Vol. 74/No. 33      August 30, 2010

Set among hay bales in front of the Register building on the busy main concourse of the fair, the “Soapbox” is covered by the media. Videos of the candidates’ speeches can be viewed afterwards on the paper’s online site.

Rosenfeld spoke shortly after the incumbent governor, Democrat Chet Culver, gave a talk at the forum. In response to Culver’s boast that Iowa has maintained its “AAA” bond rating despite the economic depression, Rosenfeld said that it showed how capitalist politicians “attack the working class while they protect the bondholders’ hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Rosenfeld explained, “The real choice in this election is between those who advocate capitalist policies that damage workers and farmers and those who are putting forth working-class politics like the Socialist Workers Party.”  
 
‘He’s got good ideas’
Republican challenger Terry Branstad, who served four terms as governor in the 1980s and ’90s, called for making people prove their citizenship status when stopped for traffic violations. Culver countered that this would be too costly to the state.

When Rosenfeld said, “We need jobs, jobs for everybody … we need to fight for the rights of all workers, including legalizing immigrants,” several young Latino workers listening to the talk cheered.

“He’s got good ideas,” said another worker who stopped by to hear the SWP candidate.

Rosenfeld’s talk was featured in a Register article titled, “Iowa’s unions are too weak, Democrats too focused on the rich” by Jennifer Jacobs. She listed Rosenfeld’s key message as: “Iowans need to build a world based on human solidarity, not the dog-eat-dog brutal competition of capitalism.”

Jacobs described his issues in this way: “Iowans face ‘a permanent state of war,’ unemployment, foreclosures on homes and farms, and cutbacks in social programs. They need to fight for access to health care, to legalize all immigrants, to defend abortion rights, and to oppose any laws that discriminate against same-sex marriage.”

Responding to Rosenfeld’s statement that he is the only candidate representing working people, Jacobs quotes Culver’s campaign as saying, “There’s only one candidate in this race who has been a champion for workers and that candidate is Chet Culver.”

The Republican Party’s booth at the state fair featured a petition protesting the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision striking down a state law banning same-sex marriage.  
 
Dairy farmers in crisis
On the opening day of the fair, Rosenfeld and Margaret Trowe, SWP candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture, visited dairy and hog farmers showing their livestock at the fair’s large show barns. One young dairy farmer who read the SWP platform flyer said, “Dairy farmers have been in crisis for 18 months. We’re getting half prices for milk. I can’t pay my feed bills. We’re trying to buy our farm, and there’s no real help for working farmers. We need aid now.”

Rosenfeld said he agreed and pointed out that he and Trowe attended a rally in Manchester, Iowa, last year of dairy farmers protesting low milk prices.
 
 
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