Mission Statement. Welcome to the Dubuque County Democratic Party website. It is our goal to strengthen our community by connecting people to the political process, developing community leaders and electing officials who listen, respond and represent the needs of the community. This is the place to learn more about how the Democratic Party can make a difference in Dubuque County, in the State of Iowa and in the Nation. All of us, working together, can help our government do its best. Join us in electing Democrats to office at the local, state and national level. Terry Stewart. Chair, Dubuque County Democratic Party.
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Our motto:
Working to elect Democrats from ...
the
Courthouse to the White House.
Democratic Message: I want unity but above everything else, I want a party that will fight for the things we know to be right at home and abroad.
(Eleanor Roosevelt 1959)
From: Terry Stewart
Dubuque County Democratic
Chairman uncleter@hotmail.com Subject:An observation on our Current Circumstances
Date: Saturday, January 16, 2010
Bill Clinton left a budget surplus to pay down the national debt. Then the Supreme Court disrupted the 2000 election for George Bush, and over the next eight years, Bush emptied the national treasury. Paul Krugman warned us about the disastrous effects that robbing the treasury (tax cuts for the rich) and fighting an unprovoked war (Iraq) would have on the economy. Bush quickly turned the surplus into record deficits, and quadrupled the national debt, while sabotaging any governmental oversight of his cronies. For the Republicans to whine and cry and moan and groan about the budget expenditures of Barack Obama is blatant hypocrisy.
The best way to describe what's going on is this: the Republicans drove the economy into the ditch, and are now complaining about the cost of the tow truck needed to get us back on the road to a strong economy and responsible policies. They need to push, pull. or get out of the way, and quit siphoning off the lifeblood of our economy for their rich banker and insurance company and military contractor friends.This democracy is supposed to function Of, By, and For ALL the people, not just the corporate giants with the richest lobbyists.
Obama was handed huge problems, and is making a heroic effort to resolve them. Those who created the problems have been the loudest critics and biggest obstructionists to solving them. In spite of their resistance to change, we are inching into the future and making progress on the economy and the environment. From great adversity comes great opportunity. We are living in a key phase of our nation's, and the world's history, and are privileged to be able to participate in the solutions. It's imperative that we meet the challenge.
Dean Baker | Governor Palin's Crazed Health Care Rant http://www.truthout.org/081009A?n Dean Baker, Truthout: "As a basic rule, politicians
will say anything they can get away with.... This
basic
truth must be kept in mind in understanding
the
health care debate. The debate has trailed off
into
loon tune land, and it's the media's fault."
Whistleblower Speaks Out Against Health Care Industry http://www.truthout.org/081009B?n Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!: "As the healthcare reform debate intensifies on Capitol Hill, we spend the hour today with a former top executive from one of the nation's largest health insurance companies who has begun exposing some of the industry's dirty secrets."
Please join us for the induction of our 2011 Hall of Fame Honorees
Tom Auge
Marty O’Shea
Tom Reisdorf
Judy Schmidt
Ray Zirkelbach
Tom Schueller
Roger Stewart
Terry Stewart
Donna Smith
7th Annual Hall of Fame Banquet
Happy's Place, 2323 Rockdale Road, Dubuque, Iowa
6:00 p.m. Reception with Cash Bar / Silent Auction benefiting Clarence Griep Scholarship fund begins
6:45 Welcome by Walt Pregler, DCD Chair
Invocation, Father Thomas Zinkula, Holy Spirit Pastorate
Pledge of Allegiance
7:00 Dinner (Menu: Chicken and Beef buffet)
7:30 Program:
Announcements (anyone)
Introductions, Walt Pregler
Video Remarks U.S. Senator Thomas R. Harkin
Special Guest U.S. Representative Bruce L. Braley
Clarence Griep Scholarship Winners (Presented by CGS Committee) / Final Bids on Silent Auction
Induction of Honorees (Presented by the Hall of Fame Committee)
Benediction, Ms. Andrea Beacham, Spiritual Guide / Marriage Celebrant at Body & Soul and member of St. Luke's United Methodist Church
Tickets are $30 individual (students with ID $20) / $50 couple if ordered by 12 May; $40 individual / $70 couple at the door. Tickets can be obtained several ways.
A) Buy them at Central Committee meetings
B) Contact a member of the Hall of Fame Committee
C) Contact an Executive Board Member
D) Go to www.dbqdemocrats.com and click on the “contribute” link to buy your tickets through Act Blue. Bring print-out of donation confirmation
E) Mail a check to Dubuque County Democrats P.O. Box 686, Dubuque, IA 52004-0686 or call 563-583-4419
We have inducted 59 activists since Hall of Fame was revived in 2004. If you have any information about the earlier incarnation of Hall of Fame, please contact R.R.S. Stewart using the link under website committee.
