For this post, I’m going super local. If you don’t live in Iowa City, you’ll find the local context unfamiliar. But the themes probably feel common enough for you to draw connections to your own community.

With that as a disclaimer, let’s get down to it.

County Supervisor Rod Sullivan blogged twice about our upcoming city council race. His first attempt was ill-informed. Readers who use my two part test for criticizing a candidate’s social media posts would have to conclude that it fails at least the second part.

But that’s the last time I’ll mention his first attempt. That’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing because Rod made a much more interesting and compelling second attempt to write about the race. That’s the post I’m using as a springboard here.

Like many others in Iowa City these days, Rod raised issues about what disqualifies a candidate from office. The topic has come up with regard to three candidates for office in the last year: Royceann Porter, Guillermo Morales, and Oliver Weilein.

I’ll introduce Rod’s argument, say a bit about why it’s such an appealing argument, and then I’ll lay out some of the problems in it. At the end of the day, there are huge differences between Weilein, on one hand, and Porter and Morales, on the other.

Iowa City’s Naughty Politicians

Before getting to Rod’s argument, let’s set some context. Anyone closely familiar with Iowa City politics should skip to the next section. But for those who don’t live in Iowa City – or who aren’t out on the nerd patrol – here’s a quick synopsis.

Three candidates for office – Porter and Morales for county supervisor in 2024, and Weilein for city council right now – ran into issues of candidate behavior and decorum during their campaigns. The accusations differed in details that we’ll get into later. For now, suffice it to say that the accusations against Weilein concerned social media posts. For Morales, they referenced his behavior in the workplace (as a county employee). And for Porter, it was sort of an ‘all of the above’ situation. They referenced her behavior basically anytime someone criticized her.

As far as background, that should do. Now let’s get to Rod’s argument.

Rod’s Argument: Rod’s Version

Rod’s post over at his blog, Sullivan’s Salvos, is short and to the point. Readers can check it out here (section title ‘Acceptable Statements for Candidates’), and I also linked it earlier in this post. But I’ll quote most of it below, because the argument largely speaks for itself.

I have had several interesting conversations recently about what is and is not acceptable for a candidate to say and/or post…

It is interesting, however, what I am hearing from folks on this matter. Some people who howled indignantly when former Supervisor Royceann Porter made insensitive statements feel Welein [sic] deserves a break. “He has done so much good work,” I heard from one person. Interestingly, that same person called for Royceann Porter to step down. Hadn’t Royceann also done much good work?

The hypocrisy cuts both ways. People who supported Royceann are claiming that what Welein [sic] said is beyond the pale. And so it goes.

It reads like a fairly standard ‘hypocrisy’ argument of the sort liberals and progressives commonly make. Rod claims that people criticized Porter and Weilein for similar reasons, i.e., their behavior. He claims that many who supported Porter opposed Weilein, and vice-versa. In conclusion, Rod issues a call against hypocrisy and in favor of consistency.

At the surface, it feels plausible. It’s an attractive argument. Plus, Rod gets most of the facts right. There is, indeed, a large mismatch between who criticized Porter and who criticize Weilein. So, I see why we might find an issue here.

Finally, Rod’s argument is pretty wholesome, right? Hypocrisy is bad. Consistency is good. As I’m sure many readers would agree, it’d be nice to live in a world with less of the former and more of the latter.

Rod’s Argument: Matt’s Amendments

Not only is Rod’s argument an attractive one, I want to make it a bit more attractive. Along the way, I’ll up the stakes by pointing out how the argument might challenge me, personally.

Rod didn’t talk about Morales in his post – only Porter and Weilein. That’s probably a smart move on his part. When I last heard, the press reported that Morales was planning a lawsuit against the Board of Supervisors. So, it’s probably best for a supervisor to avoid discussing him publicly.

Luckily such limitations don’t apply to me. And Rod’s argument gets stronger when we add Morales to the mix.

Where does Morales fit? Roughly speaking, he goes into the ‘Oliver Weilein’ side of the equation. Porter’s supporters fall mostly into the column of moderate or centrist Democrats, while Weilein’s supporters are sort of a motley crew ranging from progressive Democrats to leftists and disaffected voters. Morales didn’t win many votes last year, but his voters looked far more like Weilein voters than Porter voters.

