Archive for the 'Mohamed, Sal' Category

Iowa Politics Round-Up

Published by
Chris Woods
October 30, 2006 in 2006 Elections, 2006 Governor's Race, Boswell, Leonard, Congress, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Des Moines, Drake University, IA-01, IA-02, IA-03, IA-04, IA-05, Iowa politics, Judge, Patty, Lamberti, Jeff, Media, Mohamed, Sal, Radical Right, Republicans, Stem Cells, TV, Vander Plaats, Bob, Vilsack, Tom and Voting. 3 Comments

I’ve been gone for a few days because of midterms and planning for events on campus. I should be back in full-force until election day next week, when my plan is to volunteer a lot, and then get around town to gauge turnout and expectations. This is going to be a massive post with a lot of links. Please click-through to what you can.

Iowa Governor’s Race

  • First, here’s the new ad from the Culver Campaign. It features current governor Tom Vilsack:

    It is a great ad. Some may not like it because of Vilsack, but he is what is needed in the ad. Vilsack has worked hard for this campaign, he needs Culver as a legacy, and Democrats in Iowa support Culver’s vision which will ad to the progress of Vilsack’s last eight years. We are officially 8 days out. Keep up the hard work on your end as well.
  • And here is the ad that appeared several days ago with regards to the Iowa Porkforest. State 29 liked it and Dave Price of WHO has Nussle’s response radio ad here — it isn’t a good sign when they can’t compete on the air and go for radio instead.
  • As I’m sure you’re well-aware, the Register endorsed Culver yesterday as well. You can read that endorsement here, with thoughts from John Deeth and Common Iowan.
  • Culver has also received the endorsements of the Mason City Globe-Gazette, the Quad-City Times, and the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
  • Nussle’s running-mate Bob Vander Plaats is a fan of teaching intelligent design (read: creationism) in schools. Just an example of what a Nussle administration would bring to Iowa: a disdain towards science.
  • Jimmy the Hustler put in his two-weeks notice. We’ll be sad to see him go. And yet happy at the same time.
  • Michael J. Fox drew 1,000 people to Drake’s Olmsted Center — quite possibly the biggest turnout for an event there ever. The Register’s first write-up of the event is here. You can also watch Flash-based video of Fox’s speech from that page. Make sure to watch it.

IA-01, 02, 03, 04, and 05

  • The Register endorsed Bruce Braley, Selden Spencer, and Joyce Schulte as the challengers in their races, along with incumbent Congressman Leonard Boswell. Unfortunately they did not endorse Dave Loebsack. Common Iowan and John Deeth rightfully take the Register to task for their endorsement of Leach. At least they admitted they were wrong in endorsing Steve King in 2002 and 2004.
  • Selden Spencer and Tom Latham debated last week and Spencer made some campaign stops. Common Iowan has some thoughts here.
  • More on Selden Spencer: He’s up on TV now — go see his ad here.
  • Here in Central Iowa, President Bush campaigned for Jeff Lamberti by calling him Dave. You can see video here. The conventional wisdom coming from the folks there was that Bush slipped up because it happened right Bush talked about Dave Vaudt. Not according to Kay Henderson. Iowa Progress has some fun here too.
  • That’s all I’ve got for now, but I’m sure I’ve got more odds and ends that I forgot to add to this post, so expect to see them later.

Iowa Statewide Races (Ag and SoS)

  • Michael Mauro is up on the air with his first campaign ad — you can watch it here. I’ll try to get it on YouTube in a bit.
  • Denise O’Brien is also up on the air, this time with a second advertisement on local control. You can view it below:

    Local control is an important part of this race — Denise O’Brien is the candidate to support in this race because of that one issue, not to mention she is the candidate of the future, not the status quo.
  • Speaking of O’Brien, Common Iowan saw her at a campaign stop over the weekend. Read his thoughts here.
  • In the Secretary of State race, Michael Mauro got the Register’s endorsment. You can read John Deeth’s thoughts here, including the part where he boils the race down to one real simple point.
  • Denise and Mike both got the endorsement of the Storm Lake Times as well. There is some harsh criticism of Northey that’s worth noting here:

    ” We support Denise O’Brien for the job, based on that stupid and dishonest ad.