Inductees since 2004:
2004 (17) - Thomas Breitbach, Robert Carr, Richard Dickinson, Thomas Flynn, Andrew Frommelt, Elden Herrig, Terry Hirsch, Thomas Jochum, Leo Kennedy, Don Knapp, Alan Manternach, Michael McFarland, Robert Osterhaus, Paul Scherrman, Ray Scherrman, Jim Waller, Joseph Welsh
2005 (0)
2006 (14) - William Delany, Dorthea Green, Clarence & Maxine Griep, Sister Dorothy Hennessey, Sister Gwen Hennessey, Joan & William Herrig, Leo Meier, Betty & Elmer Miller, Attorney General Thomas Miller, Eileen Murphy, Thomas Wainwright
2007 (6) - U.S. Senator John Culver, Mary Lee Hostert, Helen McClain, Jerry Pregler, Walt Preglar, Jo Ann Reynolds
2008 (5) - Mary Therese Ahern, State Senator Michael Connolly, U.S. Senator Thomas Harkin, Agnese Hayes, Ann Michalski
2009 (7) - Denise Dolan, Pat Kelly, Kathy Flynn Thurlow, T.J. Mulgrew, JoAnn, Michael & Sylvester McCauley
2010 (10) - Dorothy & William Blum, Dominic Goodmann, Sen. Pam Jochum, Linda & Nicholas Lucy, Rep. Patrick J. Murphy, Ruth & Ralph Scharnau, William Winders & the Dubuque Leader
Past Keynote Speakers:
2004 U.S. Congressional candidate Rick Dickinson
2006 Andy ? & Secretary of State / Gubernatorial Candidate Chet Culver
2007 U.S. Senators / Presidential Candidates CHRIS DODD and JOE BIDEN, plus representatives of other candidates
2008 U.S. REPRESENTATIVE BRUCE BRALEY
2009 Kate Mulgrew
2010 Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge
List of Past County Chairs (If you know the years any of these people served, please contact R.R.S. using the link under website committee). Thomas FLYNN
TERI Hawks GOODMANN
STEVE HODGE
M.P. HOGAN
DENNIS HOULIHAN
MIchael MCFARLAND
LEO MEIER
PAUL SCHERRMAN
T.J. MULGREW (196? – 1967)
MIchael MCCAULEY (1967 – 1969)
ED ROLLE (1969 – 1971)
? (1971-1973)
TOM AUGE, 1973-1975
DONNA (McDermott) SMITH 1975 - 1978
Pam Jochum 1982
Terry Stewart 1983-1984 & 2007-2011
PAT LYNCH ?2001-2003?
Jason Stecklein 2003-2005
Greg Simpson 2005-2007
DONNA (McDermott) SMITH's Executive Board 1975 – 1978
First Vice Chair Jerry Lynch
Second Vice Chair Joann McCauley
Ralph Scharnau Secretary
Treasurer Shirley Healy
Finance Lloyd Hayes
Permanent Organization
Publicity Bud Noonan
Research Clarence Griep
Special Events Jeanette Bahl
Volunteer Mickey Gilloon
Terry Stewart's Executive Board, 2007-2011
First Vice-Chair Will Toomey, then Tom Avenarius
Second Vice-Chair Allison Drahozal
Secretary Walt Pregler
Treasurer Jim Waller
Candidates & Campaigns Tom Reisdorf
Information Sue Wilson
Publicity Helene Hurley Magee, then Carrie Tedore
Research Ron Hughes
Special Events Judy Schmidt
State Central Committee Jerry Lynch
Technology Marcos Rubinstein
Volunteer Carmen Hernandez, then Nancy Harrington-Chartier, then R.R.S. Stewart
Webeditor Alan Garfield
Jordan J. Montgomery vs. Ralph, a man of color
From the Newsletter Editor, 31 August 2011
As the national Martin Luther King Monument prepares to open in D.C., this year marks the 172nd anniversary of the first reported Iowa Supreme Court Decision, a case of Social Justice if there ever was one.
In the Matter of Ralph (a colored Man) on Habeas Corpus was decided 4 July 1839. Ralph was born a slave in Virginia around 1795, under the name Rafe Nelson. In infancy, he was given name of owner, Ralph Montgomery. Both later moved to Kentucky, where Ralph was sold to Montgomery’s brother William, who in turn sold Ralph to his son, Jordan, in 1830. Two years later Jordan’s family and slaves moved to Marion County, Missouri. In 1834, Jordan made a written contract with Ralph for his freedom, at the price of $550 with an additional $50 payment for hire, and interest imposed starting 1 January 1835. Ralph traveled to Dubuque County with the hope of earning the money by mining lead, where he dug by Irishman Alexander Butterworth, who also was a partner in a grocery store, and was elected a trustee of the town council in 1838. That same year, Jordan with 3 partners took out a $4,000 loan from state bank of Missouri. When the money was due to be repaid on 15 May 1839, Jordan sent agents (called “the Virginians” in records) to Dubuque that month since Ralph had yet to pay him.
