Don Smith Interview
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- Judy HunterJudy: Okay, so this is Judy Hunter interviewing Don Smith on December 3, 2013, and we are going to talk mainly about the Poweshiek Democratic Party although we can veer off into any direction you want.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Can you talk about when you first knew, or became associated with the Democratic Party in Poweshiek County?Don: Well, it was pretty much when I moved to Grinnell in 1970. I remember working to get out the vote in the fall of that year and then in ’72 we had the first really modern caucuses that were brought into being after the McGovern reforms. And was it the McGovern, I think it was the McGovern reforms.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: The McGovern reforms were on a national level?Don: No! This was for, well national level, but in Iowa we introduced the Preference Groups System at the caucuses where you break up into your—Judy: Right.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: And elect delegates to the county convention according to your preference and so on. And I remember we were kind of surprised by the turn out and—Judy: That it was big? Bigger than—Don: That it was big. In those days you had caucuses in people’s house. So the first ward of Grinnell was in the Clotfelters' on Sixth Avenue and there were so many people trying to crowd in there that it really seemed dangerous. So somebody got Darby gym and we all—
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Right then and there?Don: Right then and there and so we moved over there. And then, I probably got more and more involved as my friend Kay Jordan because Chair of the party and—
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: The county party?Don: The county party. And uh, she got me to be on the platform committee and that was funny because I’ve never been policy oriented. But you know, I worked at it and you know, just getting out the vote and so on, I met a great many people from all over the county. Names of people come to mind, Anna and Homer McDowell from Searsboro. The fellow Jones from Brooklyn. Diane Norden who taught school over at either HLV or BMG and later for a while was married to Congressman Dave Nagel. So I just met a lot of people that way. Margaret Tubaugh she was then Margaret Stemsrud from Pleasant Township. There seemed, we seemed to have a better organization or people out there in the rural areas then we do now.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Really? Was the county democratic then or was it still—Don: No. In ’74 it went democratic and that was the post-Watergate year. I mean, we were never without somebody in the courthouse.Judy: Okay.Don: But generally speaking, I would say that Poweshiek now comes pretty close to being what they call a purple county. But in those days, it was pretty red just streaked with blue occasionally.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Okay. Okay. So ’72 were the first caucuses. And—Don: They had caucuses before but they were much more informal. That is, you went to a precinct caucus but I don’t think people broke up into preference groups or anything like that.Judy: Oh.Don: And from those who came to a precinct caucus they just picked people to go to the County Convention without any kind of formal reference to their presidential preference.Judy: Ah! Okay, okay but the McGovern reforms were intended to get the back room politics out of things.
- Don SmithDon: Yeah. ‘Course it didn’t. But uh, that’s one that probably will never be removed but it’s a, I think it’s a fair system. There’s been a lot of complaints about the caucuses. First of all they take place at night where people may feel tied down. It takes longer then it would if we had a primary where you just go in and vote. And Ed Gilmour, who for many years was a leading figure in the Poweshiek Democrats, stressed the importance of people coming together and discussing the issues, debating. Now I think most people go to the caucus knowing who they’re going to support and there’s not likely to be change because somebody like Ed Gilmour comes up to them, maybe somebody’s undecided but that’s about it.
- Judy HunterJudy: And I remember in 2008, in the First Ward, the Hillary Caucus was not viable and so there was negotiation to try to get those folks to come one way or another.
- Don SmithDon: Now, I’ve said there’s been criticisms of the caucuses but I have never talked to anybody who actually went to a caucus who really didn’t have a good time. And didn’t have the feeling that they were a real part in the political process. But I saw the Hillary debacle, if you want to call it that, coming. I didn’t mean to sound prognosticator, if I wanted to sound prognosticator I would have started out for John Edwards. But I could tell that the Clinton campaign was just not making connections of the sort they need to do in Poweshiek County and particularly in Grinnell.
