I’ve heard some strange arguments against marriage equality, but the latest from Iowa Family Policy Center President Chuck Hurley is a doozy. Reacting to a new report on HIV and syphilis rates among gay and bisexual men, Hurley asserted,

“The Iowa Legislature outlawed smoking [in some public places] in an effort to improve health and reduce the medical costs that are often passed on to the state,” Hurley said. “The secondhand impacts of certain homosexual acts are arguably more destructive, and potentially more costly to society than smoking.” […]

“Iowa lawmakers need to pay attention to hard facts and not be persuaded by emotion laden half-truths,” he said. “Because of their unwillingness to correct the error of last April’s Iowa Supreme Court opinion, the Iowa Legislature is responsible for sanctioning activities that will lead to dramatically higher rates of HIV and syphilis in Iowa.”

Where to begin? Smoking increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and various respiratory ailments, causing an estimated 438,000 preventable deaths every year nationwide. In Iowa, smoking directly causes an estimated 4,400 deaths each year, and secondhand smoke claims another 440 lives. Smoking causes about $1 billion in health care costs every year in Iowa, of which about $301 million is covered by Medicaid.

AIDS is a serious health threat in the U.S., but not on the same scale as smoking. AIDS has caused fewer than 20,000 deaths nationwide per year in the past decade. The total number of AIDS deaths in this country since the epidemic began is estimated at just under 600,000. I was unable to find statistics showing how many Iowans have died of AIDS, but according to this report for the Iowa Department of Public Health, 114 Iowans were diagnosed with HIV in 2005, and 79 Iowans were diagnosed with AIDS the same year. The numbers may have increased somewhat since then, but AIDS is nowhere near as “destructive” and “costly” to Iowans as smoking. Iowa’s syphilis rate is far below the national average, and none of the states with the highest syphilis rates permit same-sex marriages. If Iowa legislators want to influence the syphilis rate, they should focus on providing adequate funding levels for STD testing and ensuring that young people have access to medically accurate sex education.

Hurley’s argument is not only fact-free, but also illogical on several levels. He seems to think that allowing same-gender couples to get married is going to encourage many more Iowans to experiment with gay sex. Do you know anyone who decided to become gay because they knew they’d be able to get married? Has homosexual activity diminished in New York and New Jersey since those states’ legislatures declined to legalize same-sex marriage? Did California’s Proposition 8 reduce the number of gays and lesbians having sex there?

If Hurley is worried about promiscuity and sexually-transmitted diseases, he should be happy to see gay couples settle down and get married.

Contrary to the strange fantasies of the Iowa Family Policy Center crowd, the Iowa Supreme Court didn’t make the sky fall last April. Fortunately, most Iowans understand that our state legislators have more important things to do than overturn same-sex marriage rights. They also sense that giving legal recognition to the relationships of committed same-sex couples does no harm to other people. More than 90 percent of respondents in a statewide poll conducted last September said gay marriage had caused “no real change” in their lives.

Hurley’s position on gay marriage is more coherent than, say, Terry Branstad’s, but it’s also more detached from reality. Maybe his latest comments aren’t the worst argument ever against gay marriage, but they are certainly a contender.

Bret Hayworth has the story at his Politically Speaking blog: David Dawson, a former prosecutor in the Woodbury County Attorney Office, will be the Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 1. He sounds like a great candidate for that Sioux City district. He will face Republican high school teacher Jeremy Taylor, who almost beat retiring State Representative Wes Whitead in 2008.

Our previously declared candidate in House district 1, local business owner Rick Mullin, switched to the Iowa Senate district 1 race after Steve Warnstadt announced his retirement. Mullin’s campaign website is here.

With the filing deadline only a week away, Democrats still lack an announced candidate in House district 2, which contains most of the east side of Sioux City. Recruiting a good candidate for that race should be a higher priority than finding someone to run in Iowa Senate district 27, which is also open and contains southern parts of Sioux City. Not only are Democrats more likely to hold House district 2 than pick up Senate district 27, we are at greater risk of losing the Iowa House than the Iowa Senate.

Once we have a candidate in House district 2, it shouldn’t take long to collect the 50 signatures required to qualify for the ballot.

In related news, there may be a brutal Republican primary in Senate district 27.

The good news is, an important public safety bill went to Governor Chet Culver’s desk on March 11. Senate File 2357 was one of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller’s legislative priorities this year. The bill prohibits Iowans from owning guns and ammunition if they have been convicted of a domestic violence crime or are subject to a protective order. Since 1995, 205 Iowans have been killed in domestic violence incidents; that figure represents nearly one-third of all murders recorded in Iowa during that period. Miller has also pointed out that firearms caused 111 of the 205 Iowa deaths in domestic abuse murders since 1995. Moreover, firearms were involved in nearly two-thirds of Iowa’s domestic violence deaths in 2007 and 2008. Records show 46 of the 205 Iowans killed in domestic abuse murders since 1995 have been bystanders. It’s easier to kill a bystander with a gun than with a knife or other weapon.

Federal law already bans those convicted of domestic violence or subject to a protective order from owning a gun. However, the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence has noted,

We need additional state law so that local law enforcement officers have the legal authority help enforce the firearm ban. Without additional state law there are only two ATF agents in the entire state who can act to enforce the federal law […] Without local law enforcement involved abusers will not and are not abiding by the federal firearms ban.  

Various law enforcement entities backed SF 2357, but most Republicans in the Iowa legislature didn’t cooperate with this effort to address a major violent crime problem. While Republicans were unable to defeat the bill, their votes on the Senate and House floor showed more deference to extremist gun advocates than to the potential victims of domestic abusers.

Eleven of the 18 Iowa Senate Republicans voted against SF 2357 when the upper chamber approved it on February 25, and a twelfth Republican joined them when the Senate considered an amended version on March 11. Roll calls can be found in pdf files for the Senate Journal on those dates. Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley and third-district Congressional candidate Brad Zaun were among the Republicans who voted no.

The March 10 Iowa House debate on SF 2357 exposed even more disturbing aspects of Republican “family values.” House Republicans voted unanimously to inject the same-sex marriage debate into this unrelated bill.

Then they voted unanimously to add a provision that might deter victims from seeking a protective order.

Then all but one of them voted to help domestic abusers get their guns back more quickly.

Then they unanimously supported language to give abuse victims access to self-defense courses, as if that’s the real solution to the domestic violence problem.

Then more than half the Republican caucus voted against the final bill.

The gory details can be found here; highlights are after the jump.

Yesterday the House of Representatives unanimously approved HR 4261, the Prevent Deceptive Census Look-Alike Mailings Act. The short bill would ban fundraising letters like those the Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee sent last month, which gave the appearance of being official census documents. Those mailings were legal because they did not “use the full name of the U.S. Census Bureau or the seal of any government agency.” However, even Republicans have admitted that the tactic crosses a line, and no one in the House GOP caucus wanted to go on record opposing the bill yesterday.

On the other hand, it costs Congressional Republicans nothing to vote for this bill. Their committees are already cashing checks from this year’s deception, and the next census won’t roll around for ten years. If Republicans truly believe it’s wrong to raise money with a fake census letter, they should return all contributions from suckers they’ve duped this year.  

Republican operative Ralph Reed, who once headed the Christian Coalition, is building an Iowa branch for his latest venture, the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Reed spoke at an Iowa Christian Alliance event on Tuesday and promised the crowd that the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition will get “people who share our values” elected “from governor all the way down to the statehouse and school boards all across the state of Iowa.” He said he needed to raise half a million dollars to execute the GOTV plans, reminding the audience that they could donate an unlimited amount, because “we’re not a PAC and we’re not a candidate.”

Reed announced yesterday that he is passing on a chance to run for Congress in order to focus on his new organization:

I believe I can best advance conservative principles by continuing to serve as CEO of Century Strategies, LLC, and founding chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Century’s voter contact subsidiary and grassroots team will be involved in a number of races in 2010. FFC is growing rapidly, with over 150,000 members and supporters already, currently adding one new state chapter a week and 1,000 new members a day.

In 2010 and 2012, FFC will register an estimated one million new faith-based voters and make tens of millions of voter contacts in what may be the largest conservative get-out-the-vote effort in modern political history. These nationwide efforts offer a much better prospect for changing the direction of the country than winning a Congressional race myself.

Speaking of GOTV, Reed made a bizarre analogy during his speech to the Iowa Christian Alliance audience. According to Kathie Obradovich, Reed said that Barack Obama’s 2008 win in Iowa was like a Harlem Globetrotters game in which the GOP were the team that showed up to get beaten. Makes you wonder why the Republican Party of Iowa hired Jim Anderson as its executive director late last year. Anderson’s main political experience in this state was with John McCain’s “Victory” GOTV operation.

Iowa Christian Alliance head Steve Scheffler said his group won’t be “directly involved” in Iowa elections this year, but will “encourage activists to get involved with a candidate, especially in competitive legislative districts.” Scheffler is also one of Iowa’s representatives on the Republican National Committee.

Former Senator Rick Santorum headlined the Iowa Christian Alliance event. You can read about his speech at Iowa Independent and the Des Moines Register’s blog. I find it amazing that anyone can be considered presidential material after losing re-election in a purple state by 18 points.

All three Republican candidates for governor also spoke Tuesday evening. William Petroski covered highlights at the Des Moines Register’s blog, and Kathie Obradovich covered the event on Twitter. Bob Vander Plaats talked about economic issues and education as well as repeating his promises to halt same-sex marriages and choose a running mate who shares his values. Vander Plaats also mentioned polls showing him leading Governor Chet Culver. Terry Branstad criticized “arrogant” Democratic leaders who are blocking a vote on the definition of marriage. He also took credit for helping make home-schooling legal and passing a ban on late-term abortions while governor. My favorite Branstad line was, I know we made our share of mistakes but I think it’s important to ask Jesus Christ for forgiveness.. Rod Roberts said he can beat Chet Culver and “emphasized his background as development director for Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in Iowa.”

Final note: the Federal Election Commission appears not to have ruled yet on a complaint filed against the Iowa Christian Alliance last year. The complaint alleged that the group had run donations through a Burlington church, a 501(c)3 organization, so that donors could benefit from a tax deduction they wouldn’t receive from giving directly to the Iowa Christian Alliance, a 501(c)4.

Yesterday the Senate approved HR 4213, the Tax Extenders Act of 2009, by a 62-35 vote. Tom Harkin voted for the bill, as did all but one Democrat. Chuck Grassley voted against the bill, as did all but six Republicans (roll call here). Harkin’s office summarized some of the $140 billion bill’s key provisions:

o    Extend the current federal unemployment benefits program through Dec 31, 2010.

o    Extend the federal funding of the state share of Extended Benefits through Dec 31, 2010.

o    Extend eligibility for the temporary increase of $25 per week in individual weekly unemployment compensation through Dec 31, 2010.

o    Extend the 65 percent subsidy for COBRA coverage through Dec 31, 2010.

o    Extend the Medicare payment fix for doctors.

o    Extend FMAP, the federal share of Medicaid payments, to give state budgets some relief.

Last week, Congress passed a 30-day extension of the federal unemployment benefits program (through April 5th) and the extension prior to that continued unemployment benefits for 2 months (from Dec 2009 to Feb 2010).

The Hill reported that about $80 billion of the bill’s cost “goes toward prolonging increased levels of federal unemployment aid and COBRA healthcare benefits for the jobless through the end of December.” According to the Washington Post, the main Republican objection was that the bill will add to the deficit. It’s notable that Republicans never let concerns about the deficit stop them from voting for unaffordable wars or tax cuts for the wealthy. But unemployment benefits that help struggling families while stimulating the economy and creating jobs are too expensive for Republicans.

The Senate bill approved yesterday also included an extension of the Biodiesel Tax Credit through the end of December. Most Iowa biodiesel plants are not viable without this tax credit, and consequently many shut down production in January of this year.

House Democrats may want a conference committee to reconcile the bill the Senate passed yesterday with a $154 billion jobs bill the House approved in December. That House bill included “significant new spending for infrastructure projects, as well as aid to states to prevent layoffs of key personnel such as teachers, police and firefighters.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly promised to “bring up a bill that included the infrastructure and state fiscal aid measures from the House jobs bill” before the Senate’s Easter break.

State Representative Dolores Mertz announced yesterday that she will not seek a twelfth term in the Iowa House. First elected to House district 8 in 1988, she said she’s in good health but wants to spend more time with her large family. House district 8 includes all of Humboldt and Pocahontas counties, plus parts of Kossuth and Webster counties (map here).

Mertz has chaired the Iowa House Agriculture Committee since Democrats won a majority in the 2006 election. Rumors of her impending retirement circulated last year, but when I saw that she raised more than $20,000 for her campaign in 2009, I assumed she would be up for another term. No Democratic candidate has announced plans to run in House district 8 yet, but we should learn more before the March 19 filing deadline.

John Deeth sees this race as a likely Republican pickup, and given the partisan lean of the district, that should be the case. However, I would not be surprised to see Democrats hold this seat if Republican infighting resembles what happened last fall in New York’s 23rd Congressional district special election.

Steven Richards fell just 42 votes short of defeating Mertz in 2008 and is seeking the GOP nomination again. Richards is a mainstream Republican, but most of the local GOP officials are backing right-winger Tom Shaw. He had planned to run as an independent in House district 8 before returning to the Republican fold this year. Shaw and Richards aired their differences at a forum last month, and I get the impression that Shaw will run as a third-party candidate if Richards wins the nomination. If Shaw wins the nomination, which seems more probable, supporters of Richards may prefer the Democrat (assuming we nominate a moderate) or simply not vote in the House race. Shaw backs Bob Vander Plaats for governor, and he may follow Kent Sorenson’s lead and refuse to vote for Branstad for governor under any circumstances. That could alienate many Republican voters in the area. Richards supports Branstad for governor.

The financial disclosure forms Shaw and Richards filed in January indicate that Richards raised only $100 last year and had a little more than three dollars (!) cash on hand at the end of December. Shaw raised $1,753 last year and had just under $238 cash on hand. In other words, the winner of the Republican primary is unlikely to have an intimidating war chest.

Normally, I hate to see an incumbent Democrat retire in a marginal district, but Mertz is the exception that proves the rule. Even if Democrats end up losing House district 8, I can’t say I am sorry to see Mertz leave the legislature. She’s not only part of the “six-pack” that blocked labor bills, she has given Republicans cover on many other issues. For example, Mertz has co-sponsored constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage and end access to abortion and some forms of birth control. She has also pushed a lot of bad bills through the House Agriculture Committee while blocking many attempts to reduce pollution from factory farms. During this year’s session, Mertz supported a bill that would undermine new rules on spreading manure over frozen ground and a bill to give owners of agricultural drainage wells until 2020 to comply with a 1997 law intended to reduce water pollution.

I understand that the new Democratic candidate in House district 8 won’t be a liberal, but I’m hoping for more of a team player than Mertz has been. At the very least a new Democrat from this district wouldn’t have the seniority to chair a House committee.

I hope Mertz will enjoy a happy retirement in the company of her seven children and eleven grandchildren. Until I read this piece in the Fort Dodge Messenger, I didn’t realize that her political career began with the untimely death of her husband.

