Inside Elizabeth Warren’s Push To Win Lee County

By Elizabeth Meyer

December 17, 2019

Patrick Rowley, the Lee County field organizer for Elizabeth Warren’s campaign in Iowa, has an unlikely roommate.

Like many young campaign staffers, Rowley lives with a local family in the county where he works. His Fort Madison hosts, however, did not discriminate when offering to house these far-flung campaign workers. At Rowley’s home, there are two organizers under one roof, himself and a staffer for Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

“That just goes to show that some people just host people from multiple campaigns because they just want to help in any way they can,” said Rowley, who met his host while door-knocking. “They just care about Democratic values and they want to help people fighting for them.”

Rowley, 23, drove more than 1,000 miles in June to move from his hometown of Newtown, Connecticut, to southeast Iowa.

During a conversation at Hy-Vee in Fort Madison, in the midst of a lively game of bingo in the grocery store cafeteria, Rowley said his hometown was the source of inspiration for his politics.

“Where I’m from is very much how I ended up in Iowa working for Elizabeth Warren,” he said.

On Monday, he saw his candidate hold two events in Lee County, an important blue-collar county for Democrats in the far southeast corner of the state. Warren is one of the only presidential contenders to hold dual rallies in both Fort Madison and Keokuk, the county’s two main towns, a sign that it’s a high-priority target for the campaign.

“Of course, I advocated for both,” Rowley said. “They’re all part of one county, but each city kind of has different identities. This is an area that really takes these things seriously, and it’s good to give them both attention.”

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From Apathy To Activism

The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School happened seven years ago this month, when Rowley was 16. Twenty children and six adults were killed Dec. 14, 2012, by a lone gunman.

“It just tore me apart. I saw how many people cared, how much love came into my town, then I saw nothing happen in the government and I just was totally disenfranchised, pushed away from the process,” Rowley said. “And over the last few years or so, I’ve started getting inspired again.”

On Monday afternoon, at a sandwich shop in Fort Madison where Warren was holding her second Lee County event of the day, he told his story.

For Rowley, who has held events, gathered volunteers and canvassed the community for the last six months, this was the first time the Massachusetts senator was on his turf.

“Why am I here in Lee County, Iowa, fighting to elect Elizabeth Warren to be president? It’s actually not her gun control plan,” Rowley said, at Sub-Arena. “Something even more fundamental than that. Elizabeth understands the root of what is holding us back right now, on issues ranging from gun safety and college affordability to worker protections and climate — it’s corruption.”

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Why Warren?

Like Rowley, Democratic caucus-goer Rob Richmond also was intrigued by Warren because of her anti-corruption, anti-big money stance.

“Greed seems to be the root of a lot of our problems,” said Richmond, of Montrose, in rural Lee County.

Richmond “by default” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Clinton had the support of 52.9% of Democratic caucus-goers in Lee County, but would go on to lose locally to Donald Trump by 16 percentage points.

Despite his lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, Richmond said “it’d be a great thing” to elect a woman to the White House.

In Fort Madison, Warren was asked by an attendee to respond to former President Barack Obama’s recent comments about female leadership and how women are “indisputably … better than us men.”

Warren pointed to the Women’s March in 2017, held in the wake of Trump’s election, and how female candidates, including two in Iowa, were crucial in flipping the U.S. House for Democrats in 2018.

“We’re going to be in this fight, and here’s the deal, 2020 is going to be led by women who have had enough,” she said.

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In Keokuk, Warren’s first stop of the day in Lee County, Sylvia Mills-Echols worried whether a woman was electable.

“The problem, you know, Hillary didn’t make it because she was a woman, I think,” said Mills-Echols, at the Keokuk Labor Temple. “I think that’s a real issue because men don’t want to see women at the top.”

Despite her reservations, Mills-Echols said she “really liked” what she heard from Warren. Like a majority of Iowans who still could be persuaded on who to support Feb. 3, Mills-Echols was deciding between the top four: Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

On Biden, a popular candidate among older African-American voters, Mills-Echols, who is black, was not sold.