    […]We don’t know what Northey means by Iowa values, but by our definition he lacks them. Chief among Iowa values is honesty. The sort of dishonesty Northey displayed in that ad disqualifies him from state office. He knows better.

    Vote for O’Brien, and put a stop to the sort of rubbish put out by the likes of Northey.”

    Ouch. And in the Republican bastion of Northwest Iowa.

And I think that is about it for now. That took forever to put together and I’m sure I’ll have more reports soon. Damn, it is going to be a long 8 days.

2008: Inevitability and Sal Mohamed

Published by
Chris Woods
July 28, 2006 in 2008 Elections, Democrats, Iowa politics and Mohamed, Sal. 3 Comments

As Kyle says, essentially we should have seen this coming. Sal Mohamed is running for President.

At least he’s dedicated.

Primary 2006: A review of the night’s events

Published by
Chris Woods
June 7, 2006 in 2006 Elections, 2006 Governor's Race, Agriculture, Blouin, Mike, Boswell, Leonard, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Des Moines, Fallon, Ed, IA-01, IA-03, IA-04, IA-05, Iowa Legislature, Iowa politics, Judge, Patty, Mohamed, Sal, Primary 2006 and Republicans. 10 Comments

Let me just say that I appreciate all of you who came and visited the site today (or yesterday now), and those who come everyday, and leave comments and get engaged in the political discussion process. I appreciate all of my readers, even if I don’t agree with you all of the time.

Anyway, tonight was an amazing night for me. This was the first campaign that I’ve really worked hard for that was victorious and let me tell you, it feels amazing. The Register story about the win is here, but I can almost guarantee you that Tom Beaumont will revise it before the actual paper comes out this morning (a few typos and flow problems). Rod Boshart also has his story on the nomination for the Gazette here.

Over in the First Congressional District, there was lots of drama tonight. It looks like Mike Whalen cleaned up decisively on the Republican side, which can’t be pleasing for a lot of conservative bloggers from over in the 1st CD (I’m looking at you Krusty). On the Democratic side, things were the most dramatic as Rick Dickinson and Bruce Braley went back and forth all night in their leads, with Braley ekeing out the win. At one point in time, I believe, the total vote difference was about 50-some votes. Yikes, talk about a nail-biter. So, its Braley vs. Whalen in November in a seat the Dems should pick up. The Register write-up is here and the Gazette write-up is here.

In the 3rd and 4th CDs, Leonard Boswell and Selden Spencer each won their primary races decisively. ;-)

In the 5th CD, Joyce Schulte again picked up the nod (over Bob Chambers) to take on Steve King. Good luck with that. And speaking of the 5th CD, there were a few problems in a precinct or two and the Register has the story here.

For Secretary of State (Republican), it looks like Mike Mauro should have an easy race against foot doctor Chuck Allison who beat the more qualified Bob Dopf.

And in the Secretary of Agriculture race, Democrat Dusky Terry was upset by Denise O’Brien and will be the Democrats’ nominee to take on Republican primary winner Bill Northey, who beat Mark Leonard. The last story the Register had on the SecAg race is a bit outdated, but you can find it and its incorrect lede here.

In some Polk County area results, take note of Julie Haggerty’s win over Tim Brien in the County Recorder’s race. Many were surprised by this result but I wasn’t at all — Julie was everywhere in Polk County over the last few weeks, much more so than Brien. As I mentioned earlier, Ako Abdul-Samad also won the primary to fill Ed Fallon’s seat and State Senator Matt McCoy easily won his primary against an opponent who was just being plain sleazy. And IowaGeek, Doug Halsted, lost his primary race to Larry Noble in Senate District 35.

