A Maryland congressman who is the first official Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 says his party must “start talking about what people really care about.” “Their jobs, the dignity of work, their pay and their opportunity for their children — that’s what people overwhelmingly care about. The Democratic Party has to be the party that stands for those things.” John Delaney has served three terms in the U.S. House, but is not seeking reelection in 2018. Instead, he’s visiting the states that host the first voting events in the 2020 presidential campaign and Delaney plans to visit Iowa twice a month over the next year. He was in Audubon Sunday afternoon and spoke by phone with Radio Iowa Sunday evening.

“The reason I entered this race so early is I think the Democratic Party has to have a very important conversation about our future and how we start winning elections,” Delaney says, “and I think I’m the person to, ultimately, lead that conversation, but really what I need to do is listen to people, make sure I’m focused on what they care about and give people an opportunity to get to know me.”

Delaney, who is 54 years old, is a former banker. He founded two companies and is worth about 90 million dollars according to the Associated Press. During his FIRST campaign for congress in 2012, Delaney promised voters he’d bring “the perspective of an entrepreneur to a gridlocked congress.” Delaney’s prescription for the Democratic Party in 2017? Figure out how to appeal to Americans who’ve been “left behind by the pace” of economic change.

“In the last election, we kind of created the wrong villain,” Delaney says. “The villain, they said, was globalization, but in reality it was government’s failure to respond to changes that were ultimately positive for the economy, but they weren’t positive for everyone and we watched it happen and we did nothing about it.” During his meeting with Democrats in Audubon on Sunday, Delaney didn’t mention Trump’s remarks about N-F-L players taking a knee during the National Anthem.

Delaney says Americans ARE looking for “civility” in their politics, but he says competence is the more pressing concern. “The Democratic Party has to be the party of good government,” Delaney says. “We need to be the party that actually gets government working again for the American people…They want to start believing in their government again because it’ll help them believe more in themselves.” Delaney was in Iowa last month and visited the Iowa State Fair.

Today (Monday) at 8 a.m., he’ll be at Duncan’s Cafe on Main Street in Council Bluffs to greet and talk with breakfast-hour customers.

(Radio Iowa)

A touring Midwestern rock band will play concerts in Underwood and two other Iowa high schools in the next week or so, shows that will be immediately followed by frank talks from the band’s frontman about financial literacy. Steve Gooding, co-founder, guitarist and singer in the band Gooding, says after the music ends, the lessons begin about debt, stocks and savings accounts.

“This is an organic thing that grew out of us just realizing some mistakes we made,” Gooding says. “I’ve got a mic and I’m lucky, I’d better use it. We’re trying to find common denominators to keep kids out of trouble later in life. We are rock-n-rollers, brother, we are not financial advisors. This is just something we realized maybe could make a little bit of a difference.” Gooding, a Wichita, Kansas native, says “the music helps the medicine go down” and most kids are receptive to hearing what he has to say about money.

“I tell them about not knowing what a credit score was until I screwed mine up,” Gooding says. “I tell them I knew more about geometry than how to balance a checkbook when I left high school. I have them raise their hands: Who wants to buy a car? Who wants to buy a house? Who wants to get married? Of all these things, I show them the stats on financial literacy being as important to achieving these things as anything else they’re going to learn in school.” While it appears some athletes and celebrities become wealthy overnight successes, Gooding says that’s just a myth he debunks with his concerts.

“We play rock-n-roll as wild and crazy as we can and we show them a little film, some of the people we’ve met in the music business, and then I come out and actually try to deconstruct that very same thing, by saying, ‘Look, I was a kid that thought some record deal was going to fix all my problems, but you have to go slow and steady,'” Gooding says. “If you’ve got a dollar in your pocket, you have more money than some of these famous people. They go up fast and they go down just as fast.”

The band Gooding is scheduled to play on Thursday (September 28th) at Underwood High School in Underwood, and next Tuesday (October 3rd) at both Norwalk High in Norwalk and Ballard High in Huxley in central Iowa. The tour is sponsored by the Iowa Insurance Division in partnership with the non-profit group, Funding the Future.

(Radio Iowa) related story links:

Program: fundingthefuturelive.org
Band: goodingmusic.com

A male juvenile is dead and two adults were seriously injured during a head-on collision late Sunday evening in Webster County.  The Iowa State Patrol reports a passenger in one of the vehicle, 12-year old Brady Ahlstrom, of Humbolt, died at the scene. The drivers of the vehicles, 40-year old Trisha Luthro, of Badger, and 39-year old Kevin Ahlstrom, of Humbolt, suffered incapacitating injuries. They were initially transported by rescue squad to the Humboldt Hospital, and soon transferred to Iowa Methodist Hospital. Each of the crash victims was wearing a seat belt.

The Patrol says the crash happened at around 7:50-p.m. on Highway 3, one-half mile east of Dakota City. It occurred as a 2007 Ford Edge driven by Trisha Luthro was traveling east in the westbound lane and a 2009 Buick LaCrosse driven by Kevin Ahlstrom was traveling west in its lane. The SUV’s collided at the crest of a hill.

The accident remains under investigation. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and Humboldt EMS assisted the Patrol at the scene.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – Officials of a city in western Iowa have agreed to spend more than $100,000 on a project to silence train horns that now frequently blare through downtown.  The Sioux City Journal reports that Sioux City Council voted on Sept. 18 to approve a contract with Twin Cities-based SRF Consulting Group Inc. to create a “quiet zone” at multiple BNSF Railway train crossings downtown. Quiet zones are areas which meet specific safety guidelines that allow trains to pass through a crossing without sounding their horns.

Mayor Bob Scott was the lone dissenting vote. He says he voted against the project because the contract was being given to an out-of-state company instead of a local business. The city created another quiet zone in the downtown area seven years ago.

SLOAN, Iowa (AP) – The Winnebago Tribe is hoping to reclaim land in Iowa that was once part of its reservation in northeast Nebraska, but local hunters are concerned they might lose access. The Sioux City Journal reports the 1,643 acres of land is owned by the federal government and attracts hundreds of hunters each year. The land, which is near the tribe’s WinnaVegas Casino, was part of the Winnebago reservation when it was created in 1865. But the eastern border of the reservation was the Missouri River, which changed course over the years.

U.S. Rep. Steve King introduced a bill earlier this month to transfer the land to the Bureau of Indian Affairs where it would be held in trust for the tribe.