Linn County GOP boot prompts soul search

Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson tells me he's been serving on Republican Party central committees at the county, congressional district and state levels since 1988. So he's been an active Republican since he was old enough to cast a vote.

That streak ended last week when he was booted from the Linn County Republican Central Committee. It happened the same night as the president's State of the Union and U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst's response, so it's a development that got lost in the shuffle.

Oleson says he wasn't at the meeting. He did show up when his ouster was on the central committee agenda back in November, but the committee didn't get around to it. So the fateful decision was moved to January. And Oleson was informed of the verdict by tweet.

'No one's called me or anything,” Oleson said.

Seems like an odd way to treat one of the county's most politically popular elected Republicans, a guy who ran unopposed for a second term in 2012 and pulled in more than 16,000 votes, or 98 percent.

But Oleson ran afoul of GOP rules by helping former Democratic state Rep. Daniel Lundby of Marion in his run for re-election last fall against Republican Ken Rizer. Lundby and Oleson have been friends for years, and Lundby's mother, the late, great state Sen. Mary Lundby, R-Marion, was Oleson's friend and political mentor.

So friendship and loyalty ran deeper than politics. And in the end, Rizer won the House seat handily.

'I get it. What I did, technically, violated the rules,” Oleson said. 'But if you can't see the unique circumstances. It wasn't like I was out campaigning for Bruce Braley.”

It would have been smart for the county GOP to let it slide. All's well that ends well. But rules are rules, apparently. And all that GOP talk we often hear about traditional values, like loyalty and friendship, for example, is null and void if it means crossing partisan trenches.

Rizer says he didn't play a role in the decision.

'I was not consulted and I have no opinion on the action taken,” Rizer said in an email. ' I'm focused on being the best representative I can be for the people of my district.”

Oleson already was considered a so called 'RINO” for caring about issues such as environmental protection and conservation, for supporting marriage equality and for backing Ron Paul's presidential campaign. He's taken the sort of positions that would make his mentor proud. But they don't get you invited to a Steve King 'Freedom Summit.”

'I guess the tent is full. The tent is as big as it's going to get,” Oleson said of his party. He's tired of the divisive rigidity that now defines our politics, and who can blame him?

'Any major news event that goes on now, we've got to divide up into sides. OK, ‘American Sniper,' are you on this side or that side?” Oleson said. 'Every major thing, any kind of incident, we just automatically divide up. That's not how I'm made.”

Oleson, like a lot of Iowans watching this uninspiring red-blue train wreck, now is wondering where he fits.

'I'm going to do a little soul-searching on what that means for me. I don't think I'm going to say anything until this summer,” said Oleson, who plans to run for re-election.

'I guess what I will say is I've done several hundred divorces as an attorney and have been through one personally. Sometimes you need to take stock of the situation and see if there's a different beginning, a new beginning,” he said.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com.