“He’s got experience and everything, but he doesn’t have it like she has,” Mills-Echols said, as Warren posed for photos after the event. “She’s a piranha. I like that about her. I haven’t seen that come out of him. I don’t know if he’s taking for granted that he’s going to win because he was there before, or what. That bothers me.”

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‘A Fundamental Human Right’

Donna Amandus, a small business owner from Fort Madison, has her mind made up.

Before Warren took the mic at Sub-Arena, Amandus told the crowd why she supported her for president.

Amandus’ ex-husband, Joel, has congestive heart failure, a condition that sank the family financially. Currently, she is uninsured.

Her support for Warren was wide-ranging, but ultimately, it came down to health care and Medicare for All.

“It would be life-changing for me. It would be life-changing for Joel, and for millions of other people across this country, and Elizabeth knows how to get it done in her first term without raising taxes on middle class families,” Amandus said.

“Health care is a fundamental human right, and it should be available to all of us, not just the ones who can afford it.”

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As a presidential candidate, Warren has advocated for universal health care coverage. In the June Democratic debate, she solidified her commitment to Medicare for All, declaring support for Sanders’ Senate bill. Since then, Warren was challenged to show how she would pay for it, particularly as a candidate who has prided herself on releasing detailed policy proposals on 65 different issue areas.

In Lee County, Warren explained how as president she would transition the country to a single-payer health care model.

“Part one, we can’t afford what we’ve got,” she said in Keokuk. “Part two, so how do we pay for it? Let’s start here. I always like to start with, how do we pay for things?”

The top 1% of wage-earners in America, large corporations and “tax cheats” could “pitch in some more” in taxes so the federal government could cover the cost of enrolling all Americans in Medicare, she said.

“We do that, we can afford to pay for health care, full health care coverage, for everybody in this country. So, there’s the pay-for part of this. Now, let’s talk about what that health care looks like.”

On “day one,” Warren said she would lower the cost of common prescription drugs like EpiPens and insulin. In the first 100 days of her administration, low income individuals and families could choose to enroll for free in Medicare. Everyone else would have the ability to opt-in “for a very modest price.” From there, she would bring Medicare for All legislation to Congress.

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‘Outwork, Out-Organize, Outlast’

Rowley, the local field organizer, is far from home, but his connection to those who showed up to see Warren in Lee County was apparent.

In Fort Madison, he was warmly embraced by Amandus after he emotionally recounted life in Newtown after the Sandy Hook shooting. While Warren spoke, they leaned on each other in the audience.

Between Keokuk and Fort Madison, about 200 people came out to see Warren here on Monday during the day. Sanders drew almost 300 in Keokuk on Sunday afternoon, his only stop in the county, the day before.

“I think about how my time in Connecticut prepared me for Lee County,” Rowley said. “Really, I didn’t need to be prepared. This is a very welcoming community if you listen to them and you’re genuine and you care. They care about you, and that’s how this place is able to feel like home in just a short amount of time for me. I’ve fallen in love with it. I’ve fallen in love with the people because everyone I come across really, really cares.”

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A baseball fanatic, Rowley centered an organizing event earlier this year around a Cubs-Cardinals game, calling it “Policy Between Pitches.”

The Warren campaign has made a name for itself as an organizing machine, putting in the long hours to try and “outwork, out-organize and outlast” their Democratic competitors.

“I’ve never worked as hard as I have with this job, but everyday I wake up with a purpose and with that hope that I had lost for years,” Rowley told Starting Line. “There’s never been one day that I wished I was somewhere else besides Lee County, Iowa. It’s true.

“It’s long hours, it’s a lot of work, but when you’re talking to people and they’re sharing their stories, every single day I’m reminded why I fight and why I’m doing this. It is the most fun I’ve ever had.”

 

By Elizabeth Meyer
Posted 12/17/19

CATEGORIES: Iowa Caucus

Politics

Local News

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