She was the first woman to become a Kossuth County supervisor. She was appointed to the Board of Supervisors in 1983 to fill the vacancy created by the death of her husband, H.P. “Pete” Mertz. In 1984, she won a special election to complete the remaining two years of her husband’s term. In 1986, she was elected to a full four-year term without any opposition.

Similar tragedies have pushed many other women into elected offices. In fact, one-fifth of all the women who have served in Congress have been widows who “directly succeeded their husbands.”  

State Representative Rod Roberts continues to line up endorsements in his long-shot gubernatorial campaign. Bill Schickel just resigned as secretary of the Iowa GOP in order to endorse Roberts. Party officers are supposed to remain neutral in Republican primaries, but  

“I can no longer remain neutral,” said Schickel, a former state representative and Mason City mayor. “Our party is currently divided. Neither of the frontrunners has shown that they can bring the two sides together. If the current division continues we will certainly lose in November. Rod Roberts has the best chance of beating Chet Culver.”  

“He is the only candidate who has demonstrated he can bring together the fiscal and social conservative wings of our party. He has also proven that he can attract the Independents and Democrats that are critical to victory,” Schickel said. “He has done it during the campaign. He did it as a state representative. And he did it in five previous elections.”  

“Rod is an underdog right now, but he is also the candidate with momentum,” Schickel said. “While the numbers for the frontrunners have remained essentially flat, Rod in the past three months has gone from almost no voter recognition to capturing 19 percent of the Republican vote in the Dallas County straw poll and winning the Guthrie County straw poll this past weekend.”  “Whenever Republicans meet him, they are won over,” Schickel said. “He is a solid fiscal and social conservative who is also a fresh face. That is exactly what our party needs, and more importantly, what Iowa needs.”

Schickel also maintains the the conservative news aggregator The Bean Walker, a task he took over when Tim Albrecht signed on with Terry Branstad’s campaign for governor.  

Over the weekend, the Roberts campaign announced two more supporters in the Iowa House: State Representatives Cecil Dolecheck (district 96 in southwest Iowa) and Mike May (district 6 in northwest Iowa). They join four current and one former Republican legislator who previously announced their support for Roberts.  

Branstad is the heavy favorite to win the primary, but many GOP activists don’t want to go back to the future. As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that any gains for Roberts will come largely at the expense of Bob Vander Plaats, who needs as much support as possible from western Iowa conservatives. Vander Plaats has been winning straw polls, but he hasn’t picked up many endorsements from within the Republican establishment since Branstad entered the race.

I suspect Roberts wouldn’t be landing these endorsements unless the donors behind Branstad had signaled that they won’t hold grudges against Roberts supporters. Or, to put it another way, my hunch is that Schickel would not go out on a limb to endorse Roberts if he feared doing so would threaten future funding for the Iowa GOP or The Bean Walker. (Albrecht launched The Bean Walker while working for the American Future Fund, and many business figures associated with the American Future Fund have made large contributions to the Branstad campaign.)

Perhaps Roberts has the inside track to become Branstad’s running mate, or the candidates have an informal non-aggression pact. Or maybe Roberts doesn’t criticize Branstad as harshly as Vander Plaats does because that’s not his personal style. Whatever the reason, Roberts is shaping up as the politically correct alternative for Republicans who aren’t wild about a fifth term for Branstad.

In related news, I was surprised to see that Branstad accepted three invitations to debate Roberts and Vander Plaats: in Sioux City on April 7, in Cedar Rapids on May 1, and in Des Moines on a date to be scheduled later.

Sioux City residents will replace their entire delegation in the Iowa House and Senate this November. Democrat Steve Warnstadt announced his retirement yesterday from Iowa Senate district 1, which comprises much of Sioux City (map here). Warnstadt is completing his second term in the Senate and has chaired the upper chamber’s Commerce Committee. He is known for his work on veterans’ issues, among other things, and commands the 671st Troop Command of the Iowa Army National Guard.

Two-term Republican State Senator Ron Wieck told Bret Hayworth of the Sioux City Journal last week that he will not seek re-election in Senate district 27. The district comprises all of Cherokee County and portions of Plymouth and Woodbury counties, including the southern areas of Sioux City (map here).

All three Iowa House seats representing the Sioux City area are open as well. Democrat Wes Whitead announced his retirement from House district 1 last November. Democrat Roger Wendt is stepping down from House district 2 because of a cancer recurrence. Republican Chris Rants is retiring from House district 54.

Businessman and former Woodbury County Democratic Party chairman Rick Mullin had previously planned to run in House district 1, but he switched to the Senate race after learning of Warnstadt’s retirement. Mullin’s campaign website had already been updated this morning. While he is a strong candidate in a district that leans Democratic (Warnstadt was re-elected in 2006 with about 67 percent of the vote), I can’t help wishing that Warnstadt had stuck it out for another term. It’s not ideal to have another Democratic retirement in what could be a tough year for our candidates nationwide.

Republican Rick Bertrand may become Mullin’s opponent in Senate district 1, having previously announced plans to run in House district 2.

Democrats already have a candidate in House district 54: Carlos Venable-Ridley, who ran against Rants in 2008. However, no candidates have announced for us in House districts 1 and 2. Since the filing deadline is just 10 days away, we should learn more soon. We need strong candidates for those races, because we have some tough holds elsewhere, and Republicans only need a net gain of seven seats to take control of the Iowa House. The Republican candidate in House district 1 is Jeremy Taylor, who nearly defeated Whitead in 2008. If Bertrand passes on the Senate district 1 race, he will be the Republican candidate in House district 2. He gave Wendt a surprisingly close race in 2008.

As for Senate district 27, Democrats did not field a candidate against Wieck when he ran for re-election in 2006. Typically we don’t leave any open seat unchallenged, but finding a candidate for Weick’s old seat will be a lower priority for Woodbury County Democrats than filling the House district 1 and 2 races. Republicans may have a competitive primary in Senate district 27. Hayworth reported that former Sioux City Councilman Jason Geary is seeking the GOP nomination and has Wieck’s backing. Bill Anderson, a staffer for Representative Steve King and member of the Iowa GOP’s state central committee, may challenge Geary in the primary. Woodbury County Republican Party parliamentarian Steve Carlson “declined to comment” to Hayworth about whether he might run for Wieck’s seat.

If I were Iowa Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign Director Derek Eadon, I would send one of my best field organizers to Woodbury County. We need an army of volunteers in the Sioux City area.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: Mullin formally announced his candidacy on March 10.

“As a small business owner, I’ve created jobs and met a payroll,” said Mullin. “And helping middle class Iowans and small business owners in Sioux City emerge from this national economic recession will be my top priority.”

Mullin is the owner and president of Mullin Awning & Siding, a family-owned business that has operated in the Sioux City area for more than 115 years.

“I’ve been involved in the Sioux City community for all of my life,” said Mullin. “And I want to take the values I learned growing up in Sioux City with me to the State Capitol where I’ll work every day to improve the lives of the people of Senate District 1. I will fight for good jobs, great schools, developing our local economy and providing accountability for the hard-earned tax dollars of Iowans in Sioux City.”

Mullin is a leader in the Sioux City community. He served as president of the Better Business Bureau of Siouxland from 1981-1984; he was past president of the Sioux City Convention Center, Auditorium & Tourism Bureau. Mullin was President of the Crime Stoppers Board of Directors from 2005-2007 and also served as vice president of the Taxpayers Research Council (TRC), during which time he founded the TRC Jail Committee to determine the necessity for building a new $50 million County Jail. Rick hosted informal meetings with judges, prosecutors, jailers and others and found creative solutions to avoid spending $50 million of taxpayer dollars.

“I think bringing people together and listening is the best way to find a solution to the problems that we face today,” said Mullin. “I’m proud of the work we did on the jail committee to figure out how to save $50 million for the taxpayers in Woodbury County. Listening to all sides of the issues and coming up with workable, cost-effective solutions will be how I represent the people of Senate District 1.”

Rick and his wife Sue have two children, Megan and John. Sue is a special education teacher at Crescent Park Elementary in Sioux City.

“I’m going to be meeting as many people as I can in Senate District 1 over the next several months. If you’ve got an idea about how to move Sioux City forward, then I want to hear from you.”

Mullin’s campaign co-chairs are prominent Sioux City attorney Marv Heidman and Senator Steve Warnstadt.

Mullin said that people can contact him at home, at (712) 574-9325 or email him at rick@mullinforiowa.com. To find out more about his campaign, visit www.mullinforiowa.com.

Warnstadt released a statement on March 10, saying, “I believe that Rick Mullin’s record of community involvement and strong work ethic will make him an effective advocate for the people of Sioux City. Rick’s experience as a small business owner will help efforts to attract and retain good-paying jobs to Sioux City. Rick Mullin will make a great state senator.”

Jason Hancock published a fascinating story at Iowa Independent today about a federal lawsuit against Syngenta AG and its U.S.-based subsidiary, Syngenta Crop Protection Inc. Sixteen communities, including Creston in southwest Iowa, are suing Syngenta because it profits from sales of atrazine while communities have to pay to remove the weed-killer from water supplies. Apparently Creston has a higher concentration of atrazine in its drinking water than any other Iowa city.

Judging from this comment by a Syngenta spokesperson, the key to the company’s defense will be a Bush administration Environmental Protection Agency finding, which asserted that atrazine has no detrimental effects in humans. However, the herbicide is banned in Europe because of numerous studies showing that it enters the water supply and is correlated with certain cancers and birth defects.

We could reduce water pollution if we made polluters pay the cost of removing contaminants from drinking water, but asking farmers who apply atrazine to pay for water treatment is a political non-starter. I don’t know what legal precedent supports suing the manufacturer of a farm chemical over the cost of treating drinking water. Last year the Obama administration EPA ordered the independent Scientific Advisory Panel to conduct a thorough scientific review of atrazine’s “potential cancer and non-cancer effects on humans,” including “its potential association with birth defects, low birth weight, and premature births.” I assume the results of that review will affect the outcome of the cities’ federal lawsuit against Syngenta.

I’m still waiting for so-called “pro-life” activists to support restrictions on farm chemicals linked to birth defects and spontaneous abortions.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee confirmed yesterday that Representative Bruce Braley will co-chair the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program this year. Red to Blue candidates are Democratic challengers seeking to win Republican-held House districts. DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen noted this week that even in a “tough cycle for Democrats,”

The DCCC is focused on not only protecting our threatened incumbents, but also staying aggressively on offense. The talented leadership of our battle-tested Red to Blue chairs Bruce Braley, Allyson Schwartz, Patrick Murphy, and Donna Edwards will ensure Democratic candidates have the infrastructure and support they need to be successful.

The Republican Party of Iowa responded with a boilerplate statement accusing Braley of being loyal to “San Franciscan Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi” instead of the citizens of Iowa’s first Congressional district. Their attacks on Braley’s record could hardly be more misleading.  

Wellmark Blue Cross-Blue Shield recently announced premium increases averaging 18 percent for about 80,000 policy-holders. Tens of thousands of customers were facing rate hikes of 22 percent, effective April 1.

Today Governor Chet Culver halted the planned increases by Iowa’s largest health insurance provider. Details are after the jump.

Iowa Republicans have landed Sandy Greiner, their dream candidate against first-term Democratic State Senator Becky Schmitz in Senate district 45. The southeast Iowa district includes all of Washington, Jefferson, and Van Buren counties, plus part of Wapello and Johnson counties (map here). Schmitz defeated Republican incumbent David Miller by 184 votes in 2006, but the area leans slightly Republican in terms of voter registration.

Greiner represented Iowa House district 89, which makes up half of Senate district 45, for four terms (1993 to 2001). She then served for two years in the Iowa Senate before redistricting prompted her to return to House district 89 for another three terms (2003-2009). Consequently, she starts the race with high name recognition in the area and will be able to campaign almost as an incumbent. Republican blogger Craig Robinson sounds ready to declare this seat won for the GOP.

Greiner will be a stronger opponent for Schmitz than the three Republicans who had previously declared for the seat (Richard Marlar, Randy Besick and Dan Cesar). However, I would not assume that local Republicans will be united behind her this fall. Greiner is linked to business elites who have battled with activists on the religious right for control over the direction of the Iowa GOP.

Join me after the jump for more background on Greiner and why I suspect some social conservatives will fight her candidacy.

Francis Thicke has hired staff for his Democratic campaign for Iowa secretary of agriculture, Will Merydith reported for the Fairfield Voice blog on Friday.

Rob Hubler, a 40-year veteran of managing political campaigns, started with the campaign about two weeks ago. Rob Hubler was the 2008 candidate for U.S. Congress in Iowa’s fifth district. This week the campaign team is growing with the addition of Keith Dinsmore, a veteran campaign media specialist. Keith has connections with press across Iowa and will be organizing Francis Thicke’s state-wide media work.

“In the next few weeks I will be traveling to a number of Democratic Party county conventions to speak to audiences about my campaign platform. I also have upcoming appearances at Grinnell College and Iowa State University. I do have one out-of-state event planned for next month, to speak at a national organic farming policy conference in Washington, D.C.”

“We have a local event planned for Fairfield on Saturday, March 27: Blues musician Bill Lupkin will be performing at Morning Star Studio as a fundraiser for our campaign.”

Thicke also recently opened a campaign office on the main square in Fairfield (Jefferson County, southeast Iowa).

I hope Thicke’s campaign will attract a large volunteer contingent. Iowa has plenty of Democratic activists who aren’t wild about Governor Chet Culver and don’t live in a battleground state legislative district. Republican Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey will be heavily favored in this race and will raise more money than Thicke. However, Thicke has outstanding qualifications, and his vision for agriculture deserves our wholehearted support. We don’t often hear Iowa candidates speak out against excessive concentration of agricultural markets or advocate stronger regulations for confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). I recommend reading the four-part interview Blog for Iowa did with Thicke last year (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4). Francis and Susan Thicke operate a successful organic dairy farm and won the 2009 Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture.

We’ll need all Democratic hands on deck in the Fairfield area this year, since Iowa House district 90 and Iowa Senate district 45 are likely to be competitive races. State Representative Curt Hanson narrowly won last summer’s special election in House district 90, while State Senator Becky Schmitz is in her first term representing Senate district 45.

UPDATE: Forgot to add this ActBlue link for those who want to donate to Thicke’s campaign.

I didn’t manage to compile calendars the past couple of weeks, but I wanted to get back on track today, because there are lots of newsworthy events happening in the coming week around Iowa.

I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the DAWN’s List reception honoring outstanding Iowa Democratic women tomorrow. I’d appreciate it if someone who attends would post a comment or a diary here about the reception.

Other notable events this week include a symposium in Des Moines about Iowa’s 2008 floods, a sustainable communities conference in Dubuque, and a public workshop in Ankeny about competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture industry. Details on those and other happenings are after the jump.

Keep checking John Deeth’s blog for news about statewide, Congressional and state legislative candidate filings, which continue through March 19.

Bleeding Heartland readers may remember that Terry Branstad’s gubernatorial campaign paid for a round of robocalls to Iowa Democrats in December. Iowa Independent reported yesterday that Branstad’s campaign is calling Democrats again.

In three different instances, the calls focused on same-sex marriage, eventually concluding with Branstad saying that he supports marriage only between a man and a woman. One person indicated they received their call from the Branstad campaign in late January, with the others within the past two weeks.

