindly followed their deranged dictator.

While pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, I took a course titled Christianity and the Holocaust. I learned that Hitler’s strategy to build loyalty and support within German churches was masterful. He encouraged kids in his German youth organizations to get their families to attend Sunday worship with them. Church attendance skyrocketed; pastors were thrilled. Eventually, Germany’s government rule and religion became one.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

Governor Kim Reynolds came to Beit Shalom, the home of the Quad Cities Jewish community, on May 15 to sign House File 2545, a bill containing controversial new social studies curriculum requirements.

Why Beit Shalom? Because the bill requires Iowa schools to teach Holocaust education, following the model of Illinois, which has required it for several years.

Though members of the Quad Cities Jewish community are divided about the policies of the governor and the Republican-controlled legislature, we do stand united on the issue of Holocaust education in our schools. According to FBI statistics for the past several years, more than 50 percent of religion-based acts of hate in the U.S. targeted the Jewish community, more than all the other faith groups put together. Since the atrocities of the Hamas attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, the number of antisemitic attacks in the U.S. has more than tripled.

Ed Wasserman is a 52-year resident of Iowa and a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Iowa. The views expressed in his piece are his own and do not in any way reflect those of his employer.

Observers often puzzle over the chummy connection between former President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. What links these two leaders to one another? Largely ignored among several possibilities is their common political philosophy.

In a column for the New York Times in February, Carlos Lozada sharply criticized Donald Trump’s ostensible lack of political philosophy: “The difficulty with Trumpism is Trump himself, who renders any coherent ism impossible.” His assessment echoes the widespread belief that Trump is utterly unschooled in geopolitical history or philosophy. Although few would disagree with Trump’s scholarly naïveté, I fear his political acumen may have been seriously underestimated.

John Clayton grew up on a farm in Poweshiek County, which he now farms. During his childhood, going to Meskwaki Pow-Wows in neighboring Tama County was the highlight of each summer. He is a 2024 candidate for Poweshiek County supervisor.

Minnesota officially adopted a new state flag on May 11, replacing the previous design, which had long been criticized for its depiction of a Native American on horseback with a spear and a white pioneer farming with a gun. The flag’s imagery was viewed by many as a symbol of Indigenous defeat and displacement, which was considered offensive by the state’s Dakota and Ojibwe tribes.

Poweshiek County in Iowa uses a caricature of a Native American as its icon. The Poweshiek County Board of Supervisors acknowledged in a public open meeting held on May 6 that the county’s icon caricature isn’t of Chief Poweshiek. 

Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who worked in hospital management for 41 years, predominantly in the state of Iowa.

The recently concluded legislative session has shown again that the state of Iowa is firmly entrenched in red state antipathy. 

Republican elected officials continued to casually pursue and advance legislation that strips away at Iowa’s once proud history of engagement, moderation, and inclusion.

The last few legislative sessions have produced attacks on public education, threatened a women’s right to make her own health care decisions, eroded the civil rights of certain citizens, advanced book bans and now—recklessly—introduced guns into Iowa schools.

Jon Stewart discusses Donald Trump’s Gettysburg remarks on The Daily Show

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Seldom do late-night TV hosts scoop the giants of the mainstream news media. But that seems to be the case regarding news coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign rally on Saturday, April 13, in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, near Gettysburg.

Here’s how Mark Sumner of the Daily Kos website put it: “The only thing more amazing than Trump’s Gettysburg address may be how PBS, The Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post all managed to cover Trump’s rally without mentioning one word of this historic statement…Had President Joe Biden said anything half so irrational, every one of those same outlets would have dedicated their full front pages to a discussion of Biden’s mental fitness.”

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on Dec. 27, 2023. Above: Historian Paul Finkelman at Susan Clark Junior High in February 2023.

What will it take to get Muscatine’s Alexander Clark House declared a National Historic Landmark?

From Guidelines for Preparing National Historic Landmark Nominations (2023): “Nationally significant properties embody stories that have exceptional value to the nation as a whole. … The history embodied in NHLs may not always be familiar, but their significance to the nation means that they are no less deserving of recognition.”

Our city’s Historic Preservation Commission didn’t expect a “national significance” hurdle back in 2010 when we received a grant to hire an expert in U.S. legal history to help us make the case to the U.S. National Park Service. I was HPC chairperson at the time.

President Donald Trump listens to a prayer offered by the Rev. Franklin Graham on September 20, 2019. Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

“Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name and will deceive many.” Jesus Christ, Matthew 24. 

