Vernon says her jump from Republican to Democrat has nothing to do with a possible mayoral run against Republican Corbett

Council member and mayoral prospect Monica Vernon says her jump from the Republican to Democratic Party on Tuesday has nothing to do with her plans to run or not run for mayor.

She declined to say if she was in or out of the mayoral race.

A Republican since she first registered to vote as a teenager, Vernon, 51, says she has been thinking for “a long time” about changing political parties, “and I just changed.”

At the same time, she says that the Republican Party is different than it once was and so, she says, is she.
“And as a woman, as a person who believes that we must absolutely take action and make progress here (in Cedar Rapids), being a Democrat makes more sense to me,” she says.

She adds, “I want to be true to what I am. … I want to be somewhere that’s closest to where I am. … It’s really a tough one. But I’ve got to be true to myself.”

Vernon, a business owner in her second year of a four-year council term, says she is someone who understands both Republican and Democratic parties well and is someone who has friends in both places.

City Hall elective office is non-partisan; candidates don’t run by political party. But political parties, nonetheless, play a role behind the scenes.

When Vernon was elected in 2007 to the District 2 council seat, she received the backing of both labor and business, which she says is proof that she is a person who has a history of crossing party lines.

The only declared mayoral candidate to date is Ron Corbett, vice president of trucking firm CRST Inc. and a former Republican speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives.

Why did mayoral prospect Monica Vernon change from Republican Party to Democratic Party?

First it was U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter. Now it’s Cedar Rapids council member Monica Vernon.

In recent days, Specter changed his political party affiliation from Republican to Democrat as he readies to try to keep his seat in the U.S. Senate from the state of Pennsylvania. He said he couldn’t win the Republican primary there in a Republican Party that he said had moved to far to the right.

But why is Vernon — a long-time Republican with a husband, Bill, who as recently as 2008 was a member of the party’s state central committee — moving to the Democratic Party?

Vernon, who is the second year of a four-year term as District 2 council member, has been among a group of people considering a run this year for Cedar Rapids mayor, which, like other City Council seats in Iowa, is a non-partisan post.

This year’s mayoral race, though, surely will come with a partisan flavor.

To date, only Ron Corbett, a former Republican speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, has announced that he is running for mayor.

On Monday, Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston, a prominent Democrat, said Democrats were urging her to take on Corbett. She said she was considering a mayoral race, but was not yet convinced she would run.

Council member Brian Fagan is another person mentioned as a possible mayoral candidate, and Fagan is registered to vote without political party. He changed his registration to Republican so he could compete in the January 2008 presidential caucuses, and he changed it to Democratic so he could vote in the June 2008 primary, the Linn County Auditor’s Office reports.

The county office said it processed Vernon’s change of party from Republican to Democratic just today, Tuesday.

Twenty-two apply for City Hall flood-recovery post that comes with a job description worthy of Superman

The job description for City Hall’s new flood-recovery manager sounded worthy of Superman when it was released a few weeks ago.

However, the job description hasn’t intimidated applicants. Twenty-two people applied for the position before Monday’s “preferred” application deadline, reports Conni Huber, the city’s human resources director.
Others still can submit applications, but those who met the Monday date will be reviewed and considered first.

Huber says some of the applicants are from Cedar Rapids. Like in any pool of applicants, not every applicant meets every qualification, she says. For instance, she says not all have a college graduate degree preferred in an applicant.

A review will select the best applicants and a City Hall selection team will interview those. The plan is to have a flood-recovery manager in place by the first anniversary of the flood in June.

The flood-recovery manager position inside City Hall is an unusual one in that the idea for the position emanated from the private sector and because most of the position’s cost will be paid by the private sector.

The creation of the position provoked a dispute within the City Council when council members Justin Shields, Monica Vernon and Jerry McGrane pushed to have the flood-recovery manager sidestep City Manager Jim Prosser and report directly to the council. The six others on the council said Prosser was the city government’s CEO and the boss of city employees, including any flood-recovery manager.