Iowa still first, and why not

Gazette Editorial Board

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Several critics of the Iowa caucuses' leadoff status in the presidential nomination process also have referenced Stephen Bloom's recent controversial essay about Iowans and our state's lifestyle.

As we've previously written, the University of Iowa professor's article in The Atlantic included some legitimate criticism of our state, but its shrill tone, exaggerations, use of stereotypes and several inaccuracies made it fair game for fair-minded Iowans.

If you buy into Bloom's portrayal, you might find reasons that our state should be replaced as the launch site for presidential hopefuls. After all, why should a state populated with so many small-minded hicks and meth addicts have the privilege of such national attention every four years?

Of course, that's not the case. Other criticisms about our first-in-the-nation worthiness are more legitimate, such as the one about Iowa being one of only four states never to elect a woman to Congress and one of two states never to vote in a female governor.

But among the above-mentioned articles we've seen, the one elsewhere on this page makes as much sense as any of them.

Katie Curran grew up in Lisbon - the one in Iowa, not Portugal. She earned a degree at Luther College, a small private school in Northeast Iowa. Lately, she's a New York City resident who directs concert operations for Manhattan Concert Productions, producing events at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.

Curran's big-time, big-city experience hasn't convinced her that some other state is necessarily a better leadoff choice than Iowa.

“Small-mindedness,” she writes, “is not region specific. A large population does not guarantee it will be worldly, and that cultural exposure does not negate ignorance. Bloom fails to note that many choose to stay living in the places where they grew up not because they are uneducated addicts, but because it is what is good for them.”

And later: “It's just as possible to be an outsider in New York as in Iowa, and while that experience is neither easy or right, it is certainly not unique.”

Well said. By a successful, sensible Iowan.

And for at least one more presidential campaign, Iowans go first.

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