It’s been a while since we had a thread about the 2016 presidential campaign on the Republican side. Spin your own scenarios in the comments.

Public Policy Polling’s latest survey of Iowa Republicans shows a jumble, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee slightly ahead, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas notably trending up and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida trending down, along with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Highlights are after the jump, or click here for full results and cross-tabs. I’m not surprised to see Cruz’s favorability improve, as he wowed Republican crowds during two Iowa visits last year.

PPP’s robocall format only allows a maximum of nine candidates to be listed. I find it strange that the pollster included Huckabee and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, neither of whom seem likely to run for president in 2016. It’s all the more odd since the poll did not give respondents a chance to choose former Senator Rick Santorum, the narrow winner of the 2012 Iowa caucuses, as a presidential candidate.

PPP’s poll also did not offer respondents a chance to choose Texas Governor Rick Perry, who came to Iowa this week. He appeared on Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program, attended a “business roundtable” in Davenport organized by the Koch Brothers group Americans for Prosperity, and spoke to GOP activists in Polk County at a private fundraiser and a small “rally” at Governor Terry Branstad’s campaign headquarters. I’ve posted excerpts from Perry’s “Iowa Press” comments below. I was particularly interested in his take on Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoing a bill that would have allowed private businesses to discriminate against same-sex couples. Perry provided a textbook example of how to pivot away from the question you don’t want to answer the question you wanted.

Another ambitious Republican excluded from PPP’s Iowa poll is former Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who recently agreed to headline the April 3 GOP dinner in tiny Ringgold County. Brown visited the Iowa State Fair last summer and spoke at a Scott County GOP event in November.  

Most gun-related bills failed to make it through in the Iowa legislature’s first “funnel” last week. The list of proposals that are dead for this year included efforts to restrict access to firearms (such as Senate File 2179 to close the gun show loophole) and several bills aimed at making guns more available: House File 384 to authorize possession of machine guns and sawed-off shotguns; House File 169/Senate File 251 to allow Iowans with permits to carry concealed weapons on school grounds; House File 172 to allow school employees to carry guns in school; and House File 2012 to allow children as young as 12 to possess handguns.

The trouble is, many incumbents don’t want to face the gun lobby’s wrath in an election year. Many lawmakers want to have something to brag about when pro-gun activists compile scorecards and endorsement lists. Such concerns prompted Iowa House and Senate leaders to revive and eventually pass a 2010 bill to make it easier for Iowans to carry concealed weapons.

I believe the same dynamic prompted Iowa House members to vote overwhelmingly yesterday to legalize firearm suppressors, better known as “silencers” popular for many decades among snipers and assassins.

I didn’t see this coming, but perhaps I should have, given his less than stellar fourth quarter fundraising report: State Representative Walt Rogers is ending his Congressional campaign in Iowa’s first district. Instead, he will seek re-election to Iowa House district 60. His official statement is after the jump.

Rogers has long been considered a rising star in the Iowa House Republican caucus. He won re-election in 2012 despite President Barack Obama carrying his district by a narrow margin. He hired campaign staffers while his Congressional bid was still in the exploratory phase and quickly gained support from former presidential candidate Rick Santorum and several state lawmakers. But he faced a tough race against Rod Blum in the GOP primary. In addition to almost winning the Republican nomination in IA-01 in 2012, Blum had support from activists on the party’s “Liberty” wing and a financial advantage over Rogers at the end of 2013.

Even if Rogers won the IA-01 primary, he would face an uphill battle in a Congressional district with 158,970 active registered Democrats, 133,746 Republicans, and 192,496 no-party voters as of February 2014.

Returning to the Iowa legislature looks like a safer bet for Rogers. I have not yet heard of a Democratic candidate in House district 60. I posted a district map below, along with the latest voter registration numbers.

I consider Blum overwhelmingly favored to beat Steve Rathje in the IA-01 primary now. Although I don’t agree with Blum about many things, I admire his campaign work ethic and discipline. he has now scared off two Republicans with much stronger establishment connections. I believe Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen chickened out of this race because he was afraid he would lose the primary. Blum had already started making a case against Paulsen.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that just last month, former U.S. Representative and gubernatorial nominee Jim Nussle had endorsed Rogers in the GOP primary. He really did look like the preferred establishment candidate. I also forgot to mention that Marshalltown-based attorney Gail Boliver joined the Republican field in December. It’s hard for me to see a social moderate and fiscal conservative winning a GOP primary, especially since Blum has been campaigning across the district for more than a year now.

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey should end any speculation that the 2016 Iowa caucuses will be competitive if Hillary Clinton runs for president again.

On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton continues to be completely dominant. 67% want her to be the nominee, compared to 12% for Joe Biden, 5% for Elizabeth Warren, 3% for Mark Warner, 2% for Andrew Cuomo, and 1% for Cory Booker. Clinton’s dominance is near total- she has an 82/9 favorability rating and polls over 60% with liberals, moderates, men, women, young voters, and older voters alike.

Click here for full results and cross-tabs. The general election could be highly competitive in Iowa if Clinton is the nominee, but there is no sign of any vulnerability in the Democratic caucuses.

Time for bloggers and political analysts to stop claiming that Hillary has some lingering “Iowa problem” due to her allegedly “dismal” 2008 caucus showing. Fact is, Clinton didn’t do as badly here as many think. There is no evidence of any lingering fallout from her alleged failure to connect with Iowa Democrats.

It’s also time for the Des Moines Register to stop dancing around to avoid asking Iowa Democrats directly whom they would support in the 2016 caucuses. If you want to argue that the caucuses are a wide-open contest on the Democratic side, show us a poll to prove it.

P.S.–Public Policy Polling’s survey suggests that if Clinton doesn’t run, the caucuses will be much more competitive, with Vice President Joe Biden the early front-runner.  

Iowans who buy health insurance through Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield won’t be getting premium rebates anytime soon. Wellmark has a near-monopoly on Iowa’s individual and employer health insurance market. After the company announced last summer that it would not participate in the state’s health insurance exchange during its first year of operation, Democratic State Senators Jack Hatch and Matt McCoy questioned why the company was holding about $1.3 billion in reserves. The senators argued that the Iowa Insurance Division had previously justified Wellmark’s large cash reserves on the grounds that the company would be selling policies through the health exchange created under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Hatch and McCoy asked Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart to study the issue, and in November, Gerhart retained Risk and Regulatory Consulting to investigate Wellmark’s reserve levels.

The consultants’ report, made public yesterday, concluded that Wellmark’s cash reserves are “reasonable and prudent.” Click through to read the full six-page report at the end of the article by Tony Leys of the Des Moines Register.

I’ve enclosed below a few excerpts from Leys’ report, Hatch’s letter to Gerhart last July, which provides background on the issue, and the joint statement Hatch and McCoy released yesterday. They noted that Wellmark “will be using its current reserves to protect them from risks that do not exist for them; namely, the Insurance Marketplace Exchange.” Hatch and McCoy added that the report “puts to rest the notion that the ACA could ever be the basis for a future premium increase by the company, at least in the next three years.”

After many years of double-digit percent increases in health insurance premiums, Wellmark did not raise premiums for many of its individual customers this year, presumably to deter them from shopping for a better deal on Iowa’s exchange. I predict Wellmark will cite the 2010 health care reform law as an excuse for raising premiums again before too long. Iowa individuals and families can purchase policies on the exchange from either Coventry or Co-Oportunity Health. Only Co-Oportunity is selling employer health insurance plans through Iowa’s exchange.

Here’s an open thread for discussing anything on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers. Most Iowans I’ve run into lately are a little down about the seemingly endless cold winter. (Single-digit highs in the Des Moines area today, and the 10-day forecast shows only one day that might reach the 30s.) How about some good news?

Dominoes continue to fall in the march toward equal rights for LGBT Americans. Yesterday Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have allowed private businesses to discriminate against gay customers because of their religious beliefs. I posted an excerpt from her veto statement below. Before Brewer announced her decision, both of Arizona’s Republican U.S. senators, Jeff Flake and John McCain, spoke out against the legislation. Even a few years ago I would not have expected conservative Republicans to take a stand against this kind of discrimination.  

Meanwhile, last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a key provision of the Defense Against Marriage Act is influencing other judicial rulings. Yesterday a federal judge struck down the Texas ban on same-sex marriage, only two weeks after a similar ruling came down in Virginia. Federal judges struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban in December and Oklahoma’s in January. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court will need to weigh in on a question it ducked last summer: whether state constitutional amendments on marriage violate equal protection rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

And now for something completely different: “74,476 Reasons You Should Always Get The Bigger Pizza.” Granted, the author doesn’t take into account any lingering New Year’s resolutions.

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey suggests that Governor Terry Branstad will have little trouble dispatching his primary challenger and goes into the general election as a favorite, despite an approval rating below 50 percent. This pdf file contains full results from PPP’s poll of 869 Iowa voters, including 283 Republican primary voters, between February 20 and 23. Respondents approved of Branstad’s job performance by a 45 margin to 40 percent margin; only 15 percent of respondents were unsure. The leading Democratic candidate for governor, State Senator Jack Hatch, is less well-known, with 16 percent approval, 15 percent disapproval, and 69 percent of respondents not sure. Branstad led Hatch by 48 percent to 36 percent, the same margin PPP found when it last polled Iowa in July 2013.

Anything below 50 percent approval is sometimes considered a “danger zone” for an incumbent. Paradoxically, Branstad may be comforted to know that among the Republican subsample in PPP’s survey, his approval was just 72 percent with 16 percent disapproving of his job performance and 12 percent unsure. A chart further down shows that 21 percent of “somewhat conservative” and 11 percent of “very conservative” respondents disapprove of Branstad. These voters may not be happy with the incumbent, but they are also not likely to gravitate toward a Democratic candidate for governor. A more worrying sign for Branstad would be that his approval is underwater with self-identified moderates in the poll (35 percent/43 percent).

Tom Hoefling, a former third-party presidential candidate who is challenging Branstad in the GOP primary, had extremely low name recognition among Republican respondents: 3 percent favorable, 9 percent unfavorable, 88 percent not sure. In a ballot test, 70 percent of Republicans picked Branstad and 11 percent Hoefling. Discontent among conservatives suggests that Hoefling can go higher, but I would be surprised if the protest vote in the June primary exceeded 25 percent.

Any comments about the governor’s race are welcome in this thread.  

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey shows Mark Jacobs with a small lead over the rest of the Republican field in the U.S. Senate race. Democrat Bruce Braley leads all the major Republican contenders, but by a smaller margin than he did last July. Click here for complete results, including question wordings and cross-tabs. PPP surveyed surveyed 869 Iowa voters, including 283 Republican primary voters, between February 20th to 23rd, producing a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percent for the statewide poll and 5.8 percent for the Republican primary findings.

The GOP Senate candidates are still largely unknown, even to Republican voters, but Jacobs has the highest name recognition, thanks to radio and television commercials his campaign has been running since early December. Among PPP’s Republican respondents, 42 percent were undecided, followed by 20 percent for Jacobs, 13 percent for State Senator Joni Ernst, 11 percent for former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker, 8 percent for Sam Clovis, and 3 percent each for Paul Lunde and Scott Schaben.

Among the full sample, Braley has the highest name recognition but is still unknown to nearly half the respondents. He leads Whitaker by 40 percent to 34 percent, Ernst and Jacobs by 41-35, and Clovis by 42-34. In PPP’s July 2013 survey, Braley’s lead averaged 11 points. The polling firm’s Tom Jensen argued that the “pretty clear reason” for the tightening in the Senate race is that “Barack Obama’s approval rating in the state has dropped a net 10 points compared to the summer.”

Earlier this month, Jacobs’ campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing Jacobs leading the Republican field for the primary, with 22 percent support compared to 11 percent for Ernst, 8 percent for Whitaker and 6 percent for Clovis. Jacobs’ poll, conducted by Hill Research Consultants, found Jacobs and Braley essentially tied (Jacobs 42 percent, Braley 41 percent), with more upside than for Jacobs because of the Democrat’s higher name recognition.

I agree with the Republicans who claimed that Jacobs’ higher name recognition and GOP support is merely a function of his heavy spending on paid advertising. He should be polling better after two months of radio and television while his opponents’ campaigns are dark. On the other hand, who’s going to stop him if his GOP rivals lack the resources to get their message out before June?

Last year voters in Linn County and Greene County approved proposals for new casinos for Cedar Rapids and Jefferson. But backers of those projects won’t welcome the new report commissioned by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission.

By some measures, the race for the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s first Congressional district looks wide open. All five candidates have raised enough money to run credible campaigns. None are rookie candidates: four have been elected multiple times to either local government or the state legislature, and the fifth has prior experience running for Congress.  

For various reasons, I’ve long felt that former Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy was best positioned to win the Democratic nomination, whether it’s decided in the June 3 primary or at an IA-01 district convention (if no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the primary votes).

Last week Murphy’s campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing a “commanding lead” against his four Democratic rivals. I’ve enclosed the polling memo below, along with a few thoughts on its findings and the dynamic in this race going forward.