- Don SmithDon: So that an awful lot of the students were for Obama, for some reason she didn’t make much of an appeal to students. Her supporters tended to be middle aged and older women. And young people didn’t understand the point of view, or where these older people were coming from.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: The, how much of that, just in your opinion, how much of that had to do with her being a woman, with the Clintons and the scandals and all of that? I mean, was it a hang-over from the scandals, was it—?Don: No, I think it was, I think it was hard to convey to today’s undergraduates what the fight for women’s equality, the glass ceiling, all of this meant because today’s women students simply don’t feel very, you know, oppressed or sat upon, or tried to go to law school but couldn’t or what not. Whereas students don’t feel that way about black people. So if you’re eager to, if you’re white and want to lend a helping hand to somebody, you’re more apt to go for the black man than the white woman.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Okay. Let’s, we’ve gotten very recent here. I don’t want to skip. So in ’70 you went to the Caucuses and—Don: No, ’74, ’72.Judy: ’72. Okay. Okay. Where they at that point having caucuses every two years or—?Don: Yes there were caucuses every two but the main interest was in presidential years and of course they still had them in people’s houses. ABC News went to the caucus in Pleasant Township where Margaret Tubaugh had always made brownies for people who came and I think there were about four or five people there. So it was very homey back in those days.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Can you spell Tubaugh for me?Don: T-U-B-E-A-U-G-H. She was then Stemsrud. Mr. Bert Stemsrud died and she subsequently married Mr. Tubaugh, I don’t remember his name. But for people who were running the party it was very difficult to get Caucuses in twenty-one different locations. Particularly when you knew that the turnout was not going to be that big. So I was kind of relieved when we consolidated and went to ten precincts, just from the point of view of locations.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: And was that a county decision?Don: It was kind of a state decision which was partly based on the idea that the location had to be handicap accessible and I can’t think of anything else much except that the turnout at these twenty-one you know, Grant, Pleasant, Deep River, Lincoln, was so small it just didn’t seem worth the trouble to me, at least. But we were one of the last counties that had every township have a precinct.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Really? Okay. Okay. Wow.Don: And ah, of course you got to know the people in the courthouse and uh, you probably don’t remember, gosh, what was her name? That appointed Dorrie Lalonde Deputy Auditor? She moved on to Indiana? And that’s how Dorrie stayed on for so long as Deputy Auditor. Because Jo Wray, when Jo as elected auditor realized how good Dorrie was and asked her if she would stay on.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Was that a political appointment? Is Deputy Auditor, was it connected to—?Don: I think no.Judy: Is it connected to a party?Don: No. And it would be normal I think for an Auditor to want somebody of the Auditor’s own party but Jo was smart enough to see what an asset she had in Dorrie.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Okay. I’m trying to think of the woman’s name before Jo but I can’t.Don: Well Jo got in there, I can’t, boy. Was Evelyn Ketels Auditor before Jo? I don’t remember. You'd need to go back and look in Iowa Red Book or something like that.Judy: Yeah. We can do that. Okay. So who did you support in ’72, do you remember?Don: I supported, Ed Muskie.Judy: Okay.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Because I knew that McGovern didn’t have a ghost of a chance. I mean, I was smart enough to figure that out. But uh, I can’t actually remember who carried Poweshiek County. Whether it was McGovern or Muskie. But of course Muskie dropped out before the Convention.Judy: Was it after he cried? That's all I remember. That was New Hampshire wasn’t it?Don: Yeah. Because then it got down to, I’m all mixed up now. McGovern and who else? I don’t remember.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: I don’t remember. I didn’t even remember Muskie. Okay. Okay. How about ’76?Don: ’76. Did I support Carter? I don’t think so. Maybe I did. But who else was running in ’76? One of the Udalls maybe?Judy: Oh!Don: Or uh—Judy: Stuart or Mo? Stuart.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: I think it was Mo. I didn’t know what to make of Carter but he came, I think, that in some ways, Carter’s eventually becoming the nominee and winning the Iowa Caucuses helped put the Iowa Caucuses on the map.Judy: Yeah.Don: And I think kind of started the phenomenon of if you want the nomination you have to get involved in retail politics. Talking to individual people and making the right connections with people.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Did Carter come to Poweshiek County?Don: Yes!Judy: He did? Oh, okay.Don: Yeah, I remember that he; he spoke in the forum in the South Lounge. They all came to Poweshiek County I think. Certainly in ’80, I remember they all did. Dukakis. No wait, ’84 was Dukakis wasn’t it? ‘80s was Bobby Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Teddy Kennedy yeah.Don: And Carter.Judy: That’s right. That’s right.Don: And here’s another case where Teddy’s campaign was a poor fit for Iowa because when he came here he spoke in the Forum, the first thing he did was congratulate Grinnell for winning it’s football game the previous Saturday. Well uh, nobody has really done their work and I don’t think it caused offense but it caused kinda this feel this guy doesn’t know where he is.