A series of robocalls received in eastern Iowa early in December touted Branstad’s “proven record” of income tax cuts and then indicated that he would “fight for traditional marriage.” Those calls came from a Washington, D.C., number that has also been linked to possible push-poll political calls on taxpayer-funded abortion and death panels in “Obamacare.”

If you receive this call, please post a comment or a diary here with details, or e-mail me confidentially about (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com). Remember, it’s helpful not to hang up on political robocalls or surveys. Stay on the line and take notes, if possible, about the content of the call, who paid for the message, and so on.

I want to see a public poll of the Republican primary for governor. Since Branstad had nearly five times as much cash on hand as the combined total for Bob Vander Plaats and Rod Roberts as of the end of December, he should have no trouble winning. On the other hand, a lot of party activists are not sold on Branstad. Just last night Vander Plaats won the Dallas County GOP straw poll. If Branstad is trying to identify conservative Democratic supporters, he must be hoping to get them to cross over and vote in the Republican primary.

This thread is for anything on your mind this weekend. Hope everyone is enjoying the balmy temperatures of the last few days (highs in the 40s). The Des Moines Register reported today on some of the records we set this winter, according to Iowa climatologist Harry Hillaker:

GET AN INCH, TAKE 5 FEET: Des Moines logged 61.2 inches of snow December through February, besting the record of 54.6 inches set in the winter of 1885-1886. Statewide, Iowa saw an average of 45.1 inches of snow, edging the 1961-1962 record of 44.7 inches.

WHITE ZONE IS FOR UNLOADING SNOW ONLY: At least 5 inches of snow has been on the ground at the Des Moines airport for 87 days in a row through Friday, shattering the old record of 54 days set in the winter of 1961-1962.

FEB-BRR-UARY: The highest temperature recorded in Iowa was 35 degrees, the lowest high temperature since 39 degrees in 1978. Iowa usually sees an average of 10 days above 40 degrees in February.

WARM BEGINS AT 50: Through Friday, no place in Iowa recorded a temperature of 50 degrees for 78 consecutive days, the fourth-longest streak in history.

UPDATE: I saw that a House resolution expressing support for the National School Lunch Program passed on Thursday by 403 to 13. In light of the lopsided vote, I had to click on the roll call to see if Representative Steve King was one of the 13. I’m happy to report that even the occasionally mean-spirited, uncompassionate, clueless, dare I say cartoon-villain-like King recognizes that “our pupils deserve access to high-quality, safe, and nutritious meals in school.”

Representative Leonard Boswell filed nominating papers yesterday to run for an eighth term in Iowa’s third Congressional district. That’s no surprise, since Boswell has been saying he’ll run again since November 2008 and repeated that in January and February of this year.

But ever since the National Republican Congressional Committee put Boswell on a potential House Democrat retirement list in December, influential Washington-based analysts like Chris Cillizza have been saying Boswell might retire. The foot-soldiers at The Iowa Republican blog did their part to keep the rumors going, despite the lack of evidence.

Boswell and others in his camp commented on the bogus speculation to the Des Moines Register:

“This rumor stuff was completely invented in Washington, D.C.,” said JoDee Winterhof, a veteran Democratic adviser and former Boswell campaign aide. […]

Last month came another twist.

An automated telephone survey went out in the district asking potential Democratic primary voters about potential Boswell alternatives. The calls rekindled rumors that Boswell was getting out and that an alternative candidate was being vetted.

The national GOP campaign said the calls were not their work. Democrats said it would cost very little to buy a round of calls to reignite doubt. […]

His 2008 campaign manager, Grant Woodard, has remained on his campaign staff. Recently, he brought on a finance director.

“I hope that puts it to rest. The story keeps popping up in D.C.,” Boswell said. “They seem to think, if you say it over and over and over, that it’s going to grow legs.”

I never heard from any respondents who received that robo-poll last month, but it didn’t sound to me like a genuine attempt to vet alternatives to Boswell.

At least five and up to seven Republicans are competing for the chance to run against Boswell this year. Republican insiders favor Jim Gibbons, but the crowded field may force the GOP nomination to be decided at a district convention.

The Iowa Democratic Party announced today that Derek Eadon has begun working as the director for the 2010 “coordinated campaign,” the Democrats’ main voter turnout operation. From an IDP press release:

Derek will oversee the Coordinated Campaign, which will focus heavily on organizing the grassroots, from volunteer coordination to get-out the vote-programs.

“My job is to build on the organization already put into place by the Iowa Democratic Party so that Democrats win here in November. I am confident we can do that and I am eager to get the Coordinated Campaign underway,” said Eadon.

Eadon is a 2006 Coordinated Campaign veteran, working as a field organizer in the Cedar Rapids area. He then became the first field organizer hired in Iowa for President Obama’s campaign, and he worked for the Obama campaign throughout the 2008 election. Prior to this, Eadon was the Iowa State Director for Organizing for America.

I wish Eadon every success in his work, and I hope this year’s coordinated campaign is as successful as the 2006 turnout operation. The Iowa Democratic Party did an excellent job that year of focusing on Democratic voters who were unreliable for off-year elections. Although the Obama campaign had an excellent field operation before the Iowa caucuses, I was critical of letting the Obama campaign take over the 2008 coordinated campaign, and I felt the down-ticket gains weren’t as strong as they could have been. (I wasn’t alone.) I do credit the Obama campaign for its focus on early voting in 2008; that saved several Democratic seats in the state legislature. A strong absentee ballot drive also helped Curt Hanson win last year’s special election in Iowa House district 90.

Even the best turnout operation is no substitute for having this state’s leaders deliver on issues of importance to the Democratic base. But that’s a topic for another post.

Speaking of GOTV, John Morgan argued persuasively at the Pennsylvania Progressive blog that Organizing for America is a poor substitute for the 50-state strategy the Democratic National Committee carried out under Howard Dean’s leadership.  

As many as seven Republican candidates may be competing for the chance to face seven-term Representative Leonard Boswell in Iowa’s third district this year. John Deeth noticed yesterday that Scott Batcher was the first to file for the Republican nomination in IA-03. Batcher’s campaign website highlights extensive experience in business, including 15 years as a healthcare consultant. He’s been running a low-profile campaign, but collected enough signatures “at high school basketball games and coffee shops” to attempt to qualify for the ballot.

Five declared Republican candidates have filed Federal Election Commission reports on fundraising for the IA-03 race, so I assume they will follow through and qualify for the ballot: Jim Gibbons, Brad Zaun, Dave Funk, Mark Rees and Pat Bertroche. A seventh Republican, Jason Welch, was rumored to be getting into this race too, but what turns up on Google searches as Welch’s official website hasn’t been working when I’ve clicked on it.

The second Congressional district Republican primary will be nearly as crowded, with four declared candidates likely to qualify for the ballot: Rob Gettemy, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Chris Reed and Steve Rathje. (So far only Rathje has filed nominating papers.)

If no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the vote in the June 8 primary, district conventions would select the Republican nominee in IA-02 and/or IA-03. In 2002, a fifth district convention selected Steve King as the Republican nominee for Congress after no one in the four-way primary cleared the 35 percent threshold.

Republican county conventions scheduled for this weekend will select delegates for the district conventions, which will be held later this spring. If no winner emerges from the June primary, the second or third district conventions would have to reconvene to select a Congressional nominee. That could happen during the state convention, to be held on June 26 in a location not yet determined. The convention usually takes place in Des Moines but has occasionally been held in Cedar Rapids. This year, Sioux City is also in the running as a venue. That would be a three to four hour drive from the counties in IA-03 and a four to seven hour drive from the counties in IA-02.

Western Iowa is the most Republican area of the state, but the bulk of the Iowa population still lives in the eastern counties. Former GOP State Central Committee member David Chung, who lives in Cedar Rapids, sounded the alarm on his Hawkeye GOP blog:

Even if hotels are short in Des Moines, holding the convention in Sioux CIty almost guarantees that a large number of delegates will need hotel rooms. I do not know whether there will be a major pre-convention event but if there is, it will be impossible for 1st and 2nd Republicans to attend without taking a whole day off from work.

Even worse, given the number of candidates for the 2nd and 3rd district congressional races there is the real possibility that the nominee will be chosen at a district convention. The state convention has been scheduled long enough after the primary to make resolving nominations at the convention possible. I cannot stress how bad a decision it would be to decide the 2nd CD race in Sioux City! The turnout from our district will be greatly suppressed if Siouxland is the choice.

Krusty Konservative also warned yesterday that many Republican delegates will not bother to attend a state convention in Sioux City.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks had a hard time uniting second district Republicans even after winning the 2008 primary. Be prepared for lasting hard feelings if a small group of party activists ends up choosing the GOP nominee in IA-02 or IA-03 this year. King wasn’t hurt by his path to the nomination in 2002, but he was fortunate to be running in heavily Republican IA-05. In contrast, Boswell’s district leans slightly Democratic (D+1) and Dave Loebsack’s district leans strongly Democratic (D+7).

P.S.- I took my kids to see a game at the Iowa girls’ state basketball tournament on Wednesday. A bunch of teams in the Des Moines metro area made the 4A quarterfinals. I noticed that NRCC “on the radar” candidate Jim Gibbons had an ad scrolling occasionally (nothing special, just “Jim Gibbons for Congress, www.gibbonsforcongress.com”). Unfortunately for him, the teams from Republican-leaning Ankeny and Johnston were eliminated in the quarter-finals, so their fans who live in IA-03 won’t be back to see more of the Gibbons ads later this week. Des Moines East advanced to the semis, but I don’t think many GOP primary voters live on the east side of Des Moines. The other teams in the semis are Linn-Mar and Cedar Rapids Kennedy (IA-02) and Waukee (IA-04).

The House of Representatives approved a jobs bill today containing about $15 billion in tax incentives and a $20 billion allocation from the Highway Trust Fund to support infrastructure projects. (The Senate had approved the legislation on February 24.) Iowa Democrats Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) voted for the bill, while Iowa Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) voted against it (roll call here). Six Republicans joined 211 Democrats in supporting the bill, while 35 Democrats opposed it along with most of the GOP caucus. The Democratic opponents were mostly members of either the Progressive Caucus or the Congressional Black Caucus:

Congressman [Raul] Grijalva, one of the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, had dismissed the tax-credit focused bill as not “dealing with job creation.” […] The CBC’s position during the month long debate on the $15 billion jobs tax credit package was fairly straightforward – CBC members don’t want to back a bill that was composed of tax breaks for business which they don’t believe will necessarily create jobs when other job-creating programs the CBC supports, such a summer youth jobs program, face an uncertain future in the Senate.

Braley had introduced a separate bill last month containing language similar to part of the jobs bill approved today:

Braley’s language in the HIRE Act provides small business owners with greater incentives to hire workers for long-term positions, providing $1,000 in additional tax incentives for businesses that retain employees for 52 consecutive weeks. The payroll tax cut provides greater incentive for employers to move quickly to hire new workers because the credit expires at the end of the year.  The sooner employees are hired, the more time small business owners have to benefit from the credit.

The [Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment] Act also includes the following provisions:

o       Tax cuts to spur new investment by small businesses to help them expand and hire more workers

o       Extension of the Highway Trust Fund allowing for tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure investment

o       Provisions — modeled after the Build America Bonds program – to make it easier for states to borrow for infrastructure projects, such as school construction and energy projects

Earlier this week, Republican Senator Jim Bunning ended his filibuster of a bill including a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and other measures. The Senate then approved the bill by a 78 to 19 vote. Both Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Chuck Grassley voted for the bill. However, Grassley defended Bunning’s efforts to demand that the bill be paid for, while Harkin said Bunning had abused Senate procedures in blocking the bill for several days. I do agree with one point Grassley raised: the unemployment benefits should have been included in the jobs bill the Senate approved on February 24.

Obama signed the bill right away on March 3. Not only did that extend unemployment and COBRA benefits, it also allowed furloughed Department of Transportation workers to come back to work and prevented a big cut in Medicare payments to physicians from going into effect.

Speaking of jobs-related legislation, Roxanne Conlin’s campaign blasted Grassley this week for announcing that some Dubuque workers are eligible for a retraining program that he voted against. After the jump you can read the press release, which includes background information on the program and Grassley’s voting record.  

John Deeth’s latest blog post for the Des Moines Register reviews the ten worst campaigns waged in Iowa during the past 20 years. I didn’t observe all of those campaigns first-hand, but he makes a convincing case for including most of the candidates on his list.

Two campaigns don’t belong on Deeth’s list, in my opinion. He ranked Congressman Neal Smith’s 1994 effort as number seven. Maybe Smith was slow to realize that Greg Ganske was a threat, but one thing destroyed Smith in that race, and it wasn’t incompetence. Redistricting after the 1990 census took Story County and Jasper County out of Smith’s district, replacing them with a bunch of rural counties in southwest Iowa he had never represented. Smith brought incalculable millions to Iowa State University over the years, and union membership in the Newton area was very strong. If Story and Jasper had still been in IA-04, Smith would have easily survived even the Republican wave of 1994.

Number two on Deeth’s list is Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Iowa caucus campaign. As I discussed at length here, I feel that Barack Obama won the caucuses more than Clinton or John Edwards lost them. Remember, Clinton started out way behind in Iowa. Whatever mistakes her campaign made, and they made plenty, you have to give them credit for getting more than 70,000 Iowans to stand in her corner on a cold night in January. That included many thousands of people who had never attended a caucus before. In the summer of 2007, almost anyone would have agreed that 70,000 supporters would be enough to win here. The turnout for Clinton is even more impressive when you consider that she did worse on second choices than Obama or Edwards. She didn’t win Iowa, but this wasn’t one of the ten worst Iowa campaigns by a longshot.

I want to share one anecdote about Jim Ross Lightfoot’s gubernatorial campaign in 1998, which rightfully claimed the top spot on Deeth’s list. Lightfoot blew a huge lead over little-known Tom Vilsack in September and October. Here’s how stupid this guy was. According to several people who witnessed the event, Lightfoot advocated for school prayer at a candidate forum organized by Temple B’Nai Jeshurun in Des Moines. Not only that, Lightfoot told that room full of Jews that majority rule should determine the prayer. For instance, in a town that’s 90 percent Danish, why not let them say Lutheran prayers in school?

Terry Branstad showed horrible judgment by endorsing Lightfoot in the 1998 primary, when he could have supported his own highly capable Lieutenant Governor Joy Corning.

Go read Deeth’s post, then share your own thoughts about the worst Iowa campaigns in this thread.

Also, check Deeth’s own blog regularly this month for updates on Iowa candidate filings. March 19 is the deadline for state legislative and statewide candidates to submit nomination papers.

Congratulations to the same-sex couples who received marriage licenses in Washington, DC today, the first day same-sex marriage became legal in the capital. The city council had approved same-sex marriage rights last fall, but “because Washington is a federal district, the law had to undergo a congressional review period that expired Tuesday.” The weddings will begin on March 9 because of a mandatory waiting period.

One person who wasn’t celebrating today was Representative Steve King. He complained yesterday that Republican leaders in Congress didn’t push “hard enough” to overturn the D.C. city council’s decision on marriage equality.

Republican lawmakers, led by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), have introduced a resolution in Congress to overturn the city council’s ruling, which Congress can do because Washington is a federal district, and not a state.

King took Democrats to task, also, for not allowing a vote on that measure.

