Jim Gibbons, a former NCAA champion wrestler and coach, included a heavy dose of wrestling imagery in his first television ad, which goes up in central Iowa today:

Rough transcript and some analysis are after the jump.

Last week I chose not to post Pat Bertroche’s disgusting comments about inserting michochips in illegal immigrants, because they struck me as a bid to gain attention for an irrevelant Congressional campaign. Bertroche himself said “you have to be radical to get news press.” His comment drew coverage not only in Iowa, but on national blogs like Talking Points Memo and on cable news networks, including Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show.  

Unfortunately, pandering to voters on immigration isn’t just for sideshows like Bertroche, who will be lucky to get 5 percent of the vote in the third Congressional district GOP primary. During the Republican gubernatorial debate on May 1, all three candidates made false and misleading claims about illegal immigration.  

A new Rasmussen poll finds Senator Chuck Grassley’s lead shrinking against Roxanne Conlin and Terry Branstad still over 50 percent against Governor Chet Culver. Rasmussen surveyed 500 Iowa likely voters on April 29, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.

In the Senate race (survey questions and toplines here), Rasmussen found Grassley ahead of Conlin 53 percent to 40 percent. Grassley led Conlin 55-36 in Rasmussen’s previous Iowa poll, taken in mid-March. Rasmussen’s summary notes that Grassley “now leads Conlin by only five points among women.”

Grassley leads Democrat Bob Krause by 57 percent to 31 percent, the same as in Rasmussen’s March poll. He leads Tom Fiegen by 57 percent to 30 percent, a slightly smaller margin than his 57-28 lead in March.

This race is still Grassley’s to lose; Rasmussen finds 63 percent of respondents have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of the incumbent, while only 34 percent have a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion. The corresponding numbers for Conlin are 44 favorable/30 unfavorable.

However, a few stumbles by Grassley could make this race highly competitive in a hurry. At the very least Conlin is going to make it a lot closer than any other Democrat has against Grassley in the last 25 years.

I expect Conlin to have little trouble winning the Democratic primary on June 8. Not only is she the best-known candidate, she out-raised Grassley in the first quarter and had about $1 million cash on hand as of March 31. According to FEC reports, Krause had $352 and Fiegen had $582 on hand at the end of the first quarter. The Des Moines Register recently profiled Conlin, Fiegen and Krause.

Rasmussen’s numbers on the governor’s race continue to point to a tough road ahead for Culver. He trails Branstad 53 percent to 38 percent, little changed from Branstad’s 52-36 lead in Rasmussen’s March poll. Bob Vander Plaats leads Culver 45-41 in the new poll, up from a 42-40 lead in the March poll. Culver is barely ahead of Rod Roberts in the new poll, 43-41, little changed from the 40-38 lead Culver had against Roberts in the previous poll.

It’s not encouraging for an incumbent to be stuck around 40 percent against all challengers. Culver needs to bring up his own numbers and get out there to tell voters about his administration’s successes. For a preview of the case Culver will make with Iowa voters, watch his appearance on Chuck Todd’s MSNBC program last week.

Assuming Branstad will be the Republican nominee, Culver’s campaign will have to take him on aggressively. The race is bound to tighten up, but as long as Branstad is polling above 50 percent the odds are against Culver. Perhaps the governor can needle Branstad and provoke the same kind of response Vander Plaats got during the second Republican debate.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

UPDATE: At Daily Kos, Steve Singiser comments, “is it possible that one of the most invulnerable Senators in recent American history is really within striking range. Looking at the Rasmussen poll in Iowa, it appears so.”

Everyone who moderates a debate this year could learn from the journalists who guided the May 1 Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidates’ debate: Todd Dorman of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Paul Yeager of Iowa Public Television, and Jeneane Beck of Iowa Public Radio. Too many journalists ask long-winded questions that are easy to evade, or ask about hot topics of no lasting importance, or ask about policies outside the scope of the office the candidates are seeking.

In contrast, almost every question the panelists asked during Saturday’s debate was direct and addressed an issue the next governor of Iowa will face. Here are a few examples:

“Can you name one service government provides today that it should stop providing in the interest of saving the budget?”

“If elected, will you continue to support the Iowa Values Fund, the business grant and loan program created during the Vilsack administration, and also the renewable energy grant program established by Governor Culver known as the Iowa Power Fund?”

“Is there a role that government should play in limiting premium increases by Iowa insurance companies?”

“Do you believe that obesity is a problem that should be addressed through government action such as limiting unhealthy ingredients in food?”

Mind you, asking a direct, unambiguous question doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get a straight answer from a politician. Look what happened when Dorman asked the Republicans, “Can you identify one tangible way Iowa has been harmed during a full year of legal same-sex marriage?”

I just watched most of the second debate featuring the three Republicans running for governor: Terry Branstad, Rod Roberts and Bob Vander Plaats. I’ll post a link to the debate transcript when it’s available, and more detailed reactions tomorrow or Monday, but here are some initial thoughts. (UPDATE: Here is the transcript.)

The journalists asked better questions in this debate than in the first Republican gubernatorial debate in Sioux City. However, the format didn’t leave room for follow-up questions, which allowed the candidates to get away with some whoppers. Vander Plaats and Roberts are still claiming we could save huge money by denying services to undocumented immigrants, but that’s simply not true.

All the Republicans want to starve state government by cutting corporate taxes, but where are the spending cuts? Branstad has talked about shrinking state government by 15 percent, but when pressed for specific programs he would cut, he had little to say besides not providing funding for Planned Parenthood, reducing administrative overhead for the Area Education Agencies, and ending the universal preschool program for four-year-olds. That won’t come close to keeping Branstad’s promises on spending. Vander Plaats wants to reduce the property tax burden by shifting more responsibility for funding mental health services from local to state government. That may be a worthwhile idea, but how’s he going to pay for that when he’s proposing a bunch of tax cuts? What state programs would Vander Plaats eliminate besides the preschool program, the Values Fund and the Power Fund?

All the Republicans blamed Democrats for not doing enough to fund K-12 education, and Branstad went so far as to blame the preschool program for layoffs in other areas of education. Here’s what they’ll never admit: layoffs in K-12 education and at the Regents universities would have been catastrophic without the 2009 federal stimulus bill. You know, the one passed over the objections of almost every Republican in Congress.

All the Republicans blamed Democrats for allegedly overspending, never acknowledging that the worst recession since World War II strained every state’s budget, and Iowa’s leaders handled the crunch better than officials in most other states.

I agree with the comment released by Governor Chet Culver’s new campaign manager, Donn Stanley:

“This was just another forum where the candidates outlined big tax cuts for their corporate Republican donors without details about where or how they would make cuts and balance the budget.  They pandered to their special interests with more tax cuts and proposed increased spending but with a lack of specifics about how they would pay for it.  All three candidates were for cutting preschool for Iowa’s children in the age when they have the most learning capacity while rewarding out-of-state corporations with more tax breaks.

“None of these candidates have answered the ultimate question of how they would manage to balance the budget today and that is the definition of ‘reckless and irresponsible.’  That leaves the assumption that Terry Branstad would again keep two sets of books and use his accounting tricks to hide the deficit. Branstad was long on hyperbole but short on the facts and new ideas. Branstad must have forgotten, or hopes that we’ve forgotten, he made a few across the board cuts during his tenure as governor. It is sadly par for the course that Terry Branstad attacks others for the same things he has done before.”

Today wasn’t the first time Branstad criticized Culver for things he did while governor, and it won’t be the last.

Post your own reaction to the debate, or anything on your mind this weekend, in this open thread.

UPDATE: Still haven’t seen a transcript of this debate, but you can watch the whole thing at Iowa Public TV’s website.

SECOND UPDATE: I have to agree with Kathie Obradovich; Vander Plaats clearly got under Branstad’s skin during the debate. It didn’t look good for Branstad to interrupt Vander Plaats twice (once near the 59-minute mark in this video and again around the 69-minute mark). According to Obradovich, Branstad kept arguing with Vander Plaats after the cameras had been turned off.

Amazingly, I agreed with all the Republican candidates’ answers to the very last question in the debate: whether Iowa should revoke the smoking ban exemption granted to casino floors. Vander Plaats, Roberts and Branstad all said they would sign legislation to that effect.

Governor Chet Culver announced Friday,

Iowa will accept $35 million in federal funds over the next four years to operate its own temporary health insurance plan for high-risk individuals.  This step will help cover uninsured Iowans as the country transitions toward implementation of federal health insurance reform.

“Every Iowan should have access to affordable health care,” Governor Culver said. “This action is an important first step in reaching this goal.  These funds will allow Iowans who have been among the uninsured for extended time periods to get coverage, in spite of health problems and without waiting periods for existing conditions.”

Iowa will establish a new pool alongside its current high-risk pool structure that will comply with the federal requirements. Under the terms of the federal funding formula, Iowa will be eligible to receive a grant of approximately $35 million in reimbursements to subsidize the cost of the fund until 2014. The state’s next step will be to submit a plan for federal approval.

Here are more details about the program:

Consumers will be eligible for the new pools if they have a pre-existing medical condition and have not had insurance for at least six months.

They will pay premiums that parallel rates being offered by commercial insurers to healthy people on the individual market. Many existing high-risk pools charge such high premiums that many people cannot afford the coverage. Today, high-risk pools in 34 states cover only about 200,000 people.

Individuals who sign up for the new pools also will not have to pay more than $5,950 a year out of their pockets for medical care, according to the legislation.

According to this backgrounder posted at Iowa Independent, the new high-risk pool could serve more than ten times the number of people could affect many people not enrolled in Iowa’s current high-risk pool:

“This is an opportunity for the state to show whether it is ready to put a critical component of health reform – covering people with pre-existing conditions – on a faster track,” said Andrew Cannon, research associate for the nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project and author of a new policy brief on the topic.

Cannon said more than 34,500 Iowans could be eligible for Iowa’s existing high-risk pool or a new one the state may create if the state chooses to act now. The federal health-reform legislation allocated $5 billion nationally to states to provide temporary coverage as a bridge to full implementation of health reform, which will require all insurance companies to accept applicants without consideration of a person’s medical condition by 2014.

Iowa created its high-risk pool program in 1987, now known as the Health Insurance Plan of Iowa (HIPIowa). It serves 2,732 state residents.

High-risk pools such as HIPIowa are designed to help individuals who do not have health insurance through work, do not qualify for Medicaid and cannot afford or qualify for individual coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition. HIPIowa’s premiums are about half as expensive as the standard rate for plans sold on the private market, Cannon said, but in many cases those premiums still exceed potential enrollees’ ability to pay.

UPDATE: The Des Moines Register quoted HIPIOWA Executive Director Cecil Bykerk and State Senator Jack Hatch as saying federal funding will allow about 1,000 people to be covered in the new high-risk pool before 2014. That’s a small fraction of the number of Iowans who might be eligible for the program, according to the Iowa Policy Project’s estimate.

The Des Moines Register quoted Rod Roberts and spokesmen for Terry Branstad and Bob Vander Plaats as saying they oppose participation in this new federal program. I don’t know how quickly the new pool will be up and running, but I’d like to see the Republican nominee for governor explain to Iowans with pre-existing conditions why they should have to go without affordable insurance coverage until 2014. Remember, the federal government is subsidizing the cost of operating the new pools.

As of April 30, officials in 28 states had informed the federal Department of Health and Human Services of plans to create new high-risk pools, while officials in at least 15 states had declined to participate for fear that federal funds may be insufficient to cover the operation of these pools until 2014.

A few weeks ago, President Barack Obama advocated expanding offshore oil drilling in a misguided attempt to reach out to Republicans on energy legislation. The president told a town-hall meeting audience on April 2, “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.” Think Progress exposed the inaccuracies in the president’s comments at the time, and the April 20 explosion at British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was a tragic reminder of how much can go wrong with offshore drilling. Eleven workers were killed in the accident, and the resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico still has not been contained. If it hits the Gulf Coast, the environmental and economic damage will be immense.

Last week, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted that the tragedy had not given the president second thoughts about offshore drilling:

Obama still believes that “we have to have a comprehensive solution to our energy problems,” and the spill did not open up new questions about his drilling plan, [Gibbs] said. […]

“We need the increased production. The president still continues to believe the great majority of that can be done safely, securely and without any harm to the environment,” he said.

However, presidential adviser David Axelrod announced on ABC’s Good Morning America program today that

there’s a moratorium on the expansion until the recent spill can be controlled and investigated.

“No additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here,” he said.

Mike Lillis is absolutely right:

For the White House, the timing of the spill couldn’t have been worse. If Obama had stuck with his guns in opposing new drilling, he’d be seen as a prophet in the wake of this week’s Gulf disaster. Instead, by trying to make concessions to Republicans – most of whom won’t support a climate bill in any event – he’s simply alienated his conservation-minded supporters to no tangible benefit.

Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, says that any climate change bill including more offshore drilling will be “dead on arrival” in Congress. Let’s hope that message will resonates with the president. I also hope the administration will follow through on promises to make BP pay the full cost of cleaning up the oil spill.

On a related note, Mike Soraghan reports in the New York Times that BP “joined with other oil companies last year to oppose stricter safety and environmental rules” for oil rigs. I’m not surprised, and I’m not optimistic that the current disaster will lead to significantly stronger regulations on existing rigs.

UPDATE: I posted the Sierra Club’s statement after the jump. It’s worth a read.

Today is the last day to submit a public comment to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources urging them not to downgrade protections for more than 400 stream segments. Click the link for background and information on submitting a comment.

Thanks to favorable spring weather, the downtown Des Moines farmer’s market will open for the season tomorrow morning. Local farmers have plenty of produce ready for market now, and I’m looking forward to fresh spring greens.

Also on May 1, the three Republican candidates for governor debate for the second time. The Iowa Broadcast News Association is sponsoring the debate. You can watch live at 3:30 pm on IPTV WORLD (statewide on IPTV.3 or Mediacom channel 119). I’ll be watching the rebroadcast on Iowa Public Television Saturday night at 8 p.m.

Any fans of the Huffington Post should consider coming to hear Arianna Huffington speak at Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines next Tuesday.

Follow me after the jump for details on those and many other events taking place in the next week and a half. If you know of other events I’ve left out, please post a comment or e-mail me (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com). Democratic candidates, please put me to your press lists so I can add your public events to my calendar.

Congratulations are in order to Sarah Brown Wessling, an English teacher for Johnston High School who received the National Teacher of the Year award yesterday. Lynda Waddington has more here about Brown Wessling and the award.

UPDATE: I was sad to learn that “the real dean of American journalism” is retiring. From Iowa CCI:

Friday, April 30, 2010, Des Moines, Iowa — Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) will be the focus of a twenty-minute segment during the final broadcast of the national television news program Bill Moyers Journal tonight at 9pm on Iowa Public Television. The show will focus on the power of organized people standing up to organized money (corporate power) and will feature interviews and protest footage with Iowa CCI members and leaders.

Bill Moyers Journal is a nationally broadcast, weekly public affairs series that features interviews and news analysis on a wide range of subjects, including politics, arts and culture, the media, the economy and issues facing democracy. Tonight will be Moyers’ last broadcast before retiring after decades as an award-winning television news journalist.

Today marks the beginning of early voting for Iowa’s June 8 primary election, which is exactly 40 days away. Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro announced a new way for voters to track their ballots at www.iowavotes.gov. From a statement issued by the Secretary of State’s Office:

“The new feature on our website is a terrific tool for Iowa voters and will bring additional transparency to Iowa’s early voting system,” said Secretary Mauro. “By using this feature, voters will know when to expect their ballot and when their completed ballot has safely reached their auditor’s office.”

Absentee voters will be able to view the following information about the status of their ballot:

·         Date the absentee ballot request was processed by the auditor

·         Date the auditor sent the absentee ballot

·         Date the voted absentee ballot was received by the auditor

Last fall, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the Military and Overseas Voters Empowerment Act (MOVE Act). That legislation required states to develop an online absentee ballot tracking system for overseas military voters. Secretary Mauro decided to make this feature available to all of Iowa’s early voters – military and nonmilitary – regardless of location.  

In September 2009, Iowa was recognized in a national study as the top state in the nation in making voting accessible for military and overseas voters.

If you have a chance to see Mauro at one of his campaign kickoff events next Tuesday or Wednesday, please thank him for doing an outstanding job. Three Republicans are seeking the nomination for secretary of state: George Eichhorn, Chris Sanger and Matt Schultz. So far Schultz has the most Republican establishment support.  

Most of the competitive primaries in Iowa this year are on the Republican side, but three Democrats are seeking the nomination for U.S. Senate: Roxanne Conlin, Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause. Two Democrats are running against Representative Steve King in Iowa’s fifth Congressional district: Matt Campbell and Mike Denklau. There’s also a two-way Democratic primary between Richard Clewell and Dave Thede in Iowa Senate district 41 (Scott County) and a four-way Democratic primary between Tod Bowman, Paul Feller, Brian Moore and Ed O’Neill in Iowa Senate district 13 (all of Jackson County and parts of Dubuque and Clinton counties). Five Iowa House Democrats are facing primary challengers: Dave Jacoby (district 30, Iowa City/Coralville), Geri Huser (district 42, east side of Des Moines), Ako Abdul-Samad (district 66, Des Moines), Chuck Isenhart (district 27, Dubuque), and Mary Gaskill (district 93, Ottumwa). Click here to download a pdf file containing the full list of Iowa candidates who qualified for the ballot this year.

Comments about early voting or any Iowa primary races are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Iowans can also vote early at all 99 county auditor offices.

James Q. Lynch of the Cedar Rapids Gazette talked to Terry Branstad yesterday about the qualities he’s looking for in a potential lieutenant governor. If he wins the nomination, Branstad wants a running mate who is younger than he is (63), and also “intelligent, hardworking, conservative, a good communicator and someone who could serve as governor.” He told Lynch that “some Eastern Iowans” are on his list.

Branstad has promised social conservatives that he won’t pick another pro-choice running mate, so that rules out former State Representative Libby Jacobs of West Des Moines. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Branstad choose Rod Roberts, although Lynch’s report says Branstad “downplayed” the possibility that he will pick one of the other gubernatorial candidates.

Any of the 20 state legislators who have endorsed Branstad for governor could be on Branstad’s short list. Or, he may look to someone from the business community, but it’s been months since I heard anyone predict that insurance company executive Doug Reichardt would be Branstad’s choice. Perhaps there’s some truth to the rumors that Reichardt isn’t interested in being lieutenant governor.

If Branstad looks east, one obvious contender is Christian Fong, the well-spoken former candidate for governor from Cedar Rapids. Last month State Representative Renee Schulte endorsed Branstad, and since Schulte’s husband was Fong’s campaign treasurer, I wondered whether some kind of deal was in the works. But Fong hasn’t endorsed any candidate since he dropped out of the race six months ago. Earlier this month he founded the Iowa Dream Project, a “nonpartisan” 501(c)4 organization designed to increase turnout among conservative voters under age 45 and discuss issues in a respectful “Iowa tone.” I doubt Fong would have rolled out this group now if he expected to be running for lieutenant governor full-time during the next six months. It sounds more like a good way for him to stay active, help the Republican cause, and boost his prospects for some appointed position in a Branstad administration.

Another eastern Iowa possibility is former State Representative Sandy Greiner. Choosing her would continue the Iowa tradition of female lieutenant governors during the past two and a half decades. Greiner is an experienced candidate with socially conservative views (even if a few wingnuts gripe about her). She is also well-connected to some major donors in the business community. She is president of the American Future Fund and created the “Draft Branstad PAC” last year. That 527 organization turned into the NextGen PAC after Branstad formed an exploratory committee to run for governor. I don’t think Greiner will be Branstad’s choice, though, because she filed to run for the Iowa Senate in district 45. That race is one of the Republicans’ best pickup opportunities in the upper chamber, and I doubt she would have become a candidate if she expected to be on the ticket with Branstad.

Though no one else has mentioned her name to me, State Representative Linda Miller seems like a promising choice. She has endorsed Branstad and is from Bettendorf, one of the Quad Cities. Republicans used to be dominant in populous Scott County but have lost ground there in recent years.

Some conservative activists have slammed Branstad for elevating Joy Corning to the office of lieutenant governor during the 1990s. Lynch asked Branstad about Corning, and he said she was a good choice “at the time”. He added that he disagrees with some of what Corning has done as a “private citizen.” Several years ago, Corning chaired a major capital campaign for Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa. Last year she publicly supported civil marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Corning backs Branstad’s current campaign and is privately urging fellow moderates to vote for him in the primary.

Bleeding Heartland readers, who do you think is on Branstad’s short list, and whom should he pick as a running mate?

Feel free to speculate about Bob Vander Plaats as well. From what I’ve heard, the consensus is that he would choose his campaign co-chair, retiring State Representative Jodi Tymeson. I consider Vander Plaats a long-shot for the nomination, especially with Rod Roberts splitting the conservative vote. But we haven’t seen any public polls confirming Branstad’s front-runner status. Vander Plaats does have a path to the nomination, and he keeps winning straw polls of Republican activists.  

Remember last year when Republicans claimed health care reform would put government bureaucrats between patients and their doctors? It was a hypocritical talking point to begin with, given how often insurance companies overrule doctors’ orders, in some cases denying sick people access to life-saving medical care.

The hypocrisy is especially apparent now that Republicans are cheering two new laws passed in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma Legislature voted Tuesday to override the governor’s vetoes of two abortion measures, one of which requires women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before getting an abortion.

Though other states have passed similar measures requiring women to have ultrasounds, Oklahoma’s law goes further, mandating that a doctor or technician set up the monitor so the woman can see it and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. No exceptions are made for rape and incest victims.

A second measure passed into law on Tuesday prevents women who have had a disabled baby from suing a doctor for withholding information about birth defects while the child was in the womb.

To clarify: Republicans passed a law dictating the way doctors communicate with patients and how they must proceed with every woman seeking an abortion, regardless of her individual circumstances. According to the New York Times, the Center for Reproductive Rights has already filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of the ultrasound law, claiming it “violates the doctor’s freedom of speech, the woman’s right to equal protection and the woman’s right to privacy.”

The second law is in some ways more offensive, because the government is shielding doctors who deliberately do not level with their patients. I have close friends who have learned while pregnant that their future child has serious medical problems. To give doctors license to deceive women in that situation is unconscionable. Pregnant women must be able to make informed decisions regarding all medical care. Who’s to say that doctors will stop at “merely” hiding birth defects? Maybe some will decide it’s better not to tell women they have cancer or some other disease that might prompt them to terminate a pregnancy.

The new laws are similar to two anti-abortion laws the Oklahoma Supreme Court already struck down. Clearly Republicans won’t let a little thing like the state constitution get in the way of their desire to intimidate women and interfere with the information they receive from their doctors. I agree with Charles Lemos: this is a sign of how extreme today’s Republican Party has become.

Iowans who don’t take reproductive rights for granted may want to know that Arianna Huffington is coming to Des Moines next Tuesday to help raise money for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (formerly Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa). Click the link for event details.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread. I recommend this post from the Ms. Magazine blog on the 10 worst myths about abortion in the United States.

The Libertarian Party of Iowa convened on April 24 to nominate several candidates for statewide offices. The Libertarian candidate for governor is Eric Cooper, a neuroscience expert in the Iowa State University Psychology department. In his speech to the delegates, Cooper said frankly that the Libertarian Party had not been effective in the past. He laid out a “10 percent strategy” for Libertarians to “get everything we want without ever winning an election.” You can watch Cooper’s whole speech here, but I posted a rough transcript of some interesting parts after the jump.

President Barack Obama is touring southeast Iowa today, visiting three counties that have high unemployment rates. He stopped at a wind turbine blade plant in Mount Pleasant to tout the economic benefits of investing in clean energy.  IowaPolitics.com covered the president’s stops in Fort Madison and Mount Pleasant here. You can also listen to the speech he gave in Fort Madison. Obama acknowledged that “In too many places, the recovery isn’t reaching everybody just yet. And times are still tough for middle-class Americans, who have been swimming against the current for years before this economic tidal wave hit.” Governor Chet Culver joined the president at the Fort Madison event.

While in Mount Pleasant, Obama stopped at an organic farm and a small restaurant. Former Governor Tom Vilsack, whom Obama appointed as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, was with the president in Mount Pleasant, where he was once mayor.

Obama then headed to Ottumwa for a town-hall meeting, which you can watch at the KCCI site. Kathie Obradovich is live-tweeting the event.

I’ll update this post with more links later. Meanwhile, share any thoughts about the president’s visit. I hope someone who was there will post a comment or a diary here later.

This evening there will be a party for Obama’s adviser David Axelrod at Baby Boomer’s in the East Village. That would be a fun place to eavesdrop.