Via Radio Iowa I learned that Tom Hoefling is collecting signatures to run for Iowa governor as a Republican. Looking on his campaign’s website, I see he announced his candidacy in early December. I’ve posted some background on Hoefling after the jump. This guy seems drawn to hopeless causes; he is a former supporter of Alan Keyes for president, but he appears to have become disenchanted with the Republican Party sometime during the last decade. In 2008 Hoefling and “many stalwart Reagan conservatives from across the country” founded the “America’s Party.” He ran for president in 2012 as the America’s Party nominee.

It’s anyone’s guess whether Hoefling will manage to qualify for the GOP primary ballot. He needs to submit nominating petitions with at least 3,654 valid signatures, spread across at least ten Iowa counties, by the end of business on March 14.

If Hoefling becomes a candidate for governor, we all know he has no chance of beating Terry Branstad. Even he acknowledges that. I will be interested to see how much traction he can gain from bashing what he calls “crony capitalism” and “economic ‘happy talk’ coming from the governor” that doesn’t reflect “the real world for the people that I know.”

Hoefling highlights some other issues that are important to many social conservatives, on which the Branstad administration and elected Iowa Republicans are perceived to be lacking. He wants GOP leaders to fight against the “Common Core” curriculum for Iowa schools and take action to reverse “the abortion holocaust” and “the homosexual agenda which is destroying marriage and the natural family.”

Republican turnout statewide should be higher than average on June 3 because of the crowded U.S. Senate primary and the competitive races for the GOP nomination in Iowa’s first, second and third Congressional districts. How large is the potential protest vote against Branstad? Spin your own scenarios in this thread.

Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks finally made it official: she is running for Congress a third time in Iowa’s second district. Her campaign is on Facebook here and on Twitter here. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from her announcement and details on the campaign launch tour Miller-Meeks has planned for February 26 and 27. She will hit twelve of the 24 counties in IA-02, as well as attending a West Des Moines meeting of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She plans to focus on her “real world experience” as a doctor, as well as her work with Governor Terry Branstad over the past three years.

Although Miller-Meeks just filed papers with the Federal Election Commission within the last two weeks, she has been unofficially campaigning for some time. She has been meeting with GOP county officials around the district since at least the middle of last year, and she stepped down from her job in state government last month.

I think Miller-Meeks has a good chance to win the GOP primary. Although it may be challenging to convince some Republicans to give her a third chance at this seat, her competition looks weak. The only other announced candidate, State Representative Mark Lofgren, has raised very little money and doesn’t have a reputation as a great communicator on the stump. Beating four-term Democratic Representative Dave Loebsack will be a taller order. Besides aligning herself with Branstad, Miller-Meeks will hope that the new Iowa map improves her prospects. During the 2010 midterm election, she lost to Loebsack by about 11,500 votes in a district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 48,000 on election day. The current district contained 166,022 registered Democrats, 135,770 Republicans, and 181,463 no-party voters as of February 2014.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

If you’re among the roughly half a million Iowans whose household water comes from the Des Moines Water Works, you may have noticed a stronger chlorine smell lately. After the jump I’ve posted a statement explaining why the recent snow melt led to elevated ammonia levels in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, the sources for most drinking water in central Iowa. I also enclosed background on the most common causes of higher ammonia levels in surface water systems. Those can differ from watershed to watershed, but in Iowa conventional agriculture is a common source.

The Raccoon River Watershed Association is organizing an “Aldo Leopold Weekend Event” at the Hotel Pattee in Perry this Friday night and Saturday. I’ve enclosed the program below. On Saturday afternoon people will be reading from the Sand County Almanac before a showing of the documentary “Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time.” That movie is well worth watching for anyone who cares about the environment.

This week marks the Iowa legislature’s first “funnel” deadline of the 2014 session. With the exception of appropriations bills, most legislation that has not cleared at least one committee in at least one chamber is dead for the year. Only occasionally do House or Senate leaders revive bills that didn’t get through the funnel.

Rod Boshart published a comprehensive list of bills that are still pending in either the Iowa House or Senate, as well as proposals that didn’t make it this year. Notably, the ideas Governor Terry Branstad outlined in his Condition of the State speech last month are still alive, as are the top priorities House and Senate leaders mentioned on the opening day of this year’s session.

Any comments about the legislature’s work is welcome in this thread. Reading Boshart’s lists, I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. So many bad ideas died in the funnel, but so did a lot of proposals I would strongly support.

My dismay is probably nothing compared to what socially conservative Republicans are feeling. For the second year in a row, no bills aimed at “protecting” traditional marriage made it through the funnel. Every proposed anti-abortion bill died too, except for the ban on “telemedicine” abortions (which failed to move last year but passed the Iowa House last week). You would think that with a 53-47 Republican majority, the Iowa House would move more of these abortion bills through committee at least.

Small but important victory: White House officials revealed yesterday that President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for the 2015 fiscal year will not include Social Security cuts he proposed last year. The president had hoped Congressional Republicans would agree to small tax increases in exchange for using the “chained Consumer Price Index” to calculate annual cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients. It’s a terrible idea that never should have emerged from a Democratic administration.

Maybe Obama recognized that in an election year, he was never going to get any real Republican concession in exchange for cuts that would inflict real pain on seniors who rely on Social Security. Democrats may need to fight this battle again before the end of Obama’s presidency, though.

[White House] Spokesman Josh Earnest said the decision to move away from chained CPI was motivated partially by the “substantial progress in reducing the deficit.” […]

Earnest repeatedly insisted that Obama would still consider chained CPI as part of a grand bargain on the debt, and that the move “does not reflect any reduction in the president’s willingness to try to meet Republicans in the middle.”

For now, Congressional Democrats are celebrating. Senators including Iowa’s Tom Harkin had strongly urged the president to abandon the “chained CPI” proposal. More than 100 House Democrats, including Iowa’s Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02), sent a similar letter to Obama this week. After the jump I’ve posted press releases from Harkin and Braley about the issue. UPDATE: Added a comment from Loebsack below.

It’s been nearly ten months since former State Representative Rod Roberts confirmed that he was considering a campaign for U.S. Senate. I’ve long been a skeptic that Roberts has any niche or large constituency in a statewide Republican primary. In fact, I’d forgotten he was still thinking about the race. This week Carroll-based journalist Douglas Burns got the scoop in an interview: Roberts will not run for Senate, or Congress in the open third district, or for Iowa secretary of state in 2014. He cited family reasons and said he plans to continue his work as director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. In late 2010, then Governor-elect Terry Branstad offered Roberts that position without considering any other candidates, even though Roberts had not applied for the job.

Burns has long been high on Roberts as a possible Senate candidate, but for once I agree with Steve Deace: “Rod didn’t offer a reason other than, ‘I’m Rod Roberts and I’m a nice guy.’ What’s your plan? […] Offer people something.” In his latest column, Burns floats the scenario of Roberts emerging as a compromise Senate nominee at a statewide convention if none of the current candidates receives 35 percent of the vote in the June primary.

Not bloody likely.

I do largely agree with Burns’ assessment of Mark Jacobs, though. Many Iowa Republicans will be skeptical of a candidate who only recently moved back to the state. Nor will they cut Jacobs slack for giving money to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Corzine in 2000, on the grounds that Corzine was CEO of Goldman Sachs, where Jacobs worked at the time.

I have a post in progress with more news on the Jacobs campaign. Meanwhile, any comments about the U.S. Senate race are welcome in this thread.

Former Republican Party of Iowa co-chair David Fischer announced on Facebook February 18 that he has decided not to run for the Iowa Senate this year. Just a few weeks ago, Fischer sounded committed to the race, but he told his Facebook friends, “Much to my surprise, a great opportunity has just presented itself that I owe it to my family to explore.” He promised to return all campaign contributions and to keep working to promote principles of “freedom, prosperity, and peace.”

I had considered Fischer’s campaign a “game-changer” in that it pointed to a strong Republican effort to beat entrenched Democratic incumbent Dennis Black in Senate district 15.

Two other Republicans have announced plans to run against Black: Patrick Payton and Crystal Bruntz. But since neither has Fischer’s connections to the “Liberty” movement that dominates the current state GOP’s leadership, I’m not convinced Senate district 15 will rise to the top tier of competitive Iowa Senate races. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal doesn’t seem worried about holding this seat either.

After the jump I’ve posted a map of the district and the latest voter registration totals.

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? Here’s an open thread: all topics welcome.

Monday marked the fifth anniversary of President Barack Obama signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (better known as the federal stimulus) into law. Bleeding Heartland has long held that the stimulus mitigated the impact of the “Great Recession,” in part because the package saved Iowa and other states from enacting deep cuts in public services and . The stimulus had flaws, stemming primarily from the president aiming too low on the size of the package and concessions made to win a handful of conservative votes in Congress.

After the jump I’ve posted more links on the recovery act’s impact.

P.S. – The dumbest thing I’ve read this week was Kevin Hall’s comment for The Iowa Republican blog about former State Senator Swati Dandekar, a candidate for Congress in the first district. “Swati Dandekar is obviously an intelligent and accomplished woman. However, she speaks in broken English and I don’t think that translates very well to a wide electorate.” Reality: Dandekar’s English is very fluent. Having a noticeable accent is different from not speaking a language well. I would like to hear Hall try to talk in a non-native language.  

Last week Jennifer Jacobs wrote a strange feature for the Des Moines Register exploring why the “No Labels” movement is not gaining more traction in Iowa.

A better question: why would smart guys like State Senator Jeff Danielson or U.S. Representatives Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack hitch their wagons to this useless group? Leaders of No Labels express grand ambitions to “make government work again,” but the organization looks more like make-work for political consultants who are between campaign jobs. Resting on false premises, No Labels promotes the wrong “fix” for what’s broken in public policy. It’s also a classic example of a Washington-based astroturf (that is, fake grassroots) movement.  

Sam Clovis dodged what could have been a fatal blow to his U.S. Senate campaign when Bob Vander Plaats decided not to run. But to have any hope of winning the GOP primary, the Sioux City-based college professor and former radio host needs to raise real money and consolidate social conservative support quickly.  

The working of Iowa’s state legislature is transparent in many ways. The official legislative website provides thorough, timely and permanently accessible information about bills, legislators, committees, votes, and other events. Most Iowa House and Senate members are accessible to interested constituents, even listing their home and/or cell phone numbers on the web. When the legislature is in session, members of the public can come to the Capitol during working hours and often speak to key lawmakers about the issues they care about.

Nevertheless, it can be hard for those on the outside to figure out what is really going on at the statehouse. So it was last week when the Iowa House approved House File 2109, “An Act relating to vapor products and alternative nicotine products, and providing penalties.” Following the lead of the bill’s sponsor, news headlines made this legislation sound like a step toward protecting children’s health: “Iowa House approves ban on sale of e-cigarettes to minors”; “Iowa House passes ban on e-cigarettes for minors”; “House votes to ban e-cigarette sales to minors.”

The lobbyist declarations told a different story.  

Catching up on news from last week, Mariannette Miller-Meeks filed a formal statement of candidacy in Iowa’s second district with the Federal Election Commission (hat tip to Greg Hauenstein). An ophthalmologist based in Ottumwa, Miller-Meeks was the Republican nominee against Representative Dave Loebsack in both 2008 and 2010. She served as director of the Iowa Department of Public Health from early 2011 until resigning last month.

I have not seen any formal campaign announcement yet from Miller-Meeks, but she has been attending central committee meetings and other Republican events around the 24 counties in IA-02 for some time. During the past month, she has met with GOP central committee members in Johnson County, Marion County, and Mahaska County. She attended an off-year caucus in the Quad Cities (Scott County). Last week Miller-Meeks tweeted a photo of her campaign co-chairs in Muscatine County–the home base for State Representative Mark Lofgren, who announced his campaign in IA-02 last summer. Lofgren has a lot of support in the GOP establishment but has not raised much money for his Congressional bid.

Former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker was the first Republican to enter the race for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat but has struggled a bit in the fundraising department. Whitaker ended 2014 with $232,092.45 cash on hand in his campaign account, including $50,241.07 in loans from the candidate and $28,525 that can’t be spent until the general election period (if Whitaker were to win the Republican primary).

Considering that Whitaker’s campaign spent just under $60,000 during the last three months of 2013 without running television or radio commercials, it’s clear that Whitaker won’t be able to afford much (if any) television advertising before the June primary.

However, campaign commercials aren’t the only way for a candidate to raise his name recognition. Central Iowa viewers of the winter Olympics on NBC Sports have seen a lot of Whitaker these past couple of weeks. The cable tv ads are promoting his law firm, not his Senate campaign, but they hit on several themes that will resonate favorably with rank-and-file Republicans. Follow me after the jump for my unofficial transcript of the spot for Whitaker, Hagenow and Gustoff LLB. I would like to know whether any Bleeding Heartland readers living outside the Des Moines media market have seen the same commercial on cable, either during Olympics coverage or at other times.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? I’ve decided that the best way to deal with NBC’s horrible Olympics coverage is to tape and watch later or the following day, fast-forwarding over the endless commercials and filler material. It’s amazing how few events and competitors you see during hours of watching NBC. Prime-time is the worst, but even the daytime coverage is very light.

Ever heard the old blogging expression, “Don’t feed the trolls”? New psychological research shows that it’s good advice, because being an internet troll is correlated with personality traits such as “Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).” I appreciate commenters who bring substance or a different perspective to the table, but engaging with trolls is pointless.

