Gavin Aronsen

Reporter

Gavin is a Mother Jones reporter in the DC bureau.

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Gavin is an Iowa native, and covered the 2008 first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses for the Ames Tribune. He has also contributed to the Agence France-Presse, Daily Beast, Iowa Independent, Manhattan Media, and Village Voice.

Ron Paul's Wildcard: Iowa Progressives?

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Tue Jan. 3, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Young Ron Paul supporters in Des Moines, Iowa

With a New Year's Day poll showing Ron Paul in a three-way tie with Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum going into Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, who will emerge victorious is anyone's guess. If it's Paul, the conventional wisdom goes, he will owe much of his success to a weak Republican field and an adoring flock of disillusioned youth, hundreds of whom have traveled from out of state to work behind the scenes. But there's one other wild card: Paul's crossover appeal to liberals attracted to his anti-war platform.

On Monday morning, Ron Paul, introduced by his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, spoke briefly at a downtown Des Moines hotel. Afterward, several Paul supporters told me that they supported the candidate for opposing the National Defense Authorization Act, recently signed into law by Obama, which codified the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects arrested in the United States. Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, was in town for the Paul event. Later, at his nearby hotel where the Democratic National Committee houses its caucus-prep "war room," he watched occupy protesters echo many of the same complaints about the NDAA. "The only people in America who understand NDAA—I think it's fascinating—are Occupy Wall Street and Ron Paul supporters," Scarborough told me. "But you want to talk about the 99 percent—99 percent of Americans have no idea what this is all about."

Francis Thicke, an organic farmer from Fairfield, Iowa, who ran for secretary of agriculture on the state's Democratic ticket in 2010, announced that he would caucus for Paul on Tuesday "to keep his voice for peace and his voice to reduce the military in the debate, because he will challenge the other Republican candidates." Thicke told me that although a Democratic county chairman responded by telling him that he was "stabbing them in the back" by supporting a Republican, he would vote for Obama over Paul without a doubt, because he doesn't support dismantling the government. "This is a tactical thing" to expand voters' awareness, Thicke said.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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12 Protesters Busted at Democrats' Iowa War Room

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Mon Jan. 2, 2012 2:31 PM PST

Occupy Iowa Caucus protester Perry Graham, of Eugene, Oregon, is led out of the Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel by police on Monday.

On Monday afternoon, 12 Occupy Iowa Caucus protesters were arrested after staging a die-in at a Des Moines hotel where the Democratic National Committee has set up a communications "war room" in preparation for Tuesday's caucuses. The move came after protesters delivered an invitation on Sunday asking the DNC chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, to hear their complaints in person. According to the occupiers, Schultz declined the offer, saying she would be out of town Monday.

In a press release, protesters claimed that DNC officials "hid in a second floor room, locked the doors, and called police" to avoid speaking with them after they returned to the Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel on Monday. But no one was in the war room immediately before protesters arrived. A hotel staffer said the officials had left the building before the protesters arrived and planned to come back later in the day.

About 40 people, marching silently to the beat of a drum, had arrived at the hotel, where they criticized Democrats for the party's ties to Wall Street and Barack Obama's support of the National Defense Authorization Act. Two dozen protesters then lay on a lobby floor near a staircase to which the hotel's general manager, Rick Gaede, had blocked access. Across the lobby, two disinterested businessmen in suits ate lunch at a hotel restaurant. A hotel staffer called police, who told reporters and protesters that anyone (other than hotel guests and staff) who stayed in the building would face arrest.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Ron Paul's Top Secret Iowa Youth Camp

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Sun Jan. 1, 2012 9:38 AM PST

Outside the YMCA camp building in Iowa rented out by Ron Paul's campaign.

At a rented YMCA camp lodge outside the town of Boone in central Iowa, young Ron Paul volunteers are preparing for Tuesday's caucuses under a veil of secrecy. When I stopped by on Saturday, after driving down a winding gravel road surrounded by woods and farmland, the place appeared deserted, aside from a couple cars and a white van with a Ron Paul sign in the window. "At Y camp you don't have to make friends, they're given to you," a sign greeted me near the the Pioneer Hybrid Outdoor Education Center where the volunteers work.

In Ron Paul's case, those friends are hundreds of out-of-state college students who paid their own way to travel to Iowa in support of their libertarian hero. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that once they arrive at the camp, the volunteers are "under strict orders" to "look, dress, shave, sound and behave in a way that will not jeopardize Mr. Paul’s chances." That means no boozing, no visible tattoos, and no scraggy beards (although I did spot a guy with earrings). Or as one volunteer from Ithaca, New York, told the Times, "What would Ron Paul do?"