“Evangelical Christianity has been hijacked by people who, if Jesus appeared at their door, would give him the boot.” – Former President and former Baptist Jimmy Carter

Devout Christians who hoped they could get through the Holy Week between Palm Sunday and Easter free from politics were sorely disappointed.

Stephen Frese in 2006 and 2023

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on Dec. 13, 2023.

My previous column told of the high-school junior whose 2006 biographical essay on civil-rights hero Alexander Clark won him a full-tuition university scholarship, the top prize in the National History Day competition.

To find out what became of Iowa’s prodigy, I sought help from Naomi Peuse who had been the NHD coordinator at the State Historical Society at the time.

“Stephen Frese, the history nerd,” he called himself back then.

Saying she had not been in touch with him in the intervening years, she quickly pointed me to a picture on the website of his alma mater, Marshalltown High School, where he is now a teacher—of science.

Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who worked in hospital management for 41 years, predominantly in the State of Iowa.

Few presidential election cycles pass without wishful thinking in some quarters that this is the year to elect a third-party candidate to lead the United States. 

2024 is one of those years—and the outcome will be the same as in the past. Either a Democrat or a Republican will be elected president in November.

In contemporary times, a third-party candidate has not remotely come close to winning the presidency.  In fact, very few have earned a single electoral vote toward the magic number of 270.

From left: Margaret Chase Smith, Lowell Weicker, Liz Cheney

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

In an odd—even terrifying—way to respond to threats to our democracy, The Republican/MAGA Party will offer Donald Trump as its presidential nominee in 2024, the golden anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

Nixon left office in disgrace on August 9, 1974, in the wake of Watergate disclosures that would likely have led to his impeachment and removal.

The Republican Party will formally endorse Trump as its presidential candidate at its national convention in Milwaukee in July—despite Trump’s disgraceful behavior before, during, and after his one term as president. He won the electoral college in 2016 while trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by more than 2.8 million popular votes. Trump lost both the electoral college and the popular vote to Joe Biden in 2020—by more than 7 million votes this time—yet he continues to spread his Big Lie about the supposedly rigged election.

U.S. Department of State photo of NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on July 12, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Two events within a few months of each other 75 years ago forever altered the political and military landscape of the world. Their combined effects play an an important role in today’s diplomatic chess game.

On April 4, 1949, twelve Western nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC to create the Organization by that name, abbreviated to NATO. The signatories were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

Over the next 75 years NATO’s membership expanded eastward through Europe to include today’s 32 nations, with Sweden’s signature affixed earlier this month.

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

It’s unclear whether Koch Industries would avoid paying utility replacement taxes worth millions of dollars every year if it acquires OCI Global’s Iowa Fertilizer Company plant in Wever (Lee County).

According to Chuck Vandenberg’s February reporting for the Pen City Current, the Iowa Fertilizer Company plant’s current owner, OCI Global, paid between $2 to 3 million in utility replacement taxes in 2023 alone.

To understand why it’s unknown whether Koch Industries would be required to pay these taxes if it acquires the plant, we must look back in the history books.

After deregulation spread across the country in the 1980s, including in the electric and natural gas industries, the Iowa legislature responded in 1998 by passing Senate File 2146, the Property Tax Replacement and Statewide Property Tax Act.

Images of Thomas Paine, Juvenal, and Trofim Lysenko all taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

This Bleeding Heartland post offers four perspectives on the dreadful Iowa legislature and on fears of the outcome of the November general elections. Three small doses come from Thomas Paine, known as the poet or penman of the American Revolution; Juvenal, a poet in First Century Rome; and Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, who was not much of a poet and even less of a scientist.

The larger fourth dose is the draft of A Social Statement on Civic Life and Faith. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is considering this draft for September adoption by the Task Force for Studies on Civic Life and Faith. The text is relevant to laws approved by Iowa lawmakers or pending in the state legislature, and to political campaigns now under way across the country.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on Nov. 15, 2023. Above: Detail from illustration by Hayle Calvin.

Susie the Brave
was also Susie the Queen
who was born in a town
called Muscatine.

So begins the picture book Susie Clark: The Bravest Girl You’ve Ever Seen: Desegregating Iowa Schools in 1868.

You say you never knew there was
a Queen in Muscatine?
Well, get ready to meet
the bravest girl you’ve
ever seen!

Susie’s father is Alexander Clark, the most famous “colored” person in 1860s Iowa. He has just won the court case which bears her name and makes her a public figure at age 13.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on November 1, 2023.

