Conrad Does the 2018 Wing Ding

by Conrad Bascom
Lake Mills Graphic
On Friday, Aug. 10, northern Iowa was offered the chance to partake in dinner and a show with some of the brightest stars ascendant of the Democratic Party at the Historic Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake. According to organizers, nearly 1,000 tickets to the 15th annual Iowa Democratic Wing Ding were sold (depending on how you look at it, this year’s iteration was given either the hubris-heavy or magical-thinking subtitle “Surf the Blue Wave”—a clever nod to current forecasts for the midterm elections, which many pollsters and analysts allege as extremely favorable for Democrats). Wing Ding Committee Chair Randy Black asserted that tickets sales enjoyed a marked uptick—especially among women—following the late addition of Attorney-for-the-(Porn)-Stars and cable regular, Michael Avenatti, to the bill. Evidently, he’s popular enough to drive sales, despite key figures like Gubernatorial candidate, Fred Hubbell, dropping off the bill out of fear of being associated with the political firebrand. But this being an off-year for Presidential primaries, the Wing Ding’s slate of underdogs and fringe figures seemed pretty apropos—although I doubt Michael Avenatti will get top billing if he returns in 2019. The question remains whether any of the potential and announced candidates present in Clear Lake on Friday will be able to transform their early-bird gambit into a viable campaign.
The Wing Ding was conceived in 2003 as a means of fundraising for the party apparatus in Hancock, Winnebago, and Cerro Gordo counties. Since its inception, the Wing Ding has been graced by a litany of luminaries and the occasional bad egg: Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Chet Culver, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Lincoln Chafee.
After introductory remarks by Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price, 2018’s Wing Ding dinner kicked into full gear with baseball-playing big man J.D. Scholten, who, as the Iowa Democratic Party’s longshot for Steve King’s 7th District seat, continues to defy conventional wisdom—not only has Scholten mounted a formidable campaign and imbued his staff with a surprising amount of fervor for a race which has proven historically unwinnable, but his folksy youthfulness and travel-worn RV seem to be speaking to a broad coalition of Iowans. Scholten had a coterie of millennial staffers bedecked in their trademark “Standing Tall for All” t-shirts present—and they made the savvy move of securing a table at the front of the ballroom and breaking out into chants to rile the crowd up. The Party establishment seemed confident enough in Scholten’s prospects to prophesize about stirring victory in November multiple times; Maryland’s Representative John Delaney even boldly proclaimed that, “. . . this will be the last Wing Ding where Steve King represents Iowa.” They are statements that should certainly be consumed with a healthy heaping of salt, but at the same time, Scholten almost received the warmest welcome of the night (second only to Avenatti). Though his oratorical style still needs some finessing and he was more nervous than impassioned at times, Scholten still managed to send some zingers Steve King’s way and give a feisty performance, even challenging the incumbent Congressman to a debate. When touting the diversity of his field staff and the Republican mother of four that’s been campaigning for him, Scholten used King’s words to lampoon him: “When he said diversity isn’t our (Iowa’s) strength, I think he was talking about his campaign staff.”
After Scholten, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Andrew Yang, took the stage and gave the most idiosyncratic stump speech of the night—one that more closely resembled a Powerpoint pitch in a board room than a rally cry. For this reporter, at least, his colloquial and policy-geared performance was refreshing, as Yang rolled out a concise and comprehendible three-part plan, which is built around implementing Universal Basic Income, Medicare for All, and something he terms ‘Human Capitalism’ (essentially a more humane way of measuring economic success and failure). His big sell: Universal Basic Income—Yang’s campaign dubbed their proposed policy the ‘Freedom Dividend’. If elected, Yang’s ‘Freedom Dividend’ would dole out $1,000 a month to every individual between the ages of 18 and 64, regardless of employment or marital status. According to his website, “This would enable all Americans to pay their bills, educate themselves, start businesses, . . .”—and etcetera. He believes his form of UBI is the only way to stem the imminent dangers of growing automation and the ensuing wave of mass unemployment. Though it might mean a hefty price check for the government, Yang asserts that it would grow the economy by 12.56 to 13.10 percent—or close to $2.5 trillion by 2025.
I had the opportunity to ask Yang a few questions about his ‘Freedom Dividend’, and when I inquired whether he was concerned the proposal would come across as Socialism-lite to conservatives, he had this to say:
“When you look at the heritage of the ‘Freedom Dividend’, Richard Nixon passed something very similar because it empowers individuals. Milton Friedman—one of the godfathers of libertarianism—supported it. And Alaska, as I said, is a Republican state (Yang is referring to Alaska’s UBI policy here). There are plenty of conservatives that really like the idea of government giving money to people so they can make their own decisions and getting out of the way. What conservatives dislike is when the government hovers over them. I believe there’d be bipartisan support for this because there’s a lot of increasing recognition that our economy’s changing in fundamental ways.”