Speaking of wasting time, how would you like to be one of the people who supposedly helped lay the groundwork for Bob Vander Plaats to run for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat? Whether sincere fans or soulless political consultants, they turned out to be props helping him drum up publicity for his new pet project. Outside a certain conservative subculture, few people would have cared that this has-been wrote a book, if not for the extensive media speculation in recent months that Vander Plaats would join the IA-Sen Republican field.

This is an open thread. All topics welcome.

Jennifer Jacobs has the exclusive for today’s Des Moines Register: three-time Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats has decided not to run for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat. He had previously appeared to be leaning toward running and had promised to make a decision by February 15. While some observers may be surprised he opted out, given polls showing him leading the GOP field, no one can be surprised by his reason:

Instead, his priority is his new book, “If 7:14.” It’s based on a Bible passage that says if people pray and turn from their wicked ways, God will hear and heal their land.

Vander Plaats said he has been booked for speaking engagements across the country, including at the Billy Graham Evangelical Association in North Carolina a few weeks ago, the New Canaan Society in Florida, a conference in Texas next week with pastors from large churches, and the National Council of Religious Broadcasters the following week.

“When God seems to be blessing an initiative, and there’s a lot of opportunity with that initiative, it’s hard to walk away,” he said.

That’s the BVP Iowans know and love (or at least love to hate): always happy to promote himself.

I think Vander Plaats recognizes that his ship has sailed in Iowa politics. He would have zero chance of beating Bruce Braley in a statewide election and might not even win a Republican primary. All he could accomplish in a Senate campaign is mess things up for Matt Whitaker and Sam Clovis. They are fighting over the “principled conservative” niche against establishment-friendly GOP candidates Joni Ernst and Mark Jacobs. I would call Clovis the big winner from today’s news, since he is the most natural fit for social conservative voters who might have been drawn to BVP. Clovis is trying to repeat the grassroots strategy Rick Santorum used in his 2012 Iowa caucus campaign.

UPDATE: Added the press release from the FAMiLY Leader below. Vander Plaats is such a shameless showboater.

SECOND UPDATE: Added more details below from Steve Deace, a big supporter of Vander Plaats’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

There’s never a good way or a good time to lose a loved one, but few people experience loss as devastating as what State Representative Mary Wolfe’s family has gone through during the last week. Two of her younger sisters, Sarah and Susan Wolfe, were murdered on February 6 in their home near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Authorities are calling the case a homicide but have made no arrests yet.

Wolfe’s parents, the surviving six Wolfe siblings, and many friends and loved ones laid their sisters to rest today in their home town. The Clinton Herald published a beautiful feature about Sarah’s and Suzy’s work and passions in life. Sarah was a psychiatrist, and Susan was an educator.

Carol Staudacher wrote in the book A Time To Grieve, “The death of a loved one is, for most of us, the most profound emotional experience we will ever have to endure.” Although I have experienced bereavements, I cannot imagine the added pain of losing family in such an untimely and violent way. I am sending healing thoughts to Mary Wolfe and hope that her friends and colleagues will help and support her during the difficult weeks and months to come. Staudacher also writes, “The best tribute you can make to a loved one is the life you live after the death.” For those who want to make a tangible expression of their grief, the Wolfe family has asked that memorial donations be made to either the Clinton YWCA Crisis Center or the L’Arche Community, also located in Clinton.

Iowa’s largest labor union, AFSCME Iowa Coucil 61, endorsed State Senator Jack Hatch for governor yesterday, as did several Teamsters locals in the state. I’ve posted the press release after the jump. Labor union endorsements of the leading Democratic challenger to Governor Terry Branstad are only to be expected. The event would not be as newsworthy had AFSCME not made a big deal out of endorsing State Representative Tyler Olson in October. Olson dropped out of the governor’s race for personal reasons near the end of last year.

I never understood why AFSCME felt compelled to get involved in a primary featuring two state lawmakers with strong records on labor issues. Looking at the financial report AFSCME’s political action committee filed last month, I find the strategy even more baffling. During 2013, AFSCME Iowa Council 61 P.E.O.P.L.E. gave $100,000 to Olson’s gubernatorial campaign–by far the PAC’s largest expenditure. The Iowa Democratic Party and the Senate Majority Fund each received $10,000. Various Democratic state legislators or candidates for the Iowa House and Senate received campaign contributions ranging from $250 to $5,000. The House Truman Fund supporting Democratic candidates for the lower chamber received $1,000. AFSCME also supported a smattering of candidates for local government.

Speaking to Radio Iowa yesterday, AFSCME Council 61 President Danny Homan said, “When we endorsed Tyler I stated that it was a very difficult decision to pick Tyler over Jack. That was a close call.” If my dues donations were supporting AFSCME’s political activities, I’d be very upset that $100,000 went to support a “close call” for one candidate over an equally pro-labor primary rival. It would have been smarter for AFSCME to give more to pro-labor lawmakers and candidates for the Iowa House and Senate during 2013, and save any six-figure gifts for the Democratic nominee after the gubernatorial primary.

UPDATE: Corrected to clarify that separate donations (not union dues) are used for AFSCME’s PAC. My original point stands: I would stop giving to any PAC that made this kind of strategic choice. To my mind, it doesn’t matter whether they endorsed Olson or Hatch; they should not waste $100,000 meddling in a Democratic primary where both candidates support their issues, especially when control of the Iowa legislature is at stake in the midterms. Remember, this PAC made only $150,985.05 in expenditures during the reporting period. Two-thirds of the money went toward a race that Danny Homan admitted was a “close call.” Not a wise use of resources.

Last week I never got around to posting highlights from the year-end Federal Election Commission reports for candidates in Iowa’s open first Congressional district. Better late than never.

On the Democratic side, the money race remains highly competitive; all five candidates entered the election year with more than $100,000 to spend before the primary. The Republican race in IA-01 provided another reminder that establishment support does not necessarily translate into strong fundraising.  

Of the four leading Republican candidates for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, three have denounced this week’s vote to suspend the federal government’s debt ceiling.

The odd man out is trying to avoid the subject.

By a voice vote on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Kevin Techau as U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Iowa, based in Cedar Rapids. Senator Tom Harkin recommended Techau for the position, and President Barack Obama nominated him in November. The Senate Judiciary Committee, where Iowa’s Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican, approved Techau’s nomination by voice vote last month.

For more background on Techau’s career, click here or read Grassley’s Senate floor statement in support of the nomination, which I’ve posted below.

Techau will replace Stephanie Rose, who left the position as U.S. Attorney for Iowa’s Northern District to become a federal judge in Iowa’s Southern District, based in Des Moines.

This afternoon the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation to reverse a planned change in cost of living adjustments for some military pensions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to bring up the bill that passed the U.S. House yesterday, rather than a Democratic alternative that fixed the military pension policy without any spending cuts to offset the $6 billion cost over ten years. Senators approved the House bill by 95 votes to 3, with Iowa’s Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley both supporting the measure.

Also today, senators approved a bill “to temporarily extend the public debt limit” with no strings attached. That bill also cleared the House yesterday. A dozen Republicans including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell crossed party lines to approve the cloture motion on the debt ceiling hike, but the procedural vote was a nail-biter that took more than an hour. Grassley was one of the 31 Republicans who opposed cloture. The debt ceiling increase then passed on a a straight party-line vote of 55 to 43, with Harkin voting yes and Grassley voting no.

Possible 2016 presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio all voted against cloture on the debt ceiling increase as well as against the bill on final passage.

UPDATE: Erik Wasson, Ramsey Cox and Peter Schroeder wrote a fascinating piece on the battle to advance the debt ceiling bill: “McConnell and top lieutenant Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) reluctantly backed ending debate after it became clear that no one in their conference wanted to cast the deciding 60th vote.”

This post covers reaction to the debt ceiling vote from Republican candidates for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat.

Multiple Bleeding Heartland readers have told me that former Governor Chet Culver was seeking input on a possible Congressional campaign this year. I was skeptical, given Staci Appel’s big lead in fundraising and backing from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Since Representative Tom Latham announced plans to retire, many labor unions and interest groups have confirmed their support for Appel as well.

Today Culver released a statement to the Des Moines Register confirming that he won’t run for Congress or for governor this year.

“While my passion for serving Iowa remains as strong as it’s ever been, timing is everything, and I will not be a candidate for public office in 2014,” he said. “I am excited to support the Iowa Democratic Party’s great ticket of candidates up and down the ballot, and I look forward to continuing to work now and in the future to make Iowa an even better place to live, work, and raise a family.”

So far, Appel’s only competition in the IA-03 Democratic primary is Gabriel De La Cerda, a first-time candidate who hasn’t raised much money. State Senator Jack Hatch is the leading Democratic candidate for governor. Jonathan Narcisse and Paul Dahl have also announced plans to run for governor as Democrats this year.

Although Iowa House Republicans sought to restrict abortion rights after regaining the majority in the lower chamber in 2011, anti-choice bills were never a high priority for leadership. In fact, House leaders sometimes put the brakes on conservative efforts to bring anti-abortion legislation to the floor. During the 2013 legislative session, not a single bill restricting abortions even made it out of a committee in the Republican-controlled Iowa House.

House leaders must have gotten some flack from their caucus or outside advocacy groups, because even though restricting abortion isn’t a top agenda item for House Speaker Kraig Paulsen or Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, they made sure to move an anti-abortion bill quickly during this year’s session. Yesterday the Iowa House approved House File 2175, which would ban the use of telecommunications technology for the purpose of terminating a pregnancy. (A similar bill died in the funnel last year.)

Follow me after the jump for background and details on the roll call.

I didn’t see this coming: House Republican leaders brought a bill to the floor that raised the debt ceiling without attaching strings such as domestic discretionary spending cuts or entitlement reforms. Speaker John Boehner broke the news to fellow House Republicans yesterday morning; later he explained to reporters that whip counts showed leaders could not get 218 GOP votes behind plans to tie a debt ceiling hike to a bill on reversing a military pension cut by extending the “sequester” to certain Medicare payments.

Republicans wrangled big concessions out of the 2011 showdown over raising the debt ceiling. That deal led to the “sequester” spending cuts that went into effect in early 2013; some of them will stay in place for years. However, the foot-dragging over raising the debt ceiling during last October’s partial shutdown of the federal government didn’t advance the GOP policy agenda and hurt the party in Congressional polling, at least temporarily. President Barack Obama had vowed not to negotiate over future debt ceiling increases.

Yesterday afternoon, House leaders attached language raising the country’s debt ceiling to an unrelated bill, which passed by 221 votes to 201. Iowans Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) were among the 193 Democrats who joined just 28 Republicans to pass the bill. Steve King (IA-04) was among the 199 GOP House members who opposed it. His official comment is after the jump.

The roll call shows that Iowa Republican Tom Latham (IA-03) was not present for the debt ceiling vote. He also missed earlier votes yesterday. I have not seen any explanation for his absence but will update this post with details, as available. UPDATE: Latham’s Congressional office sent out a press release on February 11 about a Medicare bill he supports. I’ve posted it after the jump. The statement was datelined “Des Moines,” but it’s not clear whether Latham himself was in Iowa rather than Washington.

Conservative groups are already calling for Boehner to be replaced. It will be interesting to see whether he can remain speaker throughout this election year.  

One of the most shameful provisions in last year’s federal budget deal between Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan was a change in the cost of living adjustment for military pensions. The pension cut could never have passed in a stand-alone vote but got through as one small piece of what was perceived as a must-pass deal. At the time, an old friend and 20-year Navy veteran commented on Facebook, “This is a great bookend for why we are tired of being thanked for serving. Actions speak louder than mere words for the sacrifices made by people in uniform and their families.”

House and Senate members are eager to reverse this pension cut, but so far can’t agree on how or whether to offset the $6 billion that would have been saved during a ten-year period of screwing over veterans on full pensions.

Today House leaders attached military pension language to an unrelated bill and quickly passed it under a suspension of normal House rules. The roll call shows that Democrats Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Republican Steve King (IA-04) were all part of the 326 to 90 majority who voted yes. Tom Latham (IA-03) was not present for the vote. The 19 Republicans and 71 Democrats who voted no had different reasons, Pete Kasperowicz reported.

Some Democrats said they opposed not only the speed with which the bill was rushed to the floor, but the way Republicans are offsetting the $6 billion cost of the bill. The legislation pays for the restoration of benefits by extending sequester cuts to mandatory spending under Medicare for one year, through 2024 instead of 2023. […]

Republicans had their own reasons for opposing the measure – many GOP members have said they disapprove of the idea of paying for current spending by promising cuts 10 years out.

When Congress approved the Murray-Ryan budget deal in December, three of Iowa’s four House members voted yes, with King the odd man out. Senator Tom Harkin supported the deal, while Senator Chuck Grassley voted against it.

UPDATE: Added a statement from Braley below.

Iowa’s Constitution lays out a straightforward process for changing state law: first, a bill needs to pass the Iowa House and Senate by a simple majority in both chambers. Then, the governor signs the bill into law. Alternatively, state legislators can pass a new law without the governor’s support, by over-riding a veto with a two-thirds majority in both chambers.