UPDATE: Kay Henderson posted a good play-by-play of the Ottumwa event at the Radio Iowa blog. The president went out of his way to mention that Senate Republicans have twice blocked debate on a financial reform package. I like that Obama wondered out loud why people weren’t out protesting budget deficits during the past ten years. The previous administration left more than a $1 trillion deficit on his desk. I didn’t fully understand this passage, though:

Obama mentioned health care reform, and got a standing ovation from the crowd.  “I’m proud of it,” Obama repeats twice.

Obama talked about meeting a woman named Janice in Mount Pleasant earlier this afternoon.  According to Obama, Janice told him she and her husband “need help now because our premiums just went up $700 per month.”  Obama added:  “That’s who reform was for.”

Obama ran through a litany of items in the plan which will take effect this year.  

If Janice is supposed to believe that the new health insurance reform law will keep her premiums from being jacked up in the future, she’ll probably be disappointed. No new competition has been created for private insurers, and there are virtually no limits on how much they can raise premiums before 2014.

Like John Deeth, I’m amused that Mariannette Miller-Meeks claims Obama visited southeast Iowa because Democrats think Representative Dave Loebsack “is in deep, deep political trouble.” I noticed yesterday that Rob Gettemy, another Republican in the IA-02 primary, made the same claim.

Obviously, the president visited those counties because of the relatively high unemployment rates there, and because he could tout renewable energy tax credits at the Siemens plant in Fort Madison. Republicans are deluding themselves if they think Loebsack is vulnerable. As I’ve discussed before, very few Republicans represent House districts with anything close to the Democratic lean of Iowa’s second district (D+7). If the Iowa GOP wanted to put this district in play, they should have run a Jim Leach-type moderate who could pound on the economic issues (fiscal policies and unemployment) while leaving the divisive social issues off the table. Instead, four Republicans are trying to out-conservative each other in the primary for the right to face Loebsack.

One year ago today, the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling went into effect. From April 27, 2009 through the end of last year, at least 1,783 same-sex couples received marriage licenses in Iowa. The real number is probably higher, because about 900 marriage licenses did not specify the gender of the couple involved. Despite a petition drive led by some Iowa Republicans and the Iowa Family Policy Center, not a single county recorder denied a marriage license to a same-sex couple.

Although all three Republican candidates for governor say they want to overturn the Varnum v Brien ruling, marriage equality is probably here to stay. Conservative groups are not urging voters to pass a ballot initiative calling for a constitutional convention, which would be the quickest path to amend the Iowa constitution. Bob Vander Plaats probably won’t win the Republican nomination for governor, much less the November election, and even if he did, his plan to halt gay marriage by executive order is a non-starter.

That leaves the self-styled defenders of traditional marriage one path: approving an amendment restricting marriage rights in two separately elected Iowa legislatures, then convincing a majority of Iowans to vote for that amendment (in November 2014 at the earliest).

Republicans have an outside shot at winning a majority in the Iowa House in 2010, but they have virtually no chance of taking back the Iowa Senate this year. Democrats currently hold a 32-18 majority in the upper chamber. A net gain of four or five seats is the best-case scenario for the GOP, and I consider a net gain of two or three seats much more likely. That leaves Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal in a position to block all efforts to bring a constitutional amendment on marriage to a floor vote during the 2011 and 2012 legislative sessions.

Gubernatorial candidate Rod Roberts claims he could force Democrats to allow a marriage vote. His plan is to veto all legislation, including the state budget, until the Iowa House and Senate have voted on a marriage amendment. I doubt a Republican could win that game of chicken even if Governor Chet Culver is defeated this November. Polling indicates that most Iowans are not eager to ban gay marriage and think the state legislature has more important things to do. Anyway, the most likely Republican nominee, Terry Branstad, has an incoherent position on gay marriage and probably would make only a token effort to get a constitutional amendment passed.

Share any thoughts about same-sex marriage in Iowa in this thread.

Speaking of civil rights, some reports indicate that the House of Representatives will vote this year to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which has ended far too many military careers. Click here to read a moving open letter to President Obama from an Air Force major who was discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

A month after the House and Senate unanimously approved a bill restricting direct-mail pieces designed to look like census documents, the Republican National Committee is at it again:

An RNC mailer obtained by TPMmuckraker bears the words “Census Document” and, in all caps, “DO NOT DESTROY/OFFICIAL DOCUMENT,” on the outside of the envelope. In smaller letters, it says: “This is not a U.S. government document.” The new law requires, among other things, that such mailers state the name and address of the sender on the outside of the envelope — something the RNC’s missive doesn’t appear to do. Inside, a letter from RNC chair Michael Steele, dated April 12, asks recipients to fill out a questionnaire about their political views, and solicits donations of as much as $500 or more. (See the mailer here.)

Last month, in response to virtually identical RNC mailers, members of both parties cried foul, raising the concern that the mailers could reduce the response rate for the actual Census — which was mailed to Americans last month — by confusing some voters. […] Congress quickly passed a law — the House vote was 416-0 — requiring that mailers marked “census” state the name and address of the sender on the outside of the envelope, and contain an unambiguous disclaimer making clear that the mailer is not affiliated with the government.

Based on a PDF image, the mailer obtained by TPMmuckraker does not appear to state the sender’s name and address on the outside. And the words “DO NOT DESTROY/OFFICIAL DOCUMENT” would appear to make the disclaimer that it’s not a government document less than unambiguous.

The RNC’s fundraising efforts have taken a hit this year, and Chairman Michael Steele is under pressure to turn things around, so I can’t say I’m surprised by this desperate act.

On a related note, census mail-back rates exceeded expectations this year, which will save the U.S. Census Bureau hundreds of millions of dollars. Iowa’s census participation rate is 77 percent so far, tied for third with Indiana and just behind Wisconsin and Minnesota. Many communities in Polk County have participation rates over 80 percent.  

Democrats and Republicans gathered for district conventions over the weekend, and after reading John Deeth’s helpful news roundup I headed over to The Iowa Republican blog to watch some clips from the third district GOP convention. Congressional candidate Jim Gibbons had supporters wearing “Burn the Boats” t-shirts, which he explained toward the end of his speech to the delegates:

Gibbons talks about being a competitor, wanting to take down the champion and why this will be a tough race. Here is my rough transcript of the most intriguing part, beginning around the 3:30 mark:

If you look around this group right here, you’ll see people who have never been a part of this process. They’re new, they’re young people, they’ve got those “Burn the Boats” shirts on. People ask, “What’s that about?” Let me give you the explanation.

In the 1500s, the conqueror [Hernando] Cortés was going up against the Aztec army. He decided that to motivate his people, to get them fired up about the job that they had to do–they were outnumbered vastly–he made the decision: burn the boats. If we’re successful, we’ll go home in their boats.

That’s the attitude of this campaign. That’s what I’m about. I’m totally committed to beating Leonard Boswell. I have the resources, the will, the determination to beat him in November. I’m asking you to join me in this fight. We will win in November. I’m burning my boats, and I’m attacking the island, thank you and God bless.

Technically, Cortés scuttled (not burned) his ships in order to prevent another mutiny after one failed attempt. He wasn’t motivating his troops by the prospect of winning and going home in Aztec boats; he was making them give up hope of returning from the new world. According to Wikipedia, the “popular misconception that Cortés burned the ships […] may have come from a mistranslation of the version of the story written in Latin.”

I get Gibbons’ point: he’s all in to win this race, having quit his job as a financial adviser when he decided to run for Congress. He’s drawing an unspoken contrast with his chief Republican rival Brad Zaun, who has his state Senate seat and a job in real estate to go back to if he loses to Boswell.

Still, “burn the boats” seems weird for a campaign slogan, and I have to wonder whose idea it was to pick a greedy and brutal Spanish conquistador for a role model.

Speaking of strange historical inspiration, Josh Marshall is bewildered that “The Republican Governors Association is embracing the mantle of a 17th century radical who tried but failed to pull off a mass casualty terrorist attack to kill the King of England and all of Parliament.” Michael Scherer reported for Time’s Swampland blog,

The Republican Governors Association has embraced the symbolism of [Guy] Fawkes, launching a rather striking website, RememberNovember.com, with a video that showcases far more Hollywood savvy than one can usually expect from Republicans. Again, the Fawkes tale has been twisted a bit. This time, President Obama plays the roll of King James, the Democratic leadership is Parliament, and the Republican Party represents the aggrieved Catholic mass.

I’ve spent a few Guy Fawkes Days in the UK. The holiday is marked by fireworks and bonfires to celebrate the failure of Fawkes’ plot. There’s even a nursery rhyme, “Remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.” Republicans may have embraced the wrong hero out of confusion. Or perhaps Steve Benen is right: “the Republican mainstream made a right turn at scary, and have arrived right at stark raving mad.”

Any comments about campaign strategy or sloganeering are welcome in this thread. I love the official statements from tea party favorite Dave Funk’s third district campaign, which often start out with, “Congress needs Funk.”

Final note on Gibbons: Kathie Obradovich reports that he’ll be featured on a show for a new conservative television network later this year. That could become embarrassing if Zaun defeats Gibbons, the National Republican Campaign Committee’s favorite, in the June 8 primary or at a district convention to select the nominee.

President Barack Obama is coming back to Iowa this Tuesday with stops scheduled in Fort Madison, Mount Pleasant and Ottumwa. More details on those and other events coming up during the next two weeks can be found after the jump.

The Republican Party of Iowa is organizing a “Stand Up 4 Freedom Rally” on Monday at 5:00 in Ottumwa’s Central Park.

Congratulations to everyone elected to the Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee at the district conventions this weekend.

First district: Jean Pardee, Sue Frembgen, Michael Blackwell, Jerry Lynch, Bruce Clark and Jane Lawrence

Second district: Ebony Luensman, Judy Stevens, Melinda Jones, Norm Sterzenbach, Kory May and Al Bohanan

Third distict: Dori Rammelsberg-Dvorak, Mary Campos, Linda Olson, John McCormly, Bill Brauch and Glen Rammelsberg

Fourth district: Susan Seedorff-Keninger, Karen Pratte, Lois Jirgens, Chris Petersen, Tom Harrington and Don Ruby

Fifth district: Monica McCarthy, Penny Rosjford, Marcia Fulton, Tim Bottaro, Dennis Ryan and Dick Sokolowski

Consider this an open thread for discussing anything on your mind this weekend.

A British historian of Russia got caught hiding behind a pseudonym on Amazon in order to post nasty reviews of rival historians’ work while praising his own. One of the historians he trashed responded here. Fortunately, Bleeding Heartland has had few problems with sock-puppetry. Thanks to everyone who respects this community’s rules of engagement.

Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed a law yesterday that makes it “a state crime to be in the country illegally” and “requires local law enforcement to determine an individual’s immigration status if an officer suspects that person is in the country illegally.” Civil rights groups are already preparing federal lawsuits, and President Barack Obama called the bill “misguided”, adding, “I’ve instructed members of my admininstration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation.”

The American Civil Liberties Union explained why we should be outraged about this law:

The law creates new immigration crimes and penalties inconsistent with those in federal law, asserts sweeping authority to detain and transport persons suspected of violating civil immigration laws and prohibits speech and other expressive activity by persons seeking work. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona strongly condemn the governor’s decision to sign the unconstitutional law and are dismayed by her disregard for the serious damage it could cause to civil liberties and public safety in the state.[…]

The new law, which will not go into effect for more than 90 days, requires police agencies across Arizona to investigate the immigration status of every person they come across whom they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in the country unlawfully. To avoid arrest, citizens and immigrants will effectively have to carry their “papers” at all times. The law also makes it a state crime for immigrants to willfully fail to register with the Department of Homeland Security and carry registration documents. It further curtails the free speech rights of day laborers and encourages unchecked information sharing between government agencies.

Naturally, conservatives who claim to be for small government love the expansion of police powers in Arizona.

Representative Raul Grijalva, one of the leaders of the House Progressive Caucus, closed his Arizona offices yesterday following threatening phone calls. Grijalva also “called on businesses and groups looking for convention and meeting locations to boycott Arizona.” Already yesterday the American Immigration Lawyers Association canceled plans to hold the group’s fall national convention in Scottsdale. A petition has been created to urge California’s state pension fund to “divest from all Arizona companies” and sell all Arizona real estate.

The law may never be enforced, depending on what happens with the federal lawsuits, but some people are predicting it will boost support for Democrats among Latino voters.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread. For comic relief, I recommend reading the official statement from Arizona Hispanic Republicans. After criticizing the (Republican) state legislators who spearheaded the bill and the (Republican) governor who signed the bill, they say they are “ultimately holding President Obama accountable,” because “Obama promised Hispanics that he would pass immigration reform within 90 days of his Presidency.  Had Obama carried out his promises to Hispanics last year, the Hispanic community would not be experiencing the crisis we are experiencing right now.” That’s quite a creative way to misdirect blame.

Jim Gibbons, the Republican insiders’ favorite in the third district Congressional race, released a 45-second web ad today:

I assume this commercial or something similar will air on television before the June 8 Republican primary. I didn’t think you could get any more generic than the television ad State Senator Brad Zaun briefly ran in January, but Gibbons may have proved me wrong. Here’s my rough transcript:

Woman: Iowa needs help.

Man: Iowa needs a champion.

Second woman: Iowa needs Jim Gibbons in Washington, DC.

Gibbons: Hi, I’m Jim Gibbons. A lot of you know me from the sport of wrestling, know my background as a champion wrestler and coach at Iowa State University. Everything I’ve been about in my professional life is about creating a culture of success: setting goals, deciding what you’re going to sacrifice to achieve those goals, associating with people who can get you down the path, who have been down the path before. Make a plan and stick to that plan. That’s what it takes, and that’s what I’m going to take to Washington.

Log on to our Facebook page. Put up a yard sign. Volunteer. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Let’s make this campaign work, and let’s make Washington work again for Iowa.

I’m Jim Gibbons, and I’m running for Congress and I need your support.

Most of the ad shows Gibbons talking to the camera in Des Moines’ new Pappajohn sculpture garden, with recognizable downtown buildings in the background. At the end the Gibbons for Congress logo and web address (www.gibbonsforcongress.com) fill the screen.

I realize I’m not the target audience for this web ad, but the message seems odd. At least Zaun’s commercial, which aired briefly in January, included some Republican buzzwords: “trillion-dollar deficits and corporate bailouts,” “the Constitution still means something,” “common sense conservative values,” “It is time to take our country back.”

Gibbons talks about success and associating with the right people, but he gives no hint of what his goals are or what’s in the plan he’s making and sticking to. I don’t get who is supposed to be inspired by this ad to log on to his Facebook page, put up a yard sign, and so on.

Gibbons leads with a comment about people knowing him from his wrestling champion days. If you believe an internal poll conducted by the Zaun campaign in January, about two-thirds of Republicans in the third district had never heard of Gibbons. I’m not convinced this ad is the best way introduce the candidate.

Final note: that Des Moines backdrop is a subtle way of addressing questions about whether Gibbons really lives in the third district. As Jennifer Jacobs reported yesterday for the Des Moines Register, Gibbons leases an apartment in Des Moines while his wife and children live in Dallas County.

“I wanted to run against the first liberal I could find, so to speak, so I changed my residency to Des Moines,” he said.

The Gibbonses’ rural Perry home is in the 4th District, represented by Republican Tom Latham. […]

Gibbons and his wife, Anne, have three daughters – ages 16, 13 and 7 months. The older girls didn’t want to leave their school and home, he said.

“I decided to go ahead and run, and I didn’t necessarily want to move my family in the middle of the school year,” Gibbons said. […]

Gibbons said he has been a central Iowan for all but about seven years of his life. He said he goes to church at the Basilica of St. John in Des Moines. He previously worked in West Des Moines, and before that lived in Urbandale.

But Gibbons declined to answer questions about how much time he spends at his Des Moines apartment. “I’m spending a lot of time here on the campaign trail, so I’m spending some time in Des Moines and some time in Perry,” he said.

To me, it doesn’t matter whether Gibbons lives in Polk County or a 20-minute drive away. Plenty of politicians have moved to a different county to run for Congress. However, Gibbons’ detractors will certainly try to make his residency an issue before the primary election.

Until this morning, I would have considered myself the blogger least likely to defend the right to smoke. Because of the many health risks associated with secondhand smoke, I strongly supported the Iowa Smokefree Air Act adopted in 2008, as well as the Iowa Department of Public Health’s decision to enforce that ban in all restaurants. I had no sympathy for smokers who whined about “Big Brother Democrats and Turncoat Republicans” and called the public smoking ban “Soviet” or “fascist.” I knew restaurant and bar owners who challenged the smoking ban in court were wasting their time and money.

However, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is going too far with its new personnel policy on tobacco use. Beginning on June 1,

The insurer will “require applicants to assert that they are tobacco-free in order to be considered for a position,” said Rob Schweers, spokesman for Wellmark, which employs approximately 1,600 people in Des Moines and another 200 throughout the rest of the state.

Wellmark is asking existing employees to stop using tobacco by Oct. 1. The new policy also prohibits any smoking during work hours, including scheduled breaks and during lunch.

The Des Moines Register quotes Schweers as saying the company wants to provide “incentive for people to quit [smoking], which will result in a healthier, more productive work force.” If Wellmark wants to pay for counseling or nicotine patches or other support for smokers trying to quit, I’m all for it. Nicotine is highly addictive, and many people need extra support to stop using it. But smoking is still legal in private homes and many outdoor spaces, and employers should not try to control how employees live when they’re not at work. Yes, smokers cost employers more in health care costs, but so do people who eat unhealthy diets or engage in other risky (but legal) behavior.

According to the Register, several other large employers in central Iowa ban smoking during working hours, including lunch breaks, but don’t prohibit their employees from smoking during private time. Wellmark has not yet threatened to fire employees who don’t quit smoking by October 1, but apparently, they would have the legal right to do so. Peggy Huppert of the American Cancer Society said violating that organization’s policy on tobacco use is grounds for termination.  

This weekend, activists across Iowa have a chance to hear from their party’s candidates for Congress, the Iowa legislature, and statewide offices. The Iowa Democratic Party is holding conventions in all five Congressional districts on Saturday, April 24. These events are open to the public as well as the media. In other words, you do not have to be a convention delegate or alternate to attend. Here’s a list of Democratic convention locations and some scheduled speakers:

WHAT: 1st District Convention WHEN: 10:00AM WHERE: Northeast Iowa Community College 10250 Sundown Rd. Peosta, IA SPEAKERS: Senate Candidate Roxanne Conlin, Senate Candidate Tom Fiegen, Governor Chet Culver, Candidate for Secretary of Agriculture Francis Thicke, Congressman Bruce Braley

WHAT: 2nd District Convention WHEN:11:00 AM WHERE: Fairfield Arts and Convention Center 200 North Main St. Fairfield, IA SPEAKERS: Senate Candidate Roxanne Conlin, Governor Chet Culver, Candidate for Secretary of Agriculture Francis Thicke, Congressman Dave Loebsack, Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan

WHAT: 3rd District Convention WHEN: 9:00 AM WHERE: Adventureland Inn 3200 Adventureland Dr. Altoona, IA SPEAKERS: Senator Tom Harkin, Senate Candidate Roxanne Conlin, Senate Candidate Tom Fiegen, Governor Chet Culver, Secretary of State Michael Mauro, Candidate for Secretary of Agriculture Francis Thicke, Congressman Leonard Boswell

WHAT: 4th District Convention WHEN: 10:00 AM WHERE: North Iowa Fairgrounds, Olson Building 3700 4th St. SW Mason City, IA SPEAKERS: Senate Candidate Tom Fiegen, Governor Chet Culver, Secretary of State Michael Mauro, Candidate for Congress Bill Maske

WHAT: 5th District Convention WHEN: 9:00 AM WHERE: Atlantic Middle School 1100 Linn St. Atlantic, IA SPEAKERS: Senator Tom Harkin, Senate Candidate Tom Fiegen, Governor Chet Culver, Secretary of State Michael Mauro, Candidate for Congress Matt Campbell, Candidate for Congress Mike Denklau, Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan

The Republican Party of Iowa is holding conventions in the second, third and fifth districts this Saturday, and in the first and fourth districts on Saturday, May 1. (Click here for event details.) GOP conventions are open to the media but not the public.

The second and third district conventions will be well-attended because of the competitive GOP Congressional primaries. If no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the vote in the June 8 primary, district conventions will have to reconvene in June to select the nominee. Seven Republicans are running against Representative Leonard Boswell in the third district, and at least four of them are campaigning actively.

According to Republican blogger David Chung, there is “unprecedented” interest in the second district convention because of the four Republicans running against Representative Dave Loebsack. Chung writes, “For the first time in my memory, Linn County has filled [its] delegation. We have never actually had as many paid delegates as we were allotted.” Chung considers it “likely” that a second district convention will need to reconvene to select Loebsack’s opponent. Some other people following that race closely expect the contest to be decided on June 8, with only two candidates as serious contenders: Rob Gettemy and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Gettemmy has the most cash on hand and the support of many influential Linn County Republicans as well as the National Republican Congressional Committee. The 2008 GOP nominee, Miller-Meeks, has spent the most time campaigning around the district. She has more cash on hand than either Steve Rathje or Chris Reed and is likely to do particularly well outside Linn County, where her three Republican rivals are based.

The district conventions will also elect members of the parties’ State Central Committees. Former Republican SCC member Chung is seeking that position again and expects a “massive shakeup” on the committee, because “several current members have decided not to run” again.

UPDATE: I’ve been told that Thicke will be at the fourth district convention as well, and Senate candidate Bob Krause will be at some of these conventions too, but I don’t have details.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad has become the most prominent booster of Brenna Findley, the GOP candidate for Iowa attorney general. Branstad brings up Findley’s candidacy “in every speech” while campaigning around the state. He also talked up her candidacy on Iowa Public Television’s Iowa Press program and in the first gubernatorial candidates’ debate.

Findley has an unusual resume for an attorney general candidate. A longtime staffer for Representative Steve King, and before that for Iowa statehouse Republicans, Findley hasn’t practiced law in some time. According to Cityview’s Civic Skinny, Findley doesn’t even hold an active license to practice law in Iowa. She doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp of the attorney general’s job either. Her campaign began with a focus on job creation and has since shifted to the alleged unconstitutional nature of health insurance reform.

But for the purposes of this post, I’m less interested in Findley than in why Branstad talks about her so much. After the jump I explore some possibilities.

I wish I had better news to share on Earth Day, but the Iowa Department of Natural Resources issued its annual State of the Environment report this week, and it’s not encouraging for people who like to breathe air and drink water. From Perry Beeman’s report in the Des Moines Register:

Last year culminated a three-year run in which air pollution exceeded health thresholds 125 times – up 33 percent from the previous three-year reporting period.

[Iowa DNR Director Richard] Leopold said that’s disturbing as production was down at many factories because of the economy.

Most of the problem: fine particles from hog confinements, cars and power plants, whose emissions blend ammonia and sulfuric or nitric acid in the air.

Fine particulate matter, also known as PM 2.5, has been linked to many life-threatening illnesses and causes thousands of premature deaths every year. That’s another reason to be thankful that utility companies abandoned plans to build new coal-fired power plants in Waterloo and Marshalltown last year. (Side note: could someone please inform the three “pro-life” Republican gubernatorial candidates that coal combustion is hazardous to human health? Terry Branstad, Bob Vander Plaats and Rod Roberts all favor building more coal-fired power plants in Iowa.)

As for the other major contributors to poor air quality in our state, the Iowa legislature has done little about air pollution from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) beyond passing a time- and money-wasting odor study bill in 2008. Nor have our state’s leaders done enough to fund alternate modes of transportation, which could reduce vehicle miles per capita traveled by car (and the associated fine particulate emissions).

The DNR’s report showed statistically insignificant improvements in Iowa water quality, but not enough to lift us out of the “poor” category. While new “antidegradation rules” on water quality may protect some Iowa waterways from getting worse in the future, we have a long way to go to make our lakes and rivers safe for recreation and other uses.

Public demand for usable waterways is increasing; the DNR’s report showed that more Iowans are using state parks, boating and buying fishing licenses. It’s therefore baffling that the DNR is proposing to reduce protection for 408 Iowa stream segments this year. The Iowa Environmental Council has much more background on this issue here. Public comments to the DNR are needed by April 30, and it only takes a few minutes to send a message to the relevant DNR official (click here for contact information and talking points).

For those who like to fish: please be aware of the DNR recommends eating fish from certain lakes and rivers no more often than once a week because of elevated mercury levels. Coal combustion from power plants is the main source of mercury pollution in our waterways.

Share any relevant thoughts or Earth Day plans in this thread. I see that the Sierra Club of Iowa, Moveon.Org and 1Sky are organizing a rally outside Representative Leonard Boswell’s office (300 Locust in Des Moines) at noon today to urge Boswell to oppose various “dirty air” bills proposed in Congress. They are asking people to “dress in rain gear, such as raincoats, rain hats, umbrellas, galoshes, etc., to make the point of increasing severe weather due to climate change.”