“There’s a certain level of understanding that this pro-same sex marriage agenda is a Pelosi agenda; it’s a leftist, liberal agenda,” King said. “There are a lot of items we need to be fighting, and this is a big one.”

Look on the bright side, congressman. Maybe Iowa will become less of a gay marriage “Mecca” now that same-sex couples can get married in DC (as well as Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire).

Seriously, I find it encouraging that Democratic leaders in Congress didn’t feel political pressure to overturn DC’s decision on marriage equality. This issue is losing its potency for the Republicans, and their House and Senate leaders seem to recognize that, even if Steve King doesn’t.

Although King has little sympathy for gays and lesbians who want the same civil marriage rights he enjoys, he did find in in his heart last week to stand up for Washington lobbyists:

[Y]es lobbyists do a very effective and useful job on this Hill. […] Somebody needs to stand up for the lobby, it is a matter of providing a lot of valuable information.

Click over to Think Progress for a more detailed transcript and video of that moment.

This thread is for any comments related to King’s messed-up priorities. The scariest thing is that when it comes to gay marriage, he’s not even on the super-crazy end of the GOP spectrum.

UPDATE: I know it doesn’t pay to go looking for logic in comments by Steve King, but even by his standards, this is bizarre. King argues that since House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank is gay, and Frank doesn’t want the federal government interfering in a consensual relationship between two adults, then Frank should oppose prevailing wage requirements for federal contractors. King’s idea is that contractors and their employees are “consenting adults” who should be able to agree on a wage of their choice. (By that reasoning, King would want to do away with the minimum wage and other labor laws.)

Media Matters Action has the video clip and transcript here. Other King video “highlights” are here.  

It’s time for another post about guidelines for participating on this blog. Since the last time I covered this ground, many new users have registered at Bleeding Heartland, and competitive elections can bring out bad behavior on political blogs. Here are a few rules to keep in mind.

I welcome diaries by other contributors and will promote some of them to the front page. Diaries can be about any local, statewide or national subject you think would interest the Bleeding Heartland community. A news report or post at another blog can be the basis for a diary, but do not post lengthy excerpts or the entire text of copyrighted materials. Legal “fair use” involves posting a link to the original article and an excerpt of a few paragraphs. Going beyond that will get your diary deleted.

If you write a long diary, put the first few paragraphs in the “main text” section to let readers know what you’re writing about. The rest of your diary should go in the “extended text” section. E-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com if you have trouble creating an account or posting diaries here.

The upcoming elections should provide plenty of material. You can offer your own take on one of the statewide races; last summer American007 posted early odds on Republican race for governor. You can take a longer view, like BJazz did in predicting that marriage equality is here to stay in Iowa. You can educate us, as ragbrai08 did in this post on “Redistricting the Iowa Way.” I would love to see detailed write-ups on state legislative campaigns, so if there’s a competitive Iowa House or Senate race going on in your corner of the state, please consider writing about how the campaign looks from the ground and local media reports.

You can put a personal spin on your diary. For instance, PrairieBreezeCheese mentioned how unemployment affected his own family in this post about the need for different priorities at the Federal Reserve. I love first-person accounts of candidate forums and town-hall meetings. You don’t have to be as detailed as John Deeth (though that is useful). You can write up highlights from the event, like IowaVoter did for one of Chuck Grassley’s meetings in 2008 and iowademocrat did for a Tom Harkin meeting on health care reform last summer.

I can’t keep track of everything going on at the statehouse, so go ahead and write about specific bills being considered if you think those are newsworthy. Sean Flaherty brought a bill on post-election audits to our attention recently.

While this is a Democratic blog, feel free to criticize Democratic candidates or elected officials where warranted. (I wasn’t a cheerleader in high school, and I’m not interested in being one now.) If you have a beef with a fellow Democrat, though, you need to do more than call names. For instance, if you are upset about a bill that Iowa House or Senate Democrats are or are not supporting, tell us the bill number, what the bill does, and why that’s a good or bad idea. If you feel someone is running a bad campaign, explain what you don’t like about the campaign strategy and/or how it could be better.

Bleeding Heartland commenters and diarists can write under any screen name they choose. No one is required to reveal real names or any personal information. “Outing” other Bleeding Heartland users will get you banned here. I do ask Bleeding Heartland users not to make false statements about themselves. You’re free to never mention your age, gender or location, but if you say you are a 40-year-old, Jewish mother living in Windsor Heights, you should be a 40-year-old Jewish mother living in Windsor Heights.

I also ask that you stick to one username whenever you comment at Bleeding Heartland. In other words, creating “sock puppets” to lend support for your own position is not acceptable.

Democratic candidates are welcome to post here, and I generally promote their diaries to the front page. In order to avoid problems that have cropped up at other political blogs, I ask paid campaign staffers to disclose that fact if they write about the campaign they’re working on. However, someone employed by a campaign can post anonymously about topics not related to that candidate’s race.

Bleeding Heartland has fortunately attracted very few trolls. Registered users can rate comments, and comments are hidden if they receive too many “zero” ratings. I posted some guidelines for rating comments here and re-posted those after the jump.

Final reminder: a free Bleeding Heartland application is available for iPhone or Android users. The application lets you read posts, view recent topics covered, and search for stories containing certain names or keywords. The application can also send you alerts (free text messages) within a few minutes whenever a new post goes up here, and lets you access the story faster than if you used your phone’s web browser. After the jump I’ve posted a couple of screen shots of the new application, which looks the same on iPhone and Android. Here is the link for the Bleeding Heartland iPhone application at the iTunes store. Android users, including those who have Android 1.5, can find it by searching for “Bleeding Heartland” on your phone.

Feedback and suggestions about the blog are welcome in this thread.  

Three more Republicans in the Iowa House endorsed State Representative Rod Roberts for governor yesterday. Rich Anderson represents House district 97 in southwest Iowa.  Gary Worthan represents House district 52 in northwest Iowa. Clel Baudler represents House district 58 in southwest Iowa and also serves on the National Rifle Association’s board of directors.

Baudler and Anderson particularly praised Roberts’ leadership skills, while Worthan cited Roberts’ “proven track record of fighting for conservative values.” State Representative Jason Schultz and former representative Dan Boddicker also highlighted Roberts’ conservative credentials in their endorsement of him last week.

I wouldn’t exaggerate the importance of legislative endorsements; Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson had far more supporters in the Iowa legislature than Mike Huckabee did before the 2008 Iowa caucuses. Nevertheless, I believe that any support Roberts picks up from conservative Republicans probably helps Terry Branstad. In order to defeat the better-known, better-financed former governor in the primary, Bob Vander Plaats would need to unite primary voters who fear Branstad isn’t conservative enough. Roberts muddies the waters, especially in western Iowa, where Vander Plaats needs to dominate in order to win in June.

Last week Vander Plaats challenged Branstad and Roberts to a series of debates:

“I appreciate the opportunities Rod Roberts and I have had to meet in various settings and exchange ideas. Terry Branstad has been in this race quite a while now and it’s time for him to step up, join me on the same stage at the same time, and talk about the issues.”

Vander Plaats continued, “A number of people in the media are reporting this race as if Terry Branstad has won and is our party’s nominee. But he hasn’t won, he isn’t our nominee and that vocal minority in the media doesn’t get to make the decision; Republican voters do. As candidates, we have a responsibility to let GOP voters size us up side-by-side to see for themselves who has the energy, the new ideas and the focus on the future to lead us forward. I’m prepared to talk about how to open Iowa for business, fix our broken tax system, cut state spending and create a culture of innovation and results in our public schools.”

In a letter to Branstad, Vander Plaats proposed debates in Davenport, Des Moines, Sioux City and another city agreed upon by the candidates.

[…]”As you and your staff know, many county GOP organizations and other groups all across Iowa have organized – or have an interest in organizing – forums for the three of us to discuss our positions and principles. I encourage you to join in as many of these events as possible through June 8.”

Roberts has nothing to lose by debating; such events can only raise his profile. Branstad would be taking a big risk to debate Vander Plaats. Judging from recent video clips I’ve seen of both candidates, Vander Plaats is a much more polished speaker. Also, Branstad has no idea how he’ll fulfill his central campaign promise to cut state government by 15 percent. If he stumbles in a debate, it will be a statewide news story. For those reasons, I doubt Branstad will agree to any debates unless his refusal to do so generates a lot of bad press.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: Bret Hayworth reports that Roberts wants to debate his primary rivals in Carroll (his home town, which he has represented for the last decade in the legislature), and in some eastern Iowa town with a population under 15,000.

Rob Gettemy, an entrepreneur from the Cedar Rapids suburbs, announced today that he is running for Congress in Iowa’s second district. His campaign website here, and he is @RobGettemy on Twitter. He will compete against Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Chris Reed and Steve Rathje in the Republican primary. His first press release as a Congressional candidate contains what passes for “vision” in today’s GOP:

In my gut, I believe our country has reached a tipping point. We must decide now what country we are. Are we the country of our founders? The country of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (not a guarantee of happiness). Are we a country that gives us a right to fail…which is necessary if we want an opportunity to succeed?

Or, are we a country that looks to Washington, DC, or Des Moines, Iowa to solve so many of our basic problems? When we pick this path, we give up our liberties. We become enslaved as we become dependent.

Lynda Waddington wrote a good piece on Gettemy at Iowa Independent. Excerpt:

Rob Gettemy, 44, attends Antioch Christian Church in Marion, as do several members of the Linn County Republican Executive Board. He and another member, Jim Mayhew of Vinton, launched a Christian t-shirt and ministry business in 2008 dubbed “1M4JC,” or “One Million For Jesus Christ.” He is an instructor at the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at University of Iowa and serves on the board of directors for Aid to Women, a local anti-abortion pregnancy crisis center. […]

From a purely horse-race perspective, the entrance of Gettemy likely does the most harm to Reed. Not only does it pull the hometown base Reed hoped to energize, but it sends a definite signal that Reed, who had attempted to position himself as the only true social conservative in the race, was found to be lacking.

Due to Gettemy’s entrepreneurial and business background, it is also feasible that he could melt support that has been slowly building for Rathje, who has emerged as the predominant fiscal conservative.

Waddington mentions that several prominent Linn County Republicans belong to the church Gettemy attends, including “Linn County GOP Chairman Tim Palmer and Vice-Chairman Brent Schulte, a minister at Antioch, and Schulte’s wife, state Rep. Renee Schulte.” The kingmakers in the local GOP don’t appear to be sold on any of the three previously declared candidates, even though all have tried to position themselves as conservatives (see also here).

Miller-Meeks probably has the most name recognition, having been the 2008 nominee against Congressman Dave Loebsack. Rathje has raised the most money. Reed has the wingnuttiest endorsements so far.

I still find it remarkable that Republicans think they can win Iowa’s second district with a far-right candidate. IA-02 has a partisan lean of D+7, meaning that in the last two presidential elections, the district voted about seven points more Democratic than the country as a whole. Only two Republican-held House seats in the entire country have this strong a Democratic lean. One of those is a fluke; Joseph Cao was able to win in Louisiana’s second district because the Democratic incumbent had stashed $90,000 in his freezer. Delaware’s at-large seat (D+7) is held by pro-choice, pro-gun control former Governor Mike Castle. The obvious play for Republicans in IA-02 would be to nominate a moderate in the Jim Leach mold, who could focus on economic issues. Instead, the GOP primary keeps getting more crowded with social conservatives.

Miller-Meeks couldn’t crack 40 percent against Loebsack in 2008. In a Republican wave year, the GOP nominee should do somewhat better, but I doubt a down-the-line conservative can win a district dominated by Johnson and Linn counties. Feel free to argue with me in the comments if you’re so inclined.

John Deeth attended the League of Women Voters’ forum in Coralville on Saturday, and he buried an interesting nugget toward the end of his liveblog:

Chris Bonfig asks about HF 2420; Mascher, Dvorsky, Schmitz, Lensing, Bolkcom yes; Jacoby, Marek no. Jacby: “The first part of the bill is marvelous, the [second] part needs some work.”

House file 2420, formerly known as House Study Bill 702, is the reworked “fair share” legislation. The idea behind “fair share” is that employees who don’t belong to a union would have to reimburse the union for services provided, such as collective bargaining and handling grievances. A “fair share” bill passed the Iowa Senate in 2007 but stalled in the Iowa House, where the Democratic majority was 53-47 at the time. The current Democratic majority is 56-44, but none of organized labor’s legislative priorities passed during the 2009 legislative session because of opposition from a “six-pack” of House Democrats.

This year’s “fair share” proposal has been scaled back and would apply only to state employees. (Many labor advocates agree with Iowa AFL-CIO president emeritus Mark Smith, who has argued that the measure should apply to all private sector and public sector unions.) Iowa Republicans and business groups are fiercely opposing “fair share,” even though it would not apply to private businesses.

State Representative Dave Jacoby represents a relatively safe district in Johnson County. If he just announced at a public forum that he’s not backing HF 2420, I don’t see much chance of the “six-pack” members supporting the bill. That would leave House Democrats short of the 51 votes needed for passage.

When Jacoby praised the first part of the bill but not the second part, he appeared to be supporting reimbursement for grievance services but not for bargaining services, which are more costly for the union to provide. Click here for the full text of HF 2420. It states that “reasonable reimbursement” for bargaining services “shall not exceed sixty-five percent of the regular membership dues that the nonmember would have to pay if the nonmember were a member” of the union. The bill caps reimbursement for grievance services at ten percent of the union’s regular membership dues.

In February, Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested that a new “prevailing wage” bill is more likely to pass this session than “fair share.” In 2009 the “six-pack” sank a prevailing wage bill, but this year House Labor Committee Chairman Rick Olson prepared a compromise version that would require payment of prevailing wage on a smaller number of projects. Olson told the Cedar Rapids Gazette that the “softer” version of the prevailing wage bill addresses the objections raised last year by conservative House Democrats.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

As long-term unemployment continues to rise, unemployment benefits for many Americans will run out tonight because the U.S. Senate failed to pass a bill extending the benefits late last week. An estimated 1.2 million Americans, including about 75,000 Iowans, stand to lose unemployment benefits during the month of March if Congress does not act. For reasons I don’t understand, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid left the benefits extension out of the jobs bill approved by the Senate on February 24.

The following day, the House of Representatives approved a separate bill containing a one-month extension of unemployment benefits, federal subsidies for people on COBRA health insurance plans, current Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors, and a few other programs. Democrats tried to bring this bill up for a Senate vote right away, but retiring Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky repeatedly objected to motions for unanimous consent. Democrats promised to keep filing motions until Bunning broke down, but instead they adjourned near midnight on Thursday night.

Democrats have been slamming Bunning in public statements and e-mail blasts. Here’s an example from Senator Tom Harkin’s office on Friday:

“We need to act quickly to extend the safety net and make sure laid-off workers have access to unemployment benefits through the end of the year, at least,” said Harkin.  “It is heartbreaking to see political games being played with the lives of hardworking people who are struggling to find a job, particularly when there has been strong bipartisan support in the past to extend unemployment benefits and other vital safety net programs.  

“Unfortunately this is emblematic of the larger issue plaguing the Senate today: abuse of Senate procedure.  We saw it in November as well.  While Senate Republicans play games, families are sitting around their kitchen tables wondering how they will make ends meet.  

“I intend to do everything in my power to fight this and hope other Senators will join me in this effort.”

