Convention Notebook: Senators poke fun at McCain's housing comments

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By Ed Tibbets | Monday, August 25, 2008 7:00 PM CDT | () comments

Housing crunch

DENVER — A lot of attention was paid this morning to John McCain’s inability to answer how many houses he owns.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the featured guest at the Iowa delegation’s morning meeting, both took a poke at their colleague for his non-answer to a question from a reporter about his house holdings.

“Either you can’t count that high, or there’s too many to keep track of, or you’re covering up your elitist status,” Harkin told a roomful of people.

Klobuchar added: “People who own seven houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

The McCain camp has tried to portray Obama as an above-it-all celebrity, and the Democrats have pounced on this incident to throw it right back at him.

Harkin himself has been the target of barbs from Iowa Republicans for years for the vacation home he owns in the Bahamas.

Asked later about whether the McCain housing flap will have legs among Iowans, Harkin seemed to downplay it.

“This is all what I call the chaff of campaigns,” he said. “Will anyone decide whether to vote for or against someone on the basis of (this)? I don’t think so, but I think the fact they were trying to paint Obama as an elitist, and yet here’s a guy that owns we don’t know how many houses yet. … It just shows this is all nonsense. All this stuff about elitism is nonsense.”

Get in line!

Danny Homan, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Iowa made it clear what he expects of some of the elected officials in the upcoming legislative session.

Homan pitched some of labor’s top priorities, such as expansion of the state’s collective bargaining law. Labor and some of their Democratic allies last session tried to expand the list of items that have to be put on the bargaining table.

The bill stalled after an outcry from Republicans, school boards and city officials. Even Gov. Chet Culver was hesitant. Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba, a lifelong Democrat and an alternate delegate to the convention this year, also opposed it. Gluba got a lot of attention for his opposition from the media, too.

Homan didn’t name names but said mayors, legislators and politicians in general should get on board. “Knock off the crap, let’s get it done and start supporting organized labor,” he said.

Gluba said later he didn’t feel pressured and that Homan would be better served by seeking compromise with cities and school boards.

“If he wants the bill passed, he’s going to have to sit down with the leadership outside his little union followers,” Gluba said.

Delegate breakdown

There are lots of new folks in Iowa’s convention delegation. Thirty of the 57 are at their first convention, a clear reflection, party officials say, of Barack Obama’s influence. Obama, of course, drew tens of thousands of new people to the party’s January caucuses.

His influence is also felt in the age breakdown. Seven of the 57 delegates are under 25 years old. The youngest is Merci Wolff, an 18-year-old from Sioux City.

The oldest, incidentally, is 84-year-old Ione Shadduck of West Des Moines.

There are two Iraq War veterans, seven African-Americans, four Hispanics and one Asian Pacific Islander in the delegation.

It’s oppression, man

Protesters and police continued their tense relationship Monday.

Outside the Iowa delegation’s hotel on the 16th Street pedestrian mall mid-afternoon a young man could be seen on the ground, handcuffed by police. People nearby, meanwhile, screamed insults at the cops.

No word on what the incident was about, but there were probably three dozen passersby documenting the event with cell phones, digital cameras and video recorders.