There’s also an Earth Day Trash Bash cleanup event in downtown Des Moines this afternoon, followed by a celebration in the Simon Estes ampitheater. Here’s a description of last year’s cleanup.

It’s early in the campaign season, but Benton County Advocates (whoever they are) are on track to be the worst debate organizers of the year. They are hosting a debate on April 27 in Vinton for three Republican candidates in Iowa’s third Congressional district. Seven candidates qualified for the ballot, but Benton County Advocates invited only Dave Funk, Jim Gibbons and Brad Zaun to take part in the debate, Iowa Independent reported today.

Speaking on behalf of the Benton County Advocates, Bill Keller explained the reasoning in the comments section of Iowa Independent:

The rules, as displayed in the group event linked in your article, were quite clear. We were going to look at the individual contributions and take the top three earners. Mr. Gibbons was first place with $344,598, Mr. Zaun was second with $83,380 and Mr. Funk was third with $69,141. Mr. Reese raised $12,050, less that 1/5th his nearest competitor. While Mr. Reese rightly states he has more cash on hand than all but Mr. Gibbons, the part he leaves out is that of the $64,000 reported to the FEC, $54,000 of that money was contributed by Mr. Reese himself. While that is certainly a firm statement of his belief in his political path, we believe individual contributions are a broader yardstick to measure his viability within the 3rd district.

Our group chose individual contributions as the marker because we felt it was a solid indicator of support within the 3rd district. If a candidate presents his views and has the electorate listen to them, we believe their direct financial support is a solid indicator of a candidate’s viability. Since Mr. Reese did not meet the minimum requirement of our selection criteria, he was not invited.

Here’s some free advice, Mr. Keller: you would sound more credible if you spelled the candidate’s name correctly at least once.

The substance of Keller’s argument wasn’t convincing either. Granted, a debate with seven candidates could get unwieldy, and some of the men on the ballot for the IA-03 primary aren’t running real campaigns. In contrast, Rees has hired paid campaign staff and has been actively campaigning around the district for the last few months. He has yard signs out around the Des Moines suburbs and a strong online presence too.

What was the rationale for including only three candidates, rather than the four who are most actively seeking Leonard Boswell’s job (Rees, Funk, Zaun and Gibbons)? Why judge who is credible based only on individual contributions rather than overall financial strength? Rees has more cash on hand than Funk or Zaun and has said he is prepared to commit $200,000 of his own money to the campaign. Plenty of successful candidates have largely self-funded their first campaigns.

The April 27 debate in Vinton would have been more interesting with Rees in the mix, because he is trying to fill a more moderate niche in the GOP. Without him, the debate is likely to be a boring display of right-wing sloganeering. Who wants to watch Zaun, Gibbons and Funk try to one-up each other as the true conservative? The Benton County Advocates blew it.

Any comments about the IA-03 campaign are welcome in this thread. Whose yard signs, barn signs and bumper stickers are you seeing in your corner of the district? Here in Windsor Heights I’ve only seen yard signs for Zaun and Rees. Apparently Gibbons has some signs up on commercial properties in the Des Moines area, especially those owned by Denny Elwell in Ankeny.

Three of the world’s leading bond rating agencies agree that Iowa deserves the highest possible credit rating. This month Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service increased their ratings for Iowa to AAA and Aaa, respectively. The ratings boost is related to decisions at both agencies to “recalibrate” the way they assess default risk for municipal bonds. A third leading agency, Standard and Poor’s, gave Iowa the AAA rating last summer.

State Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald noted yesterday, “For the first time in our history, we have the highest ratings from all three rating agencies. Only seven other states have an across-the-board AAA rating.”

The credit ratings are important for two reasons. First, they represent a strong overall assessment of Iowa’s fiscal health. These agencies don’t care whether Governor Chet Culver is re-elected or whether Iowa Democrats retain majorities in the state House and Senate. Their analysts serve professional investors who need to know the risk of default on outstanding obligations. They look at a broad range of factors, including levels of revenues, spending, reserve funds and per capita debt load.

Second, the top-level credit rating means Iowa will be able to borrow at lower interest rates when the next batch of bonds for the I-JOBS infrastructure initiative are sold. When I-JOBS bonds hit the market last summer, strong investor demand drove down the interest rate and, consequently, reduced the state’s repayment costs by approximately $12 million per year for the life of the bonds.

One other point is worth noting: Moody’s gave Iowa a “stable” outlook rating. If professional market analysts believed Iowa legislators had approved unsustainable levels of debt or spending, as State Auditor David Vaudt and many other Republicans have claimed, we would be among the states that received a “negative” outlook from Moody’s.

As I recently discussed here, Republican candidates for governor keep talking about a so-called billion-dollar budget deficit projected for next year, even though the Iowa legislature approved a balanced budget for fiscal year 2011. Instead of acknowledging that fact, Republicans are shifting the goalposts, complaining that Iowa supposedly will have a huge budget gap for fiscal year 2012. Fitzgerald was pitch-perfect yesterday in response this doom-and-gloom talk:

Last week Vaudt criticized the Legislature and Culver for building a fiscal 2011 spending plan so heavily reliant on $736 million in one-time funding sources that it promises a budgetary “cliff” for the following year when state officials will face another projected funding gap exceeding $1 billion.

“The state auditor says that every year and the budget he’s talking about is a year from next July,” Fitzgerald said in an interview. “Well, my goodness gracious, volcanoes can blow up, meteors can hit the earth, who knows what’s going to happen. That’s just speculation.”

Economic and fiscal issues will be at the center of this fall’s election campaigns, creating a challenge for Iowa journalists. The “safe” way to report this issue would be the usual “he said, she said” format: [Republican’s name here] says Democrats are running deficits and driving us too deep in debt, while [Democrat’s name here] says the governor and legislature have kept Iowa in a strong fiscal position.

The alternative is to ask Republicans to defend their assertions in light of these facts:

*Independent analysts for the Pew Center on the States put Iowa in the group of states “least like California” in terms of budget problems.

*Moody’s, Fitch and Standard and Poor’s agree that Iowa deserves the highest possible credit rating.

*Iowa legislators approved balanced budgets year after year amid the biggest revenue collapse in six decades.

*Governor Culver made mid-year spending cuts when necessary in order to preserve our state’s fiscal health. He didn’t keep two sets of books like Terry Branstad, or fully deplete the state’s reserve funds like Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Analysts who don’t have a dog in this fight say Iowa is in good shape coming out of the most severe recession since World War II.

P.S.-In case you missed this story last week, Forbes magazine has ranked Des Moines as “the No. 1 city in America for businesses and careers” and Cedar Rapids the “No. 1 city for projected job growth.”

It’s looking like another rough week for Governor Chet Culver. News broke yesterday that his chief of staff is taking a new job, and the Department of Criminal Investigation is looking into campaign contributions from people who back a new casino for Fort Dodge.

Follow me after the jump for links and background on those stories.

The National Republican Campaign Committee added Rob Gettemy to its list of “on the radar” candidates today. Gettemy is one of four Republicans running against Dave Loebsack in Iowa’s second Congressional district.

“The NRCC is committed to working with Rob Gettemy as he continues to meet the rigorous goals of the Young Guns program,” said NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions. “Rob is an accomplished, independent leader who will fight to create jobs and rein in government spending. I am confident that Republicans will wage a strong fight against Dave Loebsack, a loyal Democrat who has repeatedly put his partisan agenda before a healthy economy.”

They’ll have to do more than that to convince me that this D+7 district will be competitive in the fall. The real reason for putting Gettemy “on the radar” is to signal to Republican donors that he’s the guy to support in this race. It’s a slap in the face to 2008 nominee Mariannette Miller-Meeks, not to mention the other two Republicans running in IA-02 (Steve Rathje and Chris Reed). Gettemy joined the race last but has the most cash on hand thanks to a $100,000 loan he made to his own campaign.

If no candidate wins 35 percent in the June 8 primary, NRCC support could help Gettemy at the district convention that would decide the Republican nominee. Gettemy already has backing from many prominent Linn County Republicans.

In the NRCC’s three-tiered system for candidates in supposedly competitive races, the next step up from “on the radar” is “contender.” Jim Gibbons’ campaign announced today that the NRCC has elevated him to that level. Gibbons became an “on the radar” candidate in February. If Gibbons can meet certain benchmarks, the NRCC may later elevate him to the top “Young Gun” level, for candidates deemed to have the best chances of winning Democratic-held House seats.

Getting a pat on the back from the NRCC will help Gibbons raise money, particularly from out-of-district donors who don’t know the political terrain in Iowa’s third district. Gibbons outraised the other Republican candidates in IA-03 by a substantial margin in the first quarter, and being a “contender” will probably help him extend that financial advantage in the second quarter. The Gibbons campaign press release is not subtle:

By achieving ‘Contender’ status, Gibbons has already proven his ability to build a successful campaign structure and achieve vital fundraising goals.

Gibbons added, “This recognition shows that our campaign is ready to take down Leonard Boswell in the fall.  I am the only candidate in this race that has shown the financial heft and organization structure to compete and win in November.  I am running for Congress to bring Iowa values back to Congress,” said Jim Gibbons.

I have to laugh to see Gibbons bragging about support from Washington party leaders a week after he tried to attack incumbent Leonard Boswell for getting help from the head of the DCCC.

Many people on the ground in IA-03 expect State Senator Brad Zaun to win the Republican nomination. Zaun appears to have an early advantage in name recognition as well as a base in vote-rich Urbandale. On the other hand, Zaun has raised only a little more than $80,000 for his Congressional campaign, about $50,000 of that in the first quarter. It may not be enough for strong district-wide advertising and direct mail before the June 8 primary. A majority of Republican voters haven’t yet decided on a candidate, according to a recent poll commissioned by Zaun’s campaign.

If no candidate wins 35 percent in the primary, Zaun could be well-positioned to win the nomination at a district convention, having much more background in Republican politics. But Gibbons could point to the NRCC’s backing as an argument in his favor. Party leaders in Washington are less likely to commit resources to this district if Zaun is the candidate.

A final word on Zaun’s meager fundraising. His defenders claim that his fundraising has lagged because he was tied up in the state legislature from January through March. I’m not buying it. Zaun announced his candidacy against Boswell in early December, more than a month before the 2010 legislative session began. If Rod Roberts could raise more than $50,000 in the kickoff event for his gubernatorial campaign, Zaun should have been able to raise much more at his kickoff event in late December (before the legislative session began). Zaun is a former mayor of Urbandale, a community with much more wealth and more Republicans than the Carroll area Roberts has represented in the Iowa House. Zaun should have a large pool of major donors to tap.

Share any thoughts about Congressional races in Iowa in this thread.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was in Iowa this weekend to headline an event organized by Iowans for Tax Relief. The crowd cheered the future presidential candidate after Pawlenty blasted the Obama administration and proposed one bad idea after another.

Pawlenty’s “economic bill of rights” includes requiring Congress to balance the budget every year. Freezing or reducing federal spending every time revenue drops is great if you like turning recessions into depressions, but basic economic facts won’t stop Pawlenty from pandering to the “Party of Hoover” set. I wonder whether Pawlenty’s proposed balanced budget amendment still includes “exceptions for war, natural disasters and other emergencies.”

Pawlenty also wants line-item veto powers for the president. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that unconstitutional at the federal level, and it’s unlikely Congress would ever approve a constitutional amendment on this matter.

In addition, Pawlenty favors extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Those tax cuts didn’t prevent the most severe economic recession since World War II, but they did manage to massively increase our national debt and deficit while delivering most of the benefits to the top few percent of the population.

But wait, there’s more to Pawlenty’s wish list: “He also called for requiring a supermajority of Congress to raise taxes or the debt ceiling.” Unfortunately, that would exacerbate our budget problems. When the Pew Center on the States examined state fiscal problems last year, a common feature of the states deemed “most like California” was a supermajority requirement for tax increases or budget decisions.

By the way, Iowa received higher overall marks than Minnesota in that Pew Center on the States report, which looked at six indicators to determine each state’s fiscal health.

Speaking to the Iowans for Tax Relief crowd, Pawlenty bragged about getting Minnesota out of the top 10 states for taxes but glossed over other aspects of his record as governor. Iowa Republicans have hammered Democrats for supposedly “overspending,” even though our state leaders have kept our budget balanced without depleting our state’s reserve accounts. What would they say if they knew about Pawlenty’s record?

During Pawlenty’s first year as governor, the state drew down its reserves and relied too heavily on one-time revenue to address its budget problem.  As a result, the state lost its Aaa bond rating from Moody’s Investors Service; the state has yet to regain its Aaa rating from Moody’s.

The 2009 report of the bi-partisan Minnesota Budget Trends Study Commission has recommended that the state build up its budget reserves and cash flow account in response to an increasingly unstable revenue outlook.  All members of the Commission, including the five appointed by Governor Pawlenty, endorsed this recommendation.

Pawlenty and state legislators couldn’t agree on an approach to balance the Minnesota budget. As a result, last year “Minnesota’s [projected] budget gap was the largest in the nation on a per capita basis.” Pawlenty can bash President Obama, but his state desperately needed the roughly $2.6 billion it received through the federal stimulus bill to help cover the shortfall. Even with the stimulus money, Minnesota was still billions of dollars short. So, in addition to some spending cuts, Pawlenty proposed “a bond issue that would be paid for by existing and forecast revenues from the tobacco settlement-a one-time fix disliked by some because it aimed to use long-term borrowing to pay for current state operations.”

To be clear: Pawlenty wanted the state of Minnesota to borrow money to pay its bills. In contrast, Iowa’s state borrowing program (I-JOBS) is funding capital investments in infrastructure. Last summer, Iowans for Tax Relief in effect ran the Republican campaign for a special election in Iowa House district 90. During that campaign, the Republican candidate made false and misleading claims about Iowa’s state budget and borrowing. How ironic that the Iowans for Tax Relief crowd gave a standing ovation to a panderer with a much worse record of fiscal management.

Not only did Pawlenty want Minnesota to borrow money to pay its bills, he also decided that underfunding local governments and forcing them to draw down their own reserves was a good way to control spending for the 2010-2011 budget period. Yes, Pawlenty decided in 2009 that cutting aid to local governments by hundreds of millions of dollars was a good way to balance the state budget:

“Many [cities], if not all, have reserve funds, or rainy day funds, and they should use them,” Pawlenty said.

He also talked of the option cities have of raising property taxes to make up for any LGA [local government aid] cuts.

One of the Republican talking points against Iowa Governor Chet Culver is that his midyear budget cuts supposedly forced local governments to raise property taxes. Yet Pawlenty gets a free pass from his Iowa Republican friends. Culver’s across-the-board budget cut last October wasn’t popular, but it did keep state government from overspending. In contrast, late last year Minnesota’s cash flow was so poor that state officials considered short-term borrowing to meet budget obligations.

“It’s a bad sign,” said former state Finance Commissioner Peggy Ingison, now chief financial officer with Minneapolis public schools. “It signals you didn’t have good fiscal discipline.”

Minnesota has muddled through without borrowing money to pay bills so far, but prospects for later this year are dicey:

State budget officials updated lawmakers [April 12] on Minnesota’s precarious cash-flow situation. They all but ruled out short-term borrowing for the 2010 budget year that ends June 30.

Budget director Jim Schowalter says “deep cash problems” loom for the 2011 fiscal year. Barring law changes, spending cuts and upticks in revenue, he says the state might have to take out short-term loans to meet its obligations.

The Minnesota Budget Bites blog takes a more detailed look at the state’s “troublesome” picture for fiscal year 2011. BulliedPulpit posted a good rebuttal of “TPawnomics” at MN Progressive Project.

The last thing our country needs is budget advice from Tim Pawlenty.  

Earlier this month, State Senator Brad Zaun agreed to attend an event organized by an anti-abortion extremist, then withdrew from the event at the last minute because of a problem with the invitation wording. Here’s a clue for one of the leading Republican candidates in Iowa’s third Congressional district: the reason not to do an event with Dave Leach isn’t some technicality, it’s that Leach thinks assassinating abortion providers is justifiable homicide.

Speaking of Zaun, how does an experienced campaigner who works in real estate and is a former mayor of a wealthy Des Moines suburb raise just $52,780 CORRECTION: $50,305 for his Congressional campaign in the first quarter? It’s not as if he tapped out a huge donor base already; in the fourth quarter of 2009 Zaun only raised about $30,000. He’ll need more money than that to compete with seven-term incumbent Leonard Boswell–if he can get through the crowded primary.

Speaking of that primary, Jim Gibbons issued one of his more idiotic press statements last week (and for him that’s saying something). Gibbons’ latest attack is that Boswell is relying on support from “D.C. insider” Chris Van Hollen. This from a guy who is the favorite of the Washington-based National Republican Congressional Committee, who bragged about how many members of Congress attended his own Washington fundraiser, and had former House Speaker Dennis Hastert headline an event for him in the Des Moines area. Gibbons has raised the most money in the Republican field, but he doesn’t impress me as a campaigner, unless you’re into pandering to Christians before Easter.

Another Republican who doesn’t look ready for prime time is Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts. He said this week that he’s against the proposed financial reforms because they would be “an extra layer of regulation.” As Kevin Drum says, that’s “like saying that you don’t want better brakes on your car because ‘they’re going to slow me down.’” But Brown had more empty talking points to share:

   Brown left open the possibility that he could support a compromise.

   “I want to see when it’s going to come up, how it’s going to come up,” he said. “I’m always open to trying to work something through so it is truly bipartisan.”

   Brown, whose vote could be critical as Democrats seek to find a GOP member to avoid a filibuster, assiduously avoided talking about specifics.

   When asked what areas he thought should be fixed, he replied: “Well, what areas do you think should be fixed? I mean, you know, tell me. And then I’ll get a team and go fix it.”

Give me a break. The guy has no idea what’s in the bill or why Republicans are supposed to be against it, but he wants to make sure you know he’s all for teamwork and being “bipartisan.”

Who did I miss on the not ready for prime time front? Let me know in the comments, or share anything else that’s on your mind this weekend.

If you’re interested in the upcoming British elections, you can watch the recent party leaders’ debate here (hat tip to Christian Ucles, who is following the campaign closely).

UPDATE: Had a great day out at Whiterock Conservancy today. Saw some friends there, watched a presentation featuring five snakes native to Iowa, took a long nature walk ending near a field with bison. Stopped for locally-made ice cream at Picket Fence Creamery on the way home. Who could ask for anything more?

The Senate approved another short-term extension of unemployment benefits yesterday by a vote of 59 to 39 (roll call). The bill also extends COBRA benefits (related to keeping your health insurance after leaving your job) and delays a planned cut in Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors. (Click here for the text of the bill. Iowa’s senators split, with Tom Harkin voting yes and Chuck Grassley voting no, as did all but three Republican senators.

The House of Representatives quickly passed the bill as amended by the Senate. The bill had more bipartisan support in the House, with 49 Republicans joining 240 Democrats (roll call). However, Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) voted with the majority of the GOP caucus against the extension. I guess they don’t think the thousands of long-term unemployed in their districts need the extra help. King has previously spoken out against extending jobless benefits, which in his view are becoming a “hammock” instead of a safety net. Iowa Democrats Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) all voted for the bill. After the jump I’ve posted a statement from Loebsack’s office about this legislation.

President Barack Obama signed the bill last night, but Congress will revisit this issue soon, because the new law extends unemployment benefits only until June 2 and other measures through the end of May.

President Barack Obama has instructed the Health and Human Services department to develop new rules for hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding.

The memorandum from Obama to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, made public late Thursday night, orders new rules that would ensure hospitals “respect the rights of patients to designate visitors.”

Obama says the new rules should require that hospitals not deny visitation privileges on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides whether in a sudden medical emergency or a prolonged hospital stay,” Obama says in the memo.

Affected, he said, are “gay and lesbian American who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives — unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated.”

Cue conservatives to start whining about “special rights for homosexuals,” as if there is something extraordinary about visiting a loved one in the hospital or granting your life partner power of medical attorney. I’m glad the president took a stand on this issue.

I’m curious to see how the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reacts to this executive order. I don’t know whether Catholic hospitals are more likely to have rules in place preventing visitation by gay or lesbian partners, but I would expect religious conservatives to complain about the government nullifying such rules. I wonder whether there is even grounds to challenge Obama’s order in court, if hospitals could demonstrate that their visitation bans are grounded in religious principles.  

Roxanne Conlin gave her U.S. Senate campaign $250,000 during the first quarter of 2010 and raised nearly $630,000 from other donors. From this morning’s press release:

Conlin Campaign Raises More than all of Grassley’s Past Challengers Combined

Has $1 Million in the Bank

Banked $879,615 in First Quarter with NO PAC or WASHINGTON LOBBYIST MONEY

Des Moines – Roxanne Conlin’s grassroots campaign for the US Senate has more than $1 million in the bank.  Iowans made up 81 percent of the campaign’s contributors and she has not accepted one penny from Washington lobbyists or PACs.

“I’m humbled by the outpouring of support for our campaign,” said Conlin. “Our grassroots effort has reached 93 counties and we will reach the remaining six this weekend.  Iowans keep telling me, Chuck Grassley is not the same man they sent to Washington decades ago.  We need a fighter who will stand up for Main Street and not bail out Wall Street.”

FACTS:

No PAC or Washington lobbyist funds.

81 percent of donors are Iowans.

78 percent of contributions are $100 or less.

Breakdown:

Campaign to date raised:                                    $1,483,191

First Quarter 2010 raised:                                   $629,615

Candidate contribution:                                      $250,000

First Quarter PAC Money:                                  $0

First Quarter Federal Lobbyist Money:               $0

First Quarter 2010 total:                                      $879,615

Cash on hand:                                                      $1,000,455

Those are impressive numbers for a challenger, especially since Grassley is not considered one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents. Grassley’s last Democratic opponent, Art Small, only raised about $136,000 during the whole 2004 campaign, and about $70,000 of that total came from the candidate himself.

I haven’t seen Grassley’s latest fundraising numbers yet. He raised about $810,000 during the fourth quarter of last year and began 2010 with about $5 million on hand. While Grassley will surely have a big cash-on-hand edge over Conlin, she will have the resources to run a statewide campaign.

UPDATE: Grassley raised $613,577 in the first quarter and has about $5.3 million cash on hand. I am surprised that Conlin was able to out-raise the incumbent for the quarter even if you don’t count her own large contribution to the campaign.

I haven’t seen first-quarter numbers for the other Democratic candidates, Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen, but at year-end Fiegen had about $400 on hand, and Krause had about $3,500.

Jason Hancock covered a recent dustup among the Democratic candidates over debates before the June 8 primary. I hope we will see some debates in addition to candidate forums. I plan to vote for Conlin, whose work I have long admired and who is best positioned to make the race competitive. Not only has she raised money, she will have a strong volunteer base. Just in my own precinct I know several Democrats who are not inclined to volunteer for Governor Chet Culver but will knock on doors or make phone calls for Conlin. By next Monday she will have held campaign events in all 99 counties.

I respect the Democrats who prefer Krause or Fiegen, and I understand why some people were annoyed by Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan’s apparent favoritism last year. Competitive primaries are often healthy for a party, and I particularly appreciate that Krause has kept his message focused on his good ideas and Grassley’s flaws as a public servant. I hope the final eight weeks of the primary campaign will not become too divisive.

Although most Americans say their income taxes are fair, today is “Christmas in April” for Republican politicians trying to stir up resentment about the tax burden. As I mentioned yesterday, last year’s stimulus bill contained tax cuts for 98 percent of American families and particularly helped lower and middle-income families. Gail Collins commented,

Thanks to the tax credits in President Obama’s stimulus plan and other programs aimed at helping working families, couples with two kids making up to $50,000 were generally off the hook this year.

Naturally, anti-tax groups held rallies to thank the president for doing so much to reduce the burden on the half of the country least able to pay. Not.

One of the biggest tax breaks in the stimulus bill reduces taxes owed by $400 for individual filers and $800 for married couples filing jointly, but reportedly this credit and the accompanying “Schedule M” have confused many taxpayers.

Here’s a truly disturbing trend mostly ignored by the media. Annie Lowrey reports that in recent years the IRS has shifted toward more audits of mom-and-pop businesses and less scrutiny of the big corporations that “can defraud the federal government for much more vast amounts than their smaller counterparts.”

At today’s anti-tax rallies, some speakers will argue for a “flat tax,” meaning that the income tax would be set at the same level regardless of your income. That’s a bad idea, which hasn’t worked in countries that have adopted it.

Other conservatives, such as Representative Steve King and presidential contender Mike Huckabee, will repeat their support for a “fair tax,” which would replace the income tax with a huge consumption tax. That’s a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad idea.

Speaking of conservative fantasy-land, Senator Chuck Grassley decided to make stuff up during a conference call with reporters yesterday:

Grassley spoke of his belief that America is sliding toward a European-style economy. Actually, he said the Obama adminstration is moving the country in that direction, so he envisions President Barack Obama will ask for a tax increase via a value-added tax, since he can’t politically backtrack and increase income taxes on middle income people.