Iowa House Republicans and Governor Terry Branstad don’t like current state law on setting state funding for K-12 education a year in advance. However, they lack support in the Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate for changing that law through the normal legislative process. So, they have decided they can pretend the law doesn’t exist.

It appears that nothing short of a court order will change their minds.

Catching up on news from last week, Representative Dave Loebsack (D, IA-02) continued his pattern of voting for certain Republican bills aimed at undercutting federal regulations, especially in the environmental area (see also here). The latest example came when the U.S. House approved a bill “aimed at reducing the federal government’s restrictions on hunting, fishing and sport shooting on federal land.”  

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today a new policy to “recognize lawful same-sex marriages as broadly as possible, and to recognize all marriages valid in the jurisdiction where the marriage was celebrated,” even if the couple currently resides in a state that does not allow same-sex marriages. You can read the full text of Attorney General Eric Holder’s memo here (pdf). Jaywon Choe reported for PBS,

Practically speaking, the decision means that same-sex couples will be given benefits that previously were only extended to heterosexual couples. For federal inmates, this includes spousal visits and the possibility of furloughs in the event of a crisis involving a spouse. Meanwhile in the courtroom, same-sex couples will now be given the right to refuse testimony that might incriminate their spouse, even in states where same-sex marriage is not recognized.

The policy stems from last June’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Windsor case, which struck down key provisions in the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The DOJ memo makes clear that the policy does not apply to domestic partnerships or civil unions–only to the thousands of LGBT couples married in Iowa or one of the other states where marriage equality is the law.

The Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Treasury confirmed last summer that legally married same-sex couples will be able to file the same kind of federal tax returns (jointly or separately) as married heterosexual couples.

This morning Governor Terry Branstad stood by Iowa Department of Human Services Director Chuck Palmer and his handling of problems at the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo (Tama County). He also spoke confidently about his appeal to Iowa Supreme Court against a Polk County District Court ruling ordering that the Iowa Juvenile Home be reopened.

More background and details are after the jump.  

On Thursday Republicans in the U.S. Senate again successfully filibustered efforts to extend unemployment benefits for an estimated 1.7 million people whose benefits ran out at the end of 2013. Senate rules still require 60 yes votes to approve most motions and bills, with the exception of budget legislation and most confirmation votes. As Ramsey Cox reported for The Hill, Democrats fell one vote short of the 60 needed to end debate on extending unemployment benefits. The roll call shows that four Republicans and all Democrats present voted yes, except for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who switched to “no” to preserve his right to bring the bill up again later. Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley was among the 40 Republicans who filibustered the effort to end debate.

A little later, Senators rejected a separate procedural motion to end debate on the bill to extend unemployment benefits by a mostly party-line vote. Again, Senator Tom Harkin voted to end debate, while Grassley was part of the Republican filibuster.

A similar story played out last month when Senate leaders attempted to move a bill extending unemployment benefits. Grassley and most Senate Republicans failed to block a motion to proceed to debating the bill and failed to table the measure by sending it back to the Finance Committee, but successfully kept Senate Democrats from getting the 60 votes needed to end debate on that bill. Harkin repeatedly voted to advance legislation on extending the benefits.

In a statement enclosed below, Harkin vowed that the latest vote “is not the end of the line” and said he will keep fighting to extend unemployment coverage workers “have earned and so rightly deserve.”

I have not seen any statement from Grassley directly explaining his refusal to extend unemployment benefits, but after the jump I’ve posted relevant excerpts from a floor speech he gave last month, objecting to limits on the Senate minority’s ability to offer amendments during floor debate.

Also on Thursday, senators confirmed longtime Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus of Montana to be the next U.S. ambassador to China. The vote was unanimous, except that Baucus himself voted “present.”

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? I’m excited about the Winter Olympics starting, despite NBC’s horrible coverage. (In some countries, television networks allow viewers to watch entire Olympic events from start to finish without commercial interruptions, and you can see all the competitors rather than the handful contending for medals.) The opening ceremony was spectacular, especially the holographic projections such as Peter the Great’s ship. I only wish NBC hadn’t repeatedly cut to a shot of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s smug face.

February 7 marked 50 years since the Beatles arrived in the U.S., and February 9 marks 50 years since their first live performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, the highest-rated television program of all time. When I haven’t been watching the Olympics, I’ve enjoyed listening to the Des Moines oldies station KIOA, which is playing wall to wall Beatles songs all weekend long. After the jump I’ve posted a few links about the Beatles in America and the British invasion. This is an open thread.

Polk County District Court Judge Scott Rosenberg ruled yesterday in favor of plaintiffs who are challenging the closure of the Iowa Juvenile Home by the Iowa Department of Human Services. Finding that the four state legislators and the president of a public employees union were “likely to succeed on the merits” when the court considers their lawsuit, Judge Rosenberg granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. He ordered Governor Terry Branstad’s administration to “reopen the Toledo home and abide by the duly passed laws of the state of Iowa which established the Toledo Home […].”

After the jump I’ve posted an excerpt from the ruling, which you can read in full on the Des Moines Register’s website. I’ve also posted reaction from several of the plaintiffs and from Branstad.

This isn’t the first time a state court has found that the governor overreached in disregarding legislative intent on the allocation of state funds. Maybe Branstad should get better legal advice before deciding to ignore language from budget bills he signed into law.  

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? Here’s an open thread.

Change for the better: According to Maj. Gen. Tim Orr, adjutant general of the Iowa National Guard, no members of the Guard are stationed in war zones for the first time since before the Iraq War. Orr delivered his annual “Condition of the Guard” speech to Iowa legislators today. Only about 100 of roughly 9,400 National Guard or Air National Guard members from Iowa are stationed overseas; the largest group is in Kosovo.

Change for the worse: U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman announced last week that he will retire after 40 years in Congress. He is one of the giants of his generation, having helped pass the Clean Air Act and a wide range of consumer protection laws, from tobacco regulations to food safety. Until I read this article by Timothy Westmoreland, I didn’t realize that Waxman was also an “unsung hero in the fight against AIDS” during the 1980s.

Changes don’t get much bigger than climate change. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced today that seven news “regional hubs for risk adaptation and mitigation to climate change” will open around the country. The Midwestern “climate hub” will be located in Ames. The full USDA press release is after the jump.

I thought Representative Steve King’s faction of the House Republican caucus had decisively won the war against comprehensive immigration reform in this Congress. But House leaders are trying to nudge Republicans toward moving on the issue before the midterm elections.

Just like last year, King is ready to stand and fight. In recent days, he’s been working conservative public opinion on several fronts.  

I knew that Governor Terry Branstad was trying to fill the State Judicial Nominating Commission with conservatives and big Republican donors.

I knew that Branstad liked naming former state legislators to prominent positions, sometimes without considering anyone else for the job, sometimes even when the former lawmaker hadn’t asked for the job.

But until yesterday, I never imagined that Branstad would consider a Judicial Nominating Commission an appropriate place for someone who tried to impeach Iowa Supreme Court justices over the Varnum v Brien ruling on marriage.  

A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that Iowa and many other states fail to incorporate enough long-term fiscal planning in the budget process. Click here to read the executive summary of the thoroughly researched piece by Elizabeth McNichol, Vincent Palacios, and Nicholas Johnson. Click here to download the full report (pdf).

After the jump I’ve posted the two-page fact sheet on Iowa, which scored only 4.5 out of a possible 10 and ranked 37th among the states. I’ve also enclosed a sidebar explaining the ten criteria they used to evaluate state fiscal planning. Table 1 toward the bottom of this page shows that Iowa received full marks under three categories: consensus revenue estimates, legislative fiscal offices, and budget status reports. Iowa received half-credit in three more categories: multi-year fiscal notes, pension oversight, and well-designed rainy-day funds. Iowa received zero marks in four categories: multi-year forecasting, a projection of future costs to deliver the “quantity and quality of services to residents that it is delivering in the current budget period,” pension funding and debt level reviews, and oversight of tax expenditures.

For years, the Iowa Policy Project and the Iowa Fiscal Partnership have been sounding the alarm on how Iowa needs to start calculating the costs of various tax breaks and tax credits.

While you’re at it, read the Iowa Fiscal Partnership’s recent background piece on why “Iowa lawmakers must recognize the long-term impact of tax cuts on spending choices. Past choices will force future legislatures to lower investments on critical services on which economic growth depends.”

The U.S. Senate approved a compromise five-year farm bill this afternoon by 68 votes to 32 (roll call). As occurred in the House of Representatives last week, the farm bill drew substantial support from both caucuses. At the same time, a sizable number of conservative Republicans opposed the bill because of the costs, while some liberal Democrats voted no because of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. Iowa’s Democratic Senator Tom Harkin voted for ending debate on the farm bill yesterday and for the conference report today. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley voted no on cloture and on final passage.

After the jump I’ve posted statements from Harkin and Grassley explaining their stance on the farm bill. Click here for details on the contentious provisions of the farm bill. For once I am inclined to agree more with Grassley than with Harkin. In many respects the conference report was a missed opportunity and won’t serve the interests of Iowans or Americans generally.

I also sympathize with Grassley’s outrage at “a select few members dismantling a provision that was passed by wide, bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate.” Congressional rules should be changed so that the conference committee can alter only provisions that differed in the House and Senate bills, not consensus language from both versions.  

On the other hand, I suspect Grassley cast this protest vote because he knew his support wasn’t required to get the farm bill to President Barack Obama’s desk. As disappointing as this legislation is, Iowa’s economy truly needs stability and predictability in federal agricultural programs.

UPDATE: Added Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey’s comments below.  

Governor Terry Branstad’s legal counsel Brenna Findley told the Des Moines Register yesterday that she has decided not to run for Congress in the open third district. She indicated that she plans to continue her work in the governor’s office and teach a course at the University of Iowa law school.

I would guess that the early conservative endorsements for Matt Schultz were in part intended to deter Findley from entering the GOP primary in IA-03. Not only was she seriously considering the race, the National Republican Congressional Committee had reserved the domain name BrennaFindleyforCongress.com. Findley has strong conservative credentials as a product of homeschooling and a longtime staffer for Representative Steve King before running for Iowa attorney general in 2010. She has repeatedly spoken out against illegal immigration and the mandate to purchase individual health insurance. She has arguably helped steer the Branstad administration’s policies to the right on abortion and gun-related issues.

Although Findley won’t run for Congress or statewide office this year, I expect Iowans will see her name on a ballot again sometime before the end of this decade. We may have an open race for attorney general in 2018 if Tom Miller decides to call it quits after nine terms.  

Can someone please explain Mark Lofgren to me? If you’re going to the trouble of getting in a Congressional race early and lining up a bunch of endorsements (presumably to deter would-be rivals in your own party), why wouldn’t you work hard on fundraising? Lofgren’s year-end financial report was even weaker than his third-quarter Federal Election Commission filing, which is saying something.

Lofgren isn’t giving four-term Democratic incumbent Dave Loebsack a thing to worry about, and he’s leaving the door wide open for Mariannette Miller-Meeks to come in and take the Republican primary to represent IA-02. Follow me after the jump for details from the FEC reports.  

What a difference a retirement makes. If Staci Appel were still running against ten-term incumbent Representative Tom Latham, she would have ended the year at a big disadvantage in campaign cash. Now she is poised to come out of the Democratic primary with a money lead over the eventual Republican nominee in IA-03.

Details from the candidates’ year-end Federal Election Commission reports are after the jump.

In the past, I’ve pulled together highlights from Congressional candidates’ quarterly financial reports in a single post, but with so many candidates running for Congress in Iowa, I’ve decided to separate the races. Year-end reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission show that for the second quarter in a row, Democratic challenger Jim Mowrer raised more money than six-term incumbent Representative Steve King (IA-04).

Follow me after the jump for details.

UPDATE: The Hill’s Cameron Joseph and Alexandra Jaffe named King one of five Congressional incumbent “fourth quarter fundraising losers.”

Governor Terry Branstad confirmed on Iowa Public Television this weekend that he wants Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds to succeed him in office.

Although he added that it’s “his intention” to serve an entire sixth term if re-elected this year, his comments are not likely to persuade skeptics (including me) who believe that he would resign early to give Reynolds a chance to run as an incumbent governor in 2018. I explain why after the jump, following a video clip and partial transcript of Branstad’s remarks.  

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

Ben Adler published a highly entertaining article a few days ago about former presidential candidates Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee. Can’t say I was surprised to learn they are all making big money off spam e-mails selling dubious products to former political supporters.

Questions persist over New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s involvement in lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. I doubt the disgraced former Port Authority official has any real dirt on Christie. If he gets the immunity from criminal prosecution he’s seeking, I expect his so-called “evidence” about the governor will turn out to be a whole lot of nothing. Furthermore, if Christie runs for president in 2016, I believe his signing New Jersey’s version of the DREAM Act will be more of a liability in the GOP primaries than anything related to the bridge scandal. Nevertheless, the controversy does appear to have Christie rattled.

Who’s old enough to remember Dinesh D’Souza? He made a name for himself during the 1980s as a conservative provocateur on the Dartmouth campus. He later became a popular paid speaker and occasional talking head. (Unofficial nickname: Distort D’Newsa.) In late January, he was indicted for allegedly breaking federal campaign finance laws. Naturally, D’Souza claims his prosecution may be “a kind of payback” for his documentary film “which links the supposedly anti-colonialist views of [President Barack] Obama’s father to the policies of the Obama presidency.”

