Senate Journal: Page 924: Wednesday, April 2, 1997

  924 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE 80th Day
  The old reporter title came about because I didn't know how to write in the
  first
  person when I first began writing a column in 1971. My style was the
  newspaper style.
  I had to quote people. So I quoted me and called me "the old reporter."

  "How does the Iowa Legislature break down by sex?" I asked the old reporter
  in
  1977. "I'd say that alcohol is a bigger problem," he said.

  A few years before that, some of us got bored with the lack of news at
  Governors'
  Days in Clear Lake, and began running Muscatine's Richard Drake for
  lieutenant
  governor.

  The job was very powerful then, being sought by Art Neu and Bill Harbor, and
  poor
  Drake squirmed, worrying about making those two angry.

  At a reception, I caught up with Shirley and Dick Drake and stormed at him
  for
  giving the story to the Associated Press instead of me.

  "It's on the wire?" he asked. "Yes," I said. He did some shouting, and I
  said, "Dick,
  have I ever lied to you." "No," said Drake. "Well, I am now," I said.
  "Furthermore, "
  yelled Drake, "I told that damn Bill Eberline."

  "Dick, Dick, Dick," said Shirley. "He said he's lying. Don't you ever listen
  to anyone?'

  And I remember Jack Schroeder, a talented Davenport legislator from a long
  time
  ago. His motto: "Never leave a party until you're asked to leave."

  My favorite story involves an anonymous legislator who was flying off to an
  eastern
  convention with a girl friend when his party put a call on the Senate. The
  lady went
  east, he came back to the Senate, very angry, and voted against his party at
  every
  turn.

  I am leaving out a lot of names, and for that I'm sorry. With a couple of
  exceptions
  whom I've written about, I'm proud to have met and known a host of Iowa
  legislators.
  And, God, I hate to say this, but I have to include some lobbyists in that.
  I should
  name them. It would ruin their day. In any event, I feel blessed that I had
  a chance to
  know and watch the work of so many decent, caring people in and around Iowa
  government.

  Focus on this for a moment: This place, Iowa, is a better place than it was
  - 20 years
  ago, 40 years ago, 100 years ago. In that, I include the Legislature itself,
  the counties
  and cities, our institutions.

  They need minding, some herding, some correcting, but they're better than
  their
  predecessors because your predecessors exercised political courage and made
  them so.

  That's a glorious but a demanding legacy.

  In the main, Iowa has had the luck to elect good people. We've had very few
  scoundrels.

  Many members today are not as well-schooled, formally and informally, and as
  experienced in real life as their counterparts of yesterday.

Iowa General Assembly

Index: Senate Journal (77th General Assembly: Session 1)

© 1997 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

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