The Iowa Territorial Assembly had passed “An Act to Regulate Blacks and Mulattoes” in January 1839. Under section 6, if a person or their agent applied to a justice of the peace and proved someone was their property, the JP could arrest the individual. Jordan’s Virginians swore an affidavit that Ralph was Jordan’s property and they were his agents, and a JP directed the sheriff to deliver Ralph to them. The Sheriff took the agents to Ralph’s Mineral lot, where the agents handcuffed him, put him in wagon, drove to Bellevue avoiding Dubuque, and confined him in a vessel bound for Missouri. Butterworth went to Thomas S. Wilson, District Court Judge resident in Dubuque, for a writ of habeas corpus, Latin for "you may have the body", a legal action through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. Wilson issued the writ, and the sheriff went to Bellevue, retrieved Ralph, and returned to Dubuque. The Iowa News of Dubuque reported on 1 June 1839 that Ralph appeared before Judge Wilson, who decided to transfer the case to the Supreme Court of Iowa Territory. The three district court judges composed the Supreme Court, but Wilson recused himself and the Court Order book records Chief Justice Mason and Judge Williams heard case in Burlington, the territorial capitol at the time. The Justices reasoned the Articles of Compact in 1787 of the North West Ordinance, which stated “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territories” applied to Ralph.
Furthermore, Ralph came to Iowa before there was a civil government in the area at all, and so was not subject to the Blacks and Mullatoes Act of 1839. He was not a fugitive because he came to Iowa with Jordan’s permission and being in debt does not justify a return to slavery. The Missouri Compromise did not require emancipating runaway slaves, but if a master gave permission for a slave to live in free territory, he cannot expect to then reclaim the person as property.
In Dubuque, 16 slaves belonging to 11 families were recorded in the census of 1840 and instances of slavery were reported in the state as late as 1852, but slavery was gradually phased out in Iowa except in southern Lee county, which was below the 1820 Missouri Compromise line. That is why to this day Lee County has two county courthouses while other counties only have one: it had one court house below the compromise line and one courthouse above the line. Between 1763 and 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon resolved a border dispute between the then British colonies of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. In the Missouri Compromise, the Mason–Dixon Line coincided with the northern border of Missouri and became the legal boundary between the slave and free states and the cultural boundary between the North and South. Ralph’s case was not referenced directly in the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott decision which overturned the Missouri Compromise line, but in his dissent Justice Curtis used a line of reasoning that was used by the Iowa Supreme Court in declaring Ralph free. Ralph worked in Judge Wilson’s garden one day each spring in thanks until he died of small pox, 22 July 1870, and was buried in Linwood Cemetery, aged about 75 years old.
Most of this information in this article comes from To Go Free: A Treasury of Iowa’s Legal Heritage by Richard, Lord Acton and Patricia Nassif Acton. The book’s title comes from the final line of the Ralph decision: “It is therefore ordered and adjudged that he (Ralph) be discharged from further duress and restraint, and that he go hence.”
To comment on this column, or suggest historical incidents for future newsletters, you can contact R.R.S. Stewart, newsletter editor, at countess14@hotmail.com
Clark v. Muscatine School Board of Directors
From the Newsletter Editor, 30 September 2011
On 25 September 1957, 1,000 troops secured Little Rock Central High, allowing nine black students to enter and attend school. About 100 years earlier, Iowa’s schools integrated.
In 1846, the first session of the Iowa General Assembly enacted that public schools “shall be open and free to all white persons in the district between the age of five and 21.” The Iowa Code of 1851 exempted “blacks and mulattos” from paying property taxes that went towards the support of the public schools on the assumption that the schools would be segregated. In the 1857 Constitution, a state board of education was established, and Article 9 Section 12 stated, “The board of education shall provide for the education of all the youths of the State, through a system of common schools.”
The 7th Iowa General Assembly passed a bill in March 1858 dealing with the funding of the schools, which among other things established that the District Board of Directors “shall provide for the education of the colored youths in separate schools, except in cases where, by the unanimous consent of the persons sending to the school in the sub-district, they may be permitted to attend with white youths.”