“They are going to need European-type taxes to maintain it, and that’s where the value-added tax comes in,” Grassley said. “…They just can’t get enough money from taxing wealthy people, to do all the things that they want to do. So you can add a value-added tax, and it is a hidden tax, because it is built into the price of the commodity you’ll buy. So, they can increase taxes on middle income taxpayers, contrary to what they promised in the election.”

Riiiight.

Today’s rallies will surely generate a lot of media coverage, as well as some controversy over how significant the “tea party” movement is. Blog for Iowa cross-posted a piece from News Corpse casting doubt on the political strength of tea partiers.

I’m watching several upcoming Republican primaries as a test of the tea party in Iowa. If Dave Funk does surprisingly well in the third Congressional district, Chris Reed wins in the second district, or Mike La Coste or Jim Budde exceed expectations in the first district, that will be a sign of real grassroots power for the movement, but I expect candidates with more GOP establishment connections to win all three of those primaries.

Share any thoughts about taxes or tea partiers in this thread. I’ll be back later to comment, after waiting in line at the post office for who knows how long to mail my return (note to self: get this done earlier next year!).

I was disappointed by some compromises made to pass the stimulus (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) in February 2009. I felt President Obama made too many concessions in the fruitless pursuit of Republican votes, and that too much of the cost went toward tax cuts that would be slower-acting and less stimulative than certain forms of government spending.

That said, the tax cuts in the stimulus will help tens of millions of American families, particularly those with working-class or middle-class incomes. Citizens for Tax Justice has calculated that “the major tax cuts enacted in the 2009 economic stimulus bill actually reduced federal income taxes for tax year 2009 for 98 percent of all working families and individuals. ”

In terms of the number of Americans who benefited, the stimulus bill was the biggest tax cut in history. That is, “the estimated $282 billion in tax cuts [from the stimulus] over two years is more than either of the 2001-2002 or the 2004-2005 Bush tax cuts or the Kennedy or Reagan tax cuts.” George W. Bush’s tax cuts were more costly to the U.S. Treasury over a 10-year period, but as Anonymous Liberal noted last year,

The Bush tax cuts were skewed dramatically toward the wealthy. In 2004, 60% of the tax cuts went to the top 20 percent of income earners with over 25% going to the top 1% of income earners. Those numbers have increased since then as the cuts to the estate tax have taken effect.

Tomorrow is the deadline for most Americans to file their tax returns, and Republicans will try to harness the tea party movement’s anger at what they view as excessive taxes and spending. However, many ordinary people may be shocked to learn how large their refunds are this year. According to the White House, “the average tax refund is up nearly 10 percent this year.”

Democrats should not be afraid to vigorously defend the stimulus bill during this year’s Congressional campaigns. I wish the recovery act had been larger and better targeted, but the bottom line is that Republicans voted against the largest ever middle-class tax cut.

The White House website has this Recovery Act Tax Savings Tool to help people find benefits to which they are entitled. After the jump I’ve posted a fact sheet on this subject, which the White House press office released on April 12. Note: if you have already filed your taxes, you can amend them after April 15 to collect on any credits from the stimulus bill that you missed.

MSNBC’s First Read reported today:

Per NBC’s Pete Williams and Savannah Guthrie, administration officials say at least eight names are on President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees. Six are women and two men. The names: U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Merrick Garland of the DC Court of Appeals, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, former George Supreme Court Chief Judge Leah Ward Sears, Sidney Thomas of the 9th Circuit, and Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. Of these names, people outside the government but familiar with White House thinking say the serious contenders are Kagan, Wood, Garland, Napolitano, and Granholm. Guthrie adds that Obama is likely to meet next week with key senators to discuss the vacancy. Many of the new additions are about interest group appeasement. And note the growing concern in the liberal/progressive blogosphere about Kagan.

One person who doesn’t sound concerned about Kagan is Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina:

“I like her,” he said, quickly adding, “and that might hurt her chances.”

Graham, whose support for Justice Sonia Sotomayor last summer was a turning point in her confirmation process, said he liked Kagan’s answers about national security and the president’s broad authority to detain enemy combatants when she was going through her own Senate confirmation.

Both of President Bill Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees had received a private stamp of approval from key Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. My hunch is that Graham’s kind words for Kagan help her chances with President Obama. He loves to position himself as a moderate between the left and the right.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Chris Bowers made the case for Sears here.

Approximately 80,000 Iowans will face substantial health insurance premium hikes beginning May 1. An independent review has confirmed the “need” for Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield to raise rates by an average of 18 percent. The higher rates were intended to go into effect on April 1, but last month Governor Chet Culver ordered a delay pending an review of the matter. The Des Moines Register reports today,

[Iowa Insurance Commissioner Susan] Voss said in a memo to Culver that Wellmark’s losses supported “the need for the rate increase” based on two separate actuarial analyses conducted by INS Consultants, a Philadelphia actuary. The group also found that the insurance division’s rate review process is actuarially “acceptable” and “reasonable” compared with INS’s methodology.

Birny Birnbaum, head of the Center for Economic Justice, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group in Texas, said it’s unlikely that INS would disagree with the rate increase.

“While INS is technically independent, there is no way the firm would contradict and embarrass the agency which hired the firm,” Birnbaum said Monday. “If INS were to contradict the insurance division, it would likely not be hired in the future by the Iowa Insurance Division or any other insurance regulator.”

Speaking to the Register, State Representative Janet Petersen touted legislation passed during the 2010 session, which is intended to give consumers more information and warning regarding health insurance premium increases. After the jump I’ve posted some key points from Senate File 2201 and Senate File 2356.

These bills contain a lot of good provisions but probably won’t solve this particular problem for many Iowans. Wellmark dominates the insurance market in this state. Giving people a few weeks to shop around won’t magically allow them to find a better deal. In addition, health insurers can still exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions until 2014. The only real choices Wellmark’s individual customers have are: 1) pay a lot more, like my family, or 2) downgrade to a policy that’s less comprehensive and/or involves higher out-of-pocket costs for medical care.

Iowa House Republican leader Kraig Paulsen showed his creative side yesterday, finding a way to blame Democrats for Wellmark’s rate hikes:

Paulsen pointed out that the Democrat-controlled Legislature has voted in recent years to impose several health insurance mandates, such as coverage of cancer clinical trials and prosthetics.

“It’s indisputable that those add to rates. That’s just the way it works,” he said.

Health insurance mandates drive up costs for Iowans, Paulsen said.

“Mandates aren’t necessarily requirements that insurance companies sell something. They’re requirements that purchasers buy something,” he said.

One legislative proposal would have allowed state-regulated health insurance companies to provide mandate-free coverage “for those who want a less comprehensive product,” Paulsen said.

That idea by House Republicans failed, as did a proposal to study allowing out-of-state insurers to offer policies in Iowa, which could help Iowans find cheaper policies, he said.

Come on, Mr. Paulsen, who ever anticipates needing prosthetics someday, or being in a position to benefit from a cancer clinical trial? Anyway, that cancer clinical trial bill passed both the Iowa House and Senate unanimously. Also, allowing out-of-state insurers to sell policies here would spark a “race to the bottom” in terms of consumer protection.

Share any relevant thoughts in the comments.

The U.S. Senate defeated a Republican attempt to filibuster another month-long extension of unemployment benefits yesterday by a vote of 60 to 34. Four Republicans voted with all of the Democrats present on the cloture motion, but Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley supported the filibuster, as did most of his fellow Republicans (roll call here). Senator Tom Harkin was absent but would have voted to overcome the filibuster.

Republicans claim they simply want the unemployment benefits to be “paid for” (though they never objected when supplemental spending for the war in Iraq, or tax cuts for the wealthy, added to the deficit). Senator Chuck Schumer of New York countered,

“Unemployment extensions have always been considered emergency spending, and there’s a reason for that. […] Unemployment insurance is a form of stimulus, but offsetting the extension of this program would negate the stimulative impact. It would be robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Governor Chet Culver had written to the entire Iowa delegation in Congress urging them to pass the benefits extension. Unlike Grassley, our governor understands how important these benefits are as economic stimulus:

The nonpartisan Iowa Fiscal Partnership released a study earlier this year showing the economic impacts of stimulus spending for unemployment benefits. Analysts found that direct spending for unemployment insurance included in the federal stimulus, along with ripple effects from that spending, produced $501.7 million increased economic activity and $112.1 million in income in 2009, creating or saving 3,727 jobs.

For the current year, the researchers also found direct and indirect benefits but in lower amounts, $314.6 million activity, $68.6 million income and 2,258 jobs.

So extending unemployment benefits doesn’t just help the jobless and their families, it helps businesses in virtually every community. The bad news is that the bill the Senate is poised to pass this week is not retroactive, meaning that unemployed Americans whose benefits expired on April 5 won’t get back the money they would have received this month had the Senate passed this bill before the Easter recess. It was a big mistake for Democrats to go home without taking care of this business in March.

Governor Chet Culver’s campaign has yet another new manager coming in on May 1. Donn Stanley will take a leave of absence from the Iowa Attorney General’s Office to run the governor’s re-election effort, as Abby Curran leaves for Washington. I posted the Culver campaign’s press release after the jump.

The turnover within the governor’s campaign during the past year is not an encouraging sign. Last year, John Kirincich joined Culver’s staff and was “expected to play a key role” in the campaign, but Kirincich “quietly left the governor’s office” after only a few months. Andrew Roos came in to run the campaign in September but resigned at the end of November. Curran became the new manager in January. Soon after that, deputy campaign manager Jesse Harris and finance director Grace Van Cleave left the campaign. Teresa Vilmain has been a senior consultant to the Culver campaign since last summer, but it’s not clear whether she will stay on beyond next month.

Let’s hope the current reshuffle is the last. Share any relevant thoughts in the comments.

P.S.- It turns out I am unable to complete this post without a reference to Spinal Tap drummers.

UPDATE: I learned something new in Tuesday’s Des Moines Register:

Stanley said staff turnover is common and pointed to the 1998 campaign of Culver’s predecessor, Tom Vilsack, who went through three managers before tapping John Cacciatore three months before his come-from-behind election.

From the Des Moines Register’s blog:

A West Burlington bar owner won’t appeal an Iowa District Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Iowa’s Smokefree Air Act, which bans smoking in most public places.

Larry Duncan, the owner of Otis Campbell’s bar, still strongly believes the smoking ban is unconstitutional, said Darwin Bunger, Duncan’s lawyer. But there was no guarantee Duncan would win an appeal, and losing an appeal would have resulted in two-year license revocation, he said. […]

District Judge Mary Ann Brown, in an April 1 ruling, affirmed the findings of state alcoholic beverage regulators who had revoked Otis Campbell’s liquor license. It was the first ruling on the constitutionality of the enforcement of Iowa’s Smokefree Air Act. Brown said there is no fundamental or protected right to smoke in public or to allow patrons to smoke in a public business.

State records showed that dozens of smoking complaints had been filed against Otis Campbell’s after the Smokefree Air Act took effect July 1, 2008. Visitors described an environment in which customers freely ate and drank and puffed cigarettes amid a haze of tobacco smoke. Ashtrays remained on the bar and tables, and tables and there were no no-smoking signs.

In a settlement, Duncan agreed to comply with the smoking ban. His bar’s liquor license will be restored after a 50-day suspension.

Duncan’s case was doomed from the start. No lawsuit has ever successfully overturned a local or state public smoking ban in this country. The only realistic legal challenge would have been against the unfair exemption Iowa lawmakers granted to casino owners. However, the remedy for that would be to toss out the casino exemption, not the smoking ban. Anyway, I’ve been told that a court would likely uphold the casino exemption, on the grounds that legislators had a “rational basis” for making exceptions in the law for some businesses. Judges considering this kind of appeal wouldn’t use the “strict scrutiny” standard that applies in civil rights cases.

UPDATE: The Burlington Hawk Eye covered the judge’s ruling against Duncan here.

The cover story in Cityview this week is the awkwardly-headlined “25 people not running for governor (but should)”. The list includes former Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson, who would be outstanding, and activist LaVon Griffieon, a friend who has inspired me. I don’t agree with all the names on Cityview’s list, but the whole point of a feature like that is to provoke discussions and arguments. So, Bleeding Heartland readers, who should be running for governor of Iowa, and what do you think of the list Cityview compiled?

This thread is for anything that’s on your mind this weekend. I am horrified by the plane crash that wiped out so many influential past and present citizens of Poland. If you’re wondering why the Polish elite were flying on a Soviet aircraft, apparently it was faster than the planes other countries use for similar purposes.

Many prominent Iowa Republicans and candidates are attending Representative Steve King’s “Defenders of Freedom” dinner, featuring Representative Michele Bachmann. King grabbed the blogosphere’s attention this week by slamming the Humane Society as “vegetarians with an agenda.”

I’ve been reading some clips on the Southern Republican Leadership Conference this weekend. Although the event is in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina was very much off the radar. Sarah Palin electrified the crowd yesterday, but the presidential straw poll ended up nearly tied between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. I was amused to read this snapshot of Republican family values:

just overheard a mom tell her young daughter at #SRLC, “No, we don’t support Medicaid. Medicaid is for losers.”

At Drake University today, counter-protesters outnumbered the members of Fred Phelps’ clan “church.” I still lean toward not elevating the importance of those freaks by generating more media coverage of their rallies. Ignoring them seemed to work fine for the Des Moines area Jewish community last year.

Dawn Johnsen withdrew her nomination yesterday for head of the Office of Legal Counsel, saying in a statement,

Restoring OLC to its best nonpartisan traditions was my primary objective for my anticipated service in this administration. Unfortunately, my nomination has met with lengthy delays and political opposition that threaten that objective and prevent OLC from functioning at full strength. I hope that the withdrawal of my nomination will allow this important office to be filled promptly.

Sam Stein posted the full text of Johnsen’s statement and commented,

The withdrawal represents a major blow to progressive groups and civil liberties advocates who had pushed for Johnsen to end up in the office that previously housed, among others, John Yoo, the author of the infamous torture memos under George W. Bush.

But the votes, apparently, weren’t there. Johnsen had the support of Sen Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) but was regarded skeptically by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — primarily for her positions on torture and the investigation of previous administration actions. A filibuster, in the end, was likely sustainable. Faced with this calculus, the White House chose not to appoint Johnsen during Senate recess, which would have circumvented a likely filibuster but would have kept her in the position for less than two years.

A White House statement said the president is searching for a replacement nominee and will ask the Senate to confirm that person to head the Office of Legal Counsel quickly. I still think the Obama should have included Johnsen in a group of recess appointments he made last month. Jake Tapper quoted an unnamed Senate source as saying the White House “didn’t have the stomach for the debate” on her nomination. It doesn’t reflect well on Obama or on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that Johnsen never got a vote in the Senate, even after it was clear there were 60 votes in her favor last year (before the Massachusetts Senate special election).

UPDATE: From a must-read post by Glenn Greenwald:

What Johnsen insists must not be done reads like a manual of what Barack Obama ended up doing and continues to do — from supporting retroactive immunity to terminate FISA litigations to endless assertions of “state secrecy” in order to block courts from adjudicating Bush crimes to suppressing torture photos on the ground that “opennees will empower terrorists” to the overarching Obama dictate that we “simply move on.”  Could she have described any more perfectly what Obama would end up doing when she wrote, in March, 2008, what the next President “must not do”? […]

I don’t know why her nomination was left to die, but I do know that her beliefs are quite antithetical to what this administration is doing.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has confirmed that he will retire this June, as court observers have anticipated for some time. According to the Washington Post,

Aides and Democrats close to the process named three people as likely front-runners for the job: Solicitor General Elena Kagan, whom Obama appointed as the first woman to hold the post, and two appellate court judges, Diane Wood of Chicago and Merrick Garland of Washington.

I’m relieved to know that the Senate will be able to confirm Stevens’ successor while Democrats still have a sizable majority. We are likely to lose 3-8 Senate seats this November.

Whomever Obama appoints will probably get a lecture from Senator Chuck Grassley during confirmation hearings this summer. With any luck the person will turn out not to be “aggressive” and “obnoxious.”

Any comments or predictions about the upcoming Supreme Court nomination are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Chris Bowers makes the case for former Georgia Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears.

Last night I watched the Republican gubernatorial debate on Iowa Public Television. If you missed it, you can read the full transcript here. Some Iowa stations are rebroadcasting the debate this Sunday too.

One of the worst things about televised debates is the lack of follow-up by the journalists who moderate. Wednesday’s exchange provided a classic example of this problem.  

The Atlantic’s Joshua Green thinks so:

I think Summers is going to leave sooner rather than later, possibly before the mid-term elections, and if not then, soon afterward.

Why? Because Summers is frustrated by his role, and his colleagues are clearly frustrated with him. Alexis Simendinger had a devastating item in last week’s National Journal suggesting that Summers’s “legendary self-regard” and “ego the size of the national debt” had gotten out of control. Some of Summers’s frustration no doubt stems from his wanting to be Treasury secretary. When that plum went to Geithner, Summers cast his eye on the Fed chairmanship and agreed to bide his time until Ben Bernanke’s term ended at the NEC–a staff position well below his old job as Clinton’s Treasury secretary. Most administration officials tactfully avoid pointing this out, because Summers has a fragile ego. But that’s why Joe Biden is so great. “How many former Secretaries of the Treasury would come in not as Secretary of the Treasury?” Biden blurted out to the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza last fall.

But Summers didn’t get the Fed job either. Apparently that didn’t sit well. Administration insiders told Simendinger that Summers demanded a series of perks as compensation, including cabinet status, golf dates with the president, and a personal car and driver. In the “No Drama” Obama administration, such behavior stands out.  […]

Summers always seemed a bad fit for NEC director because the job entails dispassionately presenting the president with the counsel of his competing economic advisers. Summers doesn’t do “dispassionate” and he didn’t want to limit himself to fielding others’ advice–he had plenty of his own to offer. In other words, he was supposed to be the referee, but he also wanted to play power forward.

Summers was one of President Obama’s worst appointments, in my opinion, but I wouldn’t expect the president to reshuffle his economic team unless a mostly-jobless recovery continues, or the worst-case scenario of a douple-dip recession develops. Anyway, Summers’ departure wouldn’t herald a real change in economic policy if Green is right about Timothy Geithner being “ever more secure at Treasury.”

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

First-term Democratic State Representative Kerry Burt announced yesterday that he won’t run for re-election in Iowa House district 21, which comprises part of Waterloo and some rural areas in southern Black Hawk County (map here). The state Attorney General’s Office filed charges against a group of parents including Burt, who allegedly gave false addresses to avoid paying higher tuition fees for their children to attend the Price Laboratory School in Cedar Falls. Burt said in a statement, “I look forward to my day in court.  I believe I am innocent and strongly believe my name will be vindicated once all of the relevant facts come to light. […] I am extremely grateful to the citizens of Waterloo for allowing me to serve and look forward to continuing my public service in the future.”

I wish Burt the best but won’t deny that I’m one of those relieved Democrats John Deeth mentioned here. I’ve been hoping for some time that Burt would not seek re-election, not only because of the tuition scandal but because of his drunk driving arrest in February 2009.

After the jump I cover the recent electoral history of House district 21 and reasons Democrats can feel optimistic about holding the seat.

At 1 pm today Terry Branstad, Bob Vander Plaats and Rod Roberts will face off in the first of three debates before the gubernatorial primary in June. I won’t be able to watch the live stream at KTIV’s site, so I’ll have to catch the repeat on Iowa Public Television, whenever that will be shown. I wanted to put up this thread so Bleeding Heartland readers can chat about the debate. I will update this post later with early write-ups about the event. Rod Roberts seems to have the most to gain from this debate, since he is the least-known candidate in the field.

The Republicans will throw around lots of numbers about taxes and spending, and those will need a lot of fact-checking. The truth is that Iowa doesn’t have a budget deficit, and the independent analysts who have given our state the highest bond rating recognize our relatively strong fiscal position. Like every other state, Iowa experienced a steep drop in revenues because of the recession, but unlike most other states, we have not fully depleted our cash reserves.

Which Republican candidate will come across as the most fiscally responsible person today? Will it be:

Terry Branstad, whose mismanagement was so legendary that a number of elected Republicans favored his primary challenger in 1994?

Bob Vander Plaats, whose management skills don’t seem to have helped his non-profit thrive financially, and who did a 180-degree turn on tax credits between March 2009 and January 2010?

Or Rod Roberts, who is so very serious about the governor’s responsibilities that he thinks adopting a state budget is of secondary importance to stopping same-sex marriage?

The floor is yours.

UPDATE: I still haven’t had a chance to watch the debate, but fortunately, Iowa Public Television will air it tonight at 8 pm. Over at Iowa Independent, Jason Hancock thought Vander Plaats won but “never achieved the game-changing moment his campaign needed.” Todd Dorman didn’t see a lot of substance or new ideas on display and partly blamed the debate format.

Later today the three Republican candidates for governor will hold their first debate. When discussing state fiscal issues, they are likely to advance two contradictory arguments. First, they will criticize alleged “overspending” by Iowa Democrats, ignoring the good marks our state has received for fiscal management and the fact that severe state budget cuts would be a big drag on the economy. I will address those points in a future post.

Second, the Republican candidates for governor will criticize spending reductions Democrats included in next year’s budget, on the grounds that those cuts will force corresponding increases in property taxes statewide. It’s true that many Iowans will pay more in property taxes because of changes related to the “rollback” calculation, which “determines the percentage of a property’s actual value that will be taxable” in a given year. Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Rants explained here why the rollback figure is on the rise. It has nothing to do with the tough choices Democrats made on the 2011 budget.

Rants and other Republicans are wrong to suggest that any cut in state spending will automatically lead to further property tax hikes. (They’ve been making that claim since Governor Chet Culver’s across-the-board budget cut last October.) Here’s just one example of why their assumptions are flawed. The Des Moines Register reported Tuesday on how Des Moines area school districts are coping with budget shortages. All of the districts will receive less from the state in the next fiscal year. Thankfully, the cuts are smaller than the worst-case scenarios floated in February, because Iowa House and Senate Democrats sought to protect K-12 education from severe budget cuts.

Anyway, all Iowa school districts are adapting to the reduction in state funding. But contrary to what Iowa Republicans are telling you, many districts, including the state’s largest in Des Moines, have ruled out property tax increases. Of the 10 central Iowa school districts mentioned in this article, only three are raising property taxes, and one more is considering that step. The others are cutting expenses and in some cases using money from cash reserves to cover the shortfalls in the coming fiscal year.

Some local governments in Iowa will raise property tax rates, but as with school districts, many will get by with spending or service cuts instead. I support additional federal fiscal aid to local and state governments, because the collapse in revenues is the most severe in six decades, and spending cuts could hamper the economic recovery. But naturally, the same Republicans who scream about property tax hikes are against using “one-time federal money” to help balance budgets.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Senator Chuck Grassley is still misleading Iowans about what’s in the health insurance reform bill Congress passed last month. On April 1 he had this to say in Mason City:

Several residents were worried about what would happen to their health care premiums now that the president has signed the health care law. The mandate requiring everyone to purchase health insurance was also a worry.

“It’s questionable whether the federal government can require you to buy anything,” Grassley said.

One woman asked Grassley if federal funds connected to the health care law could be used to pay for abortions.

Grassley said he believes that the subsidies the poor will receive to purchase insurance could be used to pay for abortion. Democrats believe an executive order signed by President Obama at the insistence of Michigan Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak stops any federal funds from being used for to pay for abortions.

“I think he was sold a bill of goods that an executive order would take care of it,” Grassley said. “I am pro-life and that’s how I feel about it.”

Grassley conveniently failed to mention that he supported a health insurance mandate in 1993, in 2007 and even last summer. He only started questioning the legality of a mandate last fall. Contrary to what he told the Mason City crowd, legal scholars don’t think much of the constitutional arguments against health reform. It’s also ludicrous for Grassley to charge that federal funds will be used for abortions. On the contrary, Obama’s executive order is likely to end all private insurance coverage of abortion, even for women who don’t receive a dime in government subsidies.

Grassley is smart enough not to call health insurance reform “socialist”, but when someone in the Mason City audience asked about the government taking stock in General Motors and some large banks, Grassley drew applause by saying, “If you’re listed in the Yellow Pages, I guess the president thinks that the government ought to nationalize you.”

As far as I can tell, Grassley is no longer claiming that health insurance reform will let the government “pull the plug on grandma.” A poll taken in late February found that a majority of Iowans think Grassley “embarrassed” our state by making that allegation last summer. In the same poll, only 42 percent of respondents said Grassley should be re-elected. The poll results were released this week; Iowa Independent analyzed the results here, and Senate Guru did the same in this guest post at Bleeding Heartland.

