An accident in Creston Thursday afternoon resulted in one person hurt and an estimated total of $30,000 worth of damage to the vehicles involved. Creston Police report a 2011 Chevy Traverse driven by 36-year-old Troy R. Howard, of Creston, was traveling west on Highway 34 at around 2:30-p.m., when a 2015 VW Jetta driven by 56-year-old Jans Visker, Jr., of Creston, pulled out in front of the Chevy in an attempt to turn left from Elm Street onto Highway 34.

The Chevy struck the VW on driver’s side. Visker complained of pain and was suspected of having minor/non-capacitating injuries. He was transported by EMS to the Greater Regional Medical Center, in Creston. Both driver’s were wearing their seat belts. No citations were issued.

(Radio Iowa) – Women will be the majority of Iowa’s congressional delegation in this new year. Mary Ellen Miller is the former executive director of “50-50 in 2020” — a group formed in 2010 to encourage women to run for office. “The reason we set up the program to recruit and train women was because Iowa was in a unique situation as being only one of only two states that had never sent a woman to congress or elected a woman governor and in 10 years that has all been turned around,” Miller says. “I’m just, of course, very proud of our work, but also amazed at how quickly it has all changed.”

Members of the U.S. House and Senate will be sworn into office on Sunday, the 3rd. Congresswoman Cindy Axne of West Des Moines then will be the dean of the Iowa delegation in the U.S. House, where she’ll be joined by two other women and a man. Joni Ernst will be sworn in for a second term in the U.S. Senate, too, so women will hold four of the six seats in Iowa’s D.C. delegation. 50-50 in 2020 aimed to have Iowa women serving in at least half of elected roles and disbanded last January. Miller says there are now several organizations doing the same work of encouraging and coaching women to run for office. “Very proud of our work, very excited,” Miller says, “but also kind of blown away by the speed at which the whole landscape reversed itself.”

Miller says the landscape has shifted partly due to generational change. “If you at the age of women running, they’re much younger. They grew up in a time of post-women’s liberation, post birth control,” Miller says. “They’re of an age that really are not intimidated by the customs, so to speak, of our public servant environment. It was always the ‘good old boys’ club’ and they just don’t have any patience with that.” Another contributing factor is the increasing numbers of women running for office. “Once women see other women running then they go, ‘Oh, I can do that,’ but at the beginning they just didn’t have those role models,” Miller says. “They didn’t have those images that looked like them.”

Miller predicts the next shift in Iowa and elsewhere will be toward electing more people of color and new American citizens who become active in the political process.

A Red Oak woman arrested Thursday night for Interference with Official Acts (a simple misdemeanor), was subsequently charged with felony offenses for possession of contraband and possession of a weapon in a correctional facility (The Montgomery County Jail). 41-year-old Brianna Nedean Gasper was taken into custody at around 9:42-p.m. The felony charges followed a search of her possessions and person at the Montgomery County Jail. Her bond was set at $10,000.