You can track the Register’s coverage of Primary 2006 here at their site. The folks over at IowaPolitics.com also have a great and easy to read list of who won what tonight and is a great place for review.

I think that about sums things up for me. I’ll have more blogospheric and personal reaction/accounts of last night’s events tomorrow — I mean today — when I get up in 5 hours for work.

Primary 2006: Mohamed in second in Pottawatamie County?!

Published by
Chris Woods
June 6, 2006 in 2006 Elections, 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Fallon, Ed, Mohamed, Sal and Primary 2006. 2 Comments

Ok, here’s something interesting from Bret Hayworth’s Sioux City Journal blog:

“I’ll interrupt a flurry of primary election writing at 9:50 p.m. to post this as fast as possible. If there is a high point longshot governor candidate Sal Mohamed of Sioux City can look back on years from now it is this — with two-thirds of precincts reporting in Pottawattamie County, the second largest in western Iowa, he is in second place of the four candidates, ahead of Chet Culver, who likely could take the primary.

GOVERNOR
VOTE FOR NOT MORE THAN 1
MIKE BLOUIN. . . . . . . . . . 297 29.76
CHET CULVER. . . . . . . . . . 228 22.85
ED FALLON . . . . . . . . . . 203 20.34
SAL MOHAMED. . . . . . . . . . 269 26.95
WRITE-IN. . . . . . . . . . . 1 .10 “

Maybe that’s a typo but I dunno. Western Iowa can be weird.

Primary 2006: 15% of results in and its a virtual tie

Published by
Chris Woods
June 6, 2006 in 2006 Elections, 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Fallon, Ed, Iowa politics, Mohamed, Sal and Primary 2006. 0 Comments

From Who TV:

“Ed Fallon 13703 34%
Chet Culver 13524 33%
Mike Blouin 12841 32%
Sal Mohamed 343 1%”

What do you know?

IA-Gov: Candidate profiles from the Cedar Rapids Gazette

Published by
Chris Woods
June 4, 2006 in 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Fallon, Ed, Iowa politics and Mohamed, Sal. 5 Comments

Earlier this week the Cedar Rapids Gazette did profiles on each of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates as a prelude to Tuesday’s primary election. For your reading pleasure, here they are in alphabetical and chronological appearance order: Mike Blouin, Chet Culver, Ed Fallon, and Sal Mohamed. It is always interesting to read these and see how each reporter pegged the candidate and his campaign. As they say, read ‘em all.

IA-Gov: Vote in an online poll

Published by
Chris Woods
May 31, 2006 in 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Fallon, Ed, Iowa politics, Mohamed, Sal and Polls. 1 Comment

I’m not sure if this will lead to some Freep-age of the poll, but the Mt. Pleasant News is hosting a poll with this question: “Who should win the Democrats’ primary election for governor?” All four of the Democrats are in the poll. As of this writing, Mike Blouin was in the lead with Culver right behind. Scroll down the page to find the poll, its very obscurely placed in the lower-left corner of the page.

Vote Culver!

IA-Gov: New fundraising numbers released

Published by
Chris Woods
May 19, 2006 in 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Fallon, Ed, Fundraising, Iowa politics, Mohamed, Sal, Nussle, Jim and Republicans. 13 Comments

UPDATE: As commenter Matt pointed out in the comments below, it looks like $200k of Blouin’s money came from personal loans from Mike Blouin and from Dr. Andy McGuire, his runningmate. You can find that information currently in the Tom Beaumont Register piece linked to below. Blouin originally thought it would take $2 million to run an effective primary race, as I’ve noted here. It took personal loans to get over the $1 million mark. I guess he’s really not as financially competitive as I originally thought.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Just out from the Des Moines Register:

“Republican candidate for Iowa governor Jim Nussle has maintained the fundraising edge over his would-be Democratic rivals he established last year, according to financial disclosure reports released today.