[…] In November, Senate Republicans used a similar delay tactic to filibuster a motion to proceed to a bill to extend unemployment compensation.  After delaying and grinding Senate business to a halt for nearly a month, the bill passed 97-1.

Bunning’s behavior is inexcusable, and he even had the gall to complain about missing a college basketball game while staying on the Senate floor to block this bill.

At the same time, it is pathetic that Democrats adjourned instead of standing and fighting Senate Republicans all weekend long. Apparently one or two other Republicans showed up Thursday night to back up Bunning, but so what? Democrats should have refused to leave until the unemployment benefits bill passed. At the Congress Matters blog, David Waldman explained other ways Democrats could have handled Bunning’s procedural roadblock. Chris Bowers looked at the big picture here:

Democrats are in charge, and they are going to get blamed for this.  Democratic attempts to blame this on Senate procedure will ring utterly hollow.  Not only do people not understand, or care about, those rules, but it simply sounds wimpy and pathetic for the people running the United States Government to throw their hands up in the air and say “our procedural rules prevented us from doing anything to solve this huge problem. Sorry.”

Democrats did not have to adjourn.  They could have kept fighting Bunning.  Further, they all agreed to the rules under which the Senate operates, and most of them are still defending those rules.  Blaming Senate procedure is not going to extend anyone’s unemployment or COBRA benefits, and its not going to win many hearts around the country.

Sure, Jim Bunning is currently the biggest asshole in the country right now.  However, if you think that procedure is a problem, then start working to change the procedure.  If you think that unemployment benefits need to be extended, then don’t adjourn for the weekend when those benefits are slated to run out.  

Sometime this week, or perhaps later in March, Senate Democrats will break the Republican obstruction. But when that happens, “state governments will still have to deal with the extra administrative costs of shutting down and restarting the extended benefits programs.”

Some Republicans, like Representative Steve King, are philosophically opposed to extending unemployment benefits, but they fail to acknowledge that extending unemployment benefits has tremendous “bang for the buck.” The Iowa Fiscal Partnership recently calculated that that the unemployment benefits extension contained in last year’s federal stimulus bill “produced $501.7 million increased economic activity and $112.1 million in income in 2009, while creating or saving 3,727 jobs” in Iowa alone.

While Governor Chet Culver visited Iowa reservists serving in Iraq this week, several developments back home may affect his re-election campaign.

Links and analysis are after the jump.  

I expected Terry Branstad to drive all of the lesser-known Republicans out of the governor’s race. To my surprise, State Representative Rod Roberts has not followed the lead of Paul McKinley, Christian Fong, Jerry Behn and Chris Rants. Roberts told WHO’s Dave Price last weekend that he is staying in the governor’s race all the way to the June primary.

Roberts acknowledges the other two men have raised a LOT more money and are better known. After all, Branstad has been governor 4 terms before. [Bob] Vander Plaats has run for governor 3 times. Roberts plans on not just going after typical Republican primary voters to make up for his lack of recognition (he also added that he will just have to outwork the other 2). He plans on getting Democrats and Independents who are unhappy with the money Governor Chet Culver has spent since he took over and who are also unhappy with the overall direction of the state. Roberts told me this will be the year for the outsider. And he said he will be the outsider.

Join me after the jump for closer look at Roberts and his campaign strategy. I doubt he has any chance of winning the primary, but his presence in the race will probably help Branstad.

I didn’t watch President Barack Obama’s health care summit today, but I wanted to post this thread for people to discuss the spectacle and the state of play for health care reform. Blog for Iowa liveblogged the proceedings, as did FireDogLake (in four parts).

Senator Tom Harkin got good reviews for his comments at the summit today but disappointed a lot of Democrats yesterday by saying the public health insurance option can’t pass this year. Harkin repeatedly promised during 2009 that Congress would approve a health care bill with a public option. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still advocating for the public option, but clearly there is no hope. Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent piece at Salon about “the Democratic Party’s deceitful game” (click over and read the whole thing):

   Progressives:  We want a public option!

   Democrats/WH:  We agree with you totally!  Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don’t have 60, so we can’t have it.  Gosh darn that filibuster rule.  

   Progressives:  But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.

   Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists:  Hey progressives, don’t be stupid!  Be pragmatic.  It’s not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform.  None of this their fault.  It’s the fault of the filibuster.  The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they’re powerless, and they just can’t get 60 votes to do it.  

   [Month later]

   Progressives:  Hey, great!  Now that you’re going to pass the bill through reconciliation after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love, because you only need 50 votes, and you’ve said all year you have that!

   Democrats/WH:  No.  We don’t have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller).  Besides, it’s not the right time for the public option.  The public option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill — which polls at 35% — unpopular.  Also, the public option and reconciliation are too partisan, so we’re going to go ahead and pass our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.

I have to give credit to Bleeding Heartland user ragbrai08, who called this one a long time ago.

Meanwhile, the Republicans made one bogus argument after another today. David Waldman blows up some of their ridiculous claims about the Senate reconciliation process, which is used to avoid a filibuster.

Ezra Klein reminds you why selling insurance across state lines (the centerpiece of the Republican “plan”) is a terrible idea:

Conservatives want the opposite: They want insurers to be able to cluster in one state, follow that state’s regulations and sell the product to everyone in the country. In practice, that means we will have a single national insurance standard. But that standard will be decided by South Dakota. Or, if South Dakota doesn’t give the insurers the freedom they want, it’ll be decided by Wyoming. Or whoever.

This is exactly what happened in the credit card industry, which is regulated in accordance with conservative wishes. In 1980, Bill Janklow, the governor of South Dakota, made a deal with Citibank: If Citibank would move its credit card business to South Dakota, the governor would literally let Citibank write South Dakota’s credit card regulations. You can read Janklow’s recollections of the pact here.

Citibank wrote an absurdly pro-credit card law, the legislature passed it, and soon all the credit card companies were heading to South Dakota. And that’s exactly what would happen with health-care insurance. The industry would put its money into buying the legislature of a small, conservative, economically depressed state. The deal would be simple: Let us write the regulations and we’ll bring thousands of jobs and lots of tax dollars to you. Someone will take it. The result will be an uncommonly tiny legislature in an uncommonly small state that answers to an uncommonly conservative electorate that will decide what insurance will look like for the rest of the nation.

Jonathan Cohn discusses the same problem here.

Post any comments related to health care reform in this thread.

Ed Fallon confirmed this week that he is trying to recruit a primary challenger against Governor Chet Culver. Fallon has been sounding the alarm about Culver’s re-election prospects for some time. He now believes Culver will lose to Terry Branstad, and Iowa Democrats would have a better chance nominating someone else for governor.

I voted for Fallon in the 2006 gubernatorial primary and wrote a short book’s worth of posts at this blog on why I supported his 2008 primary challenge to Congressman Leonard Boswell.

This time, I think his efforts are misguided, and I explain why after the jump.  

The House of Representatives approved a bill to repeal the insurance industry’s exemption from anti-trust laws today by an overwhelming margin of 406 to 19. All 253 Democrats present were joined by 153 Republicans in voting for H.R. 4626, the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act. Representative Tom Latham of Iowa’s fourth district voted with the majority, but Steve King disgraced the fifth district again by voting no (roll call here).

The anti-trust exemption has helped health insurers to avoid meaningful competition in most markets. Price-fixing is wonderful for corporate profits but doesn’t help consumers obtain affordable insurance coverage. The anti-trust exemption is one reason insurers have been able to jack up premiums by far more than the rate that medical costs are increasing (and many times the overall rate of inflation). Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, which controls about 70 percent of the health insurance market in Iowa, recently announced rate hikes averaging 18 percent for about 80,000 individual policy-holders. Many of those policies (including my family’s) will see premiums go up by 22 percent as of April 1.

How many of King’s constituents will be forced to downgrade their coverage or drop their insurance because of this rate increase? How many Iowa businesses will suffer because their customers have less disposable income to spend on other goods and services? I’ve come to expect outrageous votes from King, but I’m curious to hear how he will justify his vote to keep consumers at the mercy of colluding insurance companies. I will update this post when I see an official statement from him.

A press release from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee noted that King has received $53,835 in campaign contributions from the insurance industry. (That number appears to have come from Open Secrets site.) I posted the full text of the release after the jump.

The White House issued a statement yesterday supporting the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act. It’s unfortunate that the the Obama administration didn’t fight to get this provision in the larger health care reform package, but passing it as a stand-alone bill would still be a step forward.

Quite a few Senate Republicans are on record claiming to support repealing the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption. Senate Majority Harry Reid should bring this bill to a vote as soon as possible. I suspect that if it reaches the floor, Senate Republicans will be as afraid to vote against it as the majority of House Republicans were today.

UPDATE: The Associated Press reports that prospects for this bill “are dim in the Senate.” If that turns out to be correct, it’s yet another reason rank and file Democrats should stop giving to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Meanwhile, David Dayen notes that before the anti-trust exemption bill passed, “there was also a motion to recommit, which would have essentially stopped the bill in its tracks, and 165 Republicans voted for that, along with 5 Democrats.”

Iowa’s own Tom Latham was among the 100-plus Republican cowards who voted for the procedural motion to stop the bill, then for the bill once the blocking attempt had failed.

The U.S. Senate passed a scaled-back jobs bill today by a 70-28 vote (roll call here). 57 of the 59 Senate Democrats voted for the bill; Ben Nelson of Nebraska voted no and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey was absent. 13 Republicans voted for the bill. Five of them helped Democrats break a Republican filibuster on Monday: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and the retiring Kit Bond of Missouri and George Voinovich of Ohio. Two Republicans who were absent for Monday’s cloture vote also voted yes today: Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Burr of North Carolina. Six other Republicans tried to block this vote from going forward on Monday but turned around and voted for the bill today: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, George LeMieux of Florida, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Senate Democrats and the media are calling this a $15 billion jobs bill, but David Dayen notes, it’s really a $35 billion measure: “the extension of the Highway Trust Fund would add $20 billion for infrastructure projects, but because of the way it’s financed, through a fund shift, it doesn’t count as an expense.”

In addition to the highway fund money, the main features of the jobs bill are a tax credit for small businesses that hire new workers, “Build America Bonds” that help state and local governments to borrow money, and a provision to allow small businesses to write off more expenses.

Senator Chuck Grassley voted against today’s bill and against the cloture motion on Monday. He and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus had agreed on a different jobs bill, which Senate Majority Leader Reid abandoned. In a statement submitted to the Senate record on Monday, Grassley slammed Reid’s “disregard for bipartisanship” and noted that tax-extending provisions in the Baucus-Grassley bill had enjoyed broad support from both parties in the past.

The House passed a larger jobs bill in December that included many of the tax-extending provisions Reid omitted from the Senate bill.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys.com, said last week that Reid’s jobs bill was “a good first step” but not nearly large enough to address the unemployment problem:

A failure to provide additional funding to struggling states, for example, would lead to job losses that would “overwhelm” all the other job-creating efforts being tried, he said. And while the Schumer-Hatch tax credit would create between 200,000 and 300,000 new jobs, Zandi estimated, that number is a drop in the bucket relative to the roughly 11 million new jobs needed to get the country back to pre-recession jobless levels.

Reid has promised to introduce more jobs-creating legislation soon. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will try to move quickly on the bill the Senate just approved, Roll Call reported.

Mismanagement of Iowa’s state film tax credit program has led to more personnel changes at the Iowa Department of Economic Development this week. On Monday three longtime employees of the department were dismissed: general counsel Melanie Johnson, Jeff Rossate, and Amy Johnson. The Des Moines Register reported,

Rossate, as division administrator for business development, was the direct boss for film office manager Tom Wheeler. Johnson was Rossate’s No. 2 as the coordinator of the business development division.

The Des Moines Register reported on Saturday that e-mails showed those officials were privy to some of the worst problems facing the film program in the two months before it was suspended.

Amy Johnson had been serving as interim director of the film office before she was dismissed. IDED announced Tuesday that attorney Jessica Montana will be the new interim director of the film office. Montana has worked on IDED’s regulatory assistance team since 2007.

I wonder whether the latest dismissals will complicate the criminal case against Wheeler and two film producers. Wheeler was fired from IDED shortly after the scandal broke, and earlier this month the Iowa Attorney General’s Office charged him with non-felonious misconduct. His defense attorney will now be able to claim that Wheeler’s boss and others knew about problems with the film tax credit program.

No matter what happens with that case, I don’t envy IDED director Bret Mills, who needs to sort out this mess. Mike Tramontina resigned as IDED director when the film tax credit scandal broke, and Fred Hubbell served as interim director of the department until Governor Chet Culver appointed Mills in late December. The Iowa Senate confirmed Mills unanimously this month.

Here’s hoping state legislators will put the film tax credit program out of its misery. A bill is pending to suspend the tax credit until July 2011, but the program was ill-conceived from the beginning and doesn’t deserve to be revived. There are a lot better ways for the state to spend up to $50 million a year.

Meanwhile, the Des Moines Register reports today,

Eleven film companies are suing Iowa’s Department of Economic Development, saying they believe certain documents that have not been released since the scandal broke – including expenses and budgets they reported to the state – should be kept confidential.

Scott Brennan, an attorney for the film companies, said Tuesday there is a difference between public curiosity and public interest in the ongoing probe. His clients believe they were guaranteed “by contract and by statute” that certain trade secrets would be kept secret.

The attorney general’s office and the Register argue that the records – first requested last fall – are public under state law and should remain so because they are of significant public interest. The two sides met in court for the first time Tuesday.

According to a brief filed Tuesday by Michael Giudicessi, the newspaper’s lawyer, “Whether evidenced by the very requests of the Register and other news organizations for access, the suspension of the film tax credit program by the governor’s office, the conducting of an independent audit by the department, the vast and increasing amount of taxpayer dollars involved or the ongoing terminations … it is clear that the public interest is not served by any degree of continuing secrecy.”

Jim Gibbons has emerged as the Republican insiders’ choice against seven-term incumbent Leonard Boswell in Iowa’s third district. Nine members of Congress are hosting a fundraiser for Gibbons in Washington on February 24, the Gibbons campaign announced today. The hosts are Senator Chuck Grassley, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (VA-07), and Representatives Jason Chaffetz (UT-03), Dean Heller (NV-02), Jim Jordan (OH-04), Steve King (IA-05), Tom Latham (IA-04), Kevin McCarthy (CA-22), and Peter Roskam (IA-06).

I cannot recall whether Grassley or Latham endorsed a candidate in the four-way GOP primary to represent IA-05 in 2002, which King won at a district convention. I also don’t remember Grassley, Latham or King getting involved in the three-way GOP primary in IA-01 in 2006, or the three-way primary in IA-02 in 2008. If any Bleeding Heartland reader remembers endorsements by members of Congress in those races, please post a comment here or e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

CORRECTION: Not all of the co-hosts at this event are endorsing Gibbons in the Republican primary. Bleeding Heartland user mirage notes in the comments that Iowa Republicans in Congress also co-hosted an event for Dave Funk in Washington. Grassley’s spokeswoman e-mailed the following comment to me today: “Senator Grassley has not endorsed anybody in the 3rd District race. It is correct that Senator Grassley was also listed as a co-host of an event for Dave Funk.  If the other Republican candidates asked, he would do the same thing for them.”

