Maid Rite-Wing Extremists

Iowa is dealing with some serious problems right now. Unemployment is at 7.5 percent—not as bad as other states (how’s it going, Michigan?), but still pretty bad. As parts of the state still struggle to recover from the 2008 floods, an unseasonable snowfall might have saved a few towns from a reprise. Small towns across the state are withering, and to add insult to injury, Iowa stands to lose a seat in Congress after this census is tallied.

With that in mind, the Iowa state legislature is tackling the big issues: Maid-Rite sandwiches! The back story: There’s a Maid-Rite restaurant in Marshalltown that uses an antiquated method for cooking its meat—one of only two Maid-Rite locations in the country that still cooks that way. Iowa food inspectors came in and deemed it unsafe. Pretty simple, right? I would guess most people trust food inspectors.

But this story is just getting started. Maid-Rite came to the Capitol in early March and offered free sandwiches to legislators—and none of them got sick. (The devious Maid-Rite lobby strikes again!) And sure enough, the people united—thousands of them came together in support of their Maid-Rites. One Steven Sodders (D), a state senator, heard their cries. On March 9, he introduced a measure to supersede the inspectors and keep the Maid-Rite open. It was actually debated on the Senate floor, and it passed—the Maid-Rite lived to fry another day. Senator Dennis Black summed it up: “Maid-Rites are very important to me,” he said on the floor.

But the House wasn’t having any of that. No, they weren’t about to let the Senate bypass the inspections process, so they voted the provision down in their version of the bill. The Senate could have fought for the language in conference committee, but they declined–the Marshalltown Maid-Rite must comply, after all. And democracy was squashed once again, or something.

(By the way, this is a Maid-Rite.)

– Matt McGuire, Editor-in-Chief