But Democrats Mike Blouin and Chet Culver appeared to be more financially competitive than early in the year, the information expected to be filed today shows.”

In the run-up to June 6th, things are going to get immensely competitive. I think it is pretty obvious from the comments in the past few days and the ads that things are already well on there way. Only 18 days left until the primary.

Here’s the breakdown of the numbers of money raised from January 1st to May 13th (candidate’s names with links take you to their fundraising reports and will be updated as more file):

  • Jim Nussle
    Total raised: $1,195,093
    CoH: $1,500,000
    To-date: $3,700,000
  • Mike Blouin
    Total raised: $753,025
    CoH: $483,725
    To-date: $1,200,000
  • Chet Culver
    Total raised: $618,474
    CoH: $388,755
    To-date: $1,750,000
  • Ed Fallon
    Total raised: $164,349
    CoH: $34,678 $63,060 (corrected by Kyle’s comment)
    To-date: $360,522
  • Sal Mohammed
    Total raised: $2,200
    CoH: $684
    To-date: around $4,000

Out of Mohammed’s $2.2k, $2175 was a personal loan. Poor guy. I’ll let you all take the post the rest of the way in the comments. I’m glad to see Blouin and Culver competitive financially. I wonder how much the campaigns will spend in the next two weeks to get the word and vote out.

Btw, a few minutes ago a reader from Washington DC was the 32,000th visitor to the site since August of last year. Congratulations!

IA-Gov: Tax returns for the curious

Published by
Chris Woods
April 18, 2006 in 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Fallon, Ed, Iowa politics, Mohamed, Sal, Nussle, Jim, Taxes and Vilsack, Tom. 0 Comments

I’m not all that interested in what the candidates for governor make, or even what the current governor makes, and then pays in taxes. But if you’re interested, here’s the report from the Sioux City Journal with everyone’s returns but Sal Mohammed.

IA-Gov: More gubernatorial forums planned

Published by
Chris Woods
April 17, 2006 in 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Fallon, Ed, Iowa politics and Mohamed, Sal. 0 Comments

The Register announced today and the Cedar Rapids Gazette announced last Friday that there will be two more Democratic gubernatorial forums (debates) in addition to the one the Register and Iowa public television will be sponsoring on May 20. First, the Gazette’s:

“The Gazette and KCRG-TV (Channel 9) will co-sponsor a public forum Tuesday, April 25, 2006, for the four Democratic candidates for Iowa governor in the June 6 primary election.

The forum, from 7 to 8 p.m. in the auditorium of the Cedar Rapids Scottish Rite Temple, 616 A Avenue NE, will be broadcast live on KCRG. The candidates, Mike Blouin, Chet Culver and Ed Fallon, all of Des Moines, and Sal Mohamed of Sioux City, will be questioned by journalists from the newspaper and television station.

The auditorium, which has seating for approximately 400, will open to the public at 6 p.m.”

The Register has the details today on the first Black and Brown Forum for gubernatorial candidates (they usually only hold them for presidential candidates):

“The Black & Brown Forum will sponsor a Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum at 6 p.m. Saturday, May 6, at North High School, 501 Holcomb Ave., Des Moines.

Candidates Mike Blouin, Chet Culver, Ed Fallon and Sal Mohamad have agreed to attend, the sponsors said today. The winner of the June 6 Democratic primary will face Republican Jim Nussle, who is unopposed in the GOP primary.

The Black & Brown Forum is a project of Urban Dreams’ Project Voting Opportunities Through Education (V.O.T.E.) and best known for its presidential candidate forums.

This is the group’s first gubernatorial forum.”

That puts the total for this primary season at four, with one already having occurred at Iowa State. If you missed the events of the ISU forum, go ahead and check out this post for a recap real quick.