- Judy HunterJudy: Yeah. That’s funny. Okay. So in all of this time, how do you think, I’m going to stop for a minute and just sort of get an overview. How do you think Poweshiek functioned in the state as a democratic party? In terms of the presidential, in terms of local and state elections?
- Don SmithDon: Okay. One thing that you, anybody, who is a County Democratic Officer, has to remember here or an activist, is that undoubtable, the main Democratic vote is in the city of Grinnell. But you have to remember that this is not the Grinnell Democratic Party, it’s the Poweshiek County Democratic Party and you have to constantly, I could name names here and I won’t, constantly remind certain people that you want to talk about candidates visiting Poweshiek County not candidates visiting Grinnell.
- Don SmithDon: Or uh, trying to make sure that at the county conventions the Grinnell delegates don’t dominate the whole and that when you find somebody from Brooklyn or Malcom, or Montezuma that wants to go to the state convention you better try to help them get there because while you can’t win if you can’t carry Grinnell, in order to win you have to get a reasonably good vote out there. And the county no longer has the rural vote, the rural Democratic vote that it used to have. We used to have what you might call a National Farmer Organization people. The last, I guess, person who represents this tradition and uh, she’s never quit, she’s always there, is Donna Winburn.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: So is National Famers’ Organization a progressive farmers’ group?Don: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And--Judy: As opposed to Farm—
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: They’re the opposite to the Farm Bureau. Maynard Raffety was another. He was more a critic of the Farm Bureau than he was a big National Farmer supporter. But see the farms are bigger now. And as the, as the small farmers have been bought out they’ve tended to go to bigger farmers. When I started out we didn’t have any CAFOs, there wasn't anything like free mud farms. So the rural Democratic vote is not what it used to be. Deep River would be a good example of that. And it's gone pretty much. And that’s where Dave Maxwell is from. It’s become—Judy: And Dave is now our—?
