Editorials: We need a winner

Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Mike Hlas caught up with retired Hawkeye Coach Lisa Bluder and asked what she intends to do. What more could she do? She helped elevate women’s basketball to primetime TV and record crowds, with an assist from the incomparable Caitlin Clark and Company. She has money and fame, and humility.

For starters, she intends to attend every one of her son David’s basketball games at Grinnell College, where he is a senior. She has missed too many. “Have car, will travel,” she said.

Beyond that, she isn’t sure. Bluder is 63. She has so much to offer. She is proven to be the most successful leader in Iowa. She is probably the most popular resident of Iowa.

“I’m still trying to decide what it is I can do to give back. My kind of passion is empowering women and building women leaders. So how I can help in that area? That’s what I’m still kind of working on,” Bluder told Hlas.

Nobody brought this state together like Caitlin Clark and Lisa Bluder. Even Iowa State fans cheered.

Iowa needs to come together. We have never been more rancorous. Lisa Bluder has committed herself to Iowa. Whatever she does, we hope it is in service of unifying this state. She was a star at Northern Iowa, and coached St. Ambrose, Drake and Iowa. She brought together Black and White women, gay and straight, left and right, from small towns and big cities, to be champions. She can do that for Iowa.

Wouldn’t it be great if Lisa Bluder ran for governor?

She knows the state. She has been in the small-town gyms scouting and visiting. She knows the titans of business, how bureaucracies operate, how to raise money, how you parlay fairness and empathy into winning, and how to grow things. She would get 98% of the vote if she ever ran for office.

If Lisa Bluder wants to lift up women and girls, she should do everything in her power to bring moderation and a can-do spirit back to Iowa.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is mean. Bluder is the picture of Iowa nice and easy, like Bob Ray. We wish she could convince Fred Hoiberg to give up on basketball in Nebraska and move home to Ames where he belongs, and they could help us find our game again. Serious. We are dead in the water on growth. Our test scores are in decline. Our water is polluted and we lead the country in cancer. We are on the wrong track. We are divided and anxious.

We want to be winners again. Number One in great schools, strong rural communities, prosperous farms, healthy families and clean air. That is a winning Iowa. If Lisa Bluder is looking for something to do, wouldn’t that be something? We need that kind of positive leadership.

This is a winner

The Pomeroy City Council showed positive leadership by selling the Community Hall to Byron Stuart so that the show may go on. Last winter the city deemed Byron’s Bar on Main Street unfit as the whole building block is crumbling. The city intends to demolish it. Stuart didn’t know what to do or where to go. Pomeroy would be the less for it if the bar shut down and the weekly Sunday music shows ended. It is an icon in music circles from Nashville to Austin to Gilmore City and beyond.

Friends from around the state rushed to his rescue to donate money, enough to buy the Community Hall for $100,000. The deal did not come without opposition in the village, but the council showed its commitment to a native son to keep his unique enterprise in operation. Pomeroy stuck with one of its own. Fans voted with their pocketbooks to maintain culture in rural Iowa. Musicians were beside themselves that they might not be able to pin Pomeroy on their route anymore.

As a result of the sale, Pomeroy gets a downstroke on a new fire station with cash from Byron & Friends. The community is stronger and funner. Byron says the new hall is even better for music than the old dive that was falling down (we are concerned for the homeless rat).

Rural Iowa isn’t left for dead even though it has sustained several kicks to the head and abdomen since 1980. This deal proves it. Good on Pomeroy, Byron and his friends. Rock on.