This Space for Rent
We’re in the home stretch before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential precinct caucuses on January 15…less than four weeks. And the calendar is full with candidates and surrogates crisscrossing the state, squeezing out every last vote.
The joke used to be that it wasn’t an official campaign unless there were plenty of appearances at Pizza Ranch restaurants. They typically have a meeting room at each restaurant, making it a good place for a smallish group to gather without disturbing others. And restaurants like hosting events, because that brings people into their establishment to purchase food and drink.
This cycle, we have seen more and more candidate stops at restaurants…and what’s more, the campaigns are encouraging you to attend by offering free food and drink. I’ve seen such events for the DeSantis and Ramaswamy campaigns ramping up lately, for example. So instead of a perhaps stingy voter purchasing just a beverage or a small item…the campaigns are picking up the tab, so there’s no cost to you.
Sort of like those promotions where dinner is free, but you have to hear their sales pitch for condos, vacation homes, or insurance.
But here’s where folks with too much time on their hands and social media accounts at the ready need to chill out a bit.
Just because a candidate or their political action committee is hosting an event at a restaurant doesn’t mean the restaurant is endorsing the candidate. It’s nothing more than renting out space and selling food, just as they would do for a commercial business that wanted to meet with clients, or a wedding rehearsal dinner.
But those businesses are getting blistered by social media posts by ignorant folks who swear they’ll never go back since the restaurant’s politics are this or that. That’s not what’s happening necessarily…it’s a business trying to make budget and pay employees, renting out space and selling food like they would do for anyone else. And frankly, if they refused to rent the space and sell the food based on political preferences, they would run afoul of equal access laws. One downtown restaurant in Waterloo rejected one party’s attempt to rent space in 2016…and we called them on it, because that wasn’t right. I personally haven’t set foot in the place since.
Obviously in a caucus with an open race on one side and an incumbent running on the other, the only money available for a business is from one political view. I don’t think venues like the National Cattle Congress or the Waterloo Convention Center get hate-posts when they rent space to a candidate.
So leave the poor restaurants out of this. Because you want them to be thriving and open when you have a hankering for a stack of pancakes, or some good barbecue.