Back in January I told of forthcoming books about Susan Clark and said she had a publicity problem.

“Never heard of her” was indeed a buzz surrounding the mid-October release of the picture book by author Joshalyn Hickey-Johnson and illustrator Hayle Calvin—“Susie Clark: The Bravest Girl You’ve Ever Seen: Desegregating Iowa Schools in 1868.”

Iowans, even long-time Muscatine residents, exclaimed that the true story was new to them.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com

Republicans in the Iowa legislature say they don’t want politics in your kid’s classroom. But that’s not true. They don’t mind politics in your kid’s classroom—as long as it’s their politics.

The proof was in full view on February 28 in the Iowa House.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on October 18, 2023. Above: “Ms. Rocki” reads aloud that evening.

Tonight is the launch for the picture book I hinted at last January.

“You can expect rhyming and rapping…and whimsical, colorful illustration,” I wrote.

That was 20 columns ago. Today’s column is published October 18, the very day you should make your way to the third-floor meeting room at Musser Public Library for the 6 p.m. unveiling of Susie Clark: The Bravest Girl You’ve Ever Seen. Subtitle: “Desegregating Iowa Schools in 1868.”

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

House File 2544 survived last week’s funnel deadline in the Iowa legislature and is eligible for floor debate in the state House of Representatives. If I were a public school social studies teacher in Iowa and this bill were to become law, I would begin to wonder how I could continue to teach what I know about American history and government.

Gerhild Krapf is a longtime resident of Iowa City. She worked as attorney for University hospitals and served in a variety of University of Iowa administrative positions for many years, prior to retiring early. She is now real estate broker of her firm, Homes & Hearth,LLC.

I write as the daughter of German immigrants who survived Nazi Germany and came to America in the early 1950s. My father was conscripted in Germany at age 17, and fought in the German army on the Russian front. At war’s end, he was illegally captured by the Soviets and transported to a Siberian prison camp, where he almost died.

After four years of forced labor, he was sent home to Germany, now weighing only 85 pounds and too weak to labor in coal mines, build bridges and roads, and so on. His return home was a miracle to his family, who believed he was dead.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on October 4, 2023.

The longest writing I’ve seen by Alexander Clark appears on page 1 of this newspaper two days after Christmas 1883.

The editors give the title “CIVIL RIGHTS” with subtitle “Views of a Distinguished Colored Citizen on the Subject.”

Apparently their readers knew enough—and cared enough—about the subject to slog through two full-length columns, most of the non-advertising content of the page. His letter comes to well over 2,000 words, maybe as much as three times my column here.

President Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington on June 1, 2020. Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

For openers, please consider two quotes from centuries ago. They are relevant to today’s politics, and in particular to former President Donald Trump and his supporters among those the news media call “the evangelical right.”

The first quote is from 1792, when then Secretary of the Treasury and founding father Alexander Hamilton warned of the risks inherent in a democracy:

From left: State Representative Dick Myers, Chip Carter, and Tim Kraft in December 2003. Photo by Dave Leshtz, published with permission.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

The first sentence of Tim Kraft’s obituary in the Albuquerque newspapers last month labeled him as the manager of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Iowa caucus campaign and, later, “a top aide to President Carter.”

Not a bad legacy for a kid from Noblesville, Indiana. It gives a hint of the extraordinary, suggesting that the deceased man was smart, talented, and deserving of recognition for helping to elevate a nationally unknown politician and farmer from the South to the presidency.

For those of us who have worked the caucuses or on campaigns, we know just how remarkable of a feat that was—and why, almost 50 years later, it’s worth the lede in his obituary. We also know just how far out of the norm it is for the person who orchestrated that win to be so humble and down to earth.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on September 20, 2023. Above: Detail from Clark’s law-school graduation photo, 1884.

In my previous column I quoted the long report about lawyers and judges inducting Alexander Clark into their fraternity, but I did not tell nearly everything readers might want to know.

Muscatine Journal, June 24, 1884: “The members of the Muscatine Bar met at Delmonico’s as per invitation of their newly elected brother, Alexander Clark, Esq. at eight o’clock last evening.”

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on September 6, 2023. Above: Brannan, Carskaddan, Clark, Richman.

In 1879, Alexander Clark Jr. was Iowa’s first Black law-school graduate. In 1884, his father became the second.