At this point, I wanted to press Yang a little further on the subject, because I wasn’t yet convinced that Republicans would fall into line behind his ‘Freedom Dividend’ so easily. I asked whether he thought he’d have to conceal his idea in a “rhetorical Trojan horse of some kind,” at which point Yang laughed and divulged the following:
“Well, basically, we called it the ‘Freedom Dividend’ . . . It tested very well. We used internet polling and the term ‘Freedom Dividend’ was very popular.”
Needless to say, you can count on business-minded presidential candidates to be canny about testing and polling their messages. For a country that has long been mired in incremental change, Andrew Yang’s brave platform is a hard sell for many folks, and that’s the reason why he and his entourage didn’t get to enjoy the crush of media personnel and groupies that swarmed Avenatti after the event. All the same, Yang came prepared and stood out in a quiet kind of way.
Yang was followed by Congressmen John Delaney and Tim Ryan, both men who have a tendency to make grandiose and jingoistic declarations. Rep. John Delaney seems intent on bringing together a broad coalition of progressive Democrats, centrists, urban rednecks, rural hipsters, disillusioned Republicans, and the mythic independent; as such, he aimed for the fences with broad strokes. He’s currently on a Quixotic quest to hit all 99 counties in Iowa—a feat Scholten has already achieved—but it’s impossible to tell whether his sheer determinedness will translate into a fighting chance.
Congressman Tim Ryan lost me for a minute, as I needed to recharge my camera battery before Avenatti hit the stage. When I glanced around the room, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one experiencing a bit of a lull as his soft voice waxed American poetic.
Unlike the other candidates that had milled about the room before the event, there had been zero Avenatti sightings before he took the stage, and so he milked his triumphant entrance for all its worth. Say what you want about Avenatti, but the man is a pro at generating media spectacle. As all the other media outlets have noted, Avenatti took a bellicose-stance during his speech, and his biggest crowd pleaser of the night was a Michelle Obama line reinterpreted into a war cry: “When they go low, we hit harder.” Beyond his obviously sanguine desire to do battle with Trump and all his lackeys on the Presidential stage in 2020, much of Michael Avenatti’s speech hit on the same talking points as the candidates that came before him: single-payer health care, immigration reform, Roe V. Wade, equal pay, equality, and job growth. And just like the other candidates (barring Andrew Yang, who spoke of his parents’ immigrant experience), he portrayed himself as an all-around All-American, Midwestern guy that grew up doing quintessentially-American things, like riding John Deere tractors and mowing lawns in St. Louis. For the great deal of talk about Avenatti’s unlikely and iconoclastic candidacy, he seemed much the same on Friday.
After the 15th annual Iowa Democratic Wing Ding wound down to a close, I spent some minutes talking with a few Yang supporters that had stuck around for various interviews, and was able to ask Jessica Anderson of Algona why Andrew Yang had appealed to her: “Because he didn’t hit the talking points so much? Because it wasn’t about the bold courage of the Democratic Party and the comeback kid. . . . Instead, he confronted the problems and gave us the numbers. He showed that he’s analyzed the issues and come up with solutions for them.”
We all spoke for a little while longer, as we digested what we’d just seen and conversed about current events. A few minutes later, I asked Jack Ralls—also of Algona—which Iowa Democratic Wing Ding was his favorite, as I had just learned that he’s apparently attended every Wing Ding of the past 15 years (far more than half the number of years he’s been alive):
“The greatest Wing Ding was probably the year Obama attended—2007.”
Jack then relayed a classic anecdote about how he ran past Barack Obama’s security detail into the bathroom—Jack was eleven—and made awkward eye contact with the future Commander-in-Chief. Lisa Ralls, Jack’s mother and Chair of the Winnebago County Democratic Party, then showed me a picture of a smiling Jack and Barack Obama taken at that year’s Wing Ding.
Though 2018’s Wing Ding can’t compare to the legendary experience Jack had in 2007, he did speak fondly of this year’s event:
“This Wing Ding had a really good variety of candidates. I think it showed that there are a lot of new ideas coming out of the Democratic Party and, yeah, that makes me really enthusiastic about 2020 and the future of the Democratic Party as a whole.”
When I asked Jack where this year’s Wing Ding ranks out of all 15, he said, “At least top three.” And though I agree with Jack that there’s ample reason to be enthusiastic about Democratic prospects going forward, I wasn’t impressed enough by any of the Presidential performances, to begin to believe that any of them will be able to defeat an incumbent who has thrown out all of the rules of political propriety and openly colludes with rival states on election hacking. If Donald Trump is to be unseated in 2020, the Democratic Party’s going to need to become even more inspired, ASAP.