Thicke Campaign Not Surprised Monsanto Lawyer Endorsed Northey

Monsanto lobbyist, DeCoster lawyer and political power broker Jerry Crawford’s endorsement of Republican incumbent Ag Secretary Bill Northey brings key relationships to light that underscore the need to elect an independent thinker like Francis Thicke as Iowa’s top agriculture official, the campaign said today.

A Positive Campaign

Countdown to Victory: 3 Days We’re experiencing positive momentum as the Francis Thicke for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture campaign enters the final hours. Francis can win this, and you can help by making get-out-the-vote phone calls (to help, sign up here), by contributing to the $18,000 we need for media buys and voter recruitment calls [...]

Thicke Supporter Offers 25k To Match!

Last night a supporter of Francis Thicke’s campaign called us with an offer to match up to 25k in contributions over the next 48 hours. That means that the 50k we need to get the message out on TV and secure a win is at hand.

You Heard It From Northey: Vote For Francis Thicke

If you tuned into Iowa Public Radio’s “The Exchange” earlier today, you heard incumbent Ag Secretary Bill Northey say that if you want to return local control over CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations) to county governments, you should “engage in the political process to set up those rules.”

In other words, you should vote for Francis Thicke for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture.

Iowa State Daily Endosement

“This editorial board sees Thicke as being head and shoulders above the competition, and we want him as our next secretary of Agriculture.” So said the Iowa State Daily editorial board in its endorsement of my candidacy for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. Here is their full endorsement statement: Last week the Daily’s Editorial Board ran [...]

Harkin: ‘Thicke One Of The Best Ag Secretary Candidates Ever’

Countdown to Victory: 8 Days U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the most powerful voices in American agriculture as the chairman of the Senate Ag Committee for many years, believes Iowa Secretary of Agriculture candidate Francis Thicke is “one of the best candidates we’ve ever had” to lead the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land [...]

Urban Votes Count In Ag Secretary Race

Countdown to Victory: 10 days Fewer than 2 percent of Iowans live on farms. But all of us, Iowa Secretary of Agriclture candidate Francis Thicke points out, eat food, drink water and want lakes, rivers and streams to be clean when we play in them. We all breathe air. Urban votes win elections. Still, we [...]

Pushing Big Ag Away From Your Dinner Table

Countdown to Victory: 10 Days Image by Will Merydith via Flickr With his plan for more sustainable agriculture and more local food production, Francis Thicke is giving voice to a quiet revolution taking place across the country among people who think it’s time to push Big Ag away from the dinner table. It’s been going [...]

Leadership You Can Count On

Countdown to Victory: 11 Days One of the qualities those of us working to elect Francis Thicke Iowa Secretary of Agriculture respect most about our candidate is his temperament for leadership. It not only serves the campaign well, but offers Iowans a snapshot of the kind of advocate he will be for our shared values [...]

The Local Economics Of CAFOs

Many of us in rural Iowa grew up saying “Smell that money!” as we passed family farms with sows and pigs after a big rain. Agriculture was more diversified then, and many farms had pasture-farrowed pig operations – “mortgage burners,” they were called – that could always be counted on for cash flow twice a year.

That’s not money you’re smelling now when you drive past row after row of barns jammed with pigs and chickens – at least it’s not money in the pockets of family farmers.