Dan Brickner for Dallas County Sheriff
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:00pm Chase Martyn
You might have noticed that a few weeks ago I stopped posting to this site very often, and it might have reminded you of the time I stopped blogging for several months to work for the IDP during the general election. Well, I have been doing campaign work again, this time over in Dallas County, on Democrat Dan Brickner’s campaign for Sheriff.
Tomorrow is election day there, and Dallas County voters will have the opportunity to elect a replacement for former Sheriff Brian Gilbert, who was forced to resign after “allegedly” stealing $120,000 from a drug bust. We have also learned since then that there were a lot of other problems in the department, as indicated by this report by the state auditor (big PDF). The report is fun to read, unless you depend on the Dallas County Sheriff to protect you and your family. Then it’s pretty scary.
Dan has 28 years of law enforcement experience, and has spent 20 years as police chief in Albia and then in Perry. He has overseen a large budget, and he has managed a large staff. His opponent has never managed a department with more than one full-time employee, and has ties to the current Sheriff’s department. Dan has no personal connections to the department, so he’ll come in without any favors to pay back or friends to protect. In this race, it is black and white: Dan is the only candidate with the experience and the integrity to fix what needs to be fixed, and I knew it within five minutes of meeting him.
If you live in Dallas County (and that includes much of West Des Moines and Urbandale, among other more rural communities and small towns), please don’t forget to make it to the polls. The Brickner campaign has a significant lead in absentee ballots, but the cliche still holds true: every vote counts.
So tomorrow, get out and vote for Dan Brickner if you’re in Dallas County. Thanks.
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Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous, State Politics, Action
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2 Comments Add your own
1. DC Resident | January 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Iowa Progress? If you are just going to be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party without using your brains, advertise it…. rename yourselves “Sheeples’ Voice for the Democrats”.
As concerns the special election for sheriff of Dallas County, all you are doing is broadcasting some cheap negative campaign message personally written by Brickner, the only candidate the Democrats could come up with.
FACTS:
1.The city of Perry has the highest violent crimes per 1,000 residents in Dallas County, Iowa, double any other town in the county. You can find the numbers on the FBI’s website.
2. The Perry PD, operating by Brickner’s magic “blueprint, had a latino gang leader almost hired as their bilingual cop; they were giving him rides in a squad car, he was posting pics of himself on MySpace with the guns in the squad car.
3. The Perry PD approved, through a half-hearted background check, a convicted criminal for a local liquor license — it took a tip from a local citizen to set that straight.
4. Dan Brickner does have ties to the Dallas County sheriff’s department in many ways… the most obvious are his 2 ex Perry Police officers who work there.
Would you move your family to Perry, where Brickner’s BLUEPRINT is at work?
I don’t expect you to post this, but I hope you will share it with each other… shame on you… you’ve already sold out and you don’t even know you are being used.
2. Chase Martyn | January 23rd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
DC Resident, this is a blog that supports Democrats. We don’t make any bones about it. I don’t think we are “sheep” or anything like that, but we support a progressive agenda. In a Sheriff’s race, political affiliation doesn’t matter a whole lot, but we are still going to support the candidate we feel is best for the job.
I am not sure what you thought was negative in my post. I didn’t say anything particularly critical of Chad Leonard (whom I assume you know personally), but I could have if I had wanted to. I will say, though, that Chad was one of Dan’s strongest supporters in 2004, which makes me wonder why that’s the case if your four “facts” are supposed to be so compelling.
Among other things, Dan has cut Perry’s crime rate nearly in half over the 12 and a half years that he has been police chief there. He has worked hard to build bridges with community members, and he really knows his stuff, which most people he meets immediately notice and respect.
That said, the polls are closed now, so it’s out of our hands.
And comments get posted directly to the internet. We don’t censor people simply because they disagree with us, because to do so would undermine the intellectual debate we hope to foster.
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