And so, Morales serves as a logical bridge between Porter and Weilein. This especially causes problems for anyone who rejected both candidates last year but support Weilein this year. Readers might recall that I wrote a post pointing to the hypocrisy of the Iowa City liberals and progressives who rejected Porter and accepted Morales. I thought they were putting ideology ahead of consistency.

By contrast, I’m a fan of Oliver Weilein’s campaign. In fact, I’ve known Oliver for years. It’s very weird to keep using his last name in this post, because I’d never use it in person. I didn’t even known how to pronounce it until a few weeks ago.

So, Rod’s argument appears to be a big challenge for me, right?

For now, here’s a quick summary of Rod’s argument, as modified by Matt: Voters criticized three candidates for behavior that disqualified them from serving in public office. The behavior was pretty bad stuff. However, groups of voters overlooked it in some candidates but not others. Hypocrisy is bad, and consistency is good. So, it’s better for voters to either reject all three candidates or reject none of them.

Shaky Analogies, Part 1

So, that’s Rod’s argument. And it’s an attractive one – it has pull with lots of people. But it rests on a rickety bridge. In the rest of this post, I’ll say why.

In short, he builds the bridge on shaky analogies. Rod uses the phrase ‘insensitive statements’ to describe the criticisms of Porter and Weilein (and Morales, as I’ve added). But I find a lot of differences under that phrase.

Voters criticized Porter and Morales for in-person behavior, while they criticized Weilein for social media posts. But that’s not too big a difference. I don’t find social media posts inherently less problematic than in-person behavior.

More notably, voters criticized Porter and Morales for behavior while serving in public office (Porter) and while working in a public job (Morales). By contrast, Weilein wasn’t a candidate or public official at the time of his conduct.

That’s important. When a person does something naughty before running for office, there’s a space to change as a public official. But that move hardly works when you already serve in a public role. It’s not going to cut it for Porter or Morales.

Even more notably, Weilein addressed his social media posts in detail. You can read his statement here. He offered meaningful context behind the posts. He pointed out in detail how and why the accusations misrepresented him. And he explained how he’d take a different approach to his social media accounts after taking office.

Neither Porter nor Morales did anything like that. Neither reflected thoughtfully on their actions in a public way, and neither took any meaningful steps toward change. Instead, they (especially Porter) stonewalled and yelled at the public. Their campaign surrogates appealed to unacceptable forms of cultural relativism to try to guilt people into voting for them. I explained this in detail here.

Shaky Analogies, Part 2

There’s also a deeper disanalogy that Rod’s ‘insensitive statements’ characterization glosses over. In short, there was a fundamental difference in the kind of things Porter and Morales were doing, as opposed to Weilein.

‘Insensitive statements’ describes Weilein’s social media posts pretty well. Some of the posts were perfectly fine, and the complaints over those reeked of upper middle class hand-wringing. But others got into edgelord territory. I got why people were upset over some of it.

In the next section, I’ll say a bit about why I think Oliver will do better in office after he wins. For now, my point is that Porter and Morales went well beyond ‘insensitive statements.’

Porter and Morales

I covered the details on Porter in an earlier post, which you can find here. But I’ll give the gist of it below.

For one, she blew a gasket any time someone criticized her. More importantly, these outbursts derailed county business. The supervisors spent multiple sessions working on interpersonal issued caused primarily by her. In addition, Rod himself pointed out some of her poor practices in office, such as overspending her travel budget. In short, she wasn’t a good county supervisor and lacked the temperament to serve in public office.

But that’s not the worst of it. My own main reason for opposing Porter’s re-election was that she attempted to use her office to interfere with city contracts and remove a city commissioner. That’s behavior that sounds like it should sit in front of the county attorney rather than in front of the voters.

The Morales case is a bit murkier. Rod Sullivan himself read a list of the accusations against Morales at the meeting where the supervisors fired him from his public job. The list included things like berating people, making derogatory remarks, intimidating people, and having a long list of complaints against him by a variety of county employees. The accusations appear to fall into the categories of workplace bullying and hostile environment.

I can’t say for sure whether the accusations against Morales are accurate, because the behavior was less public than Porter’s behavior. But, at the very least, the accusations were credible and merited investigation before electing the person to office.

With both Porter and Morales, the key fact here is that we’re not just talking about ‘insensitive statements.’

