C.R. District 2 race anything but ho-hum
Reprinted from The Gazette, Sunday, November 4, 2007, page 3B

By Rick Smith
The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS -- Several candidates in the three races here on the Nov. 6 ballot have bemoaned the seeming lack of public interest in the city election.

It is not ho-hum, though, in the race for the District 2 council seat.
 Among the banter in the east-side district, where three Republicans are battling for the seat on the non-partisan council, are at least two topics:

• Challenger Monica Vernon’s endorsement by organized labor. (She’s also been endorsed by builders associations and the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.)

• Vernon’s $25,671 in campaign contributions compared to incumbent Sarah Henderson’s $5,299 in contributions. Challenger Robin Tucker is running for the same district for less than $750.

As for Vernon’s endorsement from the Hawkeye Labor Council, Vernon was asked Friday about her $3,755 in campaign spending for yard signs from VoteFactory.com, a private company run by Alan Bernard, executive director of the Hawkeye Labor Council.

Vernon said the purchase from Bernard’s private company had no connection to the endorsement Bernard’s employer, the Hawkeye Labor Council, ultimately made of her in the District 2 race.


Vernon, founder and president of Vernon Research Group Inc., said her campaign took bids from a few local companies that make yard signs, and Bernard’s company came in with better signs at a lower price. His company was the only one to offer durable, plastic signs, which she said she needed so she could post them early in the campaign to gain name recognition against incumbent Henderson.

“I was not trying to buy anything from anybody,’’ Vernon said.

Beyond that, Vernon said she has known and worked with Bernard the last several years on community initiatives supported by both local labor and the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, on which Vernon served as a board member.

“I know the guy, I like the guy and I also like his plastic signs,” Vernon said.

Bernard on Friday said he’s had his own political consulting business on the side for nearly 30 years, and that, as an employee of the Hawkeye Labor Council, he has no vote on the council board of director’s decisions.

“The council didn’t ask my opinion (for its endorsements), and I didn’t give them one,” Bernard said.

He said he gladly would have provided campaign services to Henderson and Tucker in the District 2 race, but they didn’t ask.

He noted his company also is doing business with at-large incumbent Tom Podzimek, who also was endorsed by the Hawkeye Labor Council.

Podzimek said he’s spent $641 with VoteFactory.com for advertising and is purchasing fliers from the business. “Nobody owns me,” he said.

Justin Shields, president of the Hawkeye Labor Council and the District 5 member on the City Council, dismissed any suggestion that a candidate’s purchase of yard signs from Bernard’s sidelight business had anything to do with the Labor Council’s endorsements. The endorsements, he said, come from a 22member executive board representing many labor unions.

On the second battle front -- campaign fundraising -- Henderson, director of strategic marketing for GreatAmerica Leasing, said she was disappointed Vernon felt a need to raise more than $25,000 for a district council race.

“Is this the precedent we want to set?” she asked. “Normal people can’t raise that much money. It’s doing a disservice.”

Vernon said she sent one letter to people she knows, and nearly 300 sent contributions.

‘‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the American people giving a small check to someone they believe in and voting in a small way with their pocketbooks,” Vernon said. “I am a hard worker. And when I go in to do something, I give it my all.”

She said she was “a little sick of” hearing what she said was Henderson’s talk about representing regular, average and normal people.
 “I’ve not met one average person, and I’ve knocked on hundreds of doors,’’ Vernon said.

Tucker, a businessman and Realtor, said he is surprised by the partisanship and “shocked” at the spending by his opponents.

He recalled his days on the Home Rule Charter Commission, when it was the hope that candidates competing for district council seats would be able to so without having to spend too much money.