The volunteers have also been told "not to speak to journalists or make postings on social media sites about their activities in Iowa," the Times explained. That became immediately clear on Saturday, when I walked into a meeting room where about 20 volunteers prepared campaign flyers. "Are you with the media?" a young woman asked as someone turned off the music. I was ordered to leave the room, and after I was told that I could "absolutely not" take a flyer with me a woman shut the door to the lobby behind me. A young man watched me intently from behind a glass window as he called someone on his phone.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Santorum Interrupts Football in Iowa to Eat Wings for the Media

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Dec. 30, 2011 6:24 PM PST

Rick Santorum chomps a wing and catches a glimpse of the Pinstripe Bowl game.

Rick Santorum visited a crowded Buffalo Wild Wings in Ames, Iowa, Friday afternoon as the Pinstripe Bowl game between Iowa State University and Rutgers played on bigscreen TVs. Most of the restaurant's patrons paid no mind to the GOP candidate, who has shot to third place in recent caucus polls after a key endorsement from anti-gay activist Bob Vander Plaats and the implosion of rival Michele Bachmann's campaign. But his sudden relevance won him the attention of dozens of members of the press, who swarmed him as he snaked his way through the crowd to the only open tables in the room.

Between cheers from beer-guzzling football fans, Santorum slammed front-runners Mitt Romney as a liberal Republican with "better hair" and Ron Paul for being in the "Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democratic Party on national security." The family values right-winger pandered to tea partiers to safeguard his status as social conservative du jour, though members of an anti-abortion group calling itself The Iowans for Life stuck flyers denouncing Santorum as a "Pro-Life FRAUD!!" with a "long and storied history of campaigning for radical pro-abortion candidates for political office" on every car in the lot.

"Get out of the way, there's a game on!" irritated Iowa State football fans yelled as Rick Santorum, swarmed by the media, blocked their views. Joe Scott

"[Santorum's rise in the polls] does not reflect well upon us" as a state, Anders Dovre told me as the candidate stood just a few feet away. Dovre, who lives in the town of Slater just a few minutes outside Ames, came to watch the game and didn't know Santorum would show up, but said he follows politics closely. He voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but plans to caucus for Jon Huntsman on January 3 and said he could maybe support Romney too, but no other Republican. "We're smarter than this," he said. "We admitted the first woman to the bar. We have gay marriage in this state. But what are we portrayed as in the national media now? A bunch of bumpkins, meth addicts, and gay bashers."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

14-Year-Old Occupier Arrested at Iowa Democratic Party Headquarters

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Thu Dec. 29, 2011 8:22 PM PST

Fourteen-year-old Frankie Hughes, right, was one of 12 Occupy Iowa protesters arrested Thursday in Des Moines.

Occupy Iowa continued a string of protests on Thursday, this time outside Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines, resulting in the arrests of 12 people. Among them was 14-year-old Frankie Hughes, who was released into her father's custody at the scene and may face a juvenile court proceeding. The overall tenor of the arrests was peaceful and symbolic.

When the protesters first arrived, Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman Sue Dvorsky and executive director Norm Sterzenbach came out to greet them. The two party officials spent about 20 minutes expressing their frustrations with what they considered to be a distraction, but also their willingness to listen to the protesters' grievances. Then they went back inside to prepare for the January 3 caucuses, and soon called the police.

The protesters originally planned to demonstrate outside Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, after having focused their attention Wednesday on Mitt Romney. They changed their plans after an impromptu early morning protest at Ron Paul's headquarters, and after hearing that Obama's headquarters had closed for the day. At the new location, about 40 protesters focused their attention on Obama's ties to Wall Street and his support of the National Defense Authorization Act, which codified the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects arrested on US soil.

"We are here to listen to you. We are not trying to ignore you," Dvorsky had told protesters before the arrests. "But we don't know what you want," she added, expressing frustration that, after eight protesters were arrested at the same location 10 days prior, some occupiers had turned down a subsequent offer to meet with her and instead showed up to protest on Thursday unannounced. When protesters asked Dvorsky to make a phone call to the White House to request that the president meet with Occupy Iowa, she refused, calling the demand unrealistic. "You guys are working outside of electoral politics," she added. "We work inside of it. That's the best answer I can give you."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]