The Senate race still looks like Grassley’s to lose, but Iowans are aware that the senator stretched the truth about end-of-life counseling. We need to call him out on his other distortions too, like his claims about student loan reform. According to Grassley’s pretzel logic, ending big federal subsidies to banks will somehow impose a “tax” on students.

I encourage all Iowa Democrats to get involved in supporting one of Grassley’s challengers: Roxanne Conlin, Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause.

This April is shaping up to be a relatively quiet month in Iowa politics, with the legislature already adjourned for the year. However, after the jump you’ll find details for many events coming up soon. Please post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you know of an event I’ve left out.

I have also posted information about an internship opportunity for women who would like to work on a sustainable farm, as well as a grant opportunity called “Iowa Sun4Schools.” It’s for Iowa schools that may want to install a solar array: “In addition to supplying electricity to the facility, the solar array will serve as an educational and research tool, and as a symbol of the schools commitment to saving energy and reducing their carbon footprint.”

UPDATE: Iowa nonprofit, charitable and government organizations have until April 16 to nominate people for the Governor’s Volunteer Award.

SECOND UPDATE: The Fred Phelps freak show is coming back to Des Moines on April 10 to protest a constitutional law symposium on same-sex marriage at Drake University. Click here for details about counter-protests being planned.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has been under pressure lately. Since he took over in January 2009, the RNC has spent far more than it has raised, and the latest numbers show the Democratic National Committee ahead of the RNC in cash of hand (which is highly unusual). Major Republican donors have been fleeing the RNC for various reasons, including staffers’ embarrassing fundraising proposals and massive overspending on luxury hotels, limos and nightclubs. Today RNC Chief of Staff Ken McKay resigned, prompting one of Steele’s advisers to leave in what Jonathan Martin described as “a full-scale bloodletting”:

“Leadership requires that I can safely assure you, our donors, and the American people that our mission is what drives every dollar we spend, every phone call we make, every email we send and every event we organize,” Steele wrote in the email [sent to RNC members and donors on Monday], obtained by POLITICO. “Recent events have called that assurance into question and the buck stops with me. That is why I have made this change in my management team and why I am confident about going forward to November with renewed focus and energy.”

McKay didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

But his apparent firing has roiled the close-knit world of GOP operatives and Monday night longtime Republican strategist and Steele adviser Curt Anderson said his consulting firm would no longer be working with the RNC.

“Ken McKay’s departure is a huge loss for the Republican Party,” Anderson said in a statement to POLITICO. “Ken steered the party through very successful elections last fall that have given us tremendous momentum. He’s a great talent. Given our firm’s commitments to campaigns all over the country we have concluded it is best for us to step away from our advisory role at the RNC. We have high personal regard for the Chairman and always have; we wish him well.”

It’s hard to see how the turmoil at the RNC won’t end with Steele’s departure, although Josh Marshall argued today that Steele

can’t be fired, in significant measure, because he’s black. Because canning Steele now would only drive home the reality that Republicans were trying to paper over, fairly clumsily, when they hired him in the first place. So Republicans are stuck with his myriad goofs and #pressfails and incompetent management and all the rest because of a set of circumstances entirely of their own making.

Hey, don’t blame Iowa’s RNC members; they voted for Katon Dawson over Steele in January 2009. But I must say I doubt a guy who became a Republican because the government desegregated his high school, and more recently belonged to an all-white country club, would have been the right man to rebuild the GOP’s image.

Governor Chet Culver today signed into law the ban on texting while driving. This chart at the Iowa Senate Democrats blog shows the relevant prohibitions and exceptions. The House Democrats blog summarizes key points:

House File 2456 prohibits the use of all electronic and mobile devices while driving for those under the age of 18.  Persons over 18 may not use a hand-held electronic device to read, write, or send a text message while driving. Violators will be charged with a simple misdemeanor and a $30 fine.  If texting is the cause of an accident that results in serious injury or death, penalties increase up to a $1000 fine and 180 day license suspension.

Law enforcement cannot stop or detain a person only for suspected violations of texting and local governments are not allowed to adopt their own ordinances.  When the new law takes effect on July 1, law enforcement will begin an education campaign and will only write warning citations for the first year before the enhanced penalties and fines begin to apply.

Click here for the full text and bill history of House File 2456. It’s a reasonable compromise between a broad texting ban approved by the Iowa Senate in February and an Iowa House version that would have applied only to teenage drivers. State Representative Curt Hanson, a retired driver’s education teacher, headed the committee that drafted the compromise language. Texting is dangerous for older drivers as well as for teens.

The new law specifies that police cannot pull someone over solely for a suspected texting violation because while this bill was under consideration, some activists alleged that the texting ban would give officers another excuse for racially-motivated traffic stops and arrests. A group paid for robocalls in some House Democrats’ districts, seeking to generate calls against the new law. Excerpt from one such call, which you can listen to here: “This has nothing to do with safety–they just want another reason to pull you over and to harrass you.”

While the texting ban is a step in the right direction, drivers ought to go further and stop using their cell phones while the vehicle is moving. Driving while talking on the phone has been shown to be as dangerous as drunk driving. Cell phones are estimated to cause 1.4 million crashes a year in the U.S., and hands-free phones are no safer for drivers than hand-held phones. For more background, read the New York Times series of reports last summer on the dangers of cell phone use while driving. I know someone who is normally a good driver but rear-ended another vehicle recently while glancing down to see who was calling her cell phone.

Politically, restricting cell phone use while driving won’t be possible in Iowa until some high-profile accident claims lives here. Too often it takes a tragedy (with sympathetic victims) to spur lawmakers to act.  

The Iowa Environmental Council sent out an action alert on water quality last Friday. Excerpt:

As you know, the 2010 legislative session ended this past Tuesday.  Thanks to your emails to your elected officials,

   * we were able to stop a dirty water bill, which would have exempted many farmers from having to have adequate storage for animal manure over the winter months, and

   * final Iowa rules protecting Iowa lakes and rivers from further degradation (Antidegradation Rules) survived their final hurdle in the legislative ARRC committee.

Also, your emails also stopped the Iowa DNR from omitting hundreds of lakes, and the people swimming and recreating in them, from protection from excess nutrient pollution.

Your emails regarding these issues made a big impact on decision makers!

But our work is not over. The third round of stream assessments has been completed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. As a result, they are proposing to downgrade protections for 408 streams or stream segments!

Please go to our website at http://www.iaenvironment.org/w… to learn how you can help maintain water quality protections for hundreds of Iowa streams and stream segments.

It’s frustrating that even though Democrats control of the Iowa legislature, environmental advocates needed to mobilize against that “dirty water” bill and lobby hard to get Iowa’s new anti-degradation rules through the legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee. Now we have to worry about the DNR under a Democratic administration downgrading protection for streams when Iowa is already one of the worst states for water quality.

Please take two minutes to submit a public comment on this issue. The Iowa Environmental Council has more background information here, including public hearing dates and times, a link to a map of the affected stream segments, as well as the mailing address, fax number and e-mail of the relevant DNR official. Comments must be received by April 30.

Although the March jobs report was encouraging, the unemployment rate and the number of long-term unemployed are still at historically high levels. Unfortunately, unemployment benefits for about 200,000 Americans will run out soon because Congress adjourned for its Easter recess before resolving an dispute over extending those and other benefits. The Hill reports:

The interruption in benefits will last two weeks at a minimum, according to Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), since lawmakers return from spring break on April 12.

As the two-week recess began, Congress was at an impasse over how to extend the emergency unemployment insurance program and other expiring provisions, including increased COBRA health insurance subsidies for the unemployed, the Medicare doctor payment rate and federal flood insurance.

Senate Republicans said the $9.3 billion, 30-day extension preferred by Democrats should be paid for, while Democrats said the bill’s cost didn’t need to be offset because the program was “emergency spending.”

Under the jobless benefits program that ends Monday, Americans out of work are eligible for up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. The program, aimed at helping jobless Americans stay afloat when new jobs aren’t readily available, gives an unemployed worker more than the 26 weeks of unemployment insurance normally available. But with the program ending, those out of work for as few as six months will see an interruption in their benefit checks.

I love how Republicans who approved every blank check for war in Iraq and every tax cut for the top 1 percent now demand that unemployment benefits be “paid for.” I don’t expect them to hold up action on unemployment benefits forever, but even if Democrats are able to apply extensions retroactively later this month, a lot of families will experience real hardship in the meantime. Democrats should not have adjourned for Easter before dealing with this issue. I hope they pass a bill to extend the benefits until the end of the year, so these battles won’t recur every month.

In an April 2 statement regarding the latest jobs report, Senator Tom Harkin outlined additional steps needed to help people looking for work:

“First, Congress must overcome the obstructionism that is holding up an extension of unemployment insurance.  This critical safety net expires Monday and will leave nearly 38,000 Americans and 1,200 Iowans without benefits they need while they look for work.  In addition, we must take immediate action to prevent job losses among our nation’s teachers – to protect the quality of education – and we need to pass job creating legislation.  When Congress returns, I intend to move immediately on those efforts.”

UPDATE: Mike Lillis has more on benefits expiring and next steps in the Senate.

One year ago today, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that our state’s Defense of Marriage Act violated the equal protection provision of the Iowa Constitution. From the day that ruling went into effect through the end of 2009, at least 1,783 same-sex couples received marriage licenses in Iowa. The real number is probably higher, because about 900 marriage licenses did not specify the gender of the couple involved.

Follow me after the jump for a review of news about marriage equality in Iowa, stories featuring happy couples, and thoughts about the future politics of this issue.  

Terry Branstad leads Governor Chet Culver by 50 percent to 34 percent, according to a new survey by the Republican firm Magellan Data and Mapping Strategies. Culver polled 40 percent against Bob Vander Plaats, who was nearly tied with the governor at 39 percent. Culver led Rod Roberts 38 percent to 32 percent in this poll. Magellan surveyed 1,353 “likely Iowa general election voters” on March 30, and the poll has a margin of error of 2.7 percent. Several pollsters have now found Branstad at or above 50 percent against Culver, but this statistic is even more worrying:

Among the key voter subgroup of Iowa independent voters, which Magellan projects to constitute 25% of voter turnout in November, Chet Culver trails Terry Branstad by 34 points, 55% to 21%, trails Bob Vander Plaats by 7 points 36% to 29%, and is statistically tied with Rod Roberts 28% to 29%.

Recent polls by Selzer and Rasmussen have also found Branstad way ahead of Culver among no-party voters. The governor has work to do with this group. There’s no guarantee that Magellan’s likely voter screen is accurate, but no-party voters did constitute about 26 percent of the electorate in the 2006 general election.

Magellan’s numbers for Culver’s and President Barack Obama’s approval ratings were lower than I’ve seen in any other Iowa poll. Culver was at 30 percent approval/56 percent disapproval, and his favorability ratings were 33 percent favorable/58 percent unfavorable. About 48 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Branstad, while 36 percent had an unfavorable opinion. President Obama was at 42 percent approval/50 percent disapproval.

The Congressional generic ballot numbers also leaned Republican. Magellan asked, “If the election for Congress was being held today, and all you knew about the two candidates was that one was a Democrat and the other was a Republican, for whom would you vote?” Statewide, 40 percent of respondents said Republican, 33 percent said Democrat and 27 percent were undecided. Republicans led the generic ballot in all three Democratic-held House districts, including a difficult-to-believe six-point edge in Dave Loebsack’s district (IA-02), which traditionally has the strongest Democratic voting performance. (Keep in mind that the margin of error for subgroups in a poll is larger than the margin of error for results including the whole sample.) In this thread at The Iowa Republican blog, commenter dblhelix noted,

The [likely voter] model is extremely tight, w/ 86% responding “extremely likely” / 9% “very likely” on voter participation. I can believe R +1/large nr of undecideds in CD3 at this time, but R+6 in CD2? The “less reliable” Dem voters will fill that in, easily. Throw some points back to Dems, but the ballots in CD1-CD3 remain competitive, and again, it’s [voters aged] 35-44 driving this.

As a general rule, the tighter the likely voter screen, the more a poll will favor Republican candidates. From that perspective, it’s surprising that Branstad’s lead over Culver is “only” 16 percent. I doubt that Iowa’s first or second Congressional districts will turn out to be competitive races this fall, but no Democrat should be complacent. Our success in the Congressional races and especially in the battleground statehouse districts will depend on turning out people who wouldn’t tell a pollster in March that they are “extremely likely” to vote.  

Click here to download files containing topline results, crosstabs and a presentation summarizing the results of the Magellan poll. The survey also included issue questions on health care reform and the federal stimulus bill, among other things. Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Finally, a decent monthly job report. Here are some highlights, brought to you by Meteor Blades:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics stated in its seasonally adjusted report that some 162,000 new jobs were created in March, the best showing since March 2007, but somewhat below the consensus of experts surveyed earlier in the week. The official unemployment rate held steady at 9.7%. Some 15 million Americans are officially out of work.

The U6 unemployment rate, an alternative measure that includes underemployed Americans as well as a portion of those too discouraged to have looked for jobs recently, rose to 16.9%. […]

Some 48,000 of the new hires are temporary jobs with the Census. Hiring for the decennial count of the population will continue through June, with an estimated 1.15 million workers eventually hired. As a consequence of the short term nature of these jobs, experts will be largely discounting public employment when judging the health of the labor market during this period. Employment rose in construction, manufacturing, health care and temporary services. It held steady in transportation and warehousing, leisure and hospitality, the retail trade, and wholesale trade. There were losses in the information industry and financial services.

BLS revisions lowered the job losses in January from the 26,000 reported last month to a gain of 14,000 and reduced the job losses for February from 36,000 to 14,000. Average hourly earnings fell 0.1% in March.

Click over for more details and charts. It’s going to be a very long climb out of this recession, which was the most severe in seven decades in terms of job losses. Blades notes that if the economy created 200,000 jobs a month from now on, “it would take until October 2013 before the number of employed Americans equaled those with a job in December 2007, when the recession began.”

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Former Governor Terry Branstad’s campaign announced today that two television commercials will begin airing statewide on Monday, April 5. That’s two days before the first debate between the three Republican candidates for governor and about nine weeks before the June 8 primary.

The Branstad campaign will run this 60-second ad called “Ready”, which first aired during UNI’s NCAA basketball game last week, and this 30-second ad called “I Know Iowa.” The “Ready” ad intersperses Branstad’s campaign promises with testimonials about his character and talents. I can’t embed the 30-second ad here, but it features footage of Branstad with lots of different Iowans, as well as his campaign bus driving toward the state capitol building. The candidate himself does the voice-over for the shorter ad, and here’s my rough transcript:

Iowans are genuinely fearful and concerned, but also, people are hopeful. They know that we have the ability to come back. They’ve seen it done before. We can create 200,000 jobs. We can increase family incomes by 25 percent. We can reduce the size and cost of government, and we can make our education system the best in America. I love this state, and I love the people of this state, because I know given the opportunity, Iowans will always exceed expectations.

Both commercials convey the central theme of the Branstad campaign: he can lead Iowa out of tough times and back to greatness. I don’t see substance backing up Branstad’s campaign promises, but for the most part Iowa journalists are giving him a free pass. I question whether his Republican opponents will be able to make an effective case against him. Branstad probably will be the only candidate advertising on television for several weeks. It’s not clear that Bob Vander Plaats and Rod Roberts have the resources to run even two weeks of commercials statewide. Vander Plaats has a stronger potential grassroots network given his experience with Mike Huckabee’s campaign and the support of the Iowa Family Policy Center, but Roberts seems to be competing for the same conservative voters Vander Plaats is targeting.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

Swing State Project posted its initial competitive House ratings chart yesterday. On one level, the chart is terrifying, because Democrats hold so many more of the seats in play than Republicans do. On the other hand, I found the chart a bit reassuring, in that Republicans would have to win about two-thirds of the tossup seats and about one-third of the “lean Democrat” seats in order to take back the House majority. That is a tall order when the National Republican Congressional Committee has so much less cash on hand than the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Republican National Committee is spending like there’s no election in seven months. Corporate-funded PACs and Republican 527s will spend money on behalf of many GOP candidates, but I still think the cash-strapped NRCC will end up leaving seats on the table.

Swing State Project commenters have been debating prospects for various House races in this thread. Click over to read the chart, then come back and share your thoughts or predictions about any of the competitive House races.

The only Iowa district Swing State Project considers competitive is the third, where seven Republican challengers are competing for the chance to face seven-term incumbent Leonard Boswell. I haven’t seen any public or internal polling on this race. Swing State Project’s “lean D” rating is defensible, because Boswell underperformed the top of the Democratic ticket in 2006 and 2008. However, Boswell is continuing to raise money while the winner of the GOP primary will probably be broke. I’ve talked to several political types who think State Senator Brad Zaun will beat the insiders’ favorite Jim Gibbons in that primary, which could put the NRCC off making big play for this district. Even if Gibbons wins the primary, I doubt the NRCC will spend serious money here. Our state is losing a district after the 2010 census, and the winner of the IA-03 election will probably be thrown into the same district as Tom Latham for 2012. So beating Boswell wouldn’t deliver a long-term gain for the GOP. Beltway Republicans trying to allocate scarce resources have dozens of targets that look more inviting than this district.

The floor is yours.

As you probably heard yesterday, President Barack Obama announced plans to expand drilling for oil off the Atlantic coast of the U.S.. Not only that, he insulted environmental advocates and their “tired” arguments against drilling.

I have nothing profound to say about this decision, but when even a big Obama fan like Oliver Willis says the administration “Clearly Took Stupid Pills Today,” that ought to tell you something. Increasing our offshore extraction of oil won’t reduce our reliance on imports from the Middle East, and Obama knows it won’t. This is just a political ploy to win some votes in the Senate while making the president look like he holds the reasonable middle ground.

Once again, Obama makes a big concession to the corporate/Republican position at the beginning of the negotiating process, without gaining anything concrete in return. A good negotiator would make that kind of concession to close the deal, and only in exchange for something significant (like a hugely ambitious renewable electricity standard).

The Senate energy bill (let’s not even pretend it’s a “climate change” bill anymore) will probably allow more offshore drilling that the president announced, and that will probably be fine with the White House. Environmentalists will be asked to clap louder at “progress” or be grateful that Obama didn’t sell us out in a more egregious way.

I am tired of having to fight this kind of battle when the Democrats control Washington. It’s another reason I probably will never again give to Democratic committees at the levels I did from 2004 through 2007.

UPDATE: I recommend reading this post at EnviroKnow: “Dems More Trusted on Energy than Any Other Issue, Yet they Continue Pursuing Polluter-Friendly GOP Ideas.”

With 37 governor’s races coming up this November, the Republican Governor’s Association and the Democratic Governor’s Association are pulling in big money. The RGA “raised $9 million in the first quarter of 2010 and has $31 million cash on hand,” CNN reported yesterday. The DGA raised $8 million during the first quarter, setting a new record for the organization, and has $22 million on hand. A DGA press release noted that first-quarter receipts in 2010 exceeded the organization’s fundraising during the first six months of 2006.

The RGA and DGA set fundraising records in 2009, with the Republican organization bringing in $30 million and its Democratic counterpart raising $23 million during the off-year. I expect both groups to spend money in Iowa this year.

I’m pleasantly surprised that the DGA has been able to stay so competitive with the RGA’s fundraising in 2010. The first couple of months of the year were rocky for Democrats, and many major Republican donors have been fleeing the Republican National Committee for various reasons, including RNC staffers’ embarrassing fundraising plans and massive overspending on luxury hotels, limos and nightclubs. I suspect a lot of contributions that would have gone to the RNC in other years are flowing to the RGA.

Yesterday’s press release from the DGA noted:

Since 2006, the DGA has compiled an impressive winning record on targeted races. In the six races where both governors committees have spent at least $500,000, DGA has won four.  […]

The strong first quarter fundraising piggybacks on two consecutive record-breaking years for the DGA and builds on what was already the largest cash-on-hand in organizational history. With $22 million already in the bank, the DGA will spend more on races in 2010 than it spent in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. Grassroots donors are fired up about the GOP’s redistricting takeover plan and they boosted the DGA tothe $8 million mark with a surge of contributions in the final days of the first quarter.

“Even as we’re raising more than ever before, we’re spending that money wisely,” said Nathan Daschle, the DGA’s executive director. “We’ve trimmed our operating expenses significantly so that we can put more resources where it matters – into the races on the ground – and our burn rate is the lowest it’s ever been. We are committed to spending every dollar wisely because the stakes are so high – Republicans are planning to win so many governorships that they can redistrict themselves back to power.”

Some of the key redistricting states with competitive gubernatorial elections include California, Texas, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Iowa will lose a Congressional district after the 2010 census, but our state’s governor has little influence over the redistricting process.

April 1 is the U.S. Census Bureau’s target date for Americans to fill out and return their census forms. Every 1 percent increase in the census mail-back rate saves the U.S. Census Bureau about $85 million. After April 10, the bureau will start sending out census-takers to households that did not return their forms. President Barack Obama filled out his own family’s form and declared today “Census Day”:

The First Ladys mother lives with the family in the White House. Since the census asks for a count of everyone currently living in the household – not just immediate family – the President included his mother-in-law on his census form.

In these difficult economic times its common for extended family and friends to live with another family, yet many households mistakenly leave these individuals off their census forms.

Mr. desmoinesdem and I filled out our family’s form and mailed it back a couple of weeks ago. There are no “long forms” anymore; everyone gets the short survey with just 10 questions.

As of this morning, the national census participation rate was 52 percent; you can click on this interactive map to find participation rates in your area. Today Iowa ranked fifth among the states with a 60 percent participation rate. South Dakota and Wisconsin tied for first place with a 62 percent participation rate, and North Dakota and Nebraska tied for third with 61 percent. Within Iowa, a few towns had participation rates exceeding 80 percent. About 63 percent of households in my corner of the state, Windsor Heights, have returned their census forms so far.

Although some conservatives hyperventilate about the demographic questions on the census form, recording the race and ethnicity of U.S. residents helps the government “execute and monitor laws and programs that are targeted to specific groups.” Like conservative arguments about the legality of health insurance reform, objections to the census questions have no basis in constitutional law:

On numerous occasions, the courts have said the Constitution gives Congress the authority to collect statistics in the census. As early as 1870, the Supreme Court characterized as unquestionable the power of Congress to require both an enumeration and the collection of statistics in the census. The Legal Tender Cases, Tex.1870; 12 Wall., U.S., 457, 536, 20 L.Ed. 287. In 1901, a District Court said the Constitution’s census clause (Art. 1, Sec. 2, Clause 3) is not limited to a headcount of the population and “does not prohibit the gathering of other statistics, if ‘necessary and proper,’ for the intelligent exercise of other powers enumerated in the constitution, and in such case there could be no objection to acquiring this information through the same machinery by which the population is enumerated.” United States v. Moriarity, 106 F. 886, 891 (S.D.N.Y.1901).

The census does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Morales v. Daley, 116 F. Supp. 2d 801, 820 (S.D. Tex. 2000). In concluding that there was no basis for holding Census 2000 unconstitutional, the District Court in Morales ruled that the 2000 Census and the 2000 Census questions did not violate the Fourth Amendment or other constitutional provisions as alleged by plaintiffs. (The Morales court said responses to census questions are not a violation of a citizen’s right to privacy or speech.) […]

These decisions are consistent with the Supreme Court’s recent description of the census as the “linchpin of the federal statistical system … collecting data on the characteristics of individuals, households, and housing units throughout the country.” Dept. of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316, 341 (1999).

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Representatives Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack are among 105 co-sponsors of H.R. 4812, the Local Jobs for America Act. The bill “would provide direct funding to local governments to create, restore or save up to one million public and private jobs for the next two years.” According to the House Education and Labor Committee, the bill includes “$75 billion over two years to local communities to hire vital staff” and “[f]unding for 50,000 on-the-job private-sector training positions.” Some provisions that the House of Representatives approved in separate legislation are included in this bill too, such as $23 billion to “help states support 250,000 education jobs” and extra money for law enforcement and firefighters. Groups endorsing the bill include the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Job creation needs to remain a top priority, because the latest recession saw the most severe employment drop the U.S. has experienced in the last seven decades. Congress recently approved a small jobs bill focused on tax credits and Build America Bonds, but direct support for state local budgets would probably have more stimulative effect. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has warned, government spending cuts “are problematic policies during an economic downturn because they reduce overall demand and can make the downturn deeper.” If the federal government can soften the blow for state and local governments, the risk of a double-dip recession will be reduced.

I am seeking comment from Representative Leonard Boswell’s office about why he’s not co-sponsoring H.R. 4812 and will update this post when I hear back.

President Barack Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act yesterday, which amended the health insurance reform bill and changed the student loan system. I’m not wild about the health reform, which made almost every concession major industries wanted, but the student loan reform is without question a step in the right direction. As Obama noted yesterday, the bill pitted “the interests of the banks and financial institutions against the interests of students.” For once Congress did the right thing by moving to a system of direct student lending. The money saved by not subsidizing private banks that make student loans will support Pell Grants and several other programs.