Closer to home, misconduct involving federal grants has ended the careers of two former Iowa State University faculty. Palaniappa Molian was a tenured professor in the highly-regarded College of Engineering when he spent federal grant funds on personal expenses unrelated to his research. Last week he pled guilty to felony charges of making false statements; he will be sentenced in April and could face up to five years in prison. It’s not clear yet whether criminal charges will be filed in a much worse case of fraud involving former ISU Assistant Professor Dong-Pyou Han, who had to resign in December after falsifying research on a vaccine for AIDS. James Bradac of the National Institutes of Health told the Des Moines Register that Han’s test results were “the worst case of research fraud he’d seen in his 24 years at the federal agency.”

Ever since David Young first revealed his plans to run for the U.S. Senate, I’ve had trouble understanding how a professional Congressional staffer could win a Republican primary in Iowa. By all accounts Young is a bright, capable, hard-working Iowa native, but who is supposed to be his constituency? Candidates who have spent years building networks among conservative activists here will have a natural advantage over Young, who worked in Washington for 17 years before moving back to Iowa in 2013.

After Representative Tom Latham announced his retirement, Young switched from the U.S. Senate to the third district Congressional race, but that doesn’t change the fundamental weakness of his candidacy. He may be the contender best-prepared to work in Congress, but I doubt that’s what primary voters are looking for. When Young joined the Senate field, Robert Cramer praised him as “a ‘man of integrity,’ trustworthy and an ‘across-the-board conservative.'” But even though Cramer has known Young for decades and thinks highly of him, he’s not backing him in IA-03. On the contrary, Cramer himself is seeking the GOP nomination for Latham’s seat.

This week Young’s campaign announced its most prominent endorsements so far: former U.S. Representatives Tom Tauke and Jim Ross Lightfoot. I’ve posted the press release after the jump. Tauke represented northeast Iowa and hasn’t served in Congress since losing the 1990 U.S. Senate race to Tom Harkin. Lightfoot represented parts of southwest Iowa that are in the current IA-03, but he hasn’t been in Congress since losing to Harkin in 1996. He was last seen in this state blowing a big lead over Tom Vilsack in the 1998 gubernatorial race. Following that debacle, Lightfoot “became a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., [and] is now owner of Texas-based Lightfoot Strategies, a government relations consulting company.” Hard to see him having any pull with the Iowa Republican base today.

The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to delay for four years “most flood insurance premium hikes resulting from a 2012 law.” Ramsey Cox reported for The Hill,

The Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, S. 1926, delays a required increase in flood insurance premiums for some homes and would allow homeowners to maintain existing flood insurance subsidies even after they are sold. Supporters of the bill say these changes are needed while the government studies whether homeowners can afford these higher costs.

In 2012, Congress passed flood insurance reform, the Biggert-Waters Act, to ensure the bankrupt program regained stability, but some lawmakers have complained that the law was ill-conceived because the new rates are too high for some people to stay in their homes.

S. 1926 would delay language that would immediately eliminate flood insurance subsidies for homes built before 1975 upon the sale of those homes. The bill would delay this trigger until the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does an affordability study. FEMA would also have to certify that its flood maps are accurate, a process the agency has said could take three years.

Fourteen Republicans joined all of the Democrats present, including Senator Tom Harkin, to pass the bill by 67 votes to 32 (roll call). Senator Chuck Grassley was one of the no votes. Before the vote on final passage, the Senate rejected three amendments to the flood insurance bill (click through for details). Harkin opposed all three amendments, while Grassley voted for two of the GOP amendments and against a third. I have not seen any public comment from Iowa’s senators on this bill but will update this post as needed.

Every year I’m amazed by some of the bills Iowa House and Senate members introduce. An Iowa House Public Safety subcommittee provided the latest head-scratching example yesterday, when two Republicans and a Democrat unanimously advanced a bill to lower from fourteen to twelve the age at which Iowans can “possess a pistol or revolver or the ammunition therefor for any lawful purpose” while being supervised by a parent or guardian or an instructor authorized by a parent or guardian. Details are after the jump.  

To no one’s surprise, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum endorsed Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s campaign in Iowa’s third Congressional district today. The official statement, enclosed below, mentions that Santorum supported Schultz’s campaign for secretary of state in 2010, and that the following year, Schultz became the only statewide elected official to endorse a candidate before the Iowa caucuses, picking Santorum with less than a month to go.

I had to laugh at Santorum praising Schultz for “insuring each vote counts” only a day after news broke that at least three eligible Iowa voters had their ballots wrongly tossed out in 2012. (A separate post is in progress on that story.)

For now, let’s briefly consider how much Santorum and his Patriot Voices PAC can help Schultz in a primary against five other declared candidates, and possibly more before the filing deadline in March.

UPDATE: The Freedom Works PAC also endorsed Schultz this week. Added more details at the end of this post.  

Yesterday Governor Terry Branstad appointed former U.S. Representative Leonard Boswell to the Iowa Transportation Commission. Boswell will replace former Iowa Senator Tom Rielly, whom the governor named to the commission in 2013. According to the press release I’ve posted after the jump, Rielly “resigned from the commission due to a business-related conflict of interest.”

Boswell served in the Iowa Senate during much of Branstad’s previous tenure as governor. During this year’s Condition of the State address, Branstad recognized Boswell for his work co-chairing the governor’s “Home Base Iowa” initiative to attract more veterans to Iowa.

While serving in Congress, Boswell rightly called attention to the poor condition of many roads and bridges across the state and in the Des Moines metro area. From my perspective, he was too eager to support some new road construction projects that were potentially harmful and not justified by traffic flows. But without question, he is knowledgeable about Iowa’s infrastructure needs and qualified to serve on the transportation commission.

I’ll be curious to see whether Iowa Senate Republicans put up a fight against Boswell. To be confirmed, he will need support not only from the 26 Senate Democrats but also from at least eight of the upper chamber’s 24 Republicans. Last year, Republicans resisted confirming their former Democratic colleague Tom Rielly to the transportation commission, prompting Branstad to withdraw the nomination during the legislative session and appoint Rielly on an interim basis after lawmakers had adjourned for the year.  

President Barack Obama will finally have an opportunity to sign a five-year Farm Bill into law. The U.S. House approved the conference committee report today by 251 votes to 166, and the U.S. Senate is expected to approve the deal this week. The House roll call shows an unusual partisan split. Iowa’s four representatives were all among the 162 Republicans and 89 Democrats who voted for the final deal. But 63 House Republicans and 103 Democrats voted no, a mixture of conservatives who objected to spending in the $956 billion bill and liberals who opposed cuts to nutrition programs.

Although 41 representatives and senators served on the conference committee (including Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Steve King), the four top-ranking members of House and Senate Agriculture Committees hashed out the final details. King’s controversial amendment aimed at California’s egg regulations was left on the cutting room floor.

After the jump I’ve posted several takes on the farm bill’s key provisions and comments from the Iowa delegation.  

Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand was admitted to a Sioux City hospital on Saturday after suffering a “mild stroke.” A statement released by the Iowa Senate Republicans said Bertrand’s doctors expect him to make a “full recovery, with no lasting effects.” His friend and fellow Senator Bill Anderson told the Sioux City Journal that Bertrand drove himself to the hospital and plans to be back in the Senate by next Monday.

A business owner and first-term lawmaker, Bertrand was Iowa Senate minority whip during last year’s legislative session but recently stepped down from that position in order to focus on his re-election campaign. Senate district 7, covering much of Sioux City and parts of Woodbury County, will probably be among this year’s most competitive Iowa Senate contests. So far no Democrat has announced plans to run against Bertrand. The filing deadline is March 14.

The U.S. House approved a bill yesterday that would make the “Hyde amendment” banning federal taxpayer funds for abortions a permanent law rather than a restriction requiring annual approval. Pete Kasperowicz reported for The Hill,

Republicans noted that Democrats just a few weeks ago approved the Hyde Amendment as part of the omnibus spending bill. They said that approval shows how noncontroversial the permanent measure should be. But Democrats countered that the bill is unnecessary precisely because Congress continues to approve the rider annually.

“This bill is a hoax,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). “Federal taxpayer [money] is not spent on abortion.” […]

During the floor debate, Slaughter said the bill is really an attack on ObamaCare, because it would end the payment of federal subsidies to people who use the healthcare law to buy health insurance that covers abortion. Slaughter said that change would chip away at women’s rights by imposing a financial hurdle to getting an abortion and accused Republican men of coming up with a policy that no woman wants. […]

Republicans said ObamaCare needs to be tweaked because it requires taxpayers to subsidize the purchase of health plans that cover abortion, which frustrates the intent of the Hyde Amendment.

The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” passed by 227 votes to 188, with very few representatives crossing party lines. As expected, Iowa Republicans Tom Latham (IA-03) and Steve King (IA-04) supported the bill, while pro-choice Democrats Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) voted no. So far, I’ve only seen public comment on this vote from King; his news release is after the jump.  

President Barack Obama addresses both houses of Congress tonight. The big policy news will be a new executive order requiring federal contractors to pay workers hourly wages of at least $10.10. The move could affect hundreds of thousands of workers. Last year the president proposed increasing the federal minimum wage to $9.00 per hour, but Senator Tom Harkin and other liberal Democrats argued for raising the wage to $10.10. Obama indicated his support for that wage level in November.

I will update this post later with highlights from tonight’s speech and reaction from Iowa’s Congressional delegation. Meanwhile, this thread is for any comments about the substance or the politics of the State of the Union address.

On a related note, I hope Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is right about the president refusing to negotiate with Congressional Republicans over raising the debt ceiling.

UPDATE: Click here for the full transcript of the president’s speech, as prepared. I’ve added some Iowa reaction after the jump.

State Senator Brad Zaun announced today that he will run for Congress again in Iowa’s third district. Radio Iowa posted the audio from his press conference. At this writing, I don’t see any news release on Zaun’s Facebook page. I will add that to this post when I get it. The campaign is on twitter here. So far the campaign website has no content, just a sign-up for supporters and volunteers. Zaun’s already been campaigning around the district, attending the Pottawattamie Republican Party debate for U.S. Senate candidates and a “Speak for Life” event in Council Bluffs earlier this month.

Zaun was mayor of the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale before being elected to the Iowa Senate for the first time in 2004. He won the crowded 2010 GOP primary in IA-03 despite being outspent by a candidate with more establishment support. Here’s a link to Zaun’s paid advertising from that primary. After losing the general election to Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell, Zaun co-chaired Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign in Iowa and stuck with her even as her poll numbers declined. During the spring of 2012, he endorsed a couple of candidates who eventually lost competitive GOP primaries in northeast Iowa. After the jump I’ve posted Zaun’s official bio and a statement from the Iowa Democratic Party.

Though stranger things have happened, I doubt Republicans would nominate a candidate this year who couldn’t beat Boswell in the massive GOP landslide of 2010. I think another strike against Zaun is his failure to raise a lot of money for fellow Iowa Senate candidates when he served as the Senate Republican minority whip. How do you not raise big money when you represent Urbandale, which includes some of Iowa’s wealthiest precincts? Zaun gave up his Senate minority leadership position shortly after the 2012 election, when Republicans failed to win a majority in the upper chamber.

Any comments about the IA-03 race are welcome in this thread. Zaun’s current competitors in the Republican primary are Senator Chuck Grassley’s former chief of staff David Young, construction business owner Robert Cramer, Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz, Iowa Renewable Fuels Association executive director Monte Shaw, and Des Moines teacher Joe Grandanette. My gut says that Governor Terry Branstad’s legal counsel Brenna Findley will stay out of this race, but if she runs, she has a pretty good story to tell conservative activists.

UPDATE: Appearing on Simon Conway’s WHO radio show this afternoon, Zaun said he would vote no to raising the debt ceiling, because “we have to pay our bills.” Which is ironic, because the U.S. can’t service its debt or meet other spending obligations already approved by Congress without further increases in the debt ceiling.

Addendum to yesterday’s post: I think the Ready for Hillary super PAC is mostly a waste of time. Hillary Clinton will either run for president, or she won’t. Her decision won’t depend on how successfully other people “grassroots organize” on her behalf.

That said, Ready for Hillary could become a vehicle for those who want to show the Clintons their usefulness, or at least make money selling a list of Clinton supporters to somebody’s future campaign.

It’s worth noting that State Representative Tyler Olson took a leading role in organizing last Saturday’s Ready for Hillary event in Des Moines. A year ago, he was a rising star, newly rubber-stamped as the Iowa Democratic Party chair and the ranking Democrat on an important Iowa House committee. He gave up the party leadership position to run for governor, and later bowed out of that campaign for family reasons. Olson has confirmed he’s not seeking re-election to the Iowa House in 2014. But he obviously isn’t done with politics. Helping to start an “informal conversation” about how to engage Hillary Clinton’s Iowa supporters may get him a paid staff or advisory position before the 2016 caucuses. He may feel pressure to jump on the bandwagon early, since he endorsed Barack Obama rather than Clinton in 2007. Still, he doesn’t have nearly as much to add to a Clinton effort as Jackie Norris, who was state political director for Al Gore’s 2000 Iowa campaign and was deeply involved in the mechanics of Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Of all the non-events to get major Iowa caucus coverage, this past weekend’s “Ready for Hillary” meeting in Des Moines must be among the most ridiculous.

