The Birth of Blog for Iowa: 5 Years Ago Today

When the new name – Democracy for America – was
announced, in March of 2004, I got an email from Eric Davis, an
Illinois super-volunteer I had met when I was in charge of recruiting
Illinois volunteers to come to help out in eastern Iowa for the Dean
campaign. Eric told me he had purchased the domain name
democracyforillinois, and suggested I acquire democracyforiowa. Of
course, I had never bought a domain name, and had only the vaguest idea
what he was even talking about. But Eric directed me to GoDaddy and I
bought the domain names.

Of course at that point I had no idea
what to do with them! So I sent out an email to the Iowa
super-volunteers letting them know what I had done. Linda Thieman
emailed me back with a short message asking “have you decided what to
do about web-hosting?” I answered “what’s web-hosting?” and that was
the start of a very productive exchange (mostly Linda knowing what to
do and me saying that sounds great!) that led to the creation of Blog
for Iowa.  Happy belated B-day, BFIA!

Alta Price

4/1/09:  Note from BFIA Editor, Trish Nelson:  For Blog for Iowa's 5th birthday, I asked some of the original Deaniacs and posters to write a few words to commemorate the occasion.   BFIA's founding Editor, Linda Thieman, starts us off with a look at how it all began.

It’s hard to believe that Blog for Iowa got up and running five years ago today.  We were born out of the glory and the defeat of the Howard Dean presidential campaign.  We were there at the birth of the modern-day progressive movement.  And we emerged intact from the local Dean Meet Up organizations.

In Storm Lake in NW Iowa, where I ran our local little Dean Meet Up, we had a wonderful Dean staffer named David who worked tirelessly for the cause.  He attended every Meet Up and acted as our “resident expert.”  Then, after each meeting, he and I would stand and talk for ages, full of the excitement of it all.

The day after Dean’s caucus defeat, David said to me excitedly, “Did you hear? We came in third?”  And I was sort of like, “Um, yeah. I know.  Dean got third.”  And David said, “No!  Buena Vista County came in third in the state—the third-highest county for Dean!”  That was remarkable for this conservative county in the 5th district, and due, I think, entirely to David and his organization of the university students in Storm Lake and the Dems in the surrounding small towns.  After such a showing, David was disappointed when the Dean campaign did not retain him, but quickly got a job driving around some unknown guy named Obama who was running for U.S. Senate in Illinois.

Well, after the defeat, we pressed on.  Dean for America morphed into Democracy for America.  Through several conference calls for Iowa Meet Up leaders, I had met Dr. Alta Price of Bettendorf, and once our beloved gov withdrew from the race, Alta contacted all the state Meet Up leaders to try to get a chapter of Democracy for Iowa going.  The cornerstone would be Blog for Iowa, which I volunteered to run.  Well, the local Meet Ups were happy remaining local and a statewide organization never did get off the ground even after years of trying.  But Blog for Iowa thrived, with people like Alta and Molly Regan over in Eastern Iowa promoting it with buttons and in parades and through e-groups.

I stayed with BFIA for two years and then came back to run the blog for three months last fall while we transitioned editors from Sam Garchik to Trish Nelson.  Yeah, I got to run Blog for Iowa when Barack Obama won the presidential election.  I tried not to let on, but I was a total nervous wreck, afraid that once again the dream would be yanked away from us. 

But it wasn’t.  For once, it actually wasn’t. 

Linda Thieman writes the Katie & Kimble: A Ghost Story chapter book series for ages 7-10.