1. VOICES&COMMENTARY
The Des Moines Register | DesMoinesRegister.com | Metro Edition Thursday, May 12, 2016 | Page 17A
P
atty Judge’s interview
with the Des Moines
Register on Tuesday
helped clarify a few
things — not so much
about her positions on
issues but on the line
of attack Republicans
will take against her.
Tweets from GOP operatives
during the one-hour editorial board
session went something like this:
Robert Haus: @pattyforiowa needs
to get her hands on a LOT of briefing
materials, sorry to say. She is not
prepared to be a US Senator #iasen
Tim Albrecht: DMR to Judge at
the edit board: Yeah, you’ve attacked
(Chuck) Grassley but issues? She
lists topics but not solutions. No
pushback. #iasen
Robert Haus: @DMRegister Ed Bd
pressing @pattyforiowa for specifics
on issues. Repeatedly, because she’s
got not much beyond talking points.
#iasen
Jimmy Centers: “Hogs still smell”
is about the only thing @pattyforio-
wa has said confidently in this ed
board meeting. #iasen
You see the theme here: Judge
isn’t prepared, she doesn’t under-
stand federal issues, all she has is
talking points. The criticism isn’t
entirely fair — political attacks sel-
dom are. But Judge has given her
opponents ammunition for complain-
ing that she’s light on details and she
gave them more to complain about
during Tuesday’s interviews.
For example, asked why the Reg-
ister editorial board should endorse
her, Judge said: “I think I’ve been on
the statewide scene for a long time.
This is the fifth time that I’ve been
on a state ballot and people are fa-
miliar with me. They know what I’ve
done throughout my political ca-
reer.” She men-
tioned flood
recovery, pre-
school expan-
sion and civil
rights issues
addressed dur-
ing her four
years as lieuten-
ant governor
and concluded
by saying she
has a “strong
resume” and
looks forward to the “next step.”
This was the first question and
the most predictable, but Judge gave
a limp-noodle answer instead of a
galvanizing argument of why she
should be Iowa’s next senator.
Judge touted her electability
against incumbent Republican
Chuck Grassley but was vague about
her strategy. She said her campaign
plan would include “all kinds of
media.” Asked about the lack of
content on her campaign website,
Judge said that’s coming soon, but
she’s only been in the race since
March. “This whole social media
thing to me is very new,” she said.
Of all of the issues discussed
during the meeting, Judge perhaps
offered the most detail about making
college more affordable. She said
she wants to increase Pell grants and
allow graduates to refinance their
loans. “I would certainly look at a
proposal for tuition-free community
college for two years if the students
kept a certain high grade-point aver-
age,” she said. But she confessed she
doesn’t understand why student loan
rates are so high and why politicians
are reluctant to deal with it.
Judge offered one idea for deal-
ing with wage disparity: Raise the
minimum wage to $15 per hour na-
tionwide. She said $15 is the right
level because it’s “certainly not sky-
high but it is a place that starts to
make a wage that people can talk
about living on.”
She would raise the $118,000 pay-
roll tax cap for Social Security. Ide-
ally, she said, the cap would be elim-
inated, but she suggested she’d be
willing to settle for raising it to some
unspecified level. She said the Af-
fordable Care Act needs controls on
the cost of prescription drugs. She
raised the need for stronger, commu-
nity-based mental health and in-
creasing access to providers but said
she didn’t know what the state is
doing now.
She was fuzzy on how the EPA’s
Waters of the United States rule
would fit into her vision for water
quality, yet walked into the Repub-
licans’ line of fire on a hot-button
issue for farmers. Asked whether
she agrees with EPA’s definition of
waters of the U.S., she said, “I think
they’re probably on target, and I
know a lot of my agricultural people,
friends don’t agree with me on that,”
she said. “But again, we are at a
point where we have to be serious
about improving water quality.”
Republican operatives leaped on
that generally positive assessment
of WOTUS. Albrecht tweeted: “And
there we have it. This gaffe is one
you’re going to hear about a lot.”
My impression is that Judge is
trying to convey that she’s capable
of working across party lines for
solutions and she doesn’t want to be
overly prescriptive in her issue posi-
tions. That’s a difficult balancing act,
however, as she’s also trying to per-
suade Democratic primary voters
that she’s the most experienced both
as a candidate and as a policymaker.
It’s especially tricky in a year
when many voters seem to prefer
bold pronouncements over picky
details. Judge, however, lacks the
showy rhetorical finesse that can
make voters forget about the nitty-
gritty.
Republicans are deploying the
same playbook against Judge that
they used successfully against
Christie Vilsack’s congressional run
in 2012, saying she’s in over her
head. Judge is well-grounded in a
range of policy experience, but she’s
going to have to make it clear she
knows exactly what to do in the U.S.
Senate and how to do it.
GOP
HITS
PATTY
JUDGE
ON FUZZY
POLICY
KATHIE
OBRADOVICH
kobradov@dmreg.com
ON POLITICS
RODNEY WHITE/THE REGISTER
“This is the fifth time that I’ve been on a state ballot
and people are familiar with me. They know what
I’ve done throughout my political career,” Democratic
U.S. Senate candidate Patty Judge told the Des
Moines Register editorial board Tuesday.
