Iowa weather and politics are extreme

Crazy extremes. You drive through fog and drizzle — Dude, slow down! Sister, turn your headlights on! — to slop through mud at the Iowa Lakeside Lab on West Lake Okoboji. How long have we been drenched?

A month. August closed with Northwest Iowa in “moderate” drought like we have been in for a few years. You worry we could drink the well dry.

These days we worry about fungus, if they ever get into the fields.

Extremes.

A dose moderation, if you please.

That was the message I took away from the Okoboji Writers and Songwriters Retreat over three drizzling days. A lot of liberal ladies and a few conservative gentlemen, but mainly moderates who were comfortable with Bob Ray or Tom Vilsack. One of the retreat hosts, Richard Gilbert of Des Moines, was in fact a top aide to Gov. Ray.

These are live-and-let-live sort of people. Just don’t rob them, and keep the schools strong and the streets safe. Make sure people can earn a decent living. Fix up Hwy. 7. Keep the air breathable and the water potable. Treat people fairly, rich or poor.

Nobody asked for Sharia Law, Christian style. We need order at the border, not goons shooting law-abiding citizens in the street and locking up reporters. Balance the state budget. People in West Des Moines don’t need a subsidy for their kid to attend Dowling.

While we were kibbitzing, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand completed his second round of 100 town halls across the state preaching centrism. He packed the Val Air Ballroom in Des Moines. Can’t we all just get along? You betcha, by golly.

People ache for some old-fashioned Iowa Nice, or Pragmatic, or just Boring.

In an emergency, Gov. Kim Reynolds convened a special session on Friday to coax a firm from India to build a steel mill in Lee County near Fort Madison, now that Lee County is nearly emptied out of a labor force from 50 years of economic consolidation. President Trump announced it. Zach Lahn, the Republican candidate for governor, is all for the subsidies.

How do you get the ore from Hibbing to Iowa when the river runs dry? Minor details.

Few, if any, people at Okoboji believe it. Including Susan (McCoy) Beckman, native Storm Laker more recently of Lee County. “Hail Mary pass,” she called it, incomplete. Trump is losing. He tried to win Wisconsin by promising a huge Foxconn plant that isn’t.

An old boy from Dallas County, retired career Navy, Iowa Stater and naturally Republican, told me he is voting straight Democrat this year. So are the other old boys down at the VFW. Why? “Everything.”

The war. Slandering John McCain. The economy. Hegseth. The VA. Mistreatment of sailors on ships. You name it.

David Thoreson’s dad was a Marine colonel. His mother’s clan owned a bank. He was a defensive back at Nebraska-Omaha who liked to hit. He will pick up a penny on the sidewalk. He is no snowflake. But the Okobojian has sailed around the Arctic Circle and believes that these weather extremes are not dumb luck. Thoreson is one of those Bob Ray ex-Republicans who believes that no other issue matters if you can’t drink the water or take a deep breath. He is on board with Chris Jones for secretary of agriculture.

Dave Bernstein of Sioux City is a steel and scrap guy. He is a Democrat in a tough trade. He does business in Sioux City, Clay/Dickinson counties, Sioux Falls and Manhattan (Kansas, that is), not Marxist bastions. Seeking center is the mood where he goes. Think things through. Work together.

In all the buzz over a steel mill, people may forget about Ruthven or Ayrshire. Lost Island Lake eventually will get lost in the silt from the farms around there. Palo Alto County has the highest cancer rates. Cancer is bipartisan. We need doctors in Sioux City.

All the prairie potholes are filling in. The state will eventually convert them to marshes like Lizard Lake to filter runoff. Pickerel Lake used to be a popular picnic spot and fishing lake near Marathon. They had Chautauquas back in the day. We abandoned that in favor of corn, hogs, soy and ethanol after draining every acre. The school closed, then the bank. That was extreme.

If you announced a steel mill or even a Spencer Foods plant in Spencer you couldn’t find help because we keep trying to chase off hard workers. Who wants to be a doctor if they are going to arrest you? Or a meatpacker? One of my specialty doctors is afraid that, if elected, Sand and Jones will not be able to clean up the water or the air. She also is afraid to speak out.

That is not the Iowa we pine for. That’s why they packed the Val Air.