Gibbons was recruited by key Iowa Republican donors, and has since been anointed by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

State Senator Brad Zaun, probably the strongest rival to Gibbons in the five-way Republican primary, has the backing of several Republican state legislators, including Iowa Senate Minority leader Paul McKinley. An internal poll for Zaun showed he begins the campaign with more name recognition and support in the district. However, Gibbons raised far more money in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Tea Party favorite Dave Funk recently attacked Gibbons for supposedly saying in an interview, “It[‘]s fine for me where the Constitution says that the federal government should be in charge of education.” Today Gibbons advocate Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican blog declared Funk’s attack “sloppy and untrue.” After listening to a recording of the interview, Robinson concludes that Gibbons actually said, “Find for me where in the Constitution does it say that the federal government is in charge of education.”

Robinson transcribed part of the interview in question and posted it here. Gibbons doesn’t come across as someone who knows what he’s talking about. But that’s not surprising, given his ignorance about Congressional procedures and idiotic federal income tax holiday proposal.

What does surprise me is that according to Robinson, no one at the Gibbons campaign “set the record straight” after Funk issued his press release. Maybe it’s a strategy for Gibbons to not acknowledge his primary opponents, but I think his press shop needs to stay on top of what the other candidates are saying about him.

UPDATE: In this comment thread Funk stands by his press release about what Gibbons said, and several commenters write that they heard Gibbons’ remarks as Funk did.

LATE UPDATE: Latham assured moderate Republican Mark Rees that he will not be endorsing a candidate before the primary.

Governor Chet Culver will not sign a bill that would weaken Iowa’s current restrictions on spreading manure over frozen and snow-covered ground. Culver’s senior adviser Jim Larew confirmed the governor’s opposition during a February 22 meeting with members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. Iowa CCI is among the environmental groups that have sounded the alarm about House File 2324 and a companion bill, Senate File 2229. The bills would exempt many large farms from the new manure application rules adopted last year. Earlier this month, the House Agriculture Committee approved HF 2324 with minimal debate.

Culver had previously promised to block the new proposal in private conversations. The bill’s lead sponsor in the Iowa House, Democratic State Representative Ray Zirkelbach, told IowaPolitics.com yesterday, “Basically I was told that the governor’s going to veto it no matter what … if it came to his desk […].” Zirkelbach contends that the bill is needed to help the struggling dairy industry. He denies that it would lead to more manure contaminating Iowa waters.

I am glad to see the governor take a stand against Zirkelbach’s proposal. Improving the manure application bill was a major victory during the closing days of last year’s legislative session. We should not have to keep fighting efforts to move us backwards on water quality.

The full text of yesterday’s press release from Iowa CCI is after the jump.

Representative Steve King doesn’t come across as the most compassionate guy in the world, bragging about opposing aid for Hurricane Katrina victims and questioning the need to stop deporting undocumented Haitian immigrants after last month’s earthquake.

But if you thought King was incapable of feeling empathy, you’re wrong. Over the weekend he spoke to a panel on immigration at the Conservative Political Action Conference:

During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could “empathize” with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people “implode” their local IRS office.

That’s right, King feels empathy for a guy who crashed his plane into a federal building, intending to harm the IRS employees inside. In the process, the man killed a loving family man and longtime federal worker who served two terms in Vietnam.

Following King’s remarks at the CPAC panel, a man with a video camera gave the congressman a chance to clarify his remarks. King dug deeper. (continues after the jump)

Republican pollster Scott Rasmussen released a new poll of the Iowa governor and U.S. Senate races today. Rasmussen surveyed 500 “likely Iowa voters” on February 18.

Given Rasmussen’s usual “house effect” favoring Republican candidates, I expected the numbers to be worse for Democrats than other recent Iowa polling. Instead, they were comparable to last week’s Research 2000 Iowa poll for KCCI-TV and the Selzer and Co. poll for the Des Moines Register, which was conducted three weeks ago.

Like the other pollsters, Rasmussen found Governor Chet Culver well behind Republican front-runner Terry Branstad. Like Research 2000, Rasmussen found Senator Chuck Grassley above 50 percent against Democratic challengers, but well below Grassley’s usual re-election numbers and even below the numbers Rasmussen found for Grassley in late January.

More details are after the jump.

Charlotte Eby reports that Democratic State Representative Roger Wendt won’t return for the rest of the current legislative session or seek re-election this year because of a “serious unnamed medical condition.” I will update this post as more is known about Wendt’s condition. I’m sure the Bleeding Heartland community joins me in hoping that Wendt will receive the medical care he needs now.

UPDATE: Bret Hayworth reports that Wendt has lung cancer. He had apparently been cancer-free since beating the disease in his other lung 17 years ago. Best wishes for another full recovery.

Wendt was first elected to House district 2 in 2002. The district includes part of Sioux City (here is a map (pdf file). In 2008, Wendt defeated Republican Rick Bertrand with about 51.5 percent of the vote. Bertrand is running again this year.

Democrats hold a 56-44 majority in the Iowa House, but leaders haven’t always been able to find 51 votes to pass bills on their agenda, particularly relating to labor and taxation. Wendt’s departure will complicate efforts to pass House File 2420, the “fair share” bill that would require non-union public employees to compensate the union for bargaining services done on their behalf.

Woodbury County Democrats will have to work harder than ever on getting the vote out this year. In November, State Representative Wes Whitead announced plans to retire from House district 1, which is also in the Sioux City area. Rick Mullin, a past chair of the Woodbury County Democrats, will face Republican Jeremy Taylor in the first district. Taylor nearly defeated Whitead in 2008.

Republican State Representative Chris Rants is retiring from House district 54 this year, leaving a third open seat in Woodbury County. That district, which stretches from southeastern Sioux City to the Sergeant Bluff area, is less friendly territory for Democrats. I believe we have better pickup opportunities in House district 74 in Warren County and in House district 51 in Carroll County, which Republican Rod Roberts is vacating in order to run for governor this year.

UPDATE: The Des Moines Register’s blog recounts some highlights from Wendt’s career. He left a mark on this state’s education policy while chairing the House Education Committee:

* Wendt fought for a model core curriculum, intended to give all students the same strong education foundation, in 2008.

* He supported an anti-bullying law. The legislation in 2007 forced public and private schools to have policies that prevent and punish bullying or harassment of any student, including based on sexual orientation.

* Wendt was one of the lawmakers who led the charge three years ago on a statewide sales tax to raise money for school building projects. The old method was more piecemeal – counties voted periodically on a tax for their area. Urban schools, where most shopping and sales taxes happen, raked in more money, while rural districts felt funding inequity. Money is distributed equally per pupil across the state now.

* He began speaking out about a “dramatic need” for preschool programs in 2005.   Two years later, a law passed so that nearly all of Iowa’s 4-year-olds could attend preschool on a voluntary basis, paid for by the state and taught by licensed teachers.

* He helped make high school more rigorous. He believed that students – and their parents – need to take high school more seriously. Too many students coast in their junior and senior years, he said.

LATE UDPATE: Dave Price notes that three other Iowa legislators are currently battling cancer: Republican State Senators David Johnson and Pat Ward and Democratic State Representative Paul Bell. Wishing them all a full recovery.  

Last Thursday, the Iowa Senate approved a bill that would improve the health and well-being of Iowa working mothers and their children. In addition, this bill would reduce many employers’ health care costs while lowering employee turnover and absenteeism. Unlike legislation that pits business interests against the needs of working families, this bill would be a win-win.

Nevertheless, almost the whole Republican caucus voted against Senate File 2270, which promotes workplace accommodations for employees who express breast milk.

Follow me after the jump for background on this bill and Republican opposition to it.

President Barack Obama and Senators Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin registered record low approval number in the latest Iowa poll by Selzer and Co. for the Des Moines Register. The poll was in the field from January 31 to February 3 and surveyed 805 Iowa adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

The Sunday Des Moines Register reported,

Forty-six percent of Iowans approve of Obama’s handling of his job, according to the poll taken Jan. 31 to Feb. 3. That’s down from 49 percent in November. […]

In Iowa, views of Obama’s handling of key domestic issues remain a problem for him. No more than 40 percent of Iowans approve of his performance on the economy, health care and the budget deficit, although the rates are essentially unchanged since the Register’s last poll, taken in November.

What has changed: The fractions of independents who support Obama’s handling of all three of these issues have shrunk in the past three months.

One-third of independents now say they approve of his work on the economy, about 30 percent on health care and less than a quarter on the budget deficit. Obama pledged during his State of the Union address in January to make jobs, health care and spending cuts top priorities this year.

The Register’s poll did find that 60 percent of Iowans approved of Obama’s work on “relations with other countries,” and 54 percent approved of how he’s handling “the fight against terrorism.” However, I expect economic issues to dominate the mid-term election campaign.

Research 2000 polled 600 likely Iowa voters last week for KCCI-TV and found only slightly better numbers for Obama:

OBAMA FAVORABILITY:

FAV UNFAV NO OPINION  

BARACK OBAMA 52% 41% 7%

QUESTION: Do you approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as President?

APPROVE DISAPPROVE NOT SURE

ALL 49% 46% 5%

MEN 45% 50% 5%

WOMEN 53% 42% 5%

DEMOCRATS 82% 12% 6%

REPUBLICANS 13% 83% 4%

INDEPENDENTS 47% 48% 5%

The Sunday Register also included new approval numbers for Senators Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin. The link doesn’t appear to be on their website yet, but I will add that when it becomes available later today. (UPDATE: Here is that link.) Grassley is at 54 percent approval/28 percent disapproval. Harkin’s numbers are 51/34. Those are all-time lows for both senators, the Register reported. I don’t ever recall seeing Grassley with such a slight advantage over Harkin in terms of overall approval.

The Sunday Register didn’t publish full crosstabs from the poll but reported that Grassley’s approval among Republicans “fell to 68 percent in the new poll, down from 76 percent in the November Iowa Poll and from 80 percent in September.” It sounds as if Harkin’s main drop came from independents; in November 52 percent of independent respondents in the Register’s poll approved of Harkin’s work, but now only 44 percent do.

Harkin won’t be on the ballot again until 2014 (if he runs for a sixth term), but Grassley faces re-election this year. Compared to where a lot of incumbent senators are, 54 percent approval isn’t too bad, but for Grassley this is a surprisingly low number. I had wondered whether his support would rise as public opinion of the health insurance reform bill soured, but it appears that isn’t the case so far. I hope Grassley’s declining support among Republicans prompts many conservatives to stay home in November. A lot of them also aren’t wild about the likely Republican nominee for governor, Terry Branstad.

This week’s Research 2000 poll of 600 likely Iowa voters for KCCI-TV included a couple of questions related to the rights of same-sex couples:

QUESTION: As you may know, same-sex marriages have been legal in Iowa for over a year. Would you favor or oppose a constitutional amendment which would over turn current law allowing same sex marriages in Iowa?

YES NO NOT SURE

ALL 39% 42% 19%

MEN 43% 40% 17%

WOMEN 35% 44% 21%

DEMOCRATS 22% 64% 14%

REPUBLICANS 66% 13% 21%

INDEPENDENTS 33% 45% 22%

QUESTION: Regardless of how you feel about same-sex marriages, do you favor or oppose allowing same-sex couples the same benefits allowed to heterosexual couples, known as civil unions?

FAVOR OPPOSE NOT SURE

ALL 51% 40% 9%

MEN 47% 44% 9%

WOMEN 55% 36% 9%

DEMOCRATS 77% 21% 2%

REPUBLICANS 16% 68% 16%

INDEPENDENTS 55% 35% 10%

Less than a year after the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling, a slight plurality of Iowans would not support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Among independents, a plurality oppose a constitutional amendment and a strong majority would support equal rights for same-sex couples in the form of civil unions. Even among Republican respondents, just two-thirds supported banning gay marriage.

Research 2000’s results are similar to the findings of a statewide poll Selzer and Co. conducted for the Des Moines Register last September. In that survey, 41 percent of respondents said they would vote for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 40 percent would vote against such an amendment. In addition, 92 percent of respondents said marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples had led to “no real change” in their own lives.

In the most recent Des Moines Register poll, conducted less than a month ago, more than 60 percent of respondents said gay marriage “does not deserve the [Iowa] Legislature’s limited time” this session.

Iowa conservative blogger Shane Vander Hart has complained that the Des Moines Register asked the wrong question two polls in a row. He thinks pollsters ought to ask Iowans whether citizens should be able to vote on a definition of marriage. The Iowa Republican blog commissioned a poll asking that question last summer and found that 67 percent of respondents said yes. However, that Republican poll conveniently failed to ask respondents whether they would support or oppose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Last week Democrats in the Iowa House and Senate defeated Republican efforts to force a floor vote on a marriage amendment. Although GOP candidates and interest groups will push their “let us vote” campaign this fall, I am less and less worried about the marriage issue hurting Democrats in the 2010 statehouse elections. Economic issues will be far more important to voters.

Research 2000 conducted an Iowa poll of 600 “likely voters who vote regularly in state elections” for KCCI-TV, the CBS affiliate in Des Moines. The poll was in the field from February 15 to 17, and KCCI published the results on its website yesterday.

It’s not a good poll for Governor Chet Culver, but it’s less bad than the Des Moines Register’s latest Iowa poll. Chuck Grassley has a comfortable lead in the Senate race, but not the kind of margin he has enjoyed against previous Democratic opponents.

Click here for all the numbers, and join me after the jump for some analysis.

The Iowa Legislature has been moving at an unusually fast pace during the shortened 2010 session. It’s time to catch up on what’s happened at the statehouse over the past three weeks. From here on out I will try to post a legislative roundup at the end of every week.

February 12 was the first “funnel” deadline. In order to have a chance of moving forward in 2010, all legislation except for tax and appropriations bills must have cleared at least one Iowa House or Senate committee by the end of last Friday.

After the jump I’ve included links on lots of bills that have passed or are still under consideration, as well as bills I took an interest in that failed to clear the funnel. I have grouped bills by subject area. This post is not an exhaustive list; way too many bills are under consideration for me to discuss them all. I recommend this funnel day roundup by Rod Boshart for the Mason City Globe-Gazette.

Note: the Iowa legislature’s second funnel deadline is coming up on March 5. To remain alive after that point, all bills except tax and appropriations bills must have been approved by either the full House or Senate and by a committee in the opposite chamber. Many bills that cleared the first funnel week will die in the second.  

Rod Boshart has the story:

Sioux City lawmaker Christopher Rants announced today that he is ending his quest to become governor of Iowa.

“Today I am ending my campaign for the office of governor,” Rants said in an e-mail he entitled as his “last Rants & Raves” column. “I’ve enjoyed meeting and learning from so many Iowans I’ve encountered on my 54,346-mile journey around our state.

“It has been a rewarding experience for me, and I hope that I’ve given my fellow Republicans some ideas to consider as they shape an agenda for the 2010 election,” he added. […]

“I continued out of a belief that campaigns should be about issues and ideas, and it was worth the effort to shape the public debate around issues that concern my supporters and me,” he added. “It is now clear that those opportunities for such a debate are not materializing, and I cannot in good conscience accept or solicit support for an effort I know will be ultimately unsuccessful.”

In the e-mail, Rants also confirmed that he won’t run for re-election to the Iowa House. You can read the whole thing at the Rants 2010 website.