The Vidette-Reporter, State University of Iowa, February 2, 1884: “We had the pleasure of perusing a very able article on the Civil Rights question, written by Mr. Alexander Clark, a member of this class, and published by the Muscatine Journal. The article sustains the dissenting opinion of Justice Harlan.”

Left: John Quincy Adams, depicted by painter Thomas Sully. Right: Andrew Jackson, also painted by Thomas Sully.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

The 2024 presidential election will in all probability be decided in the usual fashion, with a candidate receiving a majority of the electoral votes declared the winner. That’s the way it’s been done in almost all 109 presidential elections since the nation’s founding.

But not all of them. Exactly 200 years ago, the 1824 presidential election tested the Constitution as never before or since. In some ways the 1824 event seems old-fashioned, while in other respects it was a precursor of our modern contests, including recent claims of a stolen election.

To set the 1824 stage:

This column by Daniel G. Clark first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on August 23, 2023. Above: Muscatine Journal and News-Tribune, September 23, 1919.

Recently I told John Jelly’s 40-years-later account of a “colored man” bringing food for a “freedom seeker” hidden on a farm in northern Muscatine County in 1855. From not much evidence, I concluded that man must have been William H. Greenway (1840-1930).

Then I discovered Jelly had exposed young Greenway a decade prior to his 1896 letter to historian Wilbur Siebert. That version of the little-known story identifies Jelly as Atalissa correspondent.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on August 2, 2023. Above: Underground Railroad map by State Historical Society of Iowa.

It’s okay to imagine Muscatine as a station on the Underground Railroad, but only two reliable accounts tell specific instances of aid to the freedom seekers.

I’ve told about the 1848 Jim White case that is an important piece of the story of our hometown hero Alexander Clark. The second documented case is from the small town of Atalissa, along U.S. Highway 6 in the northern part of the county. Evidently slave catchers found no welcome there.

This column by Daniel G. Clark first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on July 19, 2023. Above: Lee Greenway in 1909. (Oscar Grossheim Collection of Musser Public Library, Muscatine)

The Civil War-era “Whiteway” building stands in a prime location we call Carver Corner today.

Muscatine Journal, March 12, 1919: “The White Way hotel will probably be the name of Muscatine’s newest hostelry, which will be opened within the next ten days at the corner of Hershey avenue and Green street.”

“The Appel building, a three-story brick structure, has been remodeled and changed into a modern hotel and rooming house. Fifteen apartments, some only one room, and some of two and three, have been fitted up. The first floor will be the hotel lobby and a spacious dining-room, while the two upper floors will be sleeping rooms.”

Edmund Muskie, left; Gary Hart, right

Arnold Garson is a semi-retired journalist and executive who worked for 46 years in the newspaper industry, including almost 20 years at The Des Moines Register. He writes the Substack newsletter Second Thoughts, where this article first appeared.

Iowa has been America’s biggest stage for launching presidential campaigns for more than a half-century.

Virtually every presidential election since 1972 has been impacted by what happened in Iowa in January of an election year. During this period, scores of men and women who have wanted to become president of the United States have campaigned extensively in Iowa. They have been on the ground shaking hands in all 99 counties and spent tens of millions of dollars on lodging, transportation, meals, advertising, and more in the state.

It all began in the late 1960s, as America became sharply divided over the rapidly escalating war in Vietnam. As American casualties mounted, the passion among those who favored the war and those who opposed it grew in intensity.

Screenshot of Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Newton, Iowa on January 12

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

I have written before about the incredible shifts that have happened late in Iowa caucus campaigns. Front runners beware, I wrote in 2016 (and that piece was prescient).

In 2020 I suggested Iowa would surprise, and predicted Pete Buttigieg would be the candidate most likely to do it.

This time it feels different, for good reasons.

This column by Daniel G. Clark first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on June 28, 2023. Above: Detail from poster by Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce & Industry. Not finished in time for RAGBRAI, the 40-foot installation was dedicated on October 14.

One month hence, on July 29, RAGBRAI cyclists will dip their tires here, the seventh time Muscatine will have rolled out the red carpet—previously 1976, 1986, 1995, 2001, 2006, 2016.

Before paved roads, Iowa was famous for mud and muck. And no river-to-river Great Bicycle Ride, obviously.

Long before Interstate 80 was imagined, a coalition of town leaders mobilized to build the border-to-border road christened the Great White Way. Its course from Davenport to Council Bluffs passed through Muscatine and Fruitland. It bragged the fastest route across Iowa, even outpacing the Lincoln Highway (later U.S. Highway 30).

