Monday, March 15, 2010

Rep. Wayne Ford Retirement

Des Moines Representative Wayne Ford has served in the Iowa House of Representatives for seven terms. It sounds more and more like there will not be an eighth. Ford's former house member, Ed Fallon, started the talk saying on a radio show that Ford wouldn't run and was working with the Iowa Democratic Party to pick a successor (here's the story reported by the Iowa Independent) Fallon criticized the party for it.

Here's what the party's spokesperson, Ali Glisson, sent to me in response:

“Whatever a member of the legislature decides to do, it is a personal decision that I will not comment on. No ‘clandestine effort’ is going on, as some have speculated. We remain confident that the Iowa House will remain under Democratic control.”

She declined to say whether Ford would run again. I talked to Rep. Ford tonight. He said he is still at the statehouse, so he isn't retired. I told him I was talking about next session. He said if he had news, he would issue a press release. I tried several times to get him to say whether he would retire or run again. He said several times he issues a press release when he has news.

The deadline for a candidate to file for the primary with the secretary of state's office is this Friday at 5pm.

1 comment:

desmoinesdem said...

Ford's conduct is ridiculous. If he is not planning to run again, he owes it to his Democratic constituents to say so in time for other candidates to file.

By not clarifying his intentions (four days before the filing deadline!) he is just lending credibility to Fallon's allegation.