Effective Public Service

While all this shows enough disanalogies to cause trouble for Rod’s argument, it doesn’t yet show that Oliver will be different in public office. Indeed, there’s an element of Rod’s argument that still holds appeal. He points out that people excuse Porter and Weilein on the grounds that they have done ‘so much good work’ as activists.

I can vouch for both of them in that regard. I was familiar with Porter’s activist work before she took office. While I didn’t endorse everything she did, I know she did a lot of good in the community. Even though she was a bad county supervisor, she was a good activist. However, I was skeptical that her activist work would transition to office. And while I wanted her to prove me wrong, she proved me right. Royceann still has a positive role to play in our community, but not as a public official.

To truly drive a wedge between the two cases, we need to show Oliver can put the social media stuff behind him and serve effectively as a public official.

Unlike Porter, I think he can do that. Let’s talk about why.

Is Matt a Biased Source?

As I said earlier, I’ve known Oliver for years. We were both founding board members of the Iowa City Tenants Union. Even earlier than that, I saw his good work in the community and in local activism. So, readers might hear that and conclude I’m a biased source. Of course I think Oliver will do well. I like him.

To that last sentence, I plead guilty. I do like Oliver. But you don’t know me very well if you think that makes it more likely I’d give a positive appraisal of his decision to run for office.

For one, I wouldn’t wish the job on a friend. I’m glad we have people in the community who want to serve as city councilors. And I applaud them for it. But the pay is nowhere near what it should be. And people shit on you for no good reason when you serve in office.

Beyond that, readers should know I’m a leftist with a clear preference for building power through local, democratic institutions like unions, labor centers, and political orgs rather than public office. I’ve never run for office myself, and while I’m not absolutely ruling out it, I have no plans to do so in the future.

Many people over the years have asked me if I think they should run for office. And I usually say “no.” More accurately, I try to convince them that running for office isn’t the best way to achieve their goals. Deep down, it’s not what they really want to do.

What’s Different About Oliver

Before he decided to run, Oliver reached out for a meeting with me. Naturally I thought we’d have that kind of meeting – the one where I try to convince him this isn’t what he really wants. I thought he would take a narrowly ‘activist’ approach, laying out an ambitious vision with no realistic chance at getting it done.

But that’s not how it went. Oliver had ambitious, but realistic, ideas. I talked about the relationships he needed to build to get there. But he had already started doing that.

People worry about the transition from activist to politician. So do I. I mentioned to Oliver the cases of Indira Sheumaker and Ryan Hall. Sheumaker went from Des Moines Black Liberation Movement activist to very bad city councilor. Hall ran for city council twice in Iowa City – a good campaign in 2017 and a bad one in 2018. But Hall wouldn’t have made a good city councilor, either.

Oliver was more gracious than I about the challenges Sheumaker faced. But he clearly recognized that he’d need to take a different approach. A few of Oliver’s supporters want him to take Sheumaker’s approach, but Oliver sees the need for something different.

For all these reasons, the social media stuff doesn’t worry me very much. I think we can drive a clear wedge between Oliver’s campaign and those of Porter and Morales. They’re very different things.

Rod’s Argument and Matt’s Argument

Let’s take stock. We started with an argument from Rod Sullivan, and we ended with an argument from me.

How’d we get from there to here?

As surely many others did, I found Rod’s argument intuitively appealing. We see what looks like ‘the same’ criticism of multiple people, and we figure the criticisms merit the same response.

But when we dig deeper, that’s not what we find. These cases are different.

Many Iowa Citians, I think, missed it. Many fixated more on Porter’s decorum than on how she used her office. And many Iowa City progressives excused Morales using flimsy justifications and sophistical arguments from cultural relativism.

Oliver’s social media posts are a lesser problem. Some were bad, and some were fine. And I have good reason to think the bad ones won’t reflect on his time in office.

I can’t guarantee you that Oliver will be effective in public service, but I like his chances.

P.S. – Wallace Shawn

Let me end on a lighter note. In a recent post at Sullivan’s Salvos, Rod mentions Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride fame.

I don’t know if Rod knows this, but Wallace Shawn has lived in Iowa City on multiple stints. Briefly, in the 1990s, he lived in my house. Of course, I didn’t live here at the time! That was 20 years before I moved in.

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