When Kamala signed The Sign

This week’s nomination of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States brings to mind her visit to Storm Lake and the Times Pilot office almost exactly five years ago, on Aug. 9, 2019.

Harris, then a U.S. Senator from California, was in The City Beautiful that Friday afternoon campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President. While in our Times Square office for an interview, she met Peach the News-Hound and signed her name to the Sign of The Times in the front of our newsroom, where more than 700 folks — famous and anonymous — have penned their autographs.

Her signature is just 36 inches away from a guy named Joe Biden, who autographed the sign 12 years earlier when he was campaigning for President in 2007. Although Biden failed to capture the presidential nomination that year, the senator from Delaware was chosen as  Barack Obama’s vice president and the pair went on to win the election and led us out of the Great Recession.

Harris toured Iowa in a big bus with her name emblazoned on the sides. Her outgoing personality was in sync with her hip black Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star basketball shoes, in vogue as a fashion statement at the time.

While Harris also missed out on the presidential nomination four years ago, she eventually became Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate and they likewise went on to win the election and led us out of the pandemic shock and into economic recovery.

When Biden decided last Sunday that he was too old to continue his run for president, he endorsed Harris and now she’s taking on Republican nominee Donald Trump. By all accounts, she has resurrected a somewhat moribund Democratic campaign and has a good chance of winning the election.

I’m not sure what all this means for this year’s election, but I’d like to think that candidates who sign the Sign of The Times improve their chances of becoming president. Trump’s name is not on the sign because he’s never been to Storm Lake. His visits to Iowa have been generally limited to brief airport rallies in larger cities.

The sign, which hung over the original Times office on Michigan Street in 1990, covers the political spectrum from Republicans Terry Branstad and Chuck Grassley to Democrats Tom Vilsack and Tom Harkin. Other presidential candidates include Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Republican hopeful and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson. And as I noted in Fillers two weeks ago, our office is also home to a signed portrait of President John F. Kennedy.

Biden’s history dates back to Thursday afternoon, Oct. 18, 2007, when he was holding a rally in the home of former Buena Vista University professor Nadine Brewer, just a half block south of the Times Pilot office on Geneseo Street.

Brother Art, who was covering Biden’s Storm Lake visit, suggested candidate Biden take the short stroll to Times Square and autograph our famous sign.

Biden obliged and the next thing we knew the affable senator was ambling into our office with his entourage, greeting everyone in his wake. When he shook the hand of our strapping reporter, Jake Kurtz, Biden said he wished Jake had been blocking for him when he played running back for the University of Delaware football team. “You would have made me an All-American,” Biden told Jake. While he was here, Biden signed the Sign of The Times.

Biden so impressed us that we endorsed him for the nomination in our Saturday issue. That made national news on all the Sunday morning TV talk shows the next day because we were the first newspaper in the nation to endorse a candidate for the crucial Iowa caucuses.

Likewise, we endorsed Kamala Harris for President in this Wednesday’s edition of the Times Pilot. It was probably her first newspaper endorsement this year.

Good things happen to people who sign the Sign of The Times.