- Don SmithDon: State Representative. And uh, well I guess that’s all I need to say about that. Now, in the state you’ve asked about how we function in the state. A lot of that is just what individuals want to do. Donna is almost always on the state platform committee. And she really likes platform stuff. I don’t because I don’t think it makes much difference. But Donna is really committed to the issues. And she’s—
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Mainly farming, or—?Don: Mainly farming , mainly farming yeah. But Iowans for Community Improvement, I don’t know if you know anything about that.Judy: I’ve heard of it but I don’t know anything very much about that.Don: She’s a big mover and shaker in that and she was a strong supporter of Denice O’Brien when Denice O’Brien ran for Secretary of Agriculture because they were certainly on the same page on Ag. issues.Judy: Okay. And Denice O’Brien lost to—?Don: The current Republican, Bill Northey.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Okay. It makes a difference how the redistricting goes as well right? I mean, we’ve been in various, we were represented by Dennis Black for a while right? And who was much more of a liberal.Don: Yeah. Dennis became more liberal as time went on. Now, we’ve been in so many different senatorial districts. At one time we were mostly with Joan Orr, but there was a guy named Joe Brown from Montezuma who represented about three precincts down that way. Then there was a redistricting at the end of the ‘70s when Janet Carol got in and then another—
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: And she was House right?Don: She was Senate wasn’t she?Judy: She was Senate? Oh…
- Don SmithDon: No! She was House, Janet was House and the Senator who took Joan’s place was Emil Husak from Toledo. And then the 1980's redistricting Janet ran in a somewhat new district which seemed to me every time she ran her margin got lower and lower. In fact I think in 1980 itself she went to bed thinking she’d lost. But turned out she won, so. She didn’t run again after that and I don’t think that Janet really liked campaigning in the way that some people did. Then, that districting, Janet had the western half of it and somebody else had the eastern part of it which was part of Iowa County then part of Johnson. And our state senator was a guy named Richard Varn from Solon.
- Don SmithDon: So, he was in there for a while and then in the 1990s the districting sort of gave us somebody who had two years to serve on his existing term, Senator, he was from down around, well he was Dutch. He had a Dutch name, it will come to me in a minute. So he had to move from down there up into the new district which was empty. So he, and then Dennis Black, who was our House member, told him that he, Dennis, would run for the Senate district in ’92 and—Dieleman! Bill Dieleman. So Bill Dieleman then retired to Florida and, because he was sort of a transplant you see, if you had time left on a term and there was a vacant district somewhere else you could move there, you see—
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: And just finish out your term without an election.Don: And just finish out your term without an election. Yeah.Judy: Wow.Don: So that’s what Dieleman did. So then we had Dennis Black who had, in the previous year, been elected to represent us in the House. And then it was Dennis Black for a long time until, 2001, uh, that’s when we got Eric Palmer and Tom Rielly. So that’s a brief history of Poweshiek County in the General Assembly.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Do all counties in Iowa get redistricted that much or is it because of where we are?Don: It’s partly because of where we are.Judy: Because I know our Congressional Districts get, are national—
- Don SmithDon: It’s also because of size. Uh, the computer that they used to this is supposed to honor county lines where possible. So that, uh, Davis County or Van Buren County which are pretty small tend not to get broken up. But Poweshiek is big enough you see that it can be broken up. Now as it happens, we didn’t get broken up in, we’re all together now and certainly from the point-of-view of a County Chair it’s a lot better to have a, uh, to be whole than to be in two parts. Because you see, you’ve got, and that’s partly where the Grinnell orientation tended to hurt us. Because I don’t think that many people in Grinnell knew that part of Poweshiek County was represented by Betty DeBoef—
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Betty DeBoef. Yeah.Don: They just uh, heard enough about her that they didn’t like her and they just tended to forget about her rather than work hard to beat her.Judy: Mhmm. Mhmm. When were you chair of the party? When do you, how often—Don: It was in the ‘90s.Judy: But just once? That’s it?
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: No! I can’t remember how long I stayed in. Uh, I think that most of the time I co-chaired with Sara Adams. Then Sara decided to, she’d had enough, and I finished out as regular chair, ‘til, uh –Rachel Bly was a co-chair in there for a while. ‘Til Rachel and Charlene, what is Charlene’s last name? I get so used to calling them by their first name—Charlene Doyle! From Holiday Lake. And uh, it’s good to have a chair not from Grinnell because she knows people out at Holiday Lake and in Brooklyn, so I learned a lot about Holiday Lake.Judy: Such as?