One significant piece of news emerged from the pro-Hillary super PAC’s first foray to Iowa, though. Jackie Norris, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 general election campaign here, is now publicly on the Hillary bandwagon. In other words, one of the most important early Obama supporters in Iowa has just told any other would-be 2016 Democratic presidential contenders, “You’re on your own.”  

The January 23 edition of the Iowa House Republican newsletter contains a mix of news and spin on a wide variety of topics, such as the state budget, the minimum wage, the check-off for corn growers, distracted driving, marijuana use and even a controversy over whether states should charge sales tax on “take-n-bake” pizzas.

From my perspective, the most interesting nugget was the effort to explain House Republicans’ stubborn refusal to comply with a state law that passed nearly two decades ago with strong bipartisan support. Iowa Senate Democrats are determined to set “allowable growth” levels for K-12 school budgets in the time frame laid out by the law. But Republicans are not budging from the position they staked out last year: no early notice for school district leaders who need to plan their budgets.

On Saturday night the Des Moines Register announced the major stops on the 2014 Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). The rumor going around the Iowa Bike Expo today turned out to be true: the 418-mile ride takes a northern path through the state from July 20 to July 26. It is the third-shortest route in RAGBRAI history and the second-easiest in terms of feet of climb. I’ve seen some bicyclists complaining on social media already, but let’s face it: north-central Iowa is pretty flat.

Overnight stops are after the jump. This may be the best RAGBRAI ever for architecture buffs.

UPDATE: I’ve been playing around with the Location Affordability Portal this weekend, so just for fun I thought I’d see which of the RAGBRAI overnight stops are the most and least affordable for residents, in terms of housing and transportation costs. Scroll down for the available data.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

Des Moines continues to make national news as a place with a generally high quality of life. This week NBC’s Today show named Iowa’s capital as “the city where regular folk can live a rich life,” because the “cost of living is almost 10 percent below the average for the country.” Last summer, Forbes magazine named Des Moines the country’s best city for “business and careers,” noting it was “the only place that ranks among the top quartile in at least nine of the 12 metrics we graded the cities on.” Previous research indicates that Des Moines has “one of the shortest commute times in the nation with an average commute of about 19 minutes.”

But given that Iowa wages skew lower than salaries in many other metro areas, how affordable is Des Moines, really? The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Transportation recently launched a Location Affordability Portal that takes into account “the percentage of a family’s income dedicated to the combined cost of housing and transportation in a given location.” (I’ve posted more explanation after the jump.) The algorithm takes into account that many Americans are now spending more on transportation than on rent or mortgage payments, so you can’t just look at housing costs when deciding whether a particular neighborhood is “affordable.”

On this page you can search by a specific address, a zip code, city, county or state to pull up information on average household income and how much a household in that area could expect to spend on housing and transportation.

Windsor Heights (zip code 50324) has a “location affordability” rating of 42 percent. The average household could expect to spend 25 percent of annual income on housing and 17 percent on transportation. Affordability numbers on the west side of Des Moines (50311) are similar. The near north side of Des Moines (50314) is more affordable, and the combined average cost of housing and transportation is lower still on the south side (50315) and around downtown (50309).

Residents in the Iowa City zip code of 52242 can expect to spend less on transportation (16 percent of annual income) but a lot more for housing (39 percent), for a total location affordability of 55 percent. The Cedar Falls zip code of 50613 has a nearly identical combined affordability rating as downtown Iowa City (54 percent), but residents can expect to spend less on housing (29 percent) and more on transportation (25 percent)–unless they take advantage of the bicycle-friendly atmosphere in Cedar Falls.  

The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in an appeal of Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand’s defamation lawsuit against his 2010 opponent, Rick Mullin, and the Iowa Democratic Party. Des Moines attorney and law blogger Ryan Koopmans live-tweeted the hearing, and Mike Wiser and Grant Rodgers published summaries.

We’ll know the verdict within a few months, but I’ve posted some thoughts and predictions below.

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz announced yesterday that nine more Iowans are being charged with “voter fraud.” As you can see from the statement I’ve posted below, eight Waterloo residents face election misconduct charges (a Class D felony) because they registered to vote and cast ballots in the 2012 general election, even though they are felons whose voting rights had not been restored. One Lee County resident who is also an ex-felon is charged with registering to vote and casting a ballot in a 2013 local election.

By my count, Schultz’s obsessive hunt for voter fraud has now yielded criminal charges in 25 cases, representing less than a thousandth of one percent of ballots cast in Iowa’s recent local, state, and federal elections. Most of the cases involve felons whose rights had not been restored, though not all of the accused cast ballots–some had merely registered to vote. No proof has emerged that any of these people knew they were committing a crime. They may have assumed that they had a right to vote, because tens of thousands of Iowa ex-felons had their voting rights restored during Governor Chet Culver’s tenure. They may have assumed they were able to vote once offered a registration form.

Most important, none of these cases could have been averted if Schultz had accomplished his goal of forcing Iowans to show a photo ID when voting on election day. It’s likely that many of these improperly registered voters filled out a form after renewing a driver’s license. Schultz’s full-time criminal investigator has not found anyone guilty of impersonating another voter on election day, which is the only kind of fraud that a photo ID law could prevent.

The new defendants will probably be effective poster children for Schultz’s Congressional campaign, though. Republicans love the fantasy that making it more difficult for thousands of people to vote will somehow protect “election integrity” in Iowa.  

Once upon a time, a few moderate Republicans served in the Iowa legislature. Sometimes they faced primary challenges from the right, because conservatives resented their positions on social issues and their willingness to compromise with statehouse Democrats.

Social moderates are long gone among Iowa House and Senate Republican ranks, but party leaders prefer not to talk about, let alone deliver on, some of the key priorities for hard-liners. That leads to occasional infighting between mainstream Republican lawmakers and those who want to rock the boat.

One of the proud non-compromisers, Tom Shaw, just announced plans to retire from the Iowa House. His comrade-in-arms Greg Heartsill will face at least one Republican primary challenger in Iowa House district 28.

Republican State Representative Mary Ann Hanusa confirmed yesterday that she will seek a third term in the Iowa House rather than running for Congress in the open third district.

“It’s an honor to have people ask me to consider running for Congress, and I did consider it, but it’s not the right time to make that run.”

No surprises there. The field of Republican candidates in IA-03 already includes Secretary of State Matt Schultz, who formerly was a city council member in Hanusa’s home town of Council Bluffs. Hanusa was easily re-elected in 2012, even though President Barack Obama won more votes than Mitt Romney in Iowa House district 16. She will have no trouble winning again in a midterm year. Why give up a safe Iowa House seat for a longshot bid to be her party’s Congressional nominee?

Hanusa’s decision indicates that the IA-03 Republican primary will be an all-male affair unless Governor Terry Branstad’s legal counsel Brenna Findley takes a shot at it. I expect Findley to stay out, although she could credibly claim to have moved the needle on some key conservative issues in her current job. In addition to Schultz, David Young, Joe Grandanette, Monte Shaw, and Robert Cramer have announced plans to run in IA-03. State Senator Brad Zaun is likely to join the race soon.

Who attended their Democratic or Republican precinct caucuses tonight? I was at Indian Hills Junior High School, where Democrats and Republicans from Windsor Heights, Clive, and some parts of West Des Moines gathered. Not surprisingly, turnout was low on the Democratic side, with light snow and temperatures in the teens shortly before 7 pm. Approximately 60 people total showed up from the eight or nine precincts at our location. A representative from Staci Appel’s campaign addressed Democrats at our caucus, as did a gubernatorial candidate I’d never heard of: Zachary Newbrough of West Des Moines. His key issues include improving education, mental health reform, embracing diversity in Iowa, and smokers’ rights (although he didn’t mention the last one at the caucus).

I didn’t sit in on the Republican caucuses, but I walked by their rooms after they broke into precincts from Windsor Heights and Clive. By my count, each precinct had approximately 15-20 participants. Although the weather was bad today, I expected more Republicans to come out tonight, given that Governor Terry Branstad’s campaign and several GOP candidates were said to be mobilizing supporters. Branstad’s team wants to make sure the state convention backs Kim Reynolds for lieutenant governor, and the Republican nominations for IA-03 and U.S. Senate may be decided at conventions if no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the vote.

Any comments about the off-year caucuses are welcome in this thread. I’d particularly like to hear from Bleeding Heartland readers on caucus turnout in the first Congressional district, where the Democratic and Republican nominations could conceivably go to conventions.

Iowa Senate district 15 wasn’t on my top tier of Iowa Senate races to watch or among the competitive seats recently mentioned by Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal. However, I am revising my view amid new signs that Republicans will make a strong push against five-term Democratic incumbent Dennis Black.

After the jump I’ve posted background on Black and the three Republicans who plan to challenge him, along with a district map and the latest voter registration totals.  

Republican State Representative Tom Shaw announced on Facebook last night that he will not seek re-election in Iowa House district 10. Defending his “no compromise” approach to serving in the legislature since his first election in 2010, Shaw quoted a retired California legislator as saying, “When we give in to liberals, even an inch, we’re not compromising; we’re abdicating our rights and our honor.” Shaw and his close allies, State Representatives Kim Pearson and Glen Massie, were perhaps best known for helping to block in committee and later voting against a 20-week abortion ban bill, on the grounds that it did not go far enough to end abortions. Pearson and Massie both retired from the Iowa House rather than seek re-election in 2012. Last year, Shaw could persuade only ten of his Republican colleagues to co-sponsor his more extreme version of a “personhood” bill declaring life to start at conception.

Iowa House district 10 covers Humboldt, Pocahontas, and Calhoun counties, plus portions of Webster County (but not Fort Dodge). I’ve posted a map after the jump. It leans strongly Republican, with nearly 3,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats as of January 2014.  

Shaw confirmed by telephone this morning that he is retiring from the state legislature and will not consider running against Democratic State Senator Daryl Beall in Iowa Senate district 5. Shaw’s retirement may be good news for Beall, as the open Iowa House seat comprising half the district should draw more Republican interest than taking on a three-term incumbent in a much more competitive Senate district. Beall currently has one declared challenger, Fort Dodge-based financial adviser Tim Kraayenbrink.

UPDATE: The first candidate to declare for Shaw’s seat was Mike Sexton, who was elected to the Iowa Senate in 1998 but retired after one term. I’ve posted background after the jump. I would guess that an experienced candidate and former legislator would have been a tougher challenger to Beall than Kraayenbrink. But not surprisingly, Sexton sees the open House seat as an easier path back to the statehouse. I would guess that at least one tea party oriented candidate will compete against Sexton in the House district 10 primary.

Government offices and many public school districts were closed today in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bleeding Heartland has compiled links about King to mark this day for the past three years, as well as on last summer’s 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Here’s a new batch:

The civil rights leader was a fan of the “Star Trek” television series and persuaded Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) not to leave the show during the second season.

Thomas J. Sugrue on Restoring King: “There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted and words more drained of content than Martin Luther King.”

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon on The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV: “[N]ational news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.”

Daily Kos user HamdenRice on why Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did: “his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer.”

Todd Dorman on King’s visits to eastern Iowa in 1959 and 1962:

“We have come to the point,’ Dr, King said, “where we can say in the South to those who use violence against us:

“We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.

“We will meet your physical force with soul force.

“Do to us what you will, and we still love you.”

P.S.-“Abigail Van Buren” published this quote from Dr. King in today’s “Dear Abby” column. It was new to me, but I agree with her that it “applies to many aspects of life”: “All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face-to-face with another problem.”

At least two Democrats will run for governor this year. Jonathan Narcisse, a former Des Moines School Board member and third-party gubernatorial candidate, announced his candidacy this morning at the African-American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. I don’t have a video from today’s event, but after the jump I’ve posted a speech Narcisse gave last month when he announced the creation of his exploratory committee. Among other things, he proposes to provide free college education for Iowa students who agree to do community service during the summers and to stay in the state for a certain number of years after graduation. Bleeding Heartland posted more background on Narcisse here. He received a little less than 2 percent of the vote in his independent campaign for governor in 2010.

Narcisse will be a big underdog in the Democratic primary, where State Senator Jack Hatch is better known, has more political experience, and will have the resources to run a more extensive statewide campaign. Hatch just reported raising nearly $300,000 for his gubernatorial campaign in 2013, plus $140,000 in loans from himself and his wife. At year-end, his campaign had $236,943.18 cash on hand.

This morning, former State Representative Ed Fallon endorsed Hatch, saying he “has been a strong progressive voice fighting for a better Iowa” for decades. Fallon represented areas of central Des Moines in the Iowa House for twelve years; during part of that time, Hatch served in the state House and Senate. Fallon ran for governor in 2006 and finished third in the Democratic primary for governor with about 26 percent of the vote. I’ve posted part of his e-mail blast after the jump.

