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Andy McKean is a charming country lawyer from Anamosa. He grew up in New York and was drawn to Iowa by his family roots.

He has owned a bed-and-breakfast, called square dances and played in a dance band named the Scotch Grove Pioneers. His tenure in the Iowa Legislature stretched for nearly 30 years, with an additional eight years shoehorned in as a Jones County supervisor.

A few weeks ago, McKean spoke to a group of grassroots community organizers from eastern Iowa who gathered in Monticello to brainstorm. He provided pointers gleaned from his years in public service, politics, campaigning, promising and compromising.

One choice nugget was his go-to strategy in those roles — listening more than talking.

By Randy Evans

One longtime truism of journalism is “Names make news.”

That shorthand stems from the fact people better understand the significance and context of news when they learn about events and issues through the eyes and experiences of people they know or with whom they can identify.

The late Iowa Supreme Court Justice Mark McCormick described the importance of this news tenet by noting how disclosing even sensitive private facts and names offers “a personalized frame of reference to which the reader could relate, fostering perception and understanding” and lends “specificity and credibility.”

Here are two heartbreaking examples from recent events:

First, while news reports in the last week focused on the 125+ people who died and some 150 others who remain missing after flash floods swept through the hill country of central Texas, the magnitude of the loss hits harder when you put names with the grim statistics.

Names like 8-year-old twins Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence, who died at Camp Mystic, a summertime haven for girls; camp counselor Claire Childress, 18, who lost her life trying to protect young campers; Richard Eastland, 70, the camp director, who gave his life while trying to save the young girls who filled the camp’s picturesque cabins; and sisters Blair and Brooke Harber, ages 13 and 11, whose bodies were found 15 miles downriver, still holding hands, after being swept from their grandparents’ vacation cabin. The grandparents, Mike and Charlene Harber, 76 and 74, died, too.

Second, and closer to home, Pascual Pedro, 20, of West Liberty gave Iowans a heart-wrenching names-make-news lesson about the impact of the federal government’s push to deport undocumented immigrants.

Several dozen people gathered last Saturday in Monticello for a citizen workshop the Grassroots Iowa Network organized to get more everyday Iowans engaged in the political process.

They spent the day listening to speakers* and exchanging ideas and observations, without fear or reprisal. They lunched and learned.

Former officeholders and current office-seekers were there, too. So were people who have spent countless hours working on issues or on behalf of candidates.

Although there were no knee britches or tri-corner hats in sight, our nation’s Founders were there in spirit. The Founders would take comfort knowing those Iowans were exercising liberties so important that they stitched them into our Constitution in the First Amendment — the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right to assemble peaceably, and the right to petition our government for a redress of grievances.

If an opinionated old guy from southern Iowa delivered the recent commencement address at the United States Military Academy, my message would have contrasted with the one given by another opinionated old guy, one from Queens, N.Y., by way of the White House.

When I was a newspaper editor, I sometimes told the staff they needed to run a belt sander across an article to remove rough spots before publication. So it was with Donald Trump’s speech to 1,000 new Army second lieutenants at West Point a week ago. His staff needed to take the Oval Office belt sander to his message.

The West Point graduates are embarking on military careers that will disrupt their family life and may end in death or crippling injury. The president was on the mark when he thanked them for their willingness to sacrifice to protect the safety and security of our nation.

But these young men and women deserved more facts and serious reflection, fewer half-truths, less fiction, and no campaign rhetoric. These new officers and their families did not gather on the highlands above the Hudson River to hear about trophy wives and “the late great Alphonse Capone.” (Inexplicably, our president talked about both.)

You may be experiencing whiplash this spring just trying to track the Iowa Legislature’s zig-zag movements. It comes from what some might charitably call a lack of consistency on a key theme.

A set of bills from the Republican majority at the Capitol illustrates this inconsistency.

First, there’s the Legislature’s initiative banning the state universities and community colleges from promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in their admissions programs, hiring practices and academic programs. The politicians say these promote quotas, reverse discrimination and politically divisive ideologies.

As we approach the second anniversary of a tragedy that shocked the people of Davenport and brought national attention to the issue of building safety, government secrecy continues to cloud public understanding of just what happened and who to hold accountable.

The tragedy occurred a few minutes before 5 p.m. on Sunday, May 28, 2023, when the back wall of a Davenport apartment building gave way, bringing down much of the six-story residence that occupied a quarter block across the street from City Hall.

Three people died in the collapse. Rescuers amputated the leg of a fourth victim to free her from the rubble.

Before the dust from bricks and other building materials settled, the community asked how and why the collapse occurred, who was responsible, and how the city could avoid similar tragedies in the future.

The debris is gone now, and the dead are buried. But questions still linger — largely because local officials continue to use their power and pay attorneys to keep many pertinent documents secreted from journalists and concerned residents.

Iowa Capital Dispatch
April 9, 2025

The late newspaper columnist Bill Wundram of the Quad-City Times in Davenport wrote seven days a week for 31 years. Many of his columns, highlighting a wide variety of concerns in his home community, included the refrain, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

That plaintive question came to mind Tuesday as I listened to Iowa senators debate what is likely to be the lone bill this year addressing nursing home regulation. Actually, “debate” is the wrong word. What happened was a refusal to debate.

Democrats introduced 14 bills this session in an effort to address critical failures in Iowa’s nursing homes. Failures like the one Iowa Capital Dispatch’s Clark Kauffman reported  Tuesday that led to what must have been agonizing pain, weeks of suffering and the eventual death of a resident at Sanford Senior Care in Sheldon.

Growing up in the 1950s, Evans family vacations seem typical by rural Midwest standards: car trips to the Ozarks, the Black Hills, Nauvoo and New Salem in Illinois, or St. Louis for a Cardinals baseball game.

But one memorable summer trip, around 1960, occurred when we motored north through Minnesota to Canada, the only foreign country my parents ever visited and a place more exotic than the Wisconsin Dells.

Exotic? Absolutely. This trip *required* us to stop at the border and clear a Canadian customs check.

Growing up in the 1950s, Evans family vacations seem typical by rural Midwest standards: car trips to the Ozarks, the Black Hills, Nauvoo and New Salem in Illinois, or St. Louis for a Cardinals baseball game.

But one memorable summer trip, around 1960, occurred when we motored north through Minnesota to Canada, the only foreign country my parents ever visited and a place more exotic than the Wisconsin Dells.

Exotic? Absolutely. This trip *required* us to stop at the border and clear a Canadian customs check.