Narcisse Seeks To Help Iowans ‘Take Back Iowa’

Jonathan Narcisse visited Oskaloosa on Saturday promoting 'An Iowa Worth Fighting For'

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Planning for the future is a focus for former gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Narcisse and his ongoing initiative of ‘An Iowa Worth Fighting For’.

The former candidate made an 11:15 am stop by Pizza Ranch in Oskaloosa to help organize a new initiative to help create the candidates of tomorrow.

Mahaska County proved to be one of the biggest supporters during his recent run for Governor. “Of the non-urban counties, I’d say this is probably as strong a county for us, as there was.”

Narcisse, who was a member of the Des Moines School Board was known for his outspoken personality and for asking tough questions, especially those highlighted in a recent investigation in 2007 by the State Auditor that eluded that laws pertaining to competitive bidding were broken.

“An effort was created called ‘An Iowa Worth Fighting For’,” Narcisse said about learning from his experiences while serving on the Des Moines School Board. “We realized that we also had to address other issues ranging from how state government was operated to taxation to the importance of stressing individual and personal responsibility. Now we’re trained not to understand the interconnectedness between areas like state government and education. But when the Culver Administration allowed state government to just run ashore, one of the first things he did was trigger an across the board spending cut that then meant at the local school levels they initiated property tax hikes.”

Narcisse said that this initial step is the first part of ‘A Iowa Worth Fighting For’ is a “6 year phase one plan”. “The state didn’t get in the problem overnight. We’re not going to get out of it over night.”

Narcisse then stated that the next step was to create a state-wide base of support. He saw the opportunity as a candidate for governor as also an avenue to create the 99 county effort for the initiative. “This is going to be the best way to do it,” Narcisse said. “We had to create a 99 county effort because the only way we can ultimately change how things are done in the state is we have to have a presence in every legislative district in the state, and that was the most to create presence in every legislative district.”

By the end of the 2010 governor election, Narcisse pointed out he had received support in all 99 counties and 1720 of 1774 total precincts, which helped then lead to this point.

“Before we continued organizing there was an interim step. That interim step was developing a more refined agenda that would enable us to build the kind of bi-partisan support necessary to begin the process of taking the state back.”

“There are certain things that transcend being a Republican or being a Democrat. We had to find what those were. Hone them. Put them into a tight legislative package so that 2013, 2014 those could be advanced. That took us a while, and now into the 8th month of year 3, so to speak, we announced this tour.”Narcisse said in regard to the tour that took him from Fairfield and Sigourney to Oskaloosa. The plan was for this to take place once the Iowa Legislature had adjourned for the year, and the tour was then scaled back.

On the tour, Narcisse said there are 3 main objectives;

  1. Introduce a 2013-14 Legislative Package focused on core fiscal, structural and accountability concerns;
  2. Recruit and name “Take Back Iowa” chairs in all 99 counties and, train and develop leadership squads in each county, and, where
    possible, the precinct level;
  3. Recruit and support candidates for 2013 non-partisan elected office; recruit and support individuals willing to serve on local boards and commissions; and, recruit and train Iowans willing to seek various leadership positions emerging from participation in the 2014 Republican Caucus and the 2014 Democratic Caucus.

You can read more on the ‘An Iowa Worth Fighting For’ website here for more detailed information.

Posted by on Apr 30 2012. Filed under Local News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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