Rants has campaigned hard since announcing his gubernatorial bid last June, but his fundraising dried up after former Governor Terry Branstad entered the race. Rants used his campaign website to expose Branstad’s record of fiscal mismanagement, and he called attention flip-flops on funding the Iowa State Patrol from the Road Use Tax Fund, but that seemed to have little effect.

Rants talked more about substantive policy issues than any other Republican candidate, and appeared at dozens of GOP events around the state, but just couldn’t get any traction in the race. A series of “debates” against Jonathan Narcisse in December and January didn’t attract much media attention. Rants then tried to distinguish himself on the marriage issue by vowing to veto every piece of legislation that hits his desk, including the state budget, until the legislature votes on a constitutional amendment restricting marriage to one man and one woman. Still, the Iowa Family Policy Center endorsed Bob Vander Plaats.

Rants once seemed likely to be a heavyweight contender for governor someday, but that was not to be.

Rants’ departure leaves three Republican candidates for governor: Branstad, Vander Plaats, and State Representative Rod Roberts of Carroll. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Roberts go before the primary, but he insisted in December that he would not drop out. Roberts started running radio advertising last month.

I was surprised not to see Republican primary numbers from the Des Moines Register’s latest Iowa poll. Maybe they plan to release those this weekend.

It’s been a year since President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (better known as the stimulus bill) into law. I didn’t like the early concessions Obama made to Republicans in a fruitless effort to win their support for the stimulus. I was even more upset with later compromises made to appease Senate conservadems and Republican moderates. They reduced spending in several areas that had real stimulative value (school construction funds, extra money for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, aid to state governments) in order to include tax cuts that have much less stimulus “bang for the buck.” Senator Tom Harkin was right to question why 9 percent of the stimulus bill’s cost went toward fixing the alternative minimum tax, for instance.

Still, I supported passage of the stimulus bill. In late 2008 and early 2009 the U.S. economy was losing 600,000 to 700,000 jobs per month. Something had to be done. On balance, the stimulus did much more good than bad. Economists agree it has saved or created a lot of jobs:

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

Two and a half million jobs isn’t enough to compensate for the 8 million jobs lost since this recession began, but it’s a start.

Not only did the stimulus create jobs, it greatly increased spending on programs that will have collateral benefits. Incentives to make homes more energy efficient will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save consumers money that they can spend elsewhere. Money for sewer improvements will provide lasting gains in water quality (inadequate sewers and septic systems are a huge problem in Iowa). The stimulus included $8 billion for high-speed rail. It wasn’t nearly enough, of course; we could have spent ten or twenty times that amount on improving our rail networks. But that $8 billion pot drew $102 billion in grant applications from 40 states and Washington, DC. The massive demand for high-speed rail stimulus funding increases the chance that Congress will allocate more funds for rail transportation in the future.

Unfortunately, most Americans don’t believe the stimulus bill created jobs. That’s largely because unemployment remains at a historically high level of 10 percent nationwide. Also, inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings have gone down during the past year. In addition, Republicans have stayed on message about the worthlessness of the stimulus bill, even though scores of them have hailed stimulus spending in their own states and districts.

Democrats on the House Labor and Education Committee released an ad that lists various popular stimulus bill provisions, such as increasing Pell Grants and teacher pay. The ad uses the tag line, “There’s an act for that,” naming the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act at the end. I don’t think it’s effective, because the ad doesn’t include the word “stimulus.” Few people will realize that the ARRA refers to the stimulus bill.

Bleeding Heartland readers, how do you view the stimulus one year later?

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy voted 6-0 today to recommend that Iowa legislators reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I narcotic to a Schedule II narcotic. Schedule II drugs have a “currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

In April 2009, a Polk County judge instructed the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to examine evidence on possible medical uses for marijuana. Last summer the board declined to reclassify marijuana in Iowa but ordered public hearings on the subject.

The Iowa legislature’s “funnel” deadline passed last Friday with no action on a bill to legalize medical marijuana, meaning the issue is dead for the 2010 session. Leadership can bring up new bills after the funnel deadline, but I would be surprised if House and Senate leaders used that prerogative to move a medical marijuana bill forward during a shortened legislative session.

That said, lawmakers should not fear a political backlash if they do approve a bill legalizing marijuana for medical use in Iowa. In the latest Selzer and Co. statewide poll for the Des Moines Register, 64 percent of respondents supported “allowing medical marijuana,” while only 33 percent opposed the idea. I was surprised by how little opinions on this issue varied by the respondents’ age. Medical marijuana was supported by 67 percent of respondents 18-34, 67 percent of those aged 35-54, and 60 percent of those over 55. Younger Iowans were twice as likely as those over 55 to support legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

How does a 15 to 20 percent increase in one of your household’s major expenses sound to you? About 80,000 Iowans (including me) better get used to the idea:

About 80,000 Iowans who buy their own health insurance through Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield will pay an average of 18 percent more this year, the largest increase in four years.

The state’s largest health insurer will begin notifying the individual policyholders this week of the increase.

Rising health care costs are driving the premium increases, said Rob Schweers, a Wellmark spokesman. Premium increases, which take effect April 1, range between 10 percent and 25 percent, the company said.

It’s the largest average annual increase since 2006, Wellmark data show.

Last year, Wellmark raised insurance rates for individual policyholders by an average of 9.3 percent.

This year’s increases “are a combination of medical cost inflation and increased usage,” Schweers said. “Also, people are getting sicker as a population. There are more chronic diseases.”

Premiums tend to be more volatile for individual policies than for those bought by employers and other large groups, which can negotiate for lower rates and spread risk among employees and members.

Hey, it could be worse: about 700,000 Anthem Blue Cross customers in California will see an average rate increase of 25 percent in May, and many of those will see their insurance premiums go up 35 to 39 percent. The rate hike cannot be justified by increasing medical costs alone. According to California’s insurance commissioner, medical costs in that state have gone up about 10 to 15 percent.

The U.S. inflation rate in 2009 was about 2.7 percent, by the way. Many people have seen their wages decrease during the recession.

Not many businesses can get away with increasing prices for goods or services by many times the rate of inflation year after year. The health insurance industry is different because most of their customers have no place else to go. In most parts of the country, one or two insurance companies dominate the market. Wellmark controls about 70 percent of the market in Iowa, for instance. Wellmark customers may not be able to find another insurance company willing to cover them, especially if they have any pre-existing conditions.

Aren’t you glad Republicans and cowardly Democrats “saved” us from “government-run” health care in the form of a public health insurance option?

The Des Moines Register’s editorial board cited the insurance premium hikes as evidence that the U.S. needs comprehensive health care reform with a “public option.” I couldn’t agree more, but the events of the past few months give me zero hope that Congress will approve any decent health care legislation.

Eight Democratic senators are urging Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a public option in a new health care bill that could be passed using the Senate’s budget reconciliation rules. Bills passed that way are not subject to a filibuster and can pass with 51 votes, or in this case 50 votes plus Vice President Joe Biden. Some bloggers are asking activists to contact Senate Democrats to get them on board with this effort. If you are so inclined, feel free to contact Senator Tom Harkin’s office. He was a vocal advocate of the public option last year. Frankly, I don’t feel like wasting my time anymore. If 50 Democratic senators were committed to passing a good health care bill through the reconciliation process, Reid would have been working on that option six months ago.

More important, if President Barack Obama had been interested in passing a strong health care bill, he would have been pushing for reconciliation all along instead of cutting backroom deals with industry while his spokesman praised efforts to find a bipartisan compromise in the Senate. It was obvious last summer that Republicans like Chuck Grassley were just stringing out the process with a view to killing reform.

The White House summit that Obama is convening next week looks like nothing more than a photo-op to me. I can’t see what good can come out of that other than PR for the president.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: More than a dozen Senate Democrats have signed on to passing health care reform with a public option through reconciliation.

LATE UPDATE: We received a letter from Wellmark on February 23 informing us that our premiums will go up 22 percent as of April 1, 2010.  

Shortly after the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously cleared the way for same-sex marriage rights in April 2009, prominent social conservatives in Iowa vowed to vote out three Supreme Court justices who face retention elections in November 2010. Those are Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices Michael Streit and David Baker.

Judges do not campaign actively for retention, but today Ternus commented on the upcoming elections during an Iowa Public Radio appearance. (continues after the jump)

Republicans have complained for years about Democrats allegedly spending too much on “big government,” but a majority of Iowans think state government is about the right size, according to the latest poll by Selzer and Co. for the Des Moines Register. The poll surveyed 805 Iowa adults between January 31 and February 3 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent. Respondents were asked, “In general, do you think the size of state government is too big, about right, or too small?” 52 percent said “about right” and only 39 percent said “too small.”

The Des Moines Register poll also indicates that Iowans would rather tap into the state’s tax reserves, raise fees and perhaps even raise taxes than impose massive service cuts or lay off hundreds of state workers.

The poll tested eleven options for balancing the budget and asked whether that option should be considered, strongly considered or taken off the table. The largest majority (76 percent) said consolidating some state government services should be considered or strongly considered. The Iowa legislature will pass a government reorganization bill this session, but the savings won’t be large enough to avoid other painful budget decisions.

The next largest majority (61 percent) supported considering taking up to $200 million from the state’s cash reserves. But even that probably wouldn’t be enough to balance the 2011 budget.

The other three options that at least half of respondents said should be considered were “increase fines, license fees and other user fees” (53 percent), expand gambling by allowing casinos to host large poker tournaments (51 percent) and raise the sales tax by 1 percent (51 percent).

The Register reported that several political observers found the sales tax numbers most surprising. I was more surprised to see the public evenly divided on raising the income tax. Some 48 percent of respondents said “lawmakers should consider raising state income taxes by a half percentage point; 50 percent said that idea should come off the table.”

The Register’s poll found much less support for “cutting services to thousands of Iowans” (just 33 percent favored considering that option, while 60 percent said it should be taken off the table). Only 42 percent favored considering laying off hundreds of state employees or consolidating school districts. Only 43 percent said legislators should consider eliminating all business tax credits. Just 45 percent said reducing the number of Iowa counties should be on the table.

My point is not that politicians should put blind faith in the wisdom of crowds. I don’t agree with every finding in this poll. I’d rather reduce the number of counties and scrap many business tax credits than raise the sales tax, and I find Iowans’ support for the film tax credit baffling.

The larger message from this poll is that Iowa Democrats should not cower in fear when Republicans bash “big government.” Offered a range of choices for balancing the state budget, most Iowans would prefer not to see services slashed. The Register’s November 2009 poll pointed to the same conclusion, finding broad support for spending increases Democrats have adopted in recent years.

Republicans will be cheered by the portion of Selzer’s latest poll that found one-third of Iowans called themselves supporters of the “tea party” movement, and a majority believe state government is spending too much money. To me that suggests the framing of the budget issue will be critical for this November’s elections. Democrats need to convince voters that they did all they could to find efficiencies in state government without cutting priority areas. If Republicans object, for instance, that the state could have saved tens of millions of dollars by ending the preschool initiative started in 2007, Democrats must point out that doing so would have cut off early childhood education for about 13,000 Iowa kids.

These unbelievable comments from Representative Steve King come to you courtesy of KTIV in Sioux City, who asked the congressman about the upcoming closure of the John Morrell plant in April:

King doesn’t support a suggestion, by Iowa governor Chet Culver, to extend federal unemployment benefits to 39-weeks after a worker loses his, or her, job.

The republican worries some Morrell workers won’t start looking for a new job until that 39th week when benefits are about to run out.

King says the 26-weeks workers get, right now, is enough. Rep. Steve King, (R) Iowa says “We shouldn’t turn the ‘safety net’ into a hammock. It should actually be a ‘safety net’.”

The John Morrell plant currently employs about 1,450 workers. The unemployment rate in Woodbury County is above 6 percent, so it won’t be easy for all of the displaced workers to find new jobs quickly. The Iowa Democratic Party slammed King’s “absurd” comments:

“Calling the extension to unemployment benefits a ‘hammock’ is insulting. Sioux City is suffering with the blow of the Morrell plant closing. This is the worst recession in 80 years. But, Congressman King believes that we should be worried about these workers being too lazy,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan. […]

“Iowans believe in working hard and playing by the rules, and I know that many affected by the Morrell plant closing are already looking for work to provide for their families after the plant closes. Steve King should stop insulting his constituents and get to work helping them get through this difficult time.”

Not only is King insensitive, he appears to be ignorant about how unemployment benefits relate to the broader economy. Last year Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moodys.com, calculated the stimulus “bang for the buck” of various forms of tax cuts and government spending. The table he created is on page 9 of this pdf document, or you can view it here. Of everything Zandi examined, extending unemployment benefits had the second-highest bang for the buck, generating $1.63 in economic activity for every $1 spent by the federal government. That was more than three times the bang for the buck of any permanent tax cut. Even the best tax cut for economic stimulus (a temporary payroll tax holiday) generates only an estimated $1.28 in economic activity for every $1 in revenue the federal government doesn’t collect.

In other words, extending unemployment benefits to former John Morrell workers wouldn’t just give them a safety net, it would produce more revenue for businesses in the Sioux City area. Last year’s stimulus bill extended federal unemployment benefits, but that provision may expire at the end of this month. Meanwhile, long-term unemployment has reached its highest level in decades. According to KTIV, King has talked with Smithfield Foods about giving Sioux City workers jobs at plants Smithfield owns in other communities, but I question how realistic that is when 44 other states have higher unemployment rates than Iowa. Nor would it help Sioux City businesses and property values to have hundreds of families leave the area.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Two-term incumbent Bruce Braley has drawn another Republican opponent in Iowa’s first Congressional district, Ed Tibbetts reported for the Quad-City Times last week. Brian Cook of Manchester used to work as a newspaper editor before becoming an insurance salesman. Speaking to Tibbetts, he advocated fairly generic Republican stands on the issues (against the stimulus and climate change bills, for tort reform and selling health insurance across state lines). He also said that “he would limit his time in office, probably to two terms.” I have not yet found a campaign website for Cook.

Cook will face at least one other Republican in the IA-01 primary. Ben Lange, an attorney in Independence, announced his candidacy last month. His campaign website is here. I assume that Cook will try to depict Lange as a Washington insider, since Lange used to be a staffer for a member of Congress from Minnesota.

I learned from the CQ Politics blog that a third Republican has filed Federal Election Commission paperwork to run in this district. James Budde, who lives near Bellevue, describes himself as “very active” in the Tea Party movement. You can read many of his political writings at his campaign website.

Tibbetts reported that Dubuque businessman Rod Blum is now “leaning against” running for Congress. He had announced plans to challenge Braley in October.

Iowa’s first district has a partisan voting index of D+5, meaning that in the last two presidential elections it voted about 5 points more Democratic than the national average. That metric understates Braley’s strength; in 2008 he was re-elected with about 64.5 percent of the vote while Barack Obama carried IA-01 with about 58 percent. Even though election forecasters rank IA-01 as a safe Democratic district, it makes sense for the GOP not to leave Braley unchallenged. He is considered likely to run for statewide office someday when Tom Harkin retires from the U.S. Senate.

I didn’t have time to pull this together yesterday, but here’s a late weekend open thread. Share whatever’s on your mind.

(UPDATE: If you think you know American history, see how well you do on Charles Lemos’ Presidents’ Day trivia quiz. Each president is the correct answer to only one question.)