Today the White House released a summary of benefits that student loan reform will bring to Iowans. The Pell Grant increases will mean an extra $291 million for Iowa students by the 2020-2021 academic year. Increases for the College Access Challenge Grant Program will bring about $7.5 million to Iowa over the next four years, and during the same period our state will receive at least $10 million over four years from a program aimed at community colleges and career training institutions. I’ve posted more details about those and other benefits after the jump.

Who could be against student loan reform that increases grants for students while saving the government money? Leave it to Republican Senator Chuck Grassley to find some convoluted way to characterize this reform as a “tax” on college students. Click over to Radio Iowa to read more. The Iowa Democratic Party blasted Grassley’s distortion as well as his abysmal voting record on student loans and grants. An excerpt from that release is after the jump as well.

Terry Branstad seems to have been around Iowa politics forever, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new to learn about him. This week I learned that in 2007, Branstad joined former Democratic Governor Tom Vilsack to advocate for new health insurance mandates in Iowa. More on that and other Branstad news can be found after the jump.

The Iowa House and Senate adjourned for 2010 today, wrapping up the legislative session in just 79 days. In the coming weeks I will post about various bills that passed or failed to pass during the session. For now, you can read wrap-up posts at Iowa Independent, IowaPolitics.com, the Des Moines Register and Radio Iowa.

Democratic legislative leaders said the House and Senate “succeeded in responsibly balancing the budget without raising taxes while laying the groundwork for Iowa’s economic recovery.” Governor Chet Culver described the session as “a real victory for Iowans, particularly hardworking Iowa families.” He also hailed passage of an infrastructure bill including the final installment of the I-JOBS state bonding program. AFSCME Iowa Council 61 praised several bills that passed this year, such as the government reorganization bill, the early retirement program and a budget that saved many public employees’ jobs.

Republicans and their traditional interest-group allies saw things differently, of course. House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley and Iowans for Tax Relief all emphasized the use of one-time federal dollars to help cover state spending. Their talking points have made headway with Kathie Obradovich, but the reality is that much of the federal stimulus money was intended to backfill state budgets, and rightly so, because severe state spending cuts can deepen and prolong an economic recession.

Overall, I am not satisfied with the legislature’s work in 2010. Despite the massive costs of reconstruction after the 2008 floods, legislators lacked the political will to take any steps forward on floodplain management. Despite the film tax credit fiasco, not enough was done to rein in tax credits. Many other good ideas fell by the wayside for lack of time during the rushed session. (It strikes me as penny-wise and pound-foolish to save $800,000 by shortening the legislative calendar from 100 to 80 days.) Some other good proposals got bogged down in disagreements between the House and the Senate. Labor and environmental advocates once again saw no progress on their key legislative priorities, yet this Democratic-controlled legislature found the time to pass the top priority of the National Rifle Association. Pathetic.

On the plus side, the 2011 budget protected the right priorities, and most of the projects funded by the infrastructure spending bill, Senate File 2389, are worthwhile. Some good bills affecting public safety and veterans made it through. In addition, Democrats blocked a lot of bad Republican proposals. Credit must also go to the leaders who held their caucuses together against efforts to write discrimination into the Iowa Constitution.

Any relevant thoughts are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Read Todd Dorman on the Iowa House’s “parting gift to local government officials who like to play secret agent on your dime.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote to the head of the insurance industry’s lobbying arm yesterday warning against efforts to continue to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Excerpt from the letter, which you can download as a pdf file at Greg Sargent’s blog:

Health insurance reform is designed to prevent any child from being denied coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition. Leaders in Congress have reaffirmed this in recent days in the attached statement. To ensure that there is no ambiguity on this point, I am preparing to issue regulations in the weeks ahead ensuring that the term “pre-existing condition exclusion” applies to both a child’s access to a plan and to his or her benefits once he or she is in the plan. These regulations will further confirm that beginning in September, 2010:

*Children with pre-existing conditions may not be denied access to their parents’ health insurance plan;

*Insurance companies will no longer be allowed to insure a child, but exclude treatments for that child’s pre-existing condition.

I urge you to share this information with your members and to help ensure that they cease any attempt to deny coverage to some of the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.

A spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent Sargent the following statement:

The intent of Congress to end discrimination against children was crystal clear, and as the House chairs said last week, the fact that insurance companies would even try to deny children coverage exemplifies why the health reform legislation was so vital. Secretary Sebelius isn’t going to let insurance companies discriminate against children, and no one in the industry should think otherwise.

Let’s hope this works. I wouldn’t be surprised to see insurance companies challenge the new regulations in court. They must have been counting on that loophole to save them money during the next few years.

UPDATE: David Dayen is probably right about the insurance companies’ motives here:

You can pretty much figure out AHIP’s game here. With no restrictions on cost until 2014, the industry can raise their premium prices almost at will. Even the bad publicity suffered from that 39% rate hike of Anthem Blue Cross [of California] plan has not stopped that scheduled increase from taking effect in May. And when outrage is expressed by families facing double-digit rate hikes, AHIP will clear their throats and blame the pre-existing condition exclusion for children, forcing the poor insurance companies to take on a sicker risk pool and raise prices to survive.

Except covering kids is fairly cheap to begin with. And the universe of kids with a pre-existing condition who aren’t covered through SCHIP, Medicaid, or an employer plan is extremely small. So by making a big issue of this, AHIP potentially sets up large rate hikes in the 2010-2014 period that aren’t at all justified.

The State Central Committee of the Republican Party of Iowa voted yesterday to hold the state GOP convention in Des Moines yet again this June. Bret Hayworth reports:

Sioux City area Republicans pushed hard to land the convention after several consecutive years of the event being held in Des Moines. [..]

It was news that made Bill Anderson of tiny Pierson, a member of the Iowa GOP state central committee, quite disappointed. Anderson, who happens to be running for Iowa Senate District 27, voted for Sioux City, but he was one of only two to do so. He said the vote broke down as 10 for DM, three for Cedar Rapids and two for Sioux City, while two members didn’t take part.

“I am surprised that it was so lopsided,” Anderson said.

In the last two decades, the convention has been held outside of Des Moines, although the couple of times it happened, Cedar Rapids was the only other site. So coming to Sioux City in far western Iowa would have been a break from tradition.

Anderson said with a Sioux City siting, the delegates would have found plenty of hospitable folks eager to show them a good time while the convention played out in venues like the picturesque Orpheum Theatre.

Don’t take it personally, Mr. Anderson. Sioux City will probably host a state convention someday, but choosing that location this year would have been too risky. With four Republicans running for Congress in Iowa’s second district and seven running in Iowa’s third district, there is a good chance that no candidate will win 35 percent of the vote in the June 8 primary. In that case, the Republican nominees in IA-02 and/or IA-03 would be selected by a district convention, which would probably convene during the GOP state convention in late June. Republican commentators had already expressed concern that turnout from central and eastern Iowa would suffer if delegates were asked to drive four to seven hours each way to the convention location.

Getting to Des Moines will be much easier for delegates in the second and especially the third districts. The main logistical problem for Republicans coming to the state convention this summer will be finding hotel rooms here during the same weekend as the Des Moines Arts Festival.

Happy Passover to those in the Bleeding Heartland community who celebrate the holiday. You don’t have to be Jewish to attend a seder. President Obama is having one in the White House.

Our seder plate is “fired up and ready to go” with a beet in place of the shankbone (it’s an accepted alternative). We also follow the relatively new tradition of placing an orange on the seder plate. Here’s why.

Consider this an open thread.

Two Democrats are running for Congress in Iowa’s fifth district this year. It’s an uphill climb in a Republican-leaning part of the state, but I appreciate their commitment to challenge Steve King. While King’s embarrassing antics provide a lot of material for this blog, western Iowa deserves a representative who’s not a repeat winner of Keith Olbermann’s “worst person of the world” award.

Learn more about the candidates at their websites: Matt Campbell for Congress and Mike Denklau for Congress. Blog for Iowa recently interviewed both candidates about a wide range of issues. Here’s part 1 and part 2 of the Campbell interview. Here’s part 1, part 2 and part 3 of the Denklau interview.

I don’t plan to get involved in this primary, because from what I’ve read, both Campbell and Denklau seem highly capable, and either would be an enormous improvement over Steve “10 Worst” King. However, I encourage other Bleeding Heartland users to write diaries about the fifth district campaign. Feel free to advocate for your candidate, as NWIA Granny has done, cover a public appearance by either candidate, or compare where Campbell and Denklau stand on the issues.

This Thursday, April 1, from 7 pm to 8 pm, Ed and Lynn Fallon will cover the Steve King “phenomenon” on the Fallon Forum radio show. You can listen at 98.3 WOW-FM and on-line at www.983wowfm.com. If you want to call in to the show, the numbers are (515) 312-0983 or (866) 908-TALK. A podcast will be available later at this site.

State attorneys general have filed two federal lawsuits challenging the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, which President Barack Obama signed into law last week. Those lawsuits look like pure political posturing to me, given the well-established Congressional powers to regulate interstate commerce and taxation.

It turns out that precedent for a health insurance mandate is much older than the 1930s Supreme Court rulings on the Commerce Clause. Thanks to Paul J. O’Rourke for the history lesson:

In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.

This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax, as a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship’s captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.

This historical fact demolishes claims of “unprecedented” and “The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty…”

Perhaps these somewhat incompetent attorneys general might wish to amend their lawsuits to conform to the 1798 precedent, and demand that the mandate and fines be linked to implementing a federal single payer healthcare insurance plan.

O’Rourke posted the full text of the 1798 legislation as well.

I’m not one to claim American’s “Founding Fathers” could do no wrong; after all, President Adams also signed the Sedition Act, which violated the First Amendment. But Republican “strict constructionists” say we should interpret the constitution only as 18th-century Americans would have understood it. Some claim judges should cite only 18th-century sources when interpreting the constitution. Well, Congress enacted and the president signed a health insurance mandate less than a decade after the U.S. Constitution went into effect.

I don’t expect these facts to affect Republican rhetoric about health insurance reform. Thankfully, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is not wasting our state’s money on this frivolous lawsuit. So far I haven’t heard any Republicans demand his impeachment, as some GOP legislators are doing in Georgia.

After months of obstruction by Senate Republicans, the White House announced on March 27 that President Barack Obama is appointing 15 nominees while Congress is in recess:

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees.  But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis,”  said President Barack Obama. “Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate.  At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.”

Following their appointment, these nominees will remain in the Senate for confirmation.

Obama Administration appointees have faced an unprecedented level of obstruction in the Senate.

   * President Obama currently has a total of 217 nominees pending before the Senate.  These nominees have been pending for an average of 101 days, including 34 nominees pending for more than 6 months.

   * The 15 nominees President Obama intends to recess appoint have been pending for an average of 214 days or 7 months for a total of 3204 days or almost 9 years.

   * President Bush had made 15 recess appointments by this point in his presidency, but he was not facing the same level of obstruction.  At this time in 2002, President Bush had only 5 nominees pending on the floor.  By contrast, President Obama has 77 nominees currently pending on the floor, 58 of whom have been waiting for over two weeks and 44 of those have been waiting more than a month.

I put the full list of recess appointees with their bios after the jump. In the good news column, Obama named Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Unfortunately, he also named pesticide and biotech lobbyist Islam A. Siddiqui as the U.S. Trade Representative’s Chief Agricultural Negotiator. More than 100 organizations opposed Siddiqui’s nomination “as a textbook case of the ‘revolving door’ between industry and the government agencies meant to keep watch.”

Also bad news: Obama did not use his recess appointment power to name Dawn Johnsen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel. I thought she had already been confirmed, because in January it became clear that there were 60 senators supporting her nomination. However, the Senate Judiciary Committee has repeatedly postponed considering her confirmation, raising questions about whether the Obama administration really wants Johnsen to do this job.

Many Republicans in Congress are calling for repeal of the new health insurance reform law. They know that won’t happen, but it’s good political posturing, because the GOP base is fired up and ready to go against “socialist” Obamacare.

Senator Chuck Grassley is taking a more nuanced approach. As the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, he played a prominent role in crafting the bill. Now he is taking credit for a few aspects of the new law while drawing attention to a populist-sounding provision left out by Democrats.

After the House passed the Senate’s heath insurance reform on Sunday, most Iowa Republicans condemned the effort in broad terms. In contrast, Grassley released an oddly specific statement about an amendment he planned to offer to the bill containing “fixes” to health insurance reform. Grassley called for the president, White House staff and senior Congressional staff to be covered under the new health insurance system. As expected, Senate Democrats voted against all Republican amendments to the reconciliation bill, hoping to avoid another House vote on the legislation. That prompted this press release from Grassley’s office: “Senate approves unfair double standard by rejecting Grassley amendment to apply health care reforms to White House and all of Congress.” (Not every failed amendment offered by Grassley leads to a press release. I don’t recall his office drawing attention to one he offered in October, which would have cut benefits for poor people and legal immigrants in order to save private health insurers $7 billion a year.)

Grassley got some media play this week for his “double standard” framing, but a different statement from his office attracted far more attention. That release noted, “The health care legislation signed into law yesterday includes provisions Grassley co-authored to impose standards for the tax exemption of charitable hospitals for the first time.”

Anyone following this issue knows that Grassley delayed the Senate Finance Committee’s work on the health reform bill for several months, pretending to seek compromise while fundraising on a promise to defeat Obamacare and spreading false claims about what the bill would permit. Grassley then voted against the bill in the Senate Finance Committee and on the Senate floor.

Political blogs quickly publicized Grassley’s effort to brag about good things in a bill he tried to stop. The senator was even featured in a segment on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program: “Republicans farcically flustered by health reform’s passage”. Two of the Iowa Democrats running for U.S. Senate seized on Grassley’s hypocrisy as well. I posted a press release from Tom Fiegen and a memo from Roxanne Conlin’s campaign after the jump.

Grassley’s balancing act on health reform makes some political sense. He doesn’t need to play to the crowd that despises Obamacare, because the filing deadline for federal candidates in Iowa passed earlier this month. It’s too late for a conservative to mount a primary challenge against the five-term incumbent.

Meanwhile, the news media have reported many details about the new law this week, and some of the provisions are likely to be quite popular. Why should Grassley loudly condemn a law that gives tax credits to small businesses, closes the Medicare “donut hole” and lets young adults be covered on their parents’ insurance policies? If he’s trying to impress swing voters, he’s better off railing against the “double standard” of Washington elitists.  

On the other hand, swing voters might be repelled to see Grassley claim credit for reforms after he tried to “pull the plug” on health insurance reform. The senator defended himself as follows:

“So overall even though it’s got a lot of good things in it, even a lot of things that I wrote, even a lot of things that I thought up myself to help health care delivery, the bad outweighs the good, it’s just that simple.”

When the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee slammed Grassley’s posturing, Grassley’s office responded that DSCC Chairman Bob Menendez has also taken credit for provisions in bills he voted against. We’ve heard similar “two wrongs make a right” arguments from Grassley before. It doesn’t sound statesmanlike to me.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

I just saw a commercial for Terry Branstad’s gubernatorial campaign during halftime of the University of Northern Iowa’s game against Michigan State in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament. That was probably a good way to spend part of Branstad’s campaign war chest. An enormous number of Iowans must be watching that game, though who knows how many were paying attention during the halftime break. To my knowledge, this is the first television commercial run by a Republican candidate in the governor’s race.

I’ll post the video if I can find it on YouTube. The ad includes short clips from Branstad’s “comeback” speech in which he announced his candidacy. It highlights his key campaign promises: creating 200,000 new jobs, increasing family incomes by 25 percent, reducing government spending by “at least 15 percent” and giving Iowa children a world-class education. The commercial also features testimonials from unidentified Iowans about why they support Branstad (“He’s done the job before and he can do it again,” “He’s honest,” “He’s just a good man,” and so on). The viewer also sees some classic rural Iowa footage of Branstad’s campaign bus on the road, snow-covered fields, a country church and so on.

I happen to be taping the game so that my kids can watch it tomorrow, so if I have time later I will do a rough transcript of the ad. If you’re watching live, please post a comment to let me know how many times you saw the ad run during the game.

UPDATE: I didn’t do the transcript, because I found the video and posted that after the jump. Click “there’s more” if you want to watch the commercial.

LATE UPDATE: The Branstad ad ran again on Sunday during the Michigan State/Tennessee game. Craig Robinson predicted (or perhaps got a heads up) that the Branstad campaign would have bought ad time during the Elite Eight game in case UNI advanced.

The student loan reform that Congress just approved as part of the budget reconciliation bill has been overshadowed by the health insurance reform process, but it’s very good news for future college students. Senator Tom Harkin’s office summarized some benefits in a March 18 press release, which I’ve posted after the jump. The most important change is that the government will stop subsidizing banks that currently make big profits on student lending. Instead, the federal government will expand its direct student loans, saving $61 billion over 10 years. Most of the savings will go to increase Pell grants.

Just a couple of months ago, student loan reform appeared endangered because of Republican obstruction and corporate-friendly Democrats who didn’t want to cut student loan companies like Sallie Mae out of the equation. In early February, the New York Times reported on the extensive lobbying campaign against this bill. (One of the key lobbyists for the banks was Jamie Gorelick, a familiar name from Bill Clinton’s administration.)

Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate election made it even less likely that Democrats could round up 60 votes to overcome a filibuster of student loan reform.

Fortunately, Senator Tom Harkin and other strong supporters of this reform were able to get the measure included in the budget reconciliation bill that was primarily a vehicle for passing “fixes” to health insurance reform. Not only is student loan reform a good idea in itself, I agree with Jon Walker that adding it to the health reform improved the political prospects for getting the reconciliation bill through the Senate. Democrats from several states were said to be balking on the student loan reforms, but only three senators who caucus with Democrats were willing to vote no on yesterday’s reconciliation bill.

This reform is scaled back somewhat from the original proposal, which would have saved $87 billion over 10 years and passed the House of Representatives last September on a mostly party-line vote. The original proposal would have provided larger increases in Pell grant funding, because it was budget neutral. In order to be included in the budget reconciliation measure (and therefore not subject to a Republican filibuster in the Senate), the student loan reform had to reduce the deficit. But that compromise was well worth making in order to move to direct lending by the government.

Regarding health insurance reform, financial regulation and many other issues, I’m one of those “cynics and naysayers” President Obama decried in yesterday’s speech in Iowa City. But this student loan reform is a big step in the right direction, and the Democrats in the White House and Congress who kept pushing for it deserve credit.

An alert Bleeding Heartland reader in Des Moines received a brief robocall around dinnertime on Thursday, March 25. Fortunately, he did not hang up on the automated voice, but stayed on the line to get as many details as possible about the call.

The first question was whether Leonard Boswell’s vote for health care reform makes you more or less likely to vote for him. (This person responded “less likely” in an attempt to give the “correct” answer and hear more from the call.) The voice then asked two questions for “statistical purposes,” about the respondent’s gender and party affiliation. After the party ID question, the voice said thanks and ended the call without saying who paid for the call. The Bleeding Heartland reader says that he pressed *69, and a phone number with a 202 area code (Washington, DC) came up, but when he tried to dial that number he couldn’t get through–it didn’t ring.

Republicans believe Boswell is vulnerable this year, and seven candidates are competing in the GOP primary to represent Iowa’s third district (partisan voting index D+1).

I would like to hear from other Bleeding Heartland readers who received these robocalls. Was any phone number provided at the end of the call? Was any information given about who paid for the call?

I wonder whether answering that Boswell’s vote makes you “more likely” to vote for him would lead to the respondent getting a bunch of push-poll questions portraying health insurance reform in an awful light. I also wonder whether constituents of Bruce Braley (IA-01) or Dave Loebsack (IA-02) are receiving similar calls.

Please post any relevant comments in this thread or e-mail me confidentially: desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

UPDATE: Another Bleeding Heartland reader e-mailed me to report getting the same call on Boswell. This person answered “more likely” to the first question and got the same two follow-up questions “for statistical purposes.” So this sounds like a voter ID call, not a push-poll.  

Senate Republicans failed to derail passage of the budget reconciliation bill containing changes to the health insurance reform bill and to the student loan program. The vote was 56-43, with all but three Democrats (Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska) voting yes and all Republicans present voting no. The Democratic strategy was to defeat all proposed amendments, so no Democrat offered an amendment to put a public health insurance option in the bill. However, some changes to the part of the bill dealing with Pell grants were made, which means the amended version of the reconciliation bill will have to go back to the House for another vote.

I assume the House will have the votes to pass the amended reconciliation bill. In theory, House Democrats could try to add a public health insurance option, but that would require another vote in the Senate. I think leadership wants to declare victory on this issue and move on.

Speaking of health insurance reform, it turns out the bill Obama just signed had a loophole that will allow insurers to keep denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions until 2014. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claims this can be fixed through rule-making, but we’ll see. I suspect insurance companies will be able to work around most of the supposedly tough regulations in the new law. They are guaranteed more than 30 million new customers and face no new competition.

UPDATE: It wasn’t nearly as suspenseful as Sunday’s vote, but the House of Representatives passed the revised budget reconciliation bill Thursday evening by a vote of 220-207 (roll call). Just as on Sunday, all three Iowa Democrats in the House (Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack, and Leonard Boswell) voted for the bill, while Republicans Tom Latham and Steve King voted against it.

Here’s your laugh for the day: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews still thinks he was right and Representative Alan Grayson was wrong about whether changes to the health care bill could be passed using the budget reconciliation process.

The big event of the week is President Barack Obama’s visit to Iowa City today. Approximately 16,500 people requested tickets for the event, where the president will tout the benefits of the health insurance reform law he signed on Tuesday. Some 150 to 200 people showed up for last night’s Republican event opposing the new law.

I hope some Bleeding Heartland readers will post comments or a diary about today’s presidential visit.

UPDATE: Scroll down for the full text of Obama’s remarks in Iowa City, as prepared. What he said about children with pre-existing conditions being able to get insurance coverage this year isn’t accurate, unfortunately.

I’m excited about a couple of other great events for progressives this weekend. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (formerly known as Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa) holds its spring book sale from March 25-29 in the 4-H building at the State Fairgrounds. It costs $10 to get in on opening night, but admission is free for the rest of the weekend. You will find a huge selection of books in almost every category you can imagine, as well as some CDs, DVDs, comic books and posters. Mr. desmoinesdem and I always find some wonderful out-of-print children’s books. Click here for opening hours and more details. Proceeds from the book sale support Planned Parenthood’s education programs in Iowa and Nebraska.

Another free event worth checking out this weekend is the Natural Living Expo at the Polk County Convention Center in downtown Des Moines Saturday from 10-6 and Sunday from 11-4. About 150 local businesses and non-profit organizations will be represented at the expo, including Iowa farmers, green home remodelers, and cloth diaper sellers. Francis Thicke’s campaign for secretary of agriculture and Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy will have booths too. Click here for a list of vendors, free lectures and panel discussions. If you have children, bring them along, because they may enjoy the storytelling, art and activities like hula-hooping and yo-yos in the kids’ area. I’ll be helping out a couple of non-profits at the expo, so I may see you if you stop by, but I won’t be wearing my “desmoinesdem” hat.

More events coming up this weekend are listed after the jump.

Former Governor Terry Branstad maintains a 16-point lead over Governor Chet Culver, according to a new Rasmussen poll released today. The Republican pollster surveyed 500 “likely voters” in Iowa on March 17. Branstad led a match-up against Culver by 52 percent to 36 percent, similar to the 53-37 lead Branstad had in Rasmussen’s February poll. The latest poll has Bob Vander Plaats leading Culver 42-40, a slight change from the 46-40 lead Vander Plaats had in the February poll. Rasmussen found Culver leading Rod Roberts 40-38 (Roberts was not included in the February poll).

We’ve now seen several polls showing Branstad above the 50 percent mark against Culver. Clearly Culver needs to bring up his own support; Rasmussen’s survey put the governor at 41 percent approve/57 percent disapprove, and it’s never good for an incumbent to barely break 40 percent against all challengers.

Culver also needs Branstad’s numbers to come down. I have been expecting Branstad to get roughed up during the GOP primary, but I question whether Vander Plaats will have the resources to publicize his case against Branstad effectively. Roberts looks mostly like a threat to Vander Plaats from where I’m sitting, so I doubt he will make a strong case against Branstad. Chris Rants seemed determined to put Branstad’s record under scrutiny, but last month he quit the governor’s race after failing to raise enough money for a campaign.

The Republican polling firm Rasmussen conducted a one-day survey of 500 “likely voters” in Iowa on March 17. Click here for topline results.

Senator Chuck Grassley still leads all his Democratic challengers, with no statistically significant change in his lead since Rasmussen’s last Iowa poll in February. He leads Roxanne Conlin 55 percent to 36 percent (the February numbers were 53-36). Grassley leads Bob Krause 57-31 (55-33 in February), and he leads Tom Fiegen 57-28 (56-28 in February).