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: It’s not a real community. There are people who live there but the number of people who take an active interest in Holiday Lake as a um, community is very small. You see, Holiday Lake is for people who want to get awayfrom people.Judy: [laughs]Don: Um, not from people who want to work together for the wellbeing of all. Because there aren’t any jobs there.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Gotcha. Now, Holiday is one that’s just—Don: North of Brooklyn.Judy: Right.Don: Ponderosa—Judy: Oh! Okay.Don: Is the one that’s west of Montezuma.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: West of Montezuma is the one I’m thinking of. Okay. Okay. Holiday Lake got to reorient it. Yeah, north of Brooklyn yeah.Don: So just drive around up there the roads all have names but they’re sort of generic names, Lake Shore Drive, East Lake Shore, and it goes on. And you can drive from one house to another and the house numbers change from 2204 to 12096; you don’t know where you are.Judy: [laughs]
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: And that’s kind of difficult when you’re trying to round up absentee ballots because a lot of people who live there go south in the winter and uh, when you, that by the way’s another important part of it; which is making sure you get in all the Democratic absentee ballots you can.Judy: Is that—when you say an important part of it, of being the chair?
- Don SmithDon: Of being the chair yeah. And you know, you have people that help you out because you can identify the party identification of people who’ve asked for absentee ballots. And every afternoon during the voting period, the auditors’ office sends out to the party’s chairs whose ballot has come in that day so you can make those off and then you have to concern yourselves with the people who have received absentee ballots and get them in. And the, their numbers just increase tremendously. I believe something like 40% of the votes in Poweshiek County in the last election were early votes.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Okay. And that’s not just people who are running. Anybody can—?Don: Anybody can.Judy: Okay, I was going to say I think we voted early.
- Don SmithDon: Anybody can and also, that you can go into the court house and vote absentee. Back when Susie Harbour started doing it managing the absentee ballots, she was very good at it. Uh, but the way she did it, I think won’t work in a huge volume now. You see, she sort of established a personal relationship with the people that voted absentee and um, you know, she’d call them up and say, “This is Susie, how are you doing? I just wanted to make sure we got your absentee ballot is there anything, can I send somebody out there?” and that sort of thing. But that sort of personal talk is hard to do when you have so many. Then you have the satellite voting stations up here on the campus which is a running feud with the Republicans.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Oh, really?Don: Oh yeah. Back when Jo Wray was the county auditor, she told us why not just have all the students give us their address, the 1215 Park Street, the old campus post office and then later 1108, Eighth Avenue, and that worked out just find. And Jo said it’s a lot more convenient for us because it means that the students will have the same address all four years that they’re here. But then the Republicans caught hold of that and gave us a lot of grief and Jo, and Diana Dawley, Jo’s successor. They pointed out the voter registration form requires you to give the street address where you live. And not a campus mail box in this case.
- Don SmithDon: So the first time this happened, we had to get a lot of students who already voted absentee using their campus mail address to go to the First Ward polling station and vote there. And that was a triumph of organization because a lot of stu--you had to explain to students why they were being asked to do this and so on and so forth. But now, I think we pretty much have that under control. Whenever a student registers to vote somebody presents them with a list of the addressss of Cleveland Hall, uh, Kershaw Hall and whatever and they’re told that they have to put that down for where they live but if they want their ballot to come to them in the mail they give 1108 Park Street, or I mean Tenth Avenue.
- Don SmithDon: So it’s complicated and one day, one time the Republicans descended on the, where they were counting absentee ballots in the basement of the court house and I think I’m right about this, they kind of came mid-morning. So by that time a lot of the votes had been counted and Diana Dawley, said to them in so many words, “If you think I’m going to go back through all these votes we’ve already counted, you’ve got another think coming because these addresses were approved by my predecessor as county auditor and if this is to be changed I need a directive from the state auditor informing me we need to do it differently”.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Well they kind of backed away from that and didn’t challenge, they just went home. I think.Judy: [laughs] Wow.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: But the big Republican now, how should I say, boss, he spends all the time talking about Chicago-style politics, is Dan Bunnell.Judy: Ah.Don: And always told me, I don’t know how many times, you all just herd those students in to vote like it was somewhere in Chicago and they don’t know anything about for whom they’re voting and well, there’s probably some truth in that but that’s why we have party labels.