Democrat is making it easy for Republicans to attack her for vague policy positions and plans
‘A
geism is as odious as
racism or sexism,”
Florida Rep. Claude
Pepper, D-Fla., said in 1976
before his legislation (support-
ed by Aging Committee mem-
ber and then-Rep. Chuck
Grassley) passed to eliminate
age-based mandatory retire-
ment and end discrimination in
hiring and advancement (the
Age Discrimination and Em-
ployment Act Amendments).
While the nation is fond of
debating improvements and
changes to Social Security,
both likely presidential nomi-
nees, Hillary Clinton and Don-
ald Trump, promise to main-
tain and protect it. However,
equally important to seniors
are the economics and self-
worth of their work. Being
fired or demoted for age is
unacceptable.
Age-related complaints
have grown, not shrunk, in
recent years. The Equal Em-
ployment Opportunity Com-
mission reports that between
1997 and 2007, there were
around 16,000 to 19,000 filings
for age complaints. However,
from 2008 though the present,
complaints increased to 23,000
to 25,000 a year. An AARP
survey found that two-thirds of
workers between 45 and 74
have “seen or experienced age
discrimination on the job.”
A Supreme Court decision
in 2009, Gross v. FBL. Finan-
cial Services, Inc., put the
ADEA at greater risk, and the
risk continues today. In 2003,
Jack Gross no-
ticed a memo at
his West Des
Moines insur-
ance job that
explained staff-
ing changes. “I
got this ahead of
time, and it just
jumped off the
page. Every-
body that they’re naming here
is my age or older. Nobody
under 50 was getting demoted.
The only promotions were
people who were basically a
generation younger than us.”
Gross was 54 at the time
and a vice president at FBL
Financial. He sued the compa-
ny and achieved victory in the
lower courts. But the U.S. Su-
preme Court ruled on June 18,
2009, by 5-4 that the plaintiff
most prove that age was the
sole reason for discrimination.
As a result, hundreds of
cases relating to age discrimi-
nation have been abandoned.
"Personally, that's one of the
things that I resent most,"
Gross says. "That my name is
being associated with so much
injustice and unfairness."
Beforehand, if an employee
was fired or not promoted, the
worker could raise age dis-
crimination as an issue. Now,
he or she must prove with
absolute certainty that age was
the primary reason for termi-
nation or failure to rise.
“Suing your employer for
age discrimination is basically
playing Russian roulette with
your career future,” says Paul
Bernard, an executive coach
for Next Avenue, a public and
national media service for
America’s 50 and over pop-
ulation. “You burn your
bridges and may never get
hired again.”
Pearl Zuchlewski, a New
York-based employment law-
yer, adds how time consuming
the process is. “Most people
want to get another job and
not spend years in deposition.”
Arguably, the biggest ob-
stacle is cost. Deposition costs
are as much as $1,800 a day.
For Gross, the fee was $11,000
simply to print the documents
relating to his case. You might
be in a better off to negotiate a
deal with your employer.
Dan Kohrman, a senior
attorney at the AARP Founda-
tion, asserts: “These kind of
decisions scare off workers
and lawyers. It’s harder to
prove an age case.”
A bright spot is that more
victories are being won in
state courts, if not federal
courts. California, Michigan,
New York, and Iowa are some
states that have better protec-
tions for older workers. Deb-
orah Campbell, 63, a commu-
nity program monitor for
Iowa’s 3rd Judicial District
Correctional Department, was
awarded $404,682 in 2014 by a
Woodbury County district
judge for age discrimination.
In 2012, Dr. Zane Hurkin, 81,
was awarded $340,000 by a
Polk County jury for age dis-
crimination at Woodward
County Resource Center in
Des Moines. But Korhman
elaborates: “If you don’t live in
that kind of state, than it is
tough. It is really tough.”
Sen. Grassley and former
Sen. Tom Harkin introduced
bipartisan legislation to undo
the Supreme Court decision of
FBL vs. Financial Services in
2012, and last year Sens. Bob
Casey, D-Pa., and Mark Kirk,
R-Ill., introduced similar legis-
lation “to clean up after Su-
preme Court decision that
exposed older workers to
discrimination,” according to
Think Progress, a federal-
action monitoring blog. Grass-
ley commented, “The decision
in the Gross case has had a
major impact on employment
discrimination litigation
across the country. It’s time
we clarify the law to ensure
that other people like Jack
Gross aren’t put in similar
situations. Older Americans
deserve the protections Con-
gress originally intended.”
People 50 and older will be
35 percent of the workforce
by 2019, according to the Ur-
ban Institute. With more cases
coming in, there is pressure
for Congress to act against
discrimination and for the
Department of Justice to put
in place protections for sen-
iors’ job security. Seniors vote
in the highest percentages of
any age, so this not only
makes good sense, but good
politics.
ANOTHER VIEW
Iowa case shows age discrimination persists, despite law
ROBERT WEINER is
a former spokes-
man for the Clinton
White House and
was chief of staff of
the U.S. House
Aging Committee.
DANIEL KHAN is
senior policy ana-
lyst at Robert
Weiner Associates
and Solutions for
Change.
Jack Gross