As fate had it, voters decided Joe Gatto’s ill-fated bid for a seat on the Polk County Board of Supervisors the same day Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law new legislation giving more consumer protections to Iowans preyed upon by aggressive towers.
Around Des Moines, longtime Des Moines City Council member Gatto had taken heat from critics for accepting big donations from an owner of Crow Tow and a lobbyist for the company, and defending the southeast-side tower, which he’s used at his south-side Barratta’s Restaurant.
Widely known in the metro for trolling lots, Crow Tow has been accused of charging high fees, like $60 just for the use of a credit card, widespread and sometimes violent disputes with customers and profiting substantially from local impound auctions.
Critics also have blasted some of Gatto’s more controversial votes on the council, his behavior and remarks toward Black Lives Matter protesters and his move to try to join Supervisors Chair Matt McCoy, a friend since grade school, on the county board. McCoy lost in a bid for reelection Tuesday, June 2.
In a stunning upset, Heather Jones-Brown, who announced her grassroots candidacy just three months prior to the primary, defeated Gatto, who’s served 14 years on the Des Moines council, representing a southside district. The move shocked even the retiring supervisor whose District 4 seat ― spanning east and southeast Des Moines, Pleasant Hill and Runnells ― Gatto sought.
“I was surprised about Matt (McCoy) losing, but I was surprised about Joe,” said Tom Hockensmith, who is leaving the board after 23 years. “With Joe losing, I think people just want change. They want a fresh start. I get that.”
Gatto did not respond to a phone call seeking his reflections about the primary race.
Did direct voter engagement make the difference for Jones-Brown?
Primaries tend to draw the most faithful voters and party activists, and some observers think that made a difference in a race where Jones-Brown, assistant chief diversity officer for staff equity at Grinnell College, was considered the long shot.
Joe Henry, an activist, real estate agent and Democrat who ran against Gatto in his first primary for a City Council seat more than 14 years ago, said Jones-Brown did a lot of listening and grassroots work that paid off. She also had a lot of activists, including Henry, helping her by walking neighborhoods and sending handwritten postcards.
While Gatto had billboards and yard signs on the south side, that doesn’t replace face-to-face contact with voters, Henry said.
“Heather is known in the neighborhoods,” he said. “This tells you that elected officials who don’t work in the neighborhoods are paper tigers.”
He added: “The bottom line is people are suffering, and there are issues they wanted to talk about. … People want to be listened to.”
Interviewed Tuesday night after her victory, Jones-Brown said she talked a lot on the campaign trail about clean water and mental health care, issues voters care about.
“But I think really what motivated people to get behind me at the end of the day is I made it really clear that I wanted to be a leader who is accessible and transparent, who wants to be in every pocket in the district.”
She said she’d talked to lots of people in the district who had never met a candidate before or never had someone knock on their door. “And so I think showing that somebody was willing to meet them where they were at, quite literally at their home, I think really made an impression.”
The District 4 race was decided with Jones-Brown receiving 50.18% of the vote to Gatto’s 49.5%. The District 1 race was far more decisive, with John Forbes walking away with more than 60% of the vote to McCoy’s 40%.
“There was a lot going on in that race,” Jones-Brown said. “For my race, I think it shows that people were ready for somebody different. … The state of our political affairs in the United States is rough right now. And I think people are wanting individuals that are willing to work for the people.”
She said Gatto, who retains his City Council seat, called her to concede.
“I was really glad to get a phone call from him,” she said. “And I’m looking forward to figuring out how we collaborate between the city and the county and continue to just be in community with each other because it’s all our (community) and we got to keep serving it together.”
More to come on Crow Tow
On June 8, the City Council has a work session scheduled to discuss the Legislature’s overhaul this year of Iowa’s abandoned vehicle law and whether more changes in local towing practices are needed.
Crow Tow’s business practices, which have been the subject of widespread media coverage, including a monthslong Readers Watchdog series last year, have angered thousands of people in the metro, so much so, Gatto has been ridiculed on social media and in public. Near Indianola and Hartford avenues in Des Moines, someone vandalized a campaign billboard to say “Joe Crow Tow Gatto.”
Council member Josh Mandelbaum, who has been trying to make the case that the city needs to do to rein in towing abuses, said he believes Gatto’s stance on Crow Tow and some smaller issues hurt him in the primary.
“The public is hungry for us to act on it,” he said.
Nearly 8,000 people have signed a previous Change.org petition seeking an end to predatory towing and Mandelbaum said he’s collected nearly 2,000 more on another.
“This election is a sign, particularly on that issue,” he said, adding, “The Legislature took some steps for Iowans on the back end… before your car gets sold. But there’s a lot left to do to protect consumers. The consequences (of towing) should be proportionate to the harm.”
Lee Rood’s Reader’s Watchdog column helps Iowans get answers and accountability from public officials, the justice system, businesses and nonprofits. Reach her at lrood@registermedia.com, at 515-284-8549, on Twitter at @leerood or on Facebook at Facebook.com/readerswatchdog.
Des Moines Register staff writer Virginia Barreda contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Joe Gatto’s surprise defeat signals voters want change
Reporting by Lee Rood, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Lee Rood, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