Instead of asking respondents whether they approved of Grassley’s work in the Senate, Rasmussen asked whether they had a favorable or unfavorable impression of the senator. He was at 66 percent very or somewhat favorable, 31 percent very or somewhat unfavorable. (The latest Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register measured Grassley’s approval at 54 percent, but favorability numbers can often run ahead of approval numbers.)

Clearly the Senate race is still Grassley’s to lose, but he’s not likely to be re-elected with the huge margins he’s had in the past. There is also plenty of time for the race to tighten up if Grassley makes big mistakes. As Senate Guru reminded us in this diary, the current fundraising quarter ends March 31. I encourage Democrats to get involved and support one of Grassley’s challengers. Here are links to donate to the Conlin campaign, the Fiegen campaign and the Krause campaign.

Other notable findings from the latest Rasmussen poll: President Barack Obama’s approve/disapprove numbers were 50/49, but Governor Chet Culver is still in negative territory at 41 percent approve/57 disapprove. About 45 percent of respondents said they favored “the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and the congressional Democrats,” while 53 percent said they opposed it. Remember, this poll was in the field before Congress gave final approval to the bill Obama signed yesterday. I am curious to see future polling on the issue. A quickie USA Today/Gallup nationwide poll released yesterday was the first in a long time to show net positive approval for health care reform: 49 percent of respondents said it was a “good thing” that Congress passed the bill over the weekend, while 40 percent said it was a “bad thing.”

Next week will mark the first anniversary of the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling in Varnum v Brien. Seven justices unanimously concluded that the section of the Iowa Code enacted through our state’s Defense of Marriage Act violates the equal protection provision of the Iowa Constitution. Since the day that decision was announced, many Iowa Republicans have called for overturning the court’s ruling. Some have denied that county recorders were obliged to implement the ruling, or insisted that government officials may ignore a court’s opinion about the constitutionality of a law. Others have called on Iowans to vote against retaining justices who supposedly overreached their authority. For example, gubernatorial candidate Rod Roberts said last November,

“We need to send a message to the Iowa Supreme Court that they are accountable to the people of Iowa,” said Roberts, who has made restoring the role of the people in state government a centerpiece of his campaign. “The problem with judicial activism is that it thwarts the will of the legislature and of the people of Iowa.”

Now that Congress has approved a health insurance reform bill Republicans don’t like, some GOP politicians have decided judicial activism isn’t so bad after all. Gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats pledged to “invoke the Constitution’s 10th Amendment to protect Iowans from new federal mandates” on health care. Rod Roberts followed Vander Plaats’ lead:

Roberts said that if the federal government passes a nationalized health care plan that conflicts with the Roberts Amendment, as governor he will file a lawsuit in federal court against President Obama to have the plan struck down as a violation of Iowans’ Tenth Amendment rights. The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that powers not delegated to the federal government (such as the regulation of health insurance) are reserved for the states.

Gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad also supported the idea of using the courts to nullify the will of Congress: “Given the massive scope and effect of this [health insurance reform] bill, it is likely that various provisions will be challenged in the courts. Those challenges are both timely and appropriate.”

Any constitutional lawyer can tell you that the U.S. Supreme Court has long affirmed the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. Law professor Mark Hall explains in detail here why constitutional arguments against an individual mandate to purchase health insurance are wrong. As for the broader 10th amendment claim that the constitution doesn’t empower the federal government to regulate health insurance, Hall notes, “Congress has ample power and precedent through the Constitution’s ‘Commerce Clause’ to regulate just about any aspect of the national economy.”

Conservative legal scholar Eugene Volokh likewise does not find the constitutional arguments against health insurance reform convincing:

While I agree that the recent commerce clause cases hold that Congress may not regulate noneconomic activity, as such, they also state that Congress may reach otherwise unregulable conduct as part of an overarching regulatory scheme, where the regulation of such conduct is necessary and proper to the success of such scheme. In this case, the overall scheme would involve the regulation of “commerce” as the Supreme Court has defined it for several decades, as it would involve the regulation of health care markets. And the success of such a regulatory scheme would depend upon requiring all to participate. (Among other things, if health care reform requires insurers to issue insurance to all comers, and prohibits refusals for pre-existing conditions, then a mandate is necessary to prevent opportunistic behavior by individuals who simply wait to purchase insurance until they get sick.)

The U.S. Supreme Court could overrule the will of Congress on health insurance reform only by reversing several decades of precedent about the definition of commerce. That’s textbook “judicial activism,” but it’s ok with some Iowa Republicans if it achieves the political end they are seeking.

By the way, Vander Plaats claims that as governor, he could issue an executive order halting same-sex marriages in Iowa. I wonder if he also thinks President Barack Obama could issue an executive order overturning a possible Supreme Court ruling against health insurance reform.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum considers prospects for a lawsuit challenging the individual mandate to buy health insurance. He makes the same point about Congressional authority to regulate interstate commerce and adds,

What’s more, the penalties for not buying insurance are tax penalties, and if anything, Congress has even wider scope in the tax area than in the commerce area. The Supreme Court has frequently ruled that Congress can pass tax laws that essentially force people to do things that Congress doesn’t have the direct power to require.

[…]here’s the thing: if the Supreme Court decided to overturn decades of precedent and strike down the mandate even though Kevin Drum says they shouldn’t (hard to imagine, I know), the insurance industry will go ballistic. If they’re required to cover all comers, even those with expensive pre-existing conditions, then they have to have a mandate in order to get all the healthy people into the insurance pool too. So they would argue very persuasively that unless Congress figures out a fix, they’ll drive private insurers out of business in short order. And that, in turn, will almost certainly be enough incentive for both Democrats and Republicans to find a way to enforce a mandate by other means. If necessary, there are ways to rewrite the rules so that people aren’t literally required to get insurance, but are incentivized so strongly that nearly everyone will do it. As an example, Congress might pass a law making state Medicaid funding dependent on states passing laws requiring residents to buy insurance. Dependent funding is something Congress does routinely, and states don’t have any constitutional issues when it comes to requiring residents to buy insurance. They all do it with auto insurance and Massachusetts does it with health insurance.

Like Drum, I view these proposed legal challenges as Republican posturing rather than a serious threat to nullify the law Obama signed this morning.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the health insurance reform bill on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Iowa politicians from both parties have been responding to last night’s votes in the House of Representatives. After the jump I’ve posted lots of reaction quotes, plus some bonus embarrassing comments from Steve King.

The president is coming to Iowa City this Thursday to promote the health insurance reform bill:

Iowa City was where candidate Obama announced his health-care plan before the 2008 caucuses, when he was in a scrap with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for the party’s presidential nomination.

A White House official said today the president will be in the state to “discuss how health insurance reform will lower costs for small businesses and American families and give them more control over their health care.”

I’ll be curious to see the public polling on this issue in Iowa. A new nationwide CNN poll released today showed that 39 percent of respondents support the Senate bill just approved by the House. Some 43 percent oppose the bill because it is “too liberal,” while 13 percent oppose the bill because it is “not liberal enough.” In other words, more than half the respondents either support the bill or (like me) feel it doesn’t go far enough.  

UPDATE: The vote on the rules for the reconciliation bill debate passed 224-206 (roll call). The final vote on the Senate bill will be late tonight.

FINAL UPDATE: The House approved the Senate bill 219-212, with no Republicans voting in favor and 34 Democrats voting against (roll call). It’s clear House leaders did not have the votes without the Stupak bloc.

VERY FINAL UPDATE: Two more roll calls: a Republican-backed poison pill that would have inserted the president’s executive order language on the Hyde amendment into the reconciliation fixes failed 232-199. Then the House passed the reconciliation fixes to the Senate bill by a vote of 220-211.

The House of Representatives began debating the health insurance reform legislation on Sunday afternoon. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using the gavel Representative John Dingell’s father used the day the House approved Medicare in 1965. I will update this post as votes are taken on the reconciliation package and later on the Senate’s bill.

Some kind of new deal appears to have been struck with Bart Stupak and his group of anti-abortion Democrats. Link to follow later when more details become available. I assume this means House leaders didn’t have 216 votes without the Stupak bloc, which is how the whip counts have been looking. (UPDATE: The president agreed to issue this executive order affirming that the health insurance reform bill “maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges.” The executive order allows Stupak and his bloc to vote for the bill without the appearance of caving.)

Republicans are making fools out of themselves warning about the death of liberty and the “government takeover.” Gubernatorial candidate Rod Roberts has filed amendments to two Iowa House bills seeking to “challenge the constitutionality of President Obama’s plan to nationalize the health care industry.” He also says that as governor he would sue the federal government, claiming that health insurance reform violates the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Roberts is copying a Bob Vander Plaats campaign promise here, which supports my view that Roberts’ main function in the governor’s race is to undermine Vander Plaats in the GOP primary.

Meanwhile, Democrats are making fools of themselves claiming that passing a Republican plan from 1993 is something to cheer about. We should be ashamed that corporate interest groups got everything they wanted in this bill, to the extent that the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry is running ads supporting the bill. We should be outraged by all of President Obama’s broken promises on health care reform and the fact that he lied about supporting a public health insurance option after secretly agreeing to leave that out of the bill.

I don’t know whether better health care reform was achievable. Certainly Big Tent Democrat is right that progressives botched the negotiating process (see also here), but once the president decided not to do anything that angered corporate groups, we were probably stuck with what we’re getting. Some people will benefit from subsidized insurance and new primary health care clinics, but other people will be forced to downgrade their coverage, and there will be no new competition for the insurance companies that have near-monopolies in most of the country. I doubt this reform will reduce insurance company abuses, and I doubt it will save tens of thousands of lives a year, and I doubt future Congresses with (at best) smaller Democratic majorities will improve it in any meaningful way, but let’s hope I am wrong.

Failing to pass the bill might have hurt Democrats more in the short term, but I think over-promising the benefits will hurt us badly later. When Americans continue to face medical bankruptcies, and some insured people continue to find medical care unaffordable, and “wellness incentives” become the new method of discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, Democrats will be blamed.

Listing the alleged “progressive victories” in this bill is just an exercise in self-delusion. This bill was written for the benefit of corporate groups. Many provisions that would have been in the public interest have been left out. It’s a disgrace that large Democratic majorities produced this reform, and it’s one reason the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will get no money from me for the forseeable future.

You can claim the bill is a slight improvement on the status quo, but calling it “progressive” or a sign of interest groups in decline is an insult to everyone’s intelligence. Not as stupid as calling it a “government takeover,” but almost as deceptive.

Share your own thoughts in this thread, whether or not you feel like celebrating today’s “historic victory.”

UPDATE: Republican strategist David Frum argues that the GOP made a huge mistake by refusing to make a deal with Obama on health care reform:

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. […]

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.

It’s crunch time for health insurance reform, and Senator Tom Harkin and the three Iowa Democrats in the House “announced a major breakthrough today on the issue of Medicare payment reform in the final health care reform bill,” according to a joint press release. Excerpt:

[Representatives Dave] Loebsack, [Senator Tom] Harkin, [Leonard] Boswell and [Bruce] Braley have been outspoken advocates for changing the way Medicare pays health care providers for services, from its current fee-for-service system into a quality and value-based system.

Loebsack, Harkin, Boswell and Braley helped negotiate a compromise adding language to the health care reform bill that provides an immediate $800 million to address geographic disparities for both doctors and hospitals, as well as written guarantees from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for further action to reform Medicare reimbursement rates that do not qualify for reconciliation under the Byrd Rule. The Senate bill previously only provided a Medicare reimbursement fix for doctors.

The House reconciliation package maintained automatic implementation of a value index as part of the reimbursement structures for doctors, beginning in 2015.  This language was secured in the Senate bill with the help of Harkin and is based on Braley’s Medicare Payment Improvement Act, introduced in June 2009. Under the fixes secured in the Senate bill and the House reconciliation package, Iowa doctors will see five percent increases in current Medicare reimbursement rates in both 2010 and 2011.

I posted the whole press release, containing more details, after the jump. This deal appears to have secured the vote of Peter DeFazio (OR-04) as well. Yesterday he threatened to vote no because of language on the Medicare payments disparity.

President Barack Obama gave House Democrats a pep-talk today, and his speech (which wasn’t pre-written) got rave reviews from many Democrats. If only the Senate bill were as good as Obama made it sound. (UPDATE: I posted the White House transcript of Obama’s speech after the jump.)

House Democratic leaders have decided to ditch the “deem and pass” method for passing health insurance reform with a single vote, even though the legislative procedure isn’t as rare or controversial as Republicans would have you believe. Instead, the House will hold an hour of flood debate tomorrow on “the rule to allow reconcilation to get to the floor,” then House members will vote on the rule, then they will debate the Senate health insurance reform bill and vote on it. I assume this means that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is confident she has the 216 votes she needs.

Bart Stupak is now claiming only about half a dozen Democrats are willing to vote against the bill unless it contains major new restrictions on private insurance coverage of abortion. Stupak was supposed to hold a press conference this morning, but he cancelled it, so maybe that means he didn’t get the deal he was hoping for from Pelosi. David Dayen speculates on who is still in the Stupak bloc. David Waldman warns about the prospect that Stupak will use a “motion to recommit” to try to get his anti-abortion language into the reconciliation fix package.

Outside the Capitol, tea party protesters shouted racist insults and held signs threatening gun violence if health care reform passes. Congressional Republicans should disavow this reprehensible behavior, but of course they won’t.

The filing deadline for statewide and state legislative offices closed at the end of business today. John Deeth has been covering the highlights at his blog. Click here to download a pdf file from the Secretary of State’s office for the full candidate list.

As I mentioned earlier, Governor Chet Culver has no primary challenger. All three remaining Republican gubernatorial candidates qualified for the ballot (Terry Branstad, Rod Roberts, Bob Vander Plaats).

There will be a three-way Democratic primary for U.S. Senate between Roxanne Conlin, Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause.

Republicans have a full slate of candidates for statewide offices. Sadly, Democrats failed to find anyone to take on Auditor David Vaudt.

Four Republicans filed against Bruce Braley in Iowa’s first Congressional district, and four Republicans filed against Dave Loebsack in the second district. All seven declared GOP candidates qualified for the ballot in Iowa’s third district. I would not be surprised if a district convention ends up selecting Leonard Boswell’s opponent.

Bill Maske is the only Democrat running against Tom Latham in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. As expected, we will have a competitive primary in the fifth between Mike Denklau and Matt Campbell.

Most surprising statehouse district left uncontested: House district 16 in northeast Iowa. I had heard rumors that Republicans had no candidate against freshman State Representative John Beard, but I’m still shocked they left him unchallenged. That was a battleground race in 2008. Does anyone know whether a GOP district convention will be able to name a candidate for this race later?

Democrats didn’t leave any obviously competitive statehouse districts open. I’m a little disappointed we don’t have a candidate in House district 73, from which Republican Jodi Tymeson is retiring. It is a fairly strong GOP district, but I thought a candidate pounding the pavement there might help State Senator Staci Appel in her re-election campaign against Kent Sorenson (Senate district 37).

We found a candidate in House district 51 (Carroll County), which Rod Roberts is vacating to run for governor. Democrat Larry Lesle of Manning will face the winner of a three-way GOP primary.

Yesterday two-term incumbent Elesha Gayman surprised many people by announcing her retirement from House district 84 in Davenport. Gayman indicated that no one had been lined up to replace her, but today Shari Carnahan filed for that seat as a Democrat. She will face Gayman’s 2008 opponent, Ross Paustian.

Ruth Ann Gaines ended up being the only Democrat to file in Wayne Ford’s district 65 (Des Moines).

Six Democratic Iowa House incumbents have primary challengers. The people running against Dave Jacoby (district 30, Iowa City/Coralville) and Geri Huser (district 42, east side of Des Moines) appear to be backed by organized labor. A socially conservative pastor, Clair Rudison, is running against Ako Abdul-Samad in district 66 (Des Moines). Anesa Kajtazovic stepped up to the plate in House district 21 (Waterloo). Freshman Kerry Burt really should have retired from that seat. I don’t know what the deal is with Kenneth Oglesby, who is challenging Chuck Isenhart in district 27 (Dubuque). Likewise, I have no idea why Mike Petersen is running against Mary Gaskill in district 93 (Ottumwa). Please post a comment or e-mail me (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you know the backstory.

Most surprising retirement: Republican Doug Struyk in district 99. The GOP candidate for secretary of state in 2006, Mary Ann Hanusa, is running for the Council Bluffs-based seat instead. She will face Democrat Kurt Hubler, who nearly defeated Struyk in 2008. Struyk was first elected as a Democrat but switched parties several years ago. His departure will leave only one turncoat in the Iowa House. We failed to field a candidate against Dawn Pettengill (district 39), who switched to the GOP in 2007.

More posts are coming soon on some of the battleground statehouse races. Meanwhile, post any relevant comments in this thread.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that we will see seven or eight rematches in Iowa House races. Republicans are running Josh Thurston and Stephen Burgmeier and 2009 special election winners Kirsten Running-Marquardt (district 33) and Curt Hanson (district 90). Also, in district 23 first-term Democrat Gene Ficken will face the Republican he beat in 2008, Dan Rasmussen. Republican Jane Jech is taking another shot at incumbent Mark Smith in district 43. The district 89 race may be a rematch as well if Jarad Klein wins the GOP primary to face first-term Democrat Larry Marek. In House district 60, first-term Republican Peter Cownie faces 2008 Democratic candidate Alan Koslow. Not only will Koslow be at a severe financial disadvantage, his endorsement of Jonathan Narcisse for governor won’t win him friends among the Democratic base. Democrat Pat VanZante is taking another shot at Jim Van Engelenhoven in district 71 (assuming Van Engelenhoven doesn’ lose to his GOP primary challenger). Republican Dave Heaton will face his 2008 opponent, Ron Fedler, in district 91.

SECOND UPDATE: Republicans are crowing that they are fielding candidates in 88 of the 100 Iowa House districts, while Democrats are fielding candidates in only 75 districts. I would like to challenge Republicans everywhere, but it’s only natural that Iowa Democrats are going to focus more on defense this year. We already have the majority, and it could be a tough cycle for incumbents at all levels.

On Sunday, the House of Representatives will vote on the Senate’s health insurance reform bill and some “fixes” to that bill. The procedural details have not been fully worked out (David Waldman takes you through the weeds here and here), but it’s clear that the vote will be very close. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to find 216 votes to pass the bill.

Various whip counts are floating around the internet. Take your pick from David Dayen’s version at FireDogLake, the Chris Bowers tally at Open Left, or the latest from The Hill staff. Several Democrats who voted against the House health care reform bill in November have announced plans to vote for this version. However, others who voted for the House bill remain undecided or have said they will vote no.

Today Peter DeFazio (OR-04) threatened to vote no on the bill because of changes in language on correcting geographical disparities in Medicare spending. DeFazio explained, “We spent months working this out. If we don’t get it in this bill, we will never get it.” The Huffington Post reported that other House Democrats share DeFazio’s concerns.

Because all three Iowa Democrats in the House strongly supported the changes to Medicare reimbursement rates that were included in the House bill, I contacted their offices today to find out whether they, like DeFazio, consider this issue a deal-breaker. I have not yet heard back from staffers for Representative Leonard Boswell (IA-03) or Dave Loebsack (IA-02), but a spokeswoman for Bruce Braley (IA-01) sent me this response:

Congressman Braley has spent hours in meetings with Speaker Pelosi and House Leadership this week, discussing the need to correct geographic disparities in Medicare reimbursement and how those corrections can be accomplished in this final bill.  Congressman Braley is still very much undecided on how he will vote on the reconciliation package and this is one of many factors that will play a role in his final decision.

I’ve never seen Braley on any list of wavering Democrats on the health insurance reform bill. If he and DeFazio do end up voting no, it will be much harder for Pelosi to find 216 votes. On the other hand, a compromise could be reached before Sunday:

At her press briefing Friday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was asked about Rep. Peter Defazio’s objections to the removal of the Medicare disparity fix from the final bill. “We’re working on that language,” said Pelosi. “I feel comfortable about where we are heading.” She said she supports the language that was in the House bill and is working toward restoring it as much as possible.

“We have reached agreement before,” she said of the dicey political issue.

I will update this post if and when I hear back from Loebsack’s and Boswell’s offices.

UPDATE: Loebsack’s spokeswoman confirmed that he will vote for the bill. Boswell seems like a firm yes as well, judging from an e-mail blast he sent yesterday, which I have posted after the jump.

SATURDAY UPDATE: Braley confirmed that he will vote for the bill because of the deal on Medicare reimbursement payments I discussed in more detail here.

Susan Bangert filed nominating papers yesterday to be the Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 8, where Dolores Mertz recently announced her retirement. House district 8 covers all of Humboldt and Pocahontas counties, plus southern Kossuth County (including Algona) and a small portion of Webster County (map here).

Bangert grew up in north-central Iowa (Forest City) and was educated in state. She works for the Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency as a speech pathologist in Algona, the largest town in this House district. Think how many families in the area she must have helped throughout her career.

Bangert was on the Kossuth County leadership team for Barack Obama’s campaign before the Iowa caucuses, so I assume she has a good grasp of how to identify and mobilize voters. All in all, she sounds like a great candidate. It probably doesn’t hurt that her husband is the Algona chief of police. UPDATE: Bleeding Heartland user natewithglasses adds that Bangert has been active in one of the largest churches in Algona, a Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation. That may bring in some cross-over votes.

House district 8 should be one of the Republicans’ top pickup opportunities this year, but as I discussed last week, I think the bitter GOP primary fight could hurt the party’s chances in the general. Speaking of which, Republican candidates Tom Shaw and Steven Richards are holding a debate on Thursday, April 8, at 7 pm in the Humboldt County Courthouse (203 Main St. in Dakota City). If any Bleeding Heartland reader is able to attend that debate, please post a diary about it afterward.

UPDATE: A third Republican candidate filed in this district on March 19: Alissa Wagner of Rutland. I don’t know anything about her and have no idea whether a three-way primary helps Shaw or Richards.

LATE UPDATE: I posted Bangert’s March 22 press release after the jump.

Jonathan Narcisse told the Des Moines Register’s Kathie Obradovich yesterday that he won’t run against Governor Chet Culver in the Democratic primary. He plans to register for the ballot as an independent candidate.

Narcisse says he collected enough signatures to get on the ballot (the deadline is Friday), but he said his changed his mind about filing based on what he heard from Iowans as he’s traveled around the state.  “They really want an independent voice,” he says, someone not tied to either party.

I asked Narcisse if he would be willing to release the signatures, because otherwise people will be skeptical that he was able to collect them. He didn’t outright refuse but he also didn’t say he would release them. He said he’s used to dealing with skepticism from the media but he’s focused on making his case to voters around the state.  But if he’s going to say he’s collected them, he should prove it.

Obradovich posted a press release from Narcisse, which explained his decision and thanked the volunteers who “helped me obtain the signatures that I needed to be on the June 8th primary ballot.”

Ever since Narcisse announced plans late last month to run for governor as a Democrat, many political observers have privately predicted that he would not be able to meet the signature requirements. Narcisse can speak knowledgeably about public policy for hours, but his campaign manager is a management consultant and former teacher with no previous political experience. Democrats seeking statewide office in Iowa had to submit more than 4,000 total signatures (0.5 percent of the party’s statewide vote in the 2008 presidential election), including at least 1 percent of the party’s vote total in that election in at least 10 counties. (Statewide Republican candidates needed to meet the same percentage targets, but that worked out to fewer total signatures because Barack Obama did so much better than John McCain in Iowa.)

A strong statewide organization could collect more than 4,000 signatures on short order; Republican candidate Rob Gettemy’s campaign collected 3,000 in the second Congressional district in just two weeks. I agree with Obradovich that observers will remain skeptical about Narcisse’s campaign if he doesn’t release his nominating petitions. Republican blogger Craig Robinson writes today that Narcisse’s story has shifted dramatically in the last three days. He concludes, “The inability for Narcisse to get on the Democratic primary ballot is a deadly blow to any credibility he may have had as a candidate.”

Ed Fallon had been recruiting some Democrat other than Narcisse to challenge Culver, but nothing materialized. In my opinion, Culver didn’t deserve a primary challenger despite the many complaints you hear about him from Iowa Democrats.

Last night former House Speaker Dennis Hastert headlined a fundraiser for Jim Gibbons, the candidate in the third Congressional district favored by beltway Republicans. Gibbons raised the most money by far in the fourth quarter of 2009, and Hastert’s appearance should help him out-raise his five or six Republican rivals in the current fundraising period too.  

By the same token, Hastert’s trip to Des Moines will provide fodder for Gibbons’ opponents. Tea Party favorite Dave Funk is pushing this message:

As a pilot, I know if you don’t chart a clear course and stay ever vigilant, you’re going to lose your direction and get lost. I hate to say it, but that happened under Dennis Hastert’s watch. The House Republican caucus lost its way with excessive spending and policies that didn’t represent the values and ideals of our party or the majority of American voters.

