DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – A group trying to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren into the 2016 presidential race has hired several staffers in Iowa.  The “Run Warren Run” campaign announced Thursday that it had opened an office in Des Moines and hired an Iowa field director and four other field organizers in the early-voting state. The field director is Blair Lawton, an Iowa native who worked for President Barack Obama’s 2012 Iowa campaign.

The campaign is being organized by MoveOn.org and Democracy for America. They held their first Iowa meeting in Des Moines last month. The activists are trying to persuade Warren to seek the Democratic nomination in 2016, but the Massachusetts senator has said she isn’t running.

MoveOn plans to spend $1 million on its Warren effort and Democracy for America has pledged $250,000.

A truck driver from New Jersey has died on a crash on Interstate 680 in western Iowa. The Iowa State Patrol reports 48-year old Jeffrey Hall, of North Brunswick, NJ, died this (Thursday) morning, after the semi he was driving went off the road and into the median. When Hall swerved back onto I-680 westbound, the trailer hit the guard rail and the 2005 International rolled onto its left side before continuing north and west and going through the guardrail.  Hall was ejected from the cab of the truck as it rolled. The semi came to rest in the north ditch.

The accident happened just before 7-a.m. near mile marker 21. The State Patrol was assisted at the scene by Neola Fire and Rescue, and deputies with the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office.

A hearing on a motion for a new trial and an arrest of judgment will be held today in Council Bluffs for a Pottawattamie County man found guilty of first-degree murder last November in connection with the death of an Atlantic woman. Attorneys for 63-year old Robert A. Reynolds, of Oakland, filed the motion for a new trial on Dec. 31st.  The hearing takes place at 1:30-p.m.

Reynolds’ attorneys cited in their motion the grounds for a new trial would include the trial not being in Avoca, a jailhouse phone call, and other issues discussed in the judges’ chambers. Reynolds, who was found guilty of shooting to death 64-year old Patricia Kinkade-Dorsey during the early morning hours of April 8th 2013, was to have been sentenced Jan. 21st.

Police in Creston are investigating the theft of change boxes from washing machines at the Executive Apartments. The theft, which took place sometime between 3-p.m. Monday and 3-p.m Tuesday, resulted in a loss of about $268.

(7-a.m. News)