Any comments about the governor’s race are welcome in this thread. UPDATE: Added clips on the Narcisse announcement below.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

I never got around to pulling together news clips on Governor Terry Branstad’s official campaign announcement Wednesday night. After the jump I’ve posted the video of his speech to that rally in Des Moines. Easy for him to take credit for the improving economy when he came back to politics shortly after the worst U.S. recession in 60 years. Every state is doing better economically today than it was four years ago, regardless of which party controls the statehouse or the governor’s mansion. At one of his first re-election campaign stops, Branstad told a Pella audience about some of the achievements and goals he outlined in his speech to state lawmakers earlier this week. As usual, Branstad appeared alongside Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds. He said their focus will be on jobs, especially STEM jobs (science, technology, engineering and math jobs). Branstad and Reynolds held campaign events in thirteen Iowa cities and towns from Thursday through Saturday.

Sam Roecker noted that Olivia Newton John’s “Physical” was the top single the first time Branstad was elected governor in 1982. That one brings back memories: my brother took me to see her concert at Vets Auditorium in Des Moines on the “Let’s Get Physical” tour.

Speaking of blasts from the past, I recently came across a video of “Republican Clair Rudison” telling a bunch of Iowa high school students that the GOP was historically the civil rights party. Which was true 150 years ago and even 60 years ago. But it hasn’t been that way for a long time. Why do you think the states where segregation was most entrenched swung from the Democratic to the Republican Party since the 1960s? Why are Republican politicians the driving force behind efforts to suppress African-American votes in so many states now?

If Clair Rudison’s name sounds familiar, it’s because last time we heard from him, he was masquerading as a Democrat in order to challenge State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad in a 2010 primary. Rudison’s campaign was funded in part by conservatives who opposed marriage equality, so I’m not surprised to see him identifying with Republicans now. In fact, he has endorsed Steve Rathje in the GOP primary to represent Iowa’s first Congressional district. I’ve posted his endorsement letter after the jump.  

I was skeptical about these rumors, but according to Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican, Governor Terry Branstad’s legal counsel Brenna Findley “has been meeting people about a congressional run in the Third District.” Findley told the Des Moines Register “that she appreciates the encouragement, but she’s focused on her job” in the Branstad administration. That phrasing falls short of ruling out a Congressional bid.

Follow me after the jump for first thoughts on strengths and weaknesses Findley might bring to a GOP primary campaign. At the end of this post, I’ve enclosed background on the potential candidate from her 2010 campaign bio and the news release announcing her appointment as legal counsel.  

Yesterday Robert Cramer became the fifth declared candidate in the GOP primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district. His official campaign announcement, which I’ve posted below, characterizes Cramer as “a full spectrum conservative candidate” who is “deeply involved with conservative causes in his community and in Iowa since 1996.” He is president and chief administrative officer of a construction business his father helped create more than 50 years ago. Cramer previously served on the school board in Johnston, a suburb of Des Moines, and has chaired the board of the FAMiLY Leader, a social conservative group led by three-time gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats. Governor Terry Branstad nominated Cramer for a position on the Iowa Board of Regents last year, but the Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate did not confirm him.

Incidentally, State Senator Brad Zaun, who will soon join the Republican field in IA-03, voted against sending Cramer and two other Board of Regents nominees to the Iowa Senate floor as a “symbolic gesture to show his displeasure with the fact that wealthy political contributors typically serve on the Board of Regents.” However, Zaun ultimately supported Cramer’s nomination when it came before the Iowa Senate.

Thanks to his personal wealth and business contacts, Cramer should be able to raise plenty of money for a Congressional campaign. Whether he can distinguish himself from the rest of the field is another question. Zaun, Matt Schultz, David Young, Monte Shaw, and Joe Grandanette will also be campaigning as both fiscal and social conservatives.

If no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the vote in the June primary, a district convention will select the Republican nominee in IA-03.

Via Bret Hayworth’s blog at the Sioux City Journal, I see that Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) took offense at a report that House Speaker John Boehner used an unprintable word to refer to him. The incident allegedly happened at the height of last summer’s furor over King’s views on the children of undocumented immigrants. Hayworth writes that King responded to the report with a statement:

“There can be honest disagreements about policy without using hateful language. Everyone needs to remember that,” King said. “I want to be clear. There’s no place in this debate for hateful or ignorant comments from elected officials. What he said does not reflect the values of the American people or the Republican Party, and we all need to do our work in a constructive, open and respectful way.”

You read that right: Steve King sees “no place in this debate for hateful or ignorant comments from elected officials.”

This from the guy who made “cantaloupe calves” a national symbol of the GOP’s hostility to undocumented immigrants.

This from the guy who created a visual aid re-naming the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) “Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents.”

For the record, I don’t care what Boehner called King in an angry moment. I do care that King’s faction of the House GOP caucus seems to have successfully blocked comprehensive immigration reform during this Congress. President Barack Obama thinks an immigration bill will pass this year, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

UPDATE: King’s statement may have been crafted for humorous effect, as his phrasing mirrored Boehner’s comments about King last summer. But get real: calling someone an expletive is not as “hateful” and “offensive” as saying DREAMers are 100 times more likely to be drug mules than valedictorians.

Yesterday the U.S. Senate easily approved the omnibus budget bill funding most of the federal government through September 30. Like all of the Democrats present, Iowa’s Tom Harkin voted for ending debate on the budget bill and for the bill itself. Both passed by 72 votes to 26 (roll call). Although quite a few Republicans supported the omnibus bill, Senator Chuck Grassley was among the 26 GOP senators who voted no on cloture and on final passage. After the jump I’ve posted Harkin’s floor statement explaining his reasons for backing the bill, along with Grassley’s comment on his no vote.

On Wednesday three of Iowa’s four representatives in the House voted for the omnibus budget bill.

The Hill’s Erik Wasson posted a good analysis of winners and losers from the deal, which eliminates any risk of a federal government shutdown before October 1. He noted,

The omnibus makes it easier for [House Agriculture Committee Chair Frank] Lucas to pass a farm bill. Western members wanted the omnibus to reinstate funding for the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program that sends money to local governments in areas where the federal government owns most of the land, thereby limiting property tax revenue. House leaders promised this would be taken care of in the farm bill and Lucas was all too happy to comply, knowing this adds momentum to passing the farm bill in late January.

Harkin and Representative Steve King (IA-04) both serve on the conference committee working on a long-term Farm Bill.  

For the second time in a week, Iowa’s Democratic representatives in the U.S. House Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) voted for a bill calling attention to problems with the federal government’s implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Depending on whom you believe, the Exchange Information Disclosure Act is either an effort to improve oversight and transparency through weekly updates or what Representative Henry Waxman called an attempt to impede the new law by “drowning the Department of Health and Human Services in red tape.” Nevertheless, 33 Democrats including Braley and Loebsack joined all of the Republicans present to approve the bill yesterday (roll call). I haven’t seen any comment on this bill from them or from Representatives Steve King (IA-04) and Tom Latham (IA-03), who both supported it.

No matter how many anti-Obamacare bills Braley and Loebsack vote for, their opponents and outside conservative groups will run campaign ads attacking them for having helped pass the 2010 health care reform law. In fact, Americans for Prosperity (a right-wing group funded by the Koch brothers) is running television commercials in Iowa right now targeting Braley, the Democratic candidate to replace Tom Harkin in the U.S. Senate. The commercials focus on the so-called “lie of the year,” President Barack Obama’s claim that “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.” Scroll to the end of this post to read the Braley’s campaign’s response, which includes the ad script. In November, Braley and Loebsack voted for a bill that would let some consumers stay on insurance plans that don’t comply with all Affordable Care Act requirements.

Iowa Renewable Fuels Association Executive Director Monte Shaw resigned from the Republican Party of Iowa’s State Central Committee today in order to run for Congress in the open third district. Shaw told Iowa GOP Chair A.J. Spiker,

In the weeks that have passed since Congressman Latham’s announcement my wife, Tina, and I have been humbled by the people who have contacted us and suggested that I run for Congress.

We have both been committed to advancing the conservative agenda for America and being advocates for Iowa.

That commitment has driven my entire adult life, from managing campaigns for Jim Ross Lightfoot and Chuck Grassley, to serving as a national spokesperson for Steve Forbes and renewable fuels, working to protect the elderly on the Senate Select Committee on Aging and most recently eight years heading one of Iowa’s most important agricultural associations as well as volunteering for the Republican Party at the state and local levels. […]

Tina and I have engaged in much prayer, consideration and somber reflection and have reached the conclusion that the best way to continue that twenty year commitment is for me to seek the Republican nomination to fill Tom Latham’s big shoes in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Shaw will formally announce his campaign in the next few weeks, joining David Young, Secretary of State Matt Schultz, Joe Grandanette, and probably also Robert Cramer and State Senator Brad Zaun in the GOP primary.  

In recent years, Congress has funded the federal government mostly through a series of continuing spending resolutions. But yesterday, the U.S. House approved an omnibus budget bill that would fund most federal agencies through September 30 (the end of the 2014 fiscal year). The massive bill passed by an overwhelming margin of 359 votes to 67. All but three Democrats present voted yes, including Iowa’s Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-03). Republican Tom Latham also supported the bill, but Representative Steve King (IA-04) was among the 64 conservatives who voted no.

I’ve enclosed statements from Loebsack and King below. (I have not seen any public comment from Braley or Latham) Loebsack called attention to provisions he fought to include in the omnibus budget bill. King’s statement on yesterday’s vote is just one sentence long–the shortest comment I can ever remember receiving from his office.

Because the bill is so massive, it’s hard to get a handle on the good news and bad news. Here’s a summary of spending levels for various agencies. It looks like many domestic areas will be funded above “sequester” levels, including nutrition for Women, Infants and Children and some transportation programs. Some anti-environmental riders sought by Congressional Republicans were removed before the bill came up for a vote. Others made the cut, such as language supporting incandescent light bulbs and investments in overseas coal projects.  

“States’ rights” has typically been a rallying cry among American conservatives, but six Democratic Iowa legislators are concerned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership now being negotiated may infringe on local control and states’ ability to legislate in the public interest. In an open letter, 43 state lawmakers have asked 23 state attorneys general, including Iowa’s Tom Miller, to analyze the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s possible impact on state and local governments.

I’ve enclosed the text of the letter below, along with a news release on the initiative from the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. The Iowans who signed are State Representatives Chuck Isenhart, Marti Anderson, Dan Kelley and Curt Hanson, and State Senators Bill Dotzler and Joe Bolkcom. The letter spells out ten areas of state regulation that signers fear could be undermined by the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Isenhart stressed that the lawmakers’ concerns go beyond environmental issues, citing Iowa’s support for the biofuels industry as well as state policies to protect consumers and discourage smoking.

President Barack Obama is seeking to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Activists who oppose the trade agreement have criticized the secrecy surrounding the negotiations as well as the agreement’s tilt toward corporations and potential to undermine environmental and public health protections.

UPDATE: Bleeding Heartland user cocinero notes in the comments that the American Cancer Society is concerned about this trade agreement. At the end of this post I’ve enclosed a joint statement from Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy told the Des Moines Register that he will not run for Congress in the open third district. McCoy has been thinking about a Congressional bid for more than a decade, but “After careful consideration with my family, and my 14-year-old son, Jack, I have decided that this is not the right time in my life to run for Congress.” Instead, he will seek re-election this year to the Iowa Senate, where he chairs the Commerce Committee and is an assistant majority leader.

McCoy will easily be re-elected in Iowa Senate district 21, covering parts of Des Moines and West Des Moines. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by about 4,500, and President Barack Obama won nearly 59 percent of the vote here in 2012.

McCoy’s decision leaves Staci Appel in the driver’s seat for the Democratic nomination in IA-03. She has raised approximately $500,000 for her campaign so far (haven’t found her latest filing yet on the Federal Election Commission website) and won the endorsements of many labor unions and progressive interest groups. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has promised her early support as well. Gabriel De La Cerda is also seeking the Democratic nomination in IA-03. He’s a first-time candidate and former Iowa political coordinator for the United Steel Workers Union.

Here’s your mid-week open thread, Bleeding Heartland readers: all topics welcome. Earlier this evening, Governor Terry Branstad made his re-election campaign official. I’ll post a roundup of news clips and highlights tomorrow morning.

One thing’s been bothering me all week. We hear so much about how renewable energy is too expensive for consumers compared to coal and other fossil fuels used to generate electricity. But we don’t often calculate the hidden costs of this allegedly “cheap” coal. Even under normal circumstances, coal takes an enormous toll on human health every step of the way, from mining to combustion to waste disposal. Chronic illnesses shorten lives, reduce productivity and can be expensive to treat.

Costs escalate when a catastrophe happens like last week’s chemical spill in West Virginia. Not only were 300,000 people in the area left without usable water for days, residents of Cincinnati may be affected too as the pollution flows downstream. Taxpayers will foot the bill for the emergency water deliveries and probably most of the cleanup. The government board that will investigate the chemical spill lacks the resources to do its job properly.

Here’s some good news, though, courtesy of the Iowa Environmental Council’s blog:

Iowa is also making progress retiring coal-fired generation.  In fact, a recent announcement by Alliant energy that it will convert its M.L. Kapp station in Clinton to burn natural gas means that Iowa utilities have announced over one gigawatt of coal retirement in the last year.  These announcements include three Iowa plants involved in a settlement over Clean Air Act violations the Sierra Club reached with MidAmerican Energy last year.