The Iowa Supreme Court declared the March 1858 act unconstitutional in December 1858 after a dispute between the Dubuque School Board and the City of Dubuque over how to spend school funds remaining from before the state board of education was authorized in the 1857 Constitution, District Township of the City of Dubuque v. The City of Dubuque, 7 Iowa 262. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled the March 1858 act unconstitutional because the power to provide a system of education was given by the 1857 constitution to the Board of Education. The Iowa Legislature could allocate or not allocate state funds related to education, but all other decision were given to the Iowa Board of Education under the second constitution.
On 10 September 1867, Susan B. Clark tried to attend Grammar School No. 2 in the neighborhood of which she lived within the Muscatine school district. She was turned away on the basis that she is “of the Negro extraction and belongs to the colored race” and should attend the separate school for such children. Alexander Clark filed for a writ of mandamus on behalf of his daughter.
A writ of mandamus is an order from a superior court to any government subordinate court, corporation or public authority to do or forbear from doing some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do or refrain from doing as part of their public duty. In the American legal system, a public official must have a legal duty to do something and abstain from doing it, or what they are doing must infringe on a judicially enforceable and legally protected right for the aggrieved person to be granted a writ of mandamus.
The Muscatine School board argued that where the Iowa Legislature had left discretion to a board of directors, their actions couldn’t by controlled by mandamus, even if the discretion were unwisely exercised. The Clarks challenged the legal sufficiency of that claim, and the Muscatine District court issued a writ of mandamus ordering the School Board to enroll Susan at her neighborhood school. The School Board appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court. By the time they heard the case in 1868, Susan was 12.
Muscatine School Board argued that public sentiment opposed to integration justified school board discretion in establishing and maintaining schools separated by race, but even if public sentiment didn’t amount to justification, the board of directors had discretion in this particular matter and their discretion was not subject to mandamus, no mater how wise or unwise their decision was.
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that even though its previous case had dealt with funding and organization of the local School Boards, it had invalidated the entire General Assembly bill, which meant the part allowing for segregated schools had also been ruled unconstitutional. There had been no mention of discrimination in regards to color in any subsequent acts. The Board of Education in conjunction with the Iowa Legislature had passed an Act in 1860 establishing a system of education for all youths between the ages of 5 and 21 without mention of race and requiring everyone, regardless of race, to pay property taxes for the support for public schools. The Iowa Supreme Court concluded local school boards may exercise “a uniform discretion, operative upon all, as to the residence or qualification of children to entitle them to admission to each particular school, but they cannot deny a youth admission to any particular school on the basis of color, nationality, religion, or the like.”
Susan Clark's name appeared on the list of Muscatine High School graduates in 1871. The first graduation of students of any race from a high school in Dubuque took place in 1870. During the school year of 1875-1876, the Dubuque Board denied the right of African American children to attend ward schools by claiming that the teacher at African-American school was capable of primary instruction, but the Board did approve that any African American child completing the segregated primary school could attend Dubuque’s only public high school. The Board was taken to District Court by the parents of primary school children, but instructed its counsel not to offer any defense. All pupils withdrew from the African American primary school on February 14, 1877 and enrolled in their ward schools.
Susan’s brother, Alexander Clark, Jr., grew up to become the first African-American graduate of the University of Iowa Law School and at the age of 58, Alexander Clark Sr. became the second. President Benjamin Harrison appointed Clark Sr. U.S. Minister to Liberia, where he died in 1891. His appointment was one of the highest of an African-American by a U.S. President up to that point. Gov. Vilsack spoke of Alexander Clark Sr. in his 2003 inaugural address
The quotes in this article come from To Go Free: A Treasury of Iowa’s Legal Heritage by Richard, Lord Acton and Patricia Nassif Acton; Clark v. Muscatine School Board of Directors (decided by the Iowa Supreme Court on 14 June 1868); and "Dubuque Community School District" History in Encyclopedia Dubuque, http://www.encyclopediadubuque.org/index.php?title=DUBUQUE_COMMUNITY_SCHOOL_DISTRICT
Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton with our
Dubuque County Democrat Party Chair, Terry
Stewart on August 14, 2007.
(Pics courtesy Linda and Nick Lucy.)
Click for more
images.
John Culver Senior
celebrates 75.
Former Iowa US Senator visits with friends.
Among others, his son, the Governor of Iowa Chet
Culver, Dubuque Mayor Roy Buol and Asst Development
Director Terri Goodman. (Pics courtesy Helene
McGee.) Click for more
images.
Barack Obama and Labor
Day Pics.
Obama and friends. Also Dubuque Labor Day
Parade. (Pics courtesy Gregory Simpson and
Caroline Merkel.) Click for more
images.
The 4th Annual Dinner, hosted by Terry Stewart
with a host of notaries including state and city
elected officials and our guest and speaker,
Representative Bruce Braley. (Pics courtesy Alan
Garfield.) Click for more
images.