To be honest, Dennis Hastert was the “earmark king” of the Republican Party.  And now Jim Gibbons has aligned himself with Dennis Hastert and the very philosophy and actions that resulted in our party losing control of Congress, the Senate and the White House.

How can we in Iowa’s Third District expect real leadership from Jim Gibbons, when he is joining forces with the leader who led the House Republicans on the spending spree with taxpayers money that cost conservatives their reputations as fiscally responsible small government leaders?

State Senator Brad Zaun took a subtle swipe at Gibbons in a press release that was mostly about Zaun submitting his nominating papers:

“While some of the candidates in this primary are worried about earning the favor of the powerbrokers on Capitol Hill, I’ve been focused on serving my constituents and listening to the voters across the 3rd Congressional District. I look forward to ramping up our efforts in April and May after the legislative session adjourns,” concluded Zaun.

Former Representative Greg Ganske hosted the Hastert event for Gibbons. He represented Polk County when it was part of Iowa’s fourth Congressional district from 1995-2003. Ganske isn’t universally popular with the Republican base, though. He nearly lost the 2002 U.S. Senate primary to wingnut extraordinaire Bill Salier, and some Republicans believe (foolishly in my opinion) that being too moderate cost Ganske that year’s election against Tom Harkin.  

The Iowa Democratic Party released a statement yesterday on Hastert’s visit:  

More than two years after leaving public office to become a lobbyist, former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert continues to receive nearly $40,000 a month in taxpayer funded perks including an office, cell phone, staff, and an SUV.  

“Keeping Former Speaker Dennis Hastert on the taxpayer dime while he works as a lobbyist is hardly what Iowans believe is a good use of their hard earned money,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan. “Republican Jim Gibbons should know he is only as good as the company he keeps, and by choosing to embrace Dennis Hastert his calls for fiscal restraint ring [hollow].”

BACKGROUND:    

[…] Former Speaker Hastert maintains an office at taxpayer expense in Yorkville, Illinois.  The perks that Speaker Hastert accepted include an office, cell phone, staff, and a leased SUV. All told, Hastert receives nearly $40,000 a month in benefits from the federal government. These taxpayer-funded benefits are entirely legal as long as Hastert does not make use of them in the course of his lobbying work. [Politico, 12/21/09]

To my mind, Hastert’s current lobbying is less offensive than the fact that he sold real estate for nearly $2 million in profits after he secured federal earmarks to construct the Prairie Parkway near land he owned. I wonder what Gibbons thinks about that deal.

About 70 percent of voters in Iowa’s third district disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on corporate spending in election campaigns, according a poll of 548 registered voters conducted by SurveyUSA in IA-03 between March 10 and March 14. Common Cause, Public Campaign Action Fund and MoveOn.org Political Action commissioned the survey. The whole polling memo is here (pdf file). Full results and cross-tabs are here.

Asked, “Should corporations be able to spend money to support or oppose candidates for public office?” 70 percent of respondents said no, while just 21 percent said yes.

Two-thirds of respondents said Democrats have “not done enough to reduce the influence of special-interest money in politics,” while only 30 percent agreed that “Democrats have made a serious attempt to reduce the influence of special-interest money in politics.”

Respondents were asked about two different proposed laws in response to the Supreme Court ruling. One would require corporations to disclose the money they are spending in elections and would force the corporate CEO to appear in political advertising. A plurality of respondents said that would limit the influence of special interests “a little.”

The poll also asked about a law that would create a voluntary public financing system for elections, in which candidates could receive public matching funds if they reject special interest money and individual contributions exceeding $100. A plurality of respondents said that approach would limit the influence of special interests “a lot.” 40 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a member of Congress who supports that law, and only 22 percent said they would be less likely to re-elect a member of Congress who supports the law.

Representative Leonard Boswell sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. I hope this poll receives his attention and prompts him to join the co-sponsors of the Fair Elections Now act. Click here for more information about that approach to campaign finance reform.

Jefferson County supervisor Stephen Burgmeier filed yesterday to be the Republican candidate in Iowa House district 90, setting up a rematch with Democrat Curt Hanson. The district covers all of Van Buren County, most of Jefferson County (including Fairfield) and a small portion of Wapello County (map here).

Last summer Hanson narrowly defeated Burgmeier in a special election, even though Iowa-based conservative interest groups went all-in for Burgmeier and the National Organization for Marriage spent nearly $90,000 on advertising to support him.

Notably, Hanson built up a strong advantage in early voting and beat Burgmeier in Jefferson County by about 600 votes. In addition, two social conservatives ran as third-party candidates, and the 282 combined votes they received was greater than Hanson’s 127-vote margin over Burgmeier. The spoiler candidates were unhappy that Burgmeier didn’t talk much about abortion and gay marriage during the campaign.

Iowa Republicans tried to put a good face on the special election result, but the outcome was disappointing for them on several levels.

House district 90 is likely to be one of the most competitive races in the state. If you living within striking distance of the area, please consider volunteering for Hanson’s campaign this summer and fall. That said, I like Hanson’s chances of holding the seat this November. Burgmeier couldn’t win a low-turnout special election during a severe recession when the GOP base was all fired up about the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage. Despite having been elected three times as a supervisor, Burgmeier lost his own county by a sizable margin.

This week Hanson, a retired driving instructor, co-chaired a conference committee to resolve differences between the Iowa House and Senate bills to restrict texting while driving.

John Wittneben, a small business owner and member of the Estherville City Council, announced today that he is running as a Democrat in Iowa House district 7, where seven-term Democratic State Representative Marcella Frevert is retiring. The north-central Iowa district includes all of Emmet and Palo Alto Counties and Kossuth County north of Algona (map here). From Wittneben’s press release:

“As a small business owner, my top priority will be to help businesses across Iowa expand and create good-paying jobs.  We need a strong education system and world-class community colleges to make sure we have a skilled workforce that can compete for jobs in the 21st Century economy,” said Wittneben, who is former president of the Estherville Chamber of Commerce. “Through the wind energy program at Iowa Lakes Community College, I’m proud our community is training students to support Iowa’s renewable energy industry.”

Wittneben owns his own land surveying company and has previously worked for Jacobsen-Westergard & Associates in Estherville.  He serves on the Estherville City Council and was the Estherville Chamber Citizen of the Year in 2007.  He is a member of the Estherville Rotary, Friends of Fort Defiance, and the Good Samaritan Citizen Advisory Board.

“After growing up in Estherville and working across the country, I know there is no better place to live and operate my business than in Estherville.  I care deeply about our state and community and that’s why I want to be State Representative,” added Wittneben.  “My top priority at the Statehouse will be to listen to the people of District 7 and work across party lines to make our community a better place to live.” Wittneben grew up in Estherville and received his AA in pre-engineering from Iowa Lakes Community College. He also attended Iowa State University.

“I’ve balanced the books in my own business and I will make sure we keep the state’s fiscal house in order. We must balance the budget without raising taxes, create jobs, and keep our k-12 education system strong,” concluded Wittneben.

He sounds like a strong candidate to hold this district in the Democratic column. He’s already won elected office in Estherville, the largest town in the district with a population of around 6,300. Frevert was from Emmetsburg, which has about 3,600 residents. She did not have a Republican opponent in the 2006 mid-term election. In 2008 she received 58.5 percent of the vote against Republican Debra Satern.

I don’t know who is running for the Republicans in Iowa House district 7, but I will update this post when I learn more.

UPDATE: Thanks to Bleeding Heartland user hawkeye77 for more information in the comments. The GOP candidate is West Bend-Mallard School Board member Lannie Miller, who served three terms as a county supervisor in Palo Alto and has chaired the county’s Republican Party.

The U.S. Senate gave final approval to a small jobs bill today by a vote of 68-29. Eleven Republicans and the Senate’s two independents joined 55 Democrats (including Iowa’s Tom Harkin) to pass the bill. The only Democrat to vote no was Ben Nelson of Nebraska (roll call here). The motion to invoke cloture on this jobs bill passed the Senate on Monday by a 60-31 vote, with six Republicans voting with all Democrats but Ben Nelson (roll call here). Senator Chuck Grassley voted with the Republicans who tried to filibuster the bill on Monday and with those who opposed the bill today. From the Washington Post:

The centerpiece of the bill is a new program giving companies a break from paying Social Security taxes for the remainder of 2010 on any new workers they hire who had been unemployed for at least 60 days. Employers would also get a $1,000 tax credit for each of those workers who stays on the payroll for at least one year.

Aside from that program, the measure includes a one-year extension of the law governing federal transportation funding, and would transfer $20 billion into the highway trust fund. The bill also extends a tax break allowing companies to write off equipment purchases, and expands the Build America Bonds program, which helps state and local governments secure financing for infrastructure projects.

Last month the Senate approved a similar jobs measure; Grassley voted no at that time as well. After the House made minor changes to the legislation, the bill had to clear the Senate again before going to the president’s desk.

Most House Democrats support a larger job-creation bill with more money for infrastructure projects, but there may not be 60 votes in the Senate for such a measure.

Which isn’t easy, considering how high he normally sets the bar.

The Huffington Post covered Representative Steve King’s speech to yesterday’s “smaller-than-expected” Tea Party rally against health care reform:

King implored the crowd to bring the nation’s capital to a sort of paralysis. Warning, erroneously, that the health care bill would fund abortion and fund care for 6.1 million illegal immigrants, he demanded that concerned citizens “continue to rise up.”

“I look back 20 years ago in the square in Prague… when tens of thousands showed up there and they shook their keys peacefully and they took over their country and they achieved their freedom back again,” he said. “If you can keep coming to this city, fill up the congressional offices across the country but jam this city. If you can get on your cell phones, and get on your Blackberries and your email, and ask people to keep coming to this town. Storm this city, fill up Washington D.C., jam this capital so they can’t move. And if tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of you show up, we will win. We will defeat this bill and you will have your liberty back.”

King stood his ground when given a chance to clarify his remarks, saying the current U.S. government is “very, very close” to the Czechoslovak Communist regime, because of “the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over.”

I mentioned these comments to Mr. desmoinesdem, who has forgotten more about Czechoslovakia than King will ever know. He observed that if anything, the Obama administration resembles the government that took power after the Velvet Revolution. The administration changed some personnel and policies, but they didn’t punish or prosecute people who committed crimes on behalf of the old regime. That said, I don’t see Obama as much like former dissident Vaclav Havel, the first post-Communist Czech President (other than that both men are intellectuals and smokers).

Getting back to King, only the most deluded Tea Partier could imagine that the Senate health insurance bill nationalizes our health care system. The Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress have sold out to corporate interests in almost every major aspect of this bill (as well as on financial regulation, energy policy, you name it).  

King’s wrongheaded analogy got me wondering how the Czech health care system measures up against ours. Here’s a report on changes in Czech health care since the Velvet Revolution. The Czech Republic spends about half as much on health care as the U.S. as a percentage of the country’s annual gross domestic product. The U.S. has slightly longer life expectancy than the Czech Republic, but our infant mortality rate is more than double theirs.

Another featured speaker at yesterday’s Tea Party rally was Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. She recently encouraged non-payment of taxes as a response to the “illegitimate” health reform bill. Bachmann will headline an event for King next month in Sergeant Bluff (near Sioux City). The two have been collaborating on a “Declaration of Health Care Independence” since January. In October 2008, both King and Bachmann made Esquire’s list of the 10 worst members of Congress.

State Representative Wayne Ford announced today that he will not seek an eighth term in the Iowa House. He plans to “to devote more time to expand statewide, nationally, and internationally” the non-profit organization Urban Dreams, which he founded 25 years ago. After the jump I posted Ford’s press release, which recounts some of his accomplishments. His work on a 2007 law requiring blood screenings for lead poisoning has benefited thousands of Iowa families and will spare many children from the many harmful effects of lead exposure, which may even emerge decades later.

During this year’s legislative session Ford introduced a bill to restore the use of Tax-Increment Financing to its original intent: redeveloping urban, blighted areas. Unfortunately, it didn’t go anywhere, but it was a great idea that would also have saved the state money.

Yesterday Ed Fallon alleged that Iowa Democratic Party officials were trying to keep Ford’s retirement secret in order to avoid a competitive primary in House district 65. Candidates have until Friday to file nominating papers with the Secretary of State’s office. The Democratic primary will in effect determine Ford’s successor because of the district’s strong partisan lean.

UPDATE: Former Iowa teacher of the year Ruth Ann Gaines becomes the first declared candidate to succeed Ford.

LATE UPDATE: IowaPolitics.com covered Ford’s farewell speech to the House. Worth a read.

How many more tragedies need to happen before elected officials have the guts to close the gun show loophole? The latest high-profile beneficiary of this loophole was the mentally ill attacker in the recent shootings near the Pentagon.

Law enforcement officials say [John Patrick] Bedell, a man with a history of severe psychiatric problems, had been sent a letter by California authorities Jan. 10 telling him he was prohibited from buying a gun because of his mental history.

Nineteen days later, the officials say, Bedell bought the Ruger at a gun show in Las Vegas. Such a sale by a private individual does not require the kind of background check that would have stopped Bedell’s purchase.

Republican politicians fall all over themselves trying to prove how loyal they are to the National Rifle Association. Some are against any kind of background checks for people who want to carry firearms in public. Too many Democrats are afraid to stand up to this NRA-approved extremism. Meanwhile, a Republican pollster’s recent survey of gun owners shows that they understand the need for reasonable limits:

Mr. Luntz queried 832 gun owners, including 401 card-carrying N.R.A. members, in a survey commissioned by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the alliance of hundreds of executives seeking stronger gun laws. In flat rebuttal of N.R.A. propaganda, the findings showed that 69 percent of N.R.A. members supported closing the notorious gun-show loophole that invites laissez-faire arms dealing outside registration requirements.

Even more members, 82 percent, favored banning gun purchases to suspects on terrorist watch lists who are now free to arm. And 69 percent disagreed with Congressionally imposed rules against sharing federal gun-trace information with state and local police agencies.

Fortunately, it looks as if a proposal to make it easier for Iowans to carry concealed weapons is unlikely to advance during this year’s legislative session. That bill’s main advocate is Iowa House Republican Clel Baudler. He serves on the NRA’s board and doesn’t even support steps to remove guns from domestic abusers. (Last fall, Baudler suggested that murder victim Tereseann Lynch Moore might not have been killed by her estranged husband if she had been carrying her own gun.) Not that Baudler is an isolated case; a disturbing number of Iowa Republican legislators opposed a recent bill to get guns out of the hands of convicted domestic abusers and people subject to a restraining order.

CORRECTION: I spoke too soon above. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have idiotically revived the NRA’s pet bill, which “would give Iowa one of the loosest gun-permit laws in the country.” Bad for public safety, bad politics. No one who wants to increase the number of Iowans carrying concealed weapons is going to vote for Democrats.

Ed and Lynn Fallon’s I’M for Iowa organization sent out an e-mail blast today containing the following tidbit:

Monday, 1:00 – 4:00 pm, we talk about politics, and expose what appears to be a sneaky effort in the 65th House District in Des Moines to keep Wayne Ford’s retirement a secret so party insiders can hand-pick a successor. We also talk about the Des Moines Register’s love affair with Senator Grassley, Jonathan Narcisse’s love affair with himself, and Iowa Senate Republicans’ burning love for coal.

Tom Beaumont’s latest piece on Chuck Grassley for the Des Moines Register was egregious. He depicted Grassley as an old-fashioned bipartisan hero instead of the disingenuous double-dealer he has become. But that’s a topic for another post. I’m more interested in Fallon’s take on Iowa House district 65, which covers a heavily Democratic area of Des Moines (map here).

Jason Hancock listened to today’s radio show and wrote up the story for Iowa Independent. Fallon alleges that seven-term incumbent State Representative Wayne Ford has decided to retire, but is keeping his intentions secret so that there won’t be a competitive Democratic primary in the district. Republicans have no chance of winning House district 65, but in a Democratic primary with multiple candidates, someone other than the party insiders’ choice might win.

Hancock contacted the Iowa Democratic Party for a reaction and got this comment from communications director Ali Glisson:

“Whatever a member of the legislature decides to do, it is a personal decision that I will not speculate about,” she said. “But, I can assure you that the Iowa Democratic Party is not something out of Bond movie. No ‘cover up’ is going on.  We remain confident that the Iowa House will remain under Democratic control.”

In high school debate we would have called that a “non-response.” Did Fallon say the IDP was like something out of a Bond movie, or that they were “covering up” wrongdoing? No, he’s saying they don’t want to roll the dice on a competitive primary and would rather hand-pick someone to succeed Ford. And Fallon’s allegation regarding House district 65 has nothing to do with whether the Democratic Party will retain an Iowa House majority. This is about who will determine Ford’s successor, if he retires: voters or insiders. If Ford wants another term, he should say so. If not, he should give other Democrats time to start a campaign.

Whether or not Ford plans to retire this year, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to for a progressive Democrat to collect 50 signatures (plus a few extra) in time to file nominating papers by this Friday. Community organizer Tyler Reedy won about 36 percent of the vote in his primary challenge against Ford in 2008. He worked hard in that campaign and deserves another shot if he is willing to run again.

Share any other suggestions or opinions in this thread.

UPDATE: Ford could have put this matter to rest by answering Dave Price’s question about whether he plans to run again. Four days before the filing deadline, he refused to say. If he isn’t running, he owes it to his Democratic constituents to give other potential candidates an opportunity to file for an open seat.

Kudos to the Woodbury County Democrats for recruiting strong candidates for all three open Iowa House districts as well as both Iowa Senate districts representing parts of Sioux City. Two of those races became open very recently, when Democratic State Representative Roger Wendt announced his retirement from House district 2 because of a cancer recurrence and Republican State Senator Ron Wieck said he won’t run for re-election from Senate district 27.

Two new candidates announced their intentions at the Woodbury County Democratic Convention over the weekend. In House district 2, covering much of the east side of Sioux City, our candidate is Chris Hall. Bret Hayworth writes,

Hall comes from a political family –  his mother, Tina Hall of Sioux City, has served as  Woodbury County Democratic Party Chairwoman and ran unsuccessfully for county treasurer in 1994. His grandfather is Connie Bodine, a former city council member and city manager.

Republican Rick Bertrand previously said he would run in House district 2, but he may switch to run against Democrat Rick Mullin in Senate district 1 instead.

In Senate district 27, our candidate is Marty Pottebaum, a retired Sioux City police officer who served a term on the city council. He is also a past president of the Sioux City Police Officer’s Association and the Iowa State Police Association. Senate district 27 covers southern areas of Sioux City, plus other parts of Woodbury County, part of Plymouth County and all of Cherokee County. A competitive Republican primary will determine Pottebaum’s opponent.

An alert Bleeding Heartland reader informs me that Democrats also have a candidate in Iowa House district 8, from which Dolores Mertz is retiring. I’ll post more details on that race as they become available.

UPDATE: Bertrand did switch to the Senate district 1 race against Mullin. The new Republican candidate in House district 2 is Ryan Beardshear, a technology consultant and partner in an e-business.

There may not be a GOP primary in Senate district 27 after all; Jason Geary dropped out, so Bill Anderson is the likely candidate.

I haven’t posted any job listings here in a while, but I recently learned of a few opportunities in the environmental area. Those are posted below. If you know of political or progressive advocacy jobs available, feel free to send details to me (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com), and I will try to spread the word.

The big political event this week is the March 19 deadline for Iowa candidates to file nominating papers for statewide and federal offices. John Deeth has been covering the filings so far at his blog. Follow me after the jump for details on other things going on around the state, and post a comment or send me an e-mail if you know of something I’ve left out.

Six weeks after revealing the overnight towns for the 2010 Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, the Des Moines Register announced the full 442-mile route that cycling enthusiasts will follow the last week of July.

RAGBRAI XXXVIII will treat riders to one of the shortest and flattest routes ever as it winds through northern Iowa from Sioux City to Dubuque from July 25-31. That combination means the 10,000 riders will navigate a 442-mile route that ranks as third-easiest historically, at least as far as hills and mileage go. The ride will be the sixth-shortest. The 14,527 feet of climb is fifth-lowest total, so rejoice and save the hill complaints until at least Day 3.

Click here for an interactive map. On day 1, riders will start in Sioux City, passing through Leeds, Kingsley, Washta and Quimby en route to Storm Lake. The second day, riders will pass through Varina, Pocahontas, Plover, West Bend and Whittemore before reaching the overnight stop of Algona. The third day, riders will pass through Wesley, Britt and Garner en route to Clear Lake. Day 4 will take riders through Swaledale, Rockwell, Cartersville and Rockford before they stop in Charles City. The fifth day, riders pass through Clarksville, Parkersburg, Stout and Dike on the way to Waterloo. Day 6 takes the riders through Washburn, Gilbertville, Rowley, Quasqueton and Winthrop on the way to Manchester. The route for the final day passes through Earlville, Dyersville, Bankston and Graf before riders reach Dubuque and dip their wheels in the Mississippi River.

Click here to register for RAGBRAI. You can follow @ragbrai_iowa on Twitter here for updates between now and the ride.

Share anything that’s on your mind this weekend in the comments below.

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Justice jointly hosted a workshop in Ankeny devoted to concentration in agriculture, antitrust issues and market practices. After some controversy over the speakers scheduled initially, more farmers and producers were able to speak during the workshop. Lynda Waddington covered a panel including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. The Des Moines Register covered a session concerning Monsanto’s dominance in the biotech seed industry:

Monsanto has generated controversy because of its leading role in the biotech revolution in corn, soybean and cotton seeds since the mid-1990s. About 90 percent of the corn and soybean fields in the Midwest now are planted with seeds genetically altered to resist herbicides and pests.

“Biotech seeds have given farmers better yields and improved their lives,” said farmer Pam Johnson of Floyd County.

Monsanto, Pioneer and other seed companies license their traits under the auspices of a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing life forms to be patented.

Iowa State University professor emeritus Neil Harl said that Supreme Court decision radically changed the seed business from a collaborative, collegial enterprise among land grant colleges, farmers and companies.

“Before 1980, seed germplasm was considered something in the public domain,” said Harl. “Seed was developed in the field and everybody shared. Now seeds are developed in the laboratory and are patented and licensed.”

Holder said the high court decision 30 years ago wouldn’t block antitrust action, if it was deemed necessary.

“The antitrust authority is there,” Holder said. “The question is what the patent holders are doing with their patents. If they are using it to preserve monopolies, that is unfair behavior.”

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey noted that farmers are spending twice as much on seed as they did a decade ago, but also are getting better yields.

“There is tension about the cost of inputs,” Northey said. “But we don’t want to lose the innovation.”

The food blog Cooking Up a Story published this short backgrounder on “Hybrids and the Emergence of Seed Monopolies.”

The night before the DOJ/USDA workshop, Iowa CCI, Food and Water Watch, the National Family Farms Coalition and Food Democracy Now organized a town-hall meeting to raise awareness of excessive levels of concentration in agriculture. Lynda Waddington was there for Iowa Independent.

Democratic candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture Francis Thicke has long been concerned about the loss of competition in agricultural markets. He attended the workshop in Ankeny and praised the DOJ and USDA for investigating antitrust issues related to agriculture:

“Antitrust enforcement by the federal government has been ignored for so long that it will take Teddy Roosevelt-style trust busting to bring competitive markets back to agriculture,” said Thicke, who plans to participate in the first of a series of five workshops planned by the two federal departments this Friday in Ankeny. […]

“The effects of excessive market power by a few firms has been studied for years,” said Thicke. “It has been shown that if four or fewer firms control 40% or more of a market, then it no longer functions as a competitive market.” He pointed out that, as of 2007, four firms controlled 85% of the beef packing market, four firms controlled 66% of the pork packing market, four firms controlled 59% of the broiler market, and four firms controlled 55% of the turkey market.

“Clearly we are beyond the point of open competition in our agricultural markets,” Thicke asserted. “When there are so few large firms in a market, controlling firms begin to act in concert whether or not they are directly communicating pricing with each other.”

Speaking of food policy, I heard some good news this week. The Iowa Center on Health Disparities at the University of Northern Iowa has received major grants for two important projects:

The focus of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation grant is to launch an Iowa Food Policy Council, a diverse statewide cooperative to develop and make research, program and policy recommendations for a food system to support healthier Iowans, communities, economies and environments. Over the next year, the Iowa Food Policy Council will conduct a comprehensive statewide assessment of food systems, food access and health indicators.

The focus of the Leopold Center grant is to convene key food security and public health stakeholders from across Iowa who will examine the disparities in food access and health among Iowans. The Food Access and Health Working Group will address programs and policies that increase access to fresh, nutritious and affordable local food for all Iowans, including vulnerable children and their families.

More details on the grants are after the jump. I was hoping Governor Culver would revive the Food Policy Council, but I’m glad another way was found to get this project going.