Cathy Glasson Is Running for Governor; Wins Poll

Caption: Left, Cathy Glasson, gubernatorial candidate, local SEIU president, and ICU nurse at University Hospitals and Clinics; right, Colleen Mehaffey, SEIU union organizer and friend of Cathy Glasson for many years.

Cathy Glasson spoke recently at the Reunion Brewery in Coralville, Iowa. My husband and I attended, as well as many other people.

Cathy organized nurses at Finley (Dubuque) and Broadlawns (Des Moines) Hospitals. She took two years' leave at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, where she'd been an Intensive Care Unit nurse, and then had to decide whether she wanted to work for UIHC or organize. She decided she'd rather organize. As a result, she's been all over the country organizing workers to fight for their rights.

The Republican majority in both houses of the Iowa legislature and the Republican in the governor's mansion who signed the legislation that Republicans produced, which deprived workers of their collective bargaining rights; rolled back long-awaited raises in the minimum wage achieved in five of Iowa's largest counties with high costs-of-living (Johnson, Linn, Polk, Wapello, and Lee Counties) to the original $7.25 an hour statewide; and cut workmen's compensation benefits for workers injured on the job drove Glasson to run for office.

For years, a slim Democratic majority in the Iowa Senate had stopped such excesses by Republicans, but in when Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs) lost his bid to retain his senate seat, all hell broke loose. The Republicans gained control of the Senate.

Cathy's for health insurance for all and is tired of the working class getting beaten up.

"We need a governor who's willing to stand up to CEOs and big corporations. We need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Instead of taking away union rights, we need universal health care, Planned Parenthood, and clean water. We need to invest in our schools. Instead of suppressing the vote, we need to make sure Iowans can vote early.

"Democrats can't be Republican-lite. We can start in 2018 to turn this state and turn this country around."

When question time came around, I asked the first one.

"Who would you appoint as head of the Department of Human Services?"

The question is key to me and others since children, mainly girls, have been needlessly tortured and have died of starvation under the tender auspices of DHS-sponsored foster care in the past year. I used to be a social worker in child welfare.

"Let's get through the primary first," Cathy understandably responded.

Mike Carberry, Johnson County Supervisor, asked the second question, which was about clean water.

"Corporate agriculture needs to be held accountable," Cathy replied.

Cathy Glasson is nice, funny, and energetic. She's approachable and kind. She's also married to Matt Glasson, a labor attorney, who I also like very much. I met him at SEIU when I was an SEIU steward for the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program (HACAP). Matt said at the time that you could probably fit all of Iowa's labor lawyers in one cafe booth.

I like the idea that we could have two union organizers, one an attorney, in the governor's mansion for the price of one. That would be the perfect answer to the Republicans' efforts to strip Iowans' rights to a living wage and the right to collectively bargain and seek workers' compensation benefits if they're hurt on the job.

Spend a day, a morning, or an afternoon in the Day of Surgery lounge at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics if you don't think Iowa workers don't come in with some serious injuries from their jobs. One elderly woman I sat near while I was waiting for my husband to come out of surgery said, "I hope he loses his leg this time so he'll quit that job." Her husband worked for a well known plant in Cedar Rapids. He'd been badly hurt on the job before. She was in her seventies and seemed desperate to get him to retire before he got killed.

I'm voting for Cathy Glasson in the primary, and I hope you will, too. She won a recent informal poll. She got 27%; Nate Boulton got 26%, and Andy McGuire got 25%. (I voted for Cathy Glasson in the poll.)