- Don SmithDon: If you don’t know the person you can tell something about them by what party they belong to. And uh, I don’t know how many arguments he and Vicky have given me. One is their drivers licenses tend to be, so many of them have an Illinois driver’s license, and of course they don’t pay taxes here but they pay sales tax here and all other kinds of taxes. But, uh, Jo Wray once told me that, I don’t want to, I hope I’m not giving anything away—
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Okay. So do you see the current efforts by the state, Secretary of State, Matt Schultz to, let’s just say limit the right to vote?Don: I call it suppress the vote.Judy: Okay. [laughs] Oh, okay.
- Don SmithDon: The idea that there’s wide-spread voter fraud in Iowa is just silly. And that is manifested in the case if you just take the time to show up at a polling place. There aren’t, this is not like Northern Ireland, where they have a lot of what they call, Person--Persona--Personation, of people voting under false names and stuff like that. It just doesn’t happen here. Usually because the people, there’s somebody’s there who knows whosever turned up to vote.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: And uh, I think there are election officials who are honest and it’s a kind of liable on uh local election officials on Schultz to suggest that they’re somehow being tricked or gulled in letting a lot of phonies vote. People will say all kinds of things, bus loads coming out from Chicago you know. It just doesn’t happen.Judy: Yeah, it’s just…Don: Well, it doesn’t happen here. I’m not going to Scott County so I’m not sure.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Okay, let’s go back to, where did we leave off our chronological, we were at ’80 with Carter.Don: Yeah.Judy: And um, then ’84 was…Don: ’84 was Mondale.Judy: Mondale.Don: ’84 was Mondale and Reagan carried Iowa.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Did he carry Poweshiek?Don: I think he did. But Dukakis in ’88 I think Iowa was one of his best states because see that was the Farm Crisis.Judy: Right.Don: And uh, he just did really well here. And after that, in ’92 I think Clinton carried Iowa both times.Judy: I think you’re right yeah.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Then uh, in, Bush and Gore, and Bush and Kerry, were very close. The only thing I remember is in one of those years the Democrat carried Iowa and the other the Republican but Poweshiek County was exactly the opposite but very close both times. Then of course Obama won in ’08.Judy: Both the county and the state? Ok.Don: Yeah.Judy: In ’12 too?Don: Yeah.Judy: Yeah, okay.
- Don SmithDon: Presidential year management of elections is in my experience harder than in the governatorial off years because there’s no national campaign that moves in and starts recruiting people on their own and telling you how they want things done. And they do not, they don’t pay much attention to received local blue stuff. I mean if you say, “Well I don’t think it’s a very productive use of time to do this or that” in effect they say, “Well we don’t care what you think. This is, these are the orders we’ve gotten from top down.”