Click through for a table showing coal-fired plants in Iowa that will either close or shift to natural gas. (Disclosure: I’m involved with the Iowa Environmental Council but not with their blog.)

Immediately following Governor Terry Branstad’s Condition of the State address to Iowa legislators yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal told Iowa Public Television that he “didn’t hear anything I disagreed with.” Not every Iowan who closely follows state government shared his reaction. State Senator Jack Hatch, the leading Democratic challenger to Branstad, slammed the governor’s “very shallow agenda” of “low expectations.”

After the jump I’ve posted more detailed comments from Hatch and a few other Iowa Democrats, as well as statements released by several non-profit organizations, which called attention to important problems Branstad ignored or glossed over.  

Former State Representative and Polk County Auditor Ned Chiodo formally announced on Monday that he will seek the Democratic nomination in Iowa Senate district 17, which Senator Jack Hatch is vacating to run for governor. Chiodo has been planning his campaign since last summer.

The district covering parts of downtown Des Moines and most of the south side will not be competitive in the general election, as it contains more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans. But the Democratic primary will be an epic battle featuring two giants of south-side politics (Chiodo and former State Senator Tony Bisignano) and Nathan Blake, a relative newcomer to Iowa politics. Bisignano has the backing of a large organized labor group. Blake goes into the primary as an underdog, but presumably his chances improve if Bisignano and Chiodo split the south-side vote.

A map of Senate district 17 is after the jump, along with Chiodo’s press release containing a short bio. His legislative priorities include expanding the “use of tax credits for neighborhood revitalization” and “reimbursing the City of Des Moines for the cost of services it currently provides to the State for free.”  

The GOP field in Iowa’s third Congressional district may soon grow to six candidates. In addition to the three Republicans who have already declared (Joe Grandanette, David Young, and Matt Schultz), State Senator Brad Zaun told conservative blogger Shane Vander Hart yesterday that he will announce his campaign after the Iowa caucuses on January 21. Two other likely Congressional candidates attended the same Iowa GOP event on January 13: Robert Cramer and Iowa Renewable Fuels Association Executive Director Monte Shaw, who serves on the Iowa GOP’s State Central Committee. Cramer indicated last week that he is “90 percent there” in planning his campaign. A close associate of Shaw told The Iowa Republican blog that he will enter the race soon. Kevin Hall commented,

Thanks to his role with the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, Shaw has strong contacts with farmers and agri-business people throughout the Third District, as well as power brokers in Des Moines. Outside of Polk and Dallas counties, the Third District is mostly rural. […]

Additionally, Monte Shaw is an experienced campaign operative. He ran Jim Lightfoot’s congressional campaign in 1994, Chuck Grassley’s U.S. Senate campaign in 1998 and Elizabeth Dole’s Iowa caucus campaign in 2000. Shaw also assisted the Bob Dole and Steve Forbes presidential campaigns and chaired the SCC’s organizational committee for three years.

One well-connected Republican who won’t be running in IA-03 is David Oman, a former chief of staff to Governor Terry Branstad. I’ve posted his comment today after the jump. If Oman was too moderate to win the 1998 GOP nomination for governor, he’s way too moderate to have a prayer in any Republican primary today. Oman’s leadership of the now-defunct Iowa Rain Forest Environmental Project would also be disqualifying in a GOP primary.  

At this point I don’t expect any Republican woman to run in IA-03. I doubt State Representative Mary Ann Hanusa will give up a safe Iowa House seat in Council Bluffs to enter a crowded primary, especially with former Council Bluffs City Council member Schultz in the race. Hanusa did not respond to my recent request for comment. Branstad’s legal counsel Brenna Findley knows Congress well, having worked in Representative Steve King’s office for years. But despite rumors circulating in central Iowa, I see Findley as more likely to run for attorney general again than for Congress.  

Governor Terry Branstad delivered his annual “Condition of the State” address to Iowa lawmakers this morning. By Branstad’s standards, it was not a partisan speech. He drew several standing ovations from legislators in both parties, and it’s easy to imagine the Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate embracing most of the policies he advocated. In fact, immediately after the speech, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal told Iowa Public Television’s Dean Borg that he “didn’t hear anything” he disagreed with. Gronstal did get in a quick jab at the governor, though, pointing out that Branstad hailed “predictability” for the state budget, which is what statehouse Democrats are seeking for school districts. During the last two years, House Republicans and Branstad have refused to comply with Iowa law requiring the legislature to set allowable growth levels for K-12 school districts a year in advance.

Highlights from the governor’s speech are after the jump. Click here to read the full text, as prepared. Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

Stylistic note: for a guy who’s been in politics as long as Branstad has, he keeps his eyes glued to his script a lot. Experienced public speakers typically make more eye contact with the audience.  

Iowa Senate President Pam Jochum and House Minority Leader Mark Smith both called for raising Iowa’s minimum wage in their opening remarks to fellow legislators yesterday. Increasing the minimum wage from the current level of $7.25 would raise earnings for roughly 332,000 Iowa workers, according to a 2012 estimate. It would acknowledge the reality that “the minimum wage does not keep a full-time worker out of poverty.”  

Governor Terry Branstad said last week that a minimum wage hike is “not part of my agenda,” suggesting that job training and efforts to attract high-skilled jobs would be sufficient. Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen indicated that he sees a minimum wage increase as “[m]aking it harder to be an employer in the state of Iowa.”

However, appearing on Iowa Public Radio’s “River to River” program yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal pointed out that Branstad signed a minimum wage increase during the 1980s and that Paulsen had voted for the January 2007 bill that raised the wage. On the same program, Iowa House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer acknowledged that there may be support for a minimum wage increase in her caucus, since at least half of current House Republicans who were in the legislature in 2007 had voted for that minimum wage hike. Like Paulsen, Upmeyer was a yes vote. At the time, he was House minority whip and she was one of four assistant minority leaders.

Iowa’s last minimum wage hike was the first bill Governor Chet Culver signed into law. House File 1 sailed through, passing by 79 votes to 19 in the Iowa House and 40 votes to 8 in the Iowa Senate. All of the Democrats supported the bill. After the jump I’ve listed how all of the current Republican lawmakers voted on the minimum wage increase. Twelve supported the bill, thirteen opposed it, and one was absent for the 2007 vote.

The Iowa House and Senate convened today to begin the 2014 legislative session. All of the opening remarks reflected on key achievements of the 2013 session, such as compromise bills on commercial property tax cuts, education reform, and providing health care to low-income Iowans. All of the speeches called for more bipartisan work this year, and all stressed “pocketbook” issues such as improving education and building the middle class rather than social issues. But Republican and Democratic leaders take different priorities into the 2014 session.

I’ve summarized below the key points Iowa House and Senate majority and minority leaders raised today. I also enclosed lengthy excerpts and in some cases the full texts of their opening day speeches.

Click here for a tentative schedule of key dates during the 2014 legislative session. Lawmakers tend to finish their work earlier in election years than in odd-numbered years, but I highly doubt they will be ready to adjourn by March 30, as House Speaker Paulsen hopes. They will be lucky to finish work on the state budget by April 22, when lawmakers stop receiving per diem payments.

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal is “fairly confident” going into this year’s state legislative elections, he told Mike Glover in a recent interview. He cited a “pretty good message” to take to voters as well as a “a slight advantage on the map” that will allow Democrats to play “a little less defense and a little more offense,” compared to 2012.

I agree with Gronstal that Democrats are better positioned now to hold their 26 to 24 majority in the upper chamber than they were at the same point two years ago. Follow me after the jump for a quick look at the eight districts the Senate majority leader expects to be targeted this fall.

As Republicans prepare to make “Obamacare” a central argument against any incumbents who voted for the 2010 health care reform law, many House Democrats are looking for political cover. So it was on Friday, when a third of the Democratic caucus voted for the latest Republican bill in the U.S. House targeting the law. Pete Kasperowicz reported for The Hill,

The one-sentence bill says that no later than two business days after any security breach on an ObamaCare site is discovered, “the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide notice of such breach to each individual.” […] The White House said it opposed the bill, arguing the government already has plans to tell people if their information has been compromised. […]

Democrats said the GOP was trying to stir up fears about HealthCare.gov and the other enrollment sites by raising the idea that people’s personal information could be stolen.

“There have been no successful security attacks on HealthCare.gov, and no one has maliciously accessed personal information,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). “This is just another one of those scare tactics, and I just hope that my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, are not fooled by this.”

The roll call on the “Health Exchange Security and Transparency Act” shows that Iowa Representatives Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) were among the 67 House Democrats who joined all the Republicans present to approve this bill by a large margin. Neither called attention to the vote with a press release. After the jump I’ve posted the statement from Representative Steve King (IA-04), who has long been one of the most vocal critics of the Affordable Care Act. I didn’t see any statement from Tom Latham (IA-03), who also voted for this bill.

Like the last anti-Obamacare measure Braley and Loebsack supported, this bill will neither become law nor insulate the Democrats from attacks during this year’s campaigns for U.S. Senate or Iowa’s second Congressional district.  

Talk about lousy timing: just before a chemical spill made tap water unusable for 300,000 West Virginians, the U.S. House approved a bill that would “weaken the nation’s hazardous waste laws and place American communities at increased risk of toxic exposure.” The Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act of 2013 (H.R. 2279) includes three bills House Republicans drafted last year. In a letter signed by 129 public interest groups, Earth Justice listed the key points of each bill and explained why the package would “threaten human health and the environment while protecting polluters from liability for the costs of toxic cleanups.” I’ve posted an excerpt from that open letter after the jump. In a post for the Earth Justice blog last week, Lisa Evans called this bill “Kryptonite for Superfund” and “a con job of the highest order, allowing polluters to walk away without losing a penny, while taxpayers are left footing the bill.”

Under its current leadership, the House has been called “the most anti-environmental House in our nation’s history” because of the many bills passed that would curtail federal regulations and take power away from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Occasionally Iowa’s two House Democrats have gone along with those efforts, but I was pleased to see that on January 9, Representatives Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) voted against the latest effort to hamstring the EPA and for the Democratic motion to recommit this bill with instructions (often a last-ditch effort to kill legislation in the House). Iowa Republicans Tom Latham (IA-03) and Steve King (IA-04) lived up to their abysmal voting records on the environment by voting for the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act and against the motion to recommit.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

The Iowa legislature’s 2014 session begins on Monday morning. I always try to cover major developments in the Iowa House and Senate. However, there are always more things going on at the statehouse than any one person can write about, even if this year’s session is far less productive than last year’s (as seems likely). Bleeding Heartland is a community blog, and I want to encourage members to post guest diaries on bills or other legislative issues you’re following closely. Guest posts can focus on a bill you’re advocating or a bad idea legislators are considering or an area that needs more attention from lawmakers. If you refer to a specific bill, please provide the bill number (usually beginning with HF or SF, sometimes HJR or SJR) and the names of key lawmakers if it’s still in committee. A link to the bill text is also helpful and can be found by searching for the bill number at the Iowa legislature’s official website. If the bill has already passed both chambers, you can post a diary calling attention to its likely impact.

Both houses of Congress resumed work last week. I try to write about how the Iowans voted on important bills, as well as comments from Congressional candidates. I’ll be catching up soon on the Farm Bill conference committee negotiations, involving Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Steve King. But feel free to post a guest diary about any federal policy that’s on your radar.

Finally, I want to welcome Lynda Waddington back to the Iowa blogosphere. She recently reactivated her Essential Estrogen site and started posting again regularly after a break from writing about politics.

Iowa House Minority Leader Mark Smith and Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal both issued statements yesterday challenging a document that listed all 150 members of the Iowa legislature as members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The group lobbies for conservative and pro-corporate policies in state legislatures around the country, often submitting model legislation that lawmakers propose on their behalf.

In an open letter to ALEC’s executive director, Smith said none of the 47 Iowa House Democrats have applied to ALEC for membership or paid dues. He questioned “why ALEC would accept payment of dues on behalf of legislators who clearly want no part of your organization,” adding that it “likely” violates Iowa ethics law for “a corporation or other entity” to pay dues to ALEC on behalf of lawmakers. I’ve posted the full text of Smith’s letter below.

Gronstal’s statement, which is at the bottom of this post, describes ALEC’s claims as “deceptive and deceitful,” since none of the 26 Iowa Senate Democrats is a member of the organization.

Only two days after rolling out plans to eliminate cash purchases, the Iowa State Fair board of directors announced yesterday that they will not require tickets for all vendor purchases at this year’s state fair.

Officials said they plan “to investigate future implementation of a more progressive system that will eliminate Fairgoers’ concerns of the inconvenience of paper tickets and long lines, improve the concessionaires’ reporting system and accommodate the Fair’s infrastructure.”

Feedback was overwhelmingly negative on all the comment threads I read this week, because the no-cash rule would inconvenience fairgoers. The state fair board will have to look for other ways to combat the problem of some vendors failing to report their full sales.

Meanwhile, Governor Terry Branstad’s office quickly released a statement noting that he and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds “applaud” the State Fair Board’s decision. I’ve posted the statement after the jump. It does not explain whether Reynolds, who serves on the state fair board, argued against the planned no-cash policy before fair officials announced it in a letter to vendors this week. I have to say, it’s smart politics for Branstad to insert himself into this controversy. It costs him nothing to come out against a deeply unpopular change to the state fair.