Glasson calls for ‘bold, progressive’ agenda

CORALVILLE - Nurse, union organizer and now Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Cathy Glasson is 'tired of working people in our state getting beat up.”

After a legislative session in which Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Republican majorities 'stripped away” collective bargaining rights of 184,000 hardworking public employees and rolled back the minimum wage in Johnson County and other counties, there's a lot of 'cleaning up” needed, she said.

'We need a governor who is willing to step up and be a bold progressive,” Glasson said Thursday at a listening post at the ReUnion Bar in Coralville before speaking to the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee meeting.

Iowa needs a governor 'who won't sell out to corporations and CEOs, a governor who is willing to take big steps and make big plans to change the direction our state is going,” she said.

Her bold agenda includes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour 'faster, not slower, because Iowa families are hurting.”

Glasson, president of Service Employees International Union Local 199, which represents about 5,000 Iowa workers, wants to make it easier for workers to join unions, to invest more in education and to ensure universal health care for all Iowans.

Glasson called for a moratorium on large feedlots as one step in addressing Iowa's water quality problems.

'We have to go to the source of the problem, which is corporate agriculture polluting our rivers and streams,” she said. 'We go there first to make sure we hold them accountable for what they are doing to our water.”

Glasson is competing with seven others who are seeking the Iowa Democratic Party nomination in 2018. They include business people, lawmakers and policymakers. As a nurse, she said, she would bring a different approach, a different perspective to the governor's office.

Nurses are jugglers, they multitask, Glasson said. Year after year, she added, nurses are the most trusted profession because 'our mission is to take care of the patients.”

'I'll come with the perspective of making sure that Iowans (and) the things that we care about, that's the issue we focus on, that's what we prioritize in our budget,” she said. 'That's not what's happening now, and we need to change that.”

In the Legislature and governor's office, business as usual won't be good enough in 2018, Glasson said. Democrats must be bold and offer voters a different agenda, a different choice.

'We can't win if what we offer voters in 2018 is a watered-down, Republican-lite idea,” she said.

For more on Glasson, visit CathyGlasson.com.

l Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com