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Now I’ve heard that about the Obama campaign in ’12. Has that been true? How long as that been true from your experience?Don: Oh, I first remember it from, I believe it was 2004. Maybe it was 2000. Uh, and uh, well I was chair of Poweshiek Democrats and on the day it was over and we carried the Poweshiek County, we carried the county, can’t remember, Joe Scully, who came out from Massachusetts, we were cleaning up the headquarters and so on, and he said, “We really did well here. We did our job. We met our quota.” Well that’s the first time I knew we had a quota.Judy: [laughs]
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: And I explained this, I told this to Ben Jacobs. I don’t know if you ever knew Ben but—Judy: Oh!Don: He was a student.Judy: And then he became the—Don: He came here to work one year for us.Judy: Oh, okay.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: After he graduated. And Ben told me that they don’t want people to know what the quota is because somehow it makes you work harder if you don’t know about a quota.Judy: Wow.Don: Now why it wouldn’t make Joe Scully to work less I don’t know. Anyway.Judy: [laughs] Who, name me some prominent Democrats in the local party over the, since 1970. You’ve talked about Donna Winburn.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Melvin Mills the long-time Treasurer.Judy: Oh! Treasurer of the—?Don: Of the county, of Poweshiek. But he also, maybe it was a conflict of interest, but he also was Treasurer of the Poweshiek Democrats. I’m seeing ah, what time is it?Judy: It’s twenty after two.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Oh, I’ve got plenty of time. Melvin Mills who was a close-working buddy of Kevin Crim and when Melvin died Kevin was one of the speakers at the memorial service. And Melvin’s wife, Virginia, they were both from Montezuma. ’Course Ed Gilmour, and—Judy: And Ed was a political science professor at the college?Don: At the college.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: But he also ran for elected office didn’t he?Don: He was a state senator at one point in the ‘60s and in 1966 he ran for Congress. Well that was not a good Democratic year. ’64 had been. So I said: Ed Gilmour, Don Schild, who was County Attorney for some time and he still plays his part. And, did I mention Violet Jones from—Judy: You mentioned her name, what was her route?
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: I didn’t know Violet very well. That was a long time ago. Rita Baustien and uh, woman named Angelina Spading who lived at the corner of Old Six and Twenty-one between Brooklyn and Victor.Judy: Victor, yeah.Don: And uh, even after she went into a retirement home down in Brooklyn I called up her daughter and I said, “Do you think your mother would mind if we put up a yard sign that’s a very good corner and of course I talked to the son-in-law and he said not only would she not mind, she’d be annoyed if you didn’t.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: And who else were there? Well, Joan Orr of course.Judy: Right, right.Don: And she was sort of trained in politics by Ed Gilmour.Judy: Really?
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Ed and Libby were good friends of Joan’s and I think it was their recruitment of Joan to run for the State Senate in the early ‘70s that began our string of luck in having, uh, we had a long succession of Democratic state Senators. And uh, in fact that was broken only when we got, again one of these redistricting things. What was his name? Had a Maid-Right or something like that down around the Amanas. And uh, he had it for two years and then Tom Rielly of uh, uh—Judy: Phil Terrell?Don: No. Uh…
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Janet beat him.Don: Janet beat him. Uh, was it Carol something or other? Or, I can’t remember, now I’m getting mixed up with Carl Orr. Joan’s husband. And uh, Al Jones was a worker, I learned a lot from Al about who these people out there, who they were. And uh,Judy: Out there? You mean like in the county?
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Like in the county. Like uh, Rita and David Ferneau, from Sheridan. And uh, funny how I, when I first heard about them, I asked all about them, I thought their name would be pronounced in the French way, Ferneau. But he said, “No! It’s Ferneau.” So now anything but Ferneau sounds odd to me. And I, Rita’s still active, and well, just so many other people.Judy: Yeah, yeah, that’s a lot. Now, you said you had stories.Don: Stories?Judy: Stories, yeah. The other night when we were talking.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Well I told you the one about, maybe not. Evelyn Ketels. Uh, well this was about when Carolyn Woods who was County Treasurer was, I think I got this right. Anyway, she embezzled some money and I was down. Oh! And her father paid it back. That’s typical Poweshiek County way of doing things. It just let her off the hook I guess.Judy: So no charges were brought?
- Don SmithDon: No charges were filed. And um, I was talking to Evelyn she was the mother of, another one of those women from down that way. Anyway I said, I said to Evelyn, I said, and we had a Democrat, this was after ’74, we had a Democratic majority on the board of supervisors and I said, “Who do you think the supervisors will appoint in point in place of Carolyn Woods?” And she said, “It’s hard to say. I understand that in some counties when this sort of situation arises in order to restore confidence in the office the supervisors pick a well-known non-partisan figure to accomplish that.” Then she said, “Thank goodness we don’t do it that way here!” [laughs]
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: [laughs]Don: I think maybe that was when we got Melvin Mills as Treasurer.Judy: Oh! Okay, okay.