IA-Gov: Fundraising round-up

Published by
Chris Woods
January 20, 2006 in 2006 Governor's Race, Blouin, Mike, Culver, Chet, Democrats, Fallon, Ed, Fundraising, Iowa politics, Judge, Patty, Mohamed, Sal, Nussle, Jim and Vander Plaats, Bob. 3 Comments

So, yesterday was the big day and now we know where the candidates for governor stand money-wise. The Register has a nice graphic on the side of their story summing up yesterday’s reports. The Quad-City Times also has a good write up from Charlotte Eby that also explains why lesser-known Democratic candidates Vernon Weems and Marc Yackle did not turn in disclosure reports from yesterday. Essentially, they hadn’t raised any money or not enough to report.

If you’re looking for some real good work exposing who contributed to whom and where the money is coming from, make sure to check out Drew Miller’s posts on fundraising. Another particularly impressive piece of Drew’s reporting is how much money contributed to each campaign would be illegal under modern federal contribution laws. I think that point alone stresses the importance of Statehouse Democrats jumping on the campaign finance bandwagon and stressing it as an important issue in the session currently or in the run-up to November’s elections. It is a powerful message coming from the Fallon camp that campaign finance issues are critical in politics, and like I said yesterday, if national Democrats are going to stress the importance of Honest Leadership and live under campaign finance laws, why shouldn’t state Dems?

Kyle also takes a look at Culver’s out-of-state fundraising and takes issue with it. I can’t say that I’m happy either to see that less than 35% (numbers from Kyle that I haven’t verified because I haven’t looked over the report yet) of Culver’s money came from inside of Iowa but I’m optimistic in thinking that he’ll be receiving much more Iowa money in the first six months of 2006. Blouin’s camp is sending out an email claiming that 82% of their money came from Iowans (not independently verifiable yet). I guess the biggest thing to remember is that money raised is one of the first and biggest signs of candidate viability when it comes to elections. Professor Sanders’ report pretty much showed how much money takes to run for a legislative seat in Iowa, so you can imagine the money it takes to run for governor–and that probably creates the need to draw out of state for cash.

But I can say this: Chet’s a good guy dedicated to Iowa. He’s going to be Governor of the people of Iowa. Not of corporate interest groups, not of Bill Knapp, not of DC-insiders, not of anyone but Iowans. One can make the claim that money buys representation and loyalty. One can make the claim that that is what is happening to Chet. But that’s a very cynical view of politics (which can be pretty justifiable) and a character judgment of Chet. And character judgments like that just aren’t fair to make if you don’t know the guy. I hope that no one tries to make those judgments, because I can say without a doubt that Chet Culver will be a great Iowa governor if given the opportunity.

And that’s not to say some of the other Democrats in the field would be bad governors. Of the four well-known Democrats running for governor, they’ve all got great qualities and three of the four deserve to be governor and would be great governors. Blouin–not so much in my book. But Fallon, Judge, and Culver are all Democrats worthy of Iowa’s governorship.

Finally, just so its clear again: Nothing I write on this blog is the official stance of the Chet Culver for Governor Campaign and in no way is what I write influenced, determined, or approved by the campaign. My support for Chet doesn’t come from my employment, but my loyalty to the issues and the man who I feel should be Iowa’s next governor. For more on my reasons why, please read my endorsement of Chet from earlier this month.

IA-Gov: Mohamed files early

Published by
Chris Woods
January 19, 2006 in 2006 Governor's Race, Democrats, Fundraising, Iowa politics and Mohamed, Sal. 0 Comments

Drew Miller’s got the early disclosure reports and it looks like poor Sal Mohamed of Sioux City isn’t fairing too well–$125 in donations with almost $4000 in personal contributions.

I wonder how much more of his own money he’ll spend before he decides to quit. His $2,000 he’ll be getting back if elected isn’t going to cover his costs.

. . .Just to be clear, this is nothing personal against Sal. I just don’t think his message is resonating at all. He’s a great guy, but it really just wasting his time.

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