In April 1914, about 40 Muscatine “boosters” drove through the construction zone 100 miles to Oskaloosa, headquarters of the Great White Way Association of Iowa, to make a pitch for hosting the movement’s annual picnic, an event promised to bring throngs of visitors.

Having won their bid, they retraced their tracks in high spirits, parading and partying and inviting everyone they met to attend  the grand occasion on their Mississippi riverfront.

Muscatine Journal, April 24, 1914: “In fact nearly every culvert along the route is either concrete or currugated iron, both of these being manufactured in Muscatine.”

Journal, July 21: “Muscatine will be the scene of the greatest good roads celebration ever held in the state of Iowa when the Great White Way picnic is staged here from August 17th to 20th. Fifteen thousand visitors are expected to be attracted to Muscatine by the elaborate entertainment which is to be provided. Three thousand dollars is to be appropriated to meet the expenses of the event which will be of such magnitude as to attract tourists from the Mississippi to the Missouri rivers.”

Motor-boat racing. Aqua-plane racing. Hydro-plane flights. Venetian Night illuminated boat parade. Free vaudeville acts and more.

“The visitors will also be permitted to indulge in a Muscatine water melon orgy. Thousands of melons from the Muscatine Island, the richest melon producing area in the world, will be brought….”

The word went out. “5 p.m. Watermelon feed. Free watermelon to out of town visitors, who register at the headquarters.”

But the picnic got rained out. Presenters of activity and performers of entertainment slogged and soldiered on, but mud and muck prevailed. An effusive letter of thanks signed by officers of the association put on a brave face in praise of “arrangements for holding the greatest event of the kind ever planned.”

“However valuable this deluge, the thousands who were thereby prevented from motoring to the picnic more than share your regret…. Muscatine and the hospitality of its people have become better known to hundreds of thousands of people through the middle west.”

Association secretary Don McClure left for Oskaloosa “in his big touring car.”

“‘I will tell every one who intends to take an auto trip in Iowa to be sure to stop at Muscatine and get a melon’ said McClure. He took with him two of the biggest melons in the city.”

*****

So, listen up, you RAGBRAI riders. That historic route is how you will enter our town. After you cross under U.S. Highway 61, you will be on Hershey Avenue, admiring our soccer fields to your right. Soon you will approach our riverfront and at least one slice of fresh, juicy melon some volunteer will offer you.

You won’t believe your eyes when the 40-foot Largest Watermelon Slice on Planet Earth appears in view! Our mayor has promised to erect it for your passing pleasure and then grow it into a permanent icon.

He’s our Chamber of Commerce CEO, too: Booster-in-Chief Brad Bark.

But wait! Just a brief moment earlier you will be gliding by Carver Corner, and there you might give a special, grateful salute to those old-time good-roads boosters.

Glance left at that red brick, three-story, Civil War-era building. It’s vacant. Some call it an eyesore, but still it stands defiantly—like it belongs there. After decades as grocery, saloon, restaurant, and dance hall, a new owner refurbished it for the comfort of 20th-century motorists and reopened in 1919 as the White Way Hotel.

*****

Muscatine Journal, September 29, 1914, quoting the Iowa Highway Commission magazine: “She had five blocks of her main street bejewelled with myriads of electric lights. White Way banners and streamers were countless. Store fronts were orgies of bunting and banners. Muscatine water melons straight from Muscatine Island were there, enough to feed the armies of the allies and Germans combined…. But the rains descended and the floods came and soaked all eastern Iowa. Instead of picnickers, Muscatine for two days had only messages from White Way automobilists tied up, scores of miles away.”

The guns of August 1914. Germany rolled over Belgium, and the Great War was on.

Early in 2022 I set out to relate pieces of our shared story framed as local Black History. This is Column 60.

Next time: A “colored” businessman on the Great White Way

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

Nikki Haley needed an entire day to admit, rather furtively, that slavery was a possible cause of the Civil War. Donald Trump thinks that the bloody struggle from 1861-65 (which Trump, in a rare burst of accuracy, described as “very rough time”) happened because Abraham Lincoln was born too soon to read the “Art of the Deal.” Had the Great Emancipator been so fortunate, Trump said in Newton on January 6, “you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was.”

Iowans whose knowledge of the Civil War goes slightly beyond Ken Burns’ PBS series three decades ago are shaking their heads in wonderment at such ignorance. But history is as much a vantage point than an absolute certainty. I learned that lesson in September, 1963, and the first days of classes in my junior year at Lincoln High School in the Nebraska capitol city.