- Don SmithDon: So that’s the story and oh! There are lots of stories about going out. Like one time at Wickhams' house down below around Forest Home and I went to the house and she applied for an absentee ballot. I didn’t know her before this. And um, uh, she came to her door wearing house slippers and a house coat and I said, it must have been very close to Election Day. I said, “Ms. Wickhams, I’ve”—no, maybe she didn’t have a ballot. “I’ve come to see about your absentee ballot.” And she said, “Oh my goodness, what a nice service but I think I’d rather go in to the court house and cast it there.” So I waited for her to change clothes and get ready to go, drove into the court house where Diana Dawley knew her and got her vote. I think she later, the next time around, she’d moved into a retirement home.
- Judy Hunter & Don SmithJudy: Where did you say she lived? You said below Forest something.Don: Forest Home. Between Forest Home and Montezuma. Forest Home is to the east of Highway 146 down in the far south end.Judy: Okay.
- Don SmithDon: And then there was Anna McDowell who was, Homer died, Anna’s husband. And she was a really, they were a really remarkable couple. She taught school at Lynnville-Sully, and taught at Searsboro, you know where there’s a Searsboro school that sits empty up on the hill there? She had taught there. But I know every Sunday afternoon they went in to the Des Moines Symphony concert and she wasn’t elected but she was an election official in Searsboro for years and years. But finally she had to give it up because of Incupient Dementia. She understood that. And by the way, that’s another thing about staffing these precincts with election officials, they’re getting older and older. Anyway, at some point she was in her nursing home down in New Sharon in Mahaska County and I went down there to get her vote and did.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: I think she recognized that I was somebody she knew but she probably could not have given my name. But anyway, she very painfully signed all the papers with her name and everything and gave me the ballot that she marked. So I left, thanked her for the vote, she said, “Well keep fighting them!” [laughs] Then she died shortly after that. And Kevin Crim pointed out to me that somebody may have come out from the Mahaska County Court House because you know the auditors send teams of people to go out and get absentee votes from people in the nursing homes.Judy: I didn’t know that.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: So I don’t know, Anna may have voted twice that year, once in Poweshiek and once in… I should tell them that sometime. [laughs]Judy: [laughs]Don: But I didn’t know, Anna was registered to vote in Poweshiek County so I just went ahead and got her vote.Judy: Makes sense.Don: That’s enough stories.Judy: Okay. Okay.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: I don’t know what happened to Diane Norden or Dave Nagel but uh, he was, she was his second wife and they met in politics. Very, she was a very attractive woman who taught school at BGM I think and I thought it was kind of a really good marriage but you know, Dave became an alcoholic.Judy: I was going to say, I thought he had some problems that way.Don: Yeah, so they got divorced and I don’t know where she is.Judy: It’s too bad.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: Andrew Hsich gave a big fundraiser that was very successful.Judy: For?Don: For Dave Naval.Judy: That’s right.Don: Because Andrew with his Chinese sense of the way politics operates, always assumed that when you get something from the government there’s somebody behind it. In other words, he attributed means of getting her citizenship to Dave Nagel’s influence in Washington.Judy: Oh.
- Don Smith & Judy HunterDon: So he gave a fundraising dinner for Dave and of course, how many fundraisers are given by an expert Chinese cook? So it was a big turnout.Judy: Yeah, I remember that. We piggybacked on Andrew; we used Andrew for various fundraisers after that. He was very generous that way.Don: Yeah.Judy: Okay. Any last words you want to say?Don: No, I think I’ve said enough. Maybe too much. [laughs]
This is an oral history interview of Mr. Don Smith, Professor Emeritus of History at Grinnell College. The interview, conducted by Ms. Judy Hunter, recalls many of Don's memories regarding the Democratic party and the political climate in Poweshiek County, Iowa, from 1970 to 2013.