Served as Co-Chair of the Polk County Democratic Party from 1984 to 1986, chairing a record voter registration and turnout effort that contributed to Iowa going from a G.O.P. to a Democratic state.  
He worked on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. with the House D.C. committee headed by Congressman Walter Fauntroy.
He was the youngest co-chair and chair of a state commission in Iowa serving from the very beginning of the Iowa Commission on the Status of Blacks, now African-Americans.  
During more than three decades of …