After the jump I’ve posted details on many events coming up this week. I hope to attend the screening of the “Big River” documentary in Des Moines on February 18. It’s a sequel to the must-watch “King Corn,” and the screening is a joint benefit for the Iowa Environmental Council and Practical Farmers of Iowa.

If you are a Democratic candidate in Iowa, please e-mail me your list of upcoming events so I can include them in these threads. (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com)

Oxfam America “is seeking Des Moines area volunteers to lend 5-8 hours of time per week to help them raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on global communities and encourage action to alleviate it.” If you’re interested, you need to contact them by February 15 (information below).

Have a laugh at this from the Onion: New law would ban marriages between people who don’t love each other.

New Law Would Ban Marriages Between People Who Don’t Love Each Other

The latest Iowa poll by Selzer and Co. for the Des Moines Register finds Governor Chet Culver’s approval rating at a new low of 36 percent. Only 34 percent of respondents said Iowa is headed in the right direction, while 57 percent said the state is on the wrong track. The poll was in the field from January 31 to February 3 and surveyed 805 Iowa adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

Culver’s approval rating fell to 36 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. The Des Moines Register’s Iowa poll from September had Culver in positive territory, with 50 percent approval and 39 percent disapproval. The Des Moines Register’s November poll had Culver with 40 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval.

The Des Moines Register noted that since September, Culver’s approval among Democrats has fallen from 72 percent to 57 percent, while Senator Tom Harkin’s approval among Democrats was measured at 77 percent in both polls.

The economic recession is probably a major factor in Culver’s slide. Although the state’s eight leading economic indicators were measured in positive territory in December 2009 (for the first time since April 2007), employment remains weak. Iowa’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.6 percent in December 2009, and Iowa Workforce Development found,

Compared to last December, the Iowa economy has lost 40,100 jobs. Manufacturing still leads all sectors in terms of losses, down 19,900 over the year. Trade and transportation and construction followed with losses of 7,900 and 7,700, respectively. Education and health services remained the most resilient sector, adding 2,600 jobs since December 2008.

The slow economy has caused state revenues to fall below projections, which prompted Culver to make a 10 percent across-the-board cut in current-year spending in October. Spending cuts are rarely popular with anyone.

Side note: I wondered last fall whether the scandal surrounding Iowa’s film tax credit, which broke in September, would hurt Culver. I was surprised to see that 61 percent of respondents in the Des Moines Register’s poll think the film tax credit is “good for the state.” The poll question didn’t mention how much the film tax credit has cost compared to the economic impact. I agree with economist Dave Swenson, who thinks the program was flawed from the start.

The latest Register survey also polled Culver against the four Republican challengers. (This portion of the poll, like the approval numbers, is in the print version of the Sunday Des Moines Register but hasn’t appeared on the website yet. I will update this post with a link when that becomes available. UPDATE: Here is the link.) The hypothetical matchups come from a subset of 531 “likely voters,” producing a slightly higher margin of error: plus or minus 4.3 percent.

Former Governor Terry Branstad remains the strongest challenger, beating Culver 53 percent to 33 percent. Bob Vander Plaats leads Culver 43 percent to 40 percent. Strangely, Culver trailed Branstad and Vander Plaats by slightly larger margins in the Register’s November poll, even though his approval rating was a little higher then. Culver barely beats the other Republicans, who are less well known. He leads State Representative Chris Rants 41 percent to 37 percent and State Representative Rod Roberts 41 percent to 36 percent.

Needless to say, it’s never a good sign when an incumbent governor is below 40 percent approval and barely breaks 40 percent against any challenger. Culver needs to make up ground this year in order to be re-elected. The right direction/wrong track numbers show that voters under 35 were more likely than the overall population to think things are going in the right direction, but most of the electorate in November will be over 35.

Culver has chances to improve his standing this year. If the state’s leading economic indicators continue a positive trend, the job market may improve. Also, spending on infrastructure projects supported by the I-JOBS state bonding initiative will pick up in the spring and summer. So far nearly $600 million in I-JOBS money has been awarded, but only $20.7 million has been spent. As the projects take shape, more Iowans will be employed and more people will see the benefits to their communities.

On the political side, Branstad hasn’t received much scrutiny from the media yet, but when the gubernatorial campaign heats up, his accountability problem may become more apparent. A hard-fought Republican primary will exacerbate the rift between moderates and conservatives. Some conservatives have already vowed not to support Branstad if he is the GOP nominee. More focus on the inconsistencies between candidate Branstad and Governor Branstad may help Culver’s standing with Democrats and independents.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: The Des Moines Register’s Kathie Obradovich says Culver may as well start shopping his resume around, but John Deeth argues that Culver is not dead yet.

SECOND UPDATE: The latest poll commissioned by The Iowa Republican blog and the Republican Concordia group found Branstad leading Culver 57 percent to 29 percent and Vander Plaats leading Culver 43 percent to 39 percent. I don’t know much about the firm that conducted that poll, and I would put more stock in Selzer’s numbers for the Des Moines Register.

THIRD UPDATE: The Iowa Democratic Party’s statement on this poll is a bit odd. More on that after the jump.

To depressed Democrats out there, I offer six silver linings of a Branstad candidacy.

FINAL UPDATE: This poll prompted Swing State Project to change its rating of this race from tossup to lean Republican.

Last month I posted about the controversy surrounding the search for a new director of Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. University officials offered the job to Frank Louws, a plant pathologist in North Carolina, although the search committee preferred Ricardo Salvador, the program director for the Kellogg Foundation’s Food, Health and Wellbeing program. Salvador is a corn expert and displayed a more “holistic perspective” about sustainable agriculture, which is probably why the Iowa Farm Bureau had expressed a preference for Louws. ISU’s Dean of Agriculture Wendy Wintersteen informed Salvador that he would not get the position before Louws had accepted the job. Typically, employers wait until they have a deal with their top candidate before telling other finalists that they didn’t get the job.

For about two months, Louws neither accepted nor declined the offer to head the Leopold Center. Meanwhile, ISU President Greg Geoffroy denied that he had been influenced by the Farm Bureau, saying he had followed “very strong advice” from Wintersteen and ISU’s Executive Vice President and Provost Elizabeth Hoffman. In the sustainable agriculture community, many people believe industrial agriculture interests influenced Wintersteen’s and Hoffman’s recommendation.

In any event, Louws has declined ISU’s job offer, the Ames Tribune reported yesterday. Wintersteen said North Carolina State University made him “a generous counter offer,” and Louws decided not to uproot his family.

According to the Ames Tribune, Geoffroy “advised [Wintersteen] to call Salvador back for a second interview” after Louws turned down the Leopold Center job. That interview has not yet been scheduled.

A couple of years ago, I would have said State Representative Dwayne Alons (House district 4). Longtime Bleeding Heartland readers may remember Alons as the guy who asserted during a committee hearing on greenhouse gas emissions that global warming would be good for Iowa because warmer temperatures helped ancient Mayans grow taller and stronger than today’s men and women. The following year, Alons remarked, “We shouldn’t be as concerned, actually, about warming, especially now that we have modern refrigeration and air conditioning.”

Alons sets the bar high in terms of cluelessness, but after reading this piece by Jason Hancock today, I think State Representative Jason Schultz (House district 55) could give him a run for his money. Schultz has introduced House File 2313, which stipulates,

 1  1    Section 1.  NEW SECTION.  602.1100  Judicial authority.

 1  2    1.  A judicial officer shall not use judicial precedent,

 1  3 case law, penumbras, or international law as a basis for

 1  4 rulings.  A judicial officer shall only use the Constitution

 1  5 of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Iowa,

 1  6 and the Code of Iowa as the basis for any ruling issued by such

 1  7 judicial officer.    The only source material that may be used

 1  8 for interpreting the Constitution of the United States by a

 1  9 judicial officer in this state shall be the Federalist papers

 1 10 and other writings of the founding fathers to describe the

 1 11 intent of the founding fathers, and if such source material is

 1 12 used, the full context of the source material must be used by

 1 13 the judicial officer.

 1 14    2.  This section is not reviewable by the court.

 1 15    3.  A violation of this section by a judicial officer shall

 1 16 be considered malfeasance in office and subjects the judicial

 1 17 officer to impeachment under chapter 68.

Bad ideas are not in short supply at the Iowa Capitol, but Schultz has taken things to a new level of stupidity here. No precedent and no case law, really? I have never heard of a so-called “strict constructionist” who would prohibit judges from citing previous court rulings in forming their opinions. In effect, Schultz is saying judges have to reinvent the wheel in almost every case. Yet conservative jurists usually lean toward respecting precedent.

Schultz would not allow any judge to consult historians’ work on the Constitution or the Federalist Papers either, as if there can be no ambiguity about what 18th-century language was meant to convey.

Mr. desmoinesdem reminds me that even U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a critic of citing foreign law in U.S. courts, has cited international law before when interpreting a treaty. In a recent case Scalia even cited the Babylonian Talmud, which is more than 1,000 years old.

If you’re wondering why Schultz wants to ban “penumbras,” that term alludes to the idea that there is a right to privacy, even though the Bill of Rights does not contain the word “privacy.”

Schultz’s bill isn’t going anywhere, and Drake University law professor Mark Kende notes that it would be unconstitutional in any event.

Like many Iowa Republicans, Schultz appears not to have a solid grasp of the judicial review concept. His support for a bill that would restore elections for Iowa Supreme Court justices indicates that he’s not sold on judicial independence. But even in the context of bad Republican ideas, House File 2313 stands out. Schultz is angry that the Iowa Supreme Court cited Iowa case law in its Varnum v Brien ruling last year, so the solution must be to ban judges from considering case law.

Not only is Schultz ignorant, he also demonstrated an impressive mean streak by introducing a bill this session “that would remove protections for gay, lesbian and transgender students from an anti-bullying law passed in 2007.” (More on that here.)

Iowa politics-watchers, who do you think is the most embarrassingly ill-informed member of the Iowa legislature? Make your case in this thread or e-mail me confidentially: desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.  

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and ranking Republican Chuck Grassley released a draft jobs bill yesterday that would cost about $85 billion. It “would give employers a payroll tax exemption for hiring those who have been unemployed for at least 60 days. The bill would also provide a $1,000 income tax credit for new workers retained for 52 weeks.” Click here to read a copy of the draft bill.

A bipartisan jobs bill would be great if that bill would create a significant number of new jobs. Unfortunately, analysts agree that many of the measures in the Baucus-Grassley bill would do little on that front. More details are after the jump.

Senator Tom Harkin and Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire introduced a resolution yesterday that would change the Senate’s rules on filibusters:

the first vote on a cloture motion – which ends a filibuster – would require 60 votes to proceed, the next would be two days later and require 57. This process would repeat itself until the number fell to 51, or a simple majority.

The idea is to restore the filibuster to its original use (delaying passage of a bill) as opposed to its current use by Republicans (to impose a super-majority requirement for every Senate action). The authors of the Constitution never intended to make the Senate unable to act without the consent of 60 percent of its members. But Republicans used the filibuster more times in 2009 than it was used during the entire period from 1949 to 1970.

However, an unofficial whip count shows Democrats very far from having enough votes to change the filibuster rules. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in effect took the issue off the table yesterday.

Also yesterday, Harkin advised President Obama to use recess appointments for dozens of nominees whom Republicans have been holding up. Unfortunately, the White House announced that the president will not use his recess appointment powers for now, because the Senate confirmed 27 out of more than 60 nominees Republicans are holding up. (The list of those 27 nominees is here.) Although Obama’s statement reserves the right to make recess appointments in the future, he should not have taken that off the table as long as Senate Republicans continue to hold dozens of nominees in limbo.

One of the most controversial nominees is Craig Becker. A February 9 filibuster blocked his appointment to the National Labor Relations Board, because Becker is supposedly too pro-labor. President George W. Bush used recess appointments to name seven of his nine appointees to the NLRB. Of course, they were all anti-labor. It’s past time to bring balance to that board.

UPDATE: Senator Dick Durbin supports Harkin’s filibuster reform efforts. A “senior leadership aide” told Greg Sargent that Durbin is “in talks with a number of other Democratic senators regarding possible changes to Senate rules.”

SECOND UPDATE: A new CBS/New York Times poll found 50 percent of respondents said the filibuster should not remain in place, while 44 percent said they should. I think with more education of the public about how the filibuster obstructs progress, support for changing the rules would grow.

Today the Democratic Activist Women’s Network announced the winners of awards they will present on at their Women’s Appreciation Day Reception on March 8:

Award winners include Andrea Jansa, Des Moines (Rising Star Award); Rachael Grimes, McCallsburg (Special Recognition Award); Clara Oleson, West Branch (Activist Award); Peggy Huppert, Des Moines (Lifetime Achievement Award); and State Senator Amanda Ragan, Mason City (Elected Official Award).

During the reception, DAWN’s List will also honor Lynda Waddington for her volunteer efforts in 2009 and will recognize Roxanne Conlin, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, for her many years of service to DAWN-supported issues.

Guest speaker at the reception will be Christie Vilsack, Executive Director of the Iowa Initiative and former Iowa First Lady.  The reception will be held from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Grand Piano Bistro, 506 E. Grand Avenue, Des Moines.

Congratulations to all the award winners. Many Bleeding Heartland readers will recognize Lynda Waddington’s name as the founder of the Essential Estrogen blog and a frequent contributor to Iowa Independent. She’s one of my favorite reads.

Andrea Jansa is an assistant to Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Not only is Amanda Ragan a good legislator, she managed to win her first election to the Iowa Senate in 2002, which was a tough political environment for Democrats.

Peggy Huppert has worked for and volunteered for many non-profit organizations. Some of you may remember her work as executive director of the Sensible Priorities Campaign before the 2008 Iowa caucuses.

If you want to buy tickets for the March 8 event, check the DAWN’s List website or send an e-mail to dawniowa AT gmail.com. DAWN’s list supports the election of pro-choice Democratic women candidates in Iowa.

The Republican National Committee had its “worst election-year cash flow this decade” in 2009. RNC Chairman Michael Steele started the year with about $22 million cash on hand and ended the year with less than $9 million in the bank. Fortunately for him, the GOP may make up the lost ground with an innovative scam fundraising tool: fake census forms.

The fundraising letter comes in the form of a “survey,” a frequently used device for partisan fundraising, but this one has a twist: Calling itself the “Congressional District Census,” the letter comes in an envelope starkly printed with the words, “DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT” and describes itself, on the outside of the envelope, as a “census document.”

“Strengthening our party for the 2010 elections is going to take a massive grass-roots effort all across America,” Steele writes in a letter that blends official-sounding language, partisan calls to arms, and requests for between $25 and $500. “That is why I have authorized a census to be conducted for every congressional district in the country.”

Representative Dave Loebsack recently warned constituents in Iowa’s second district about the RNC’s appeal: “This fundraising letter even calls itself a ‘Census survey’ and asks people to pay for the cost of processing the census form.” Iowa Independent posted a link to a scanned version of the mailing in this piece by Lynda Waddington. She notes, “The mailing includes a ‘census tracking code’ as well as a deadline to respond.”

Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York introduced legislation this week to “prevent deceptive census lookalike mailings.” Earlier, she and Representative William Clay of Missouri wrote the U.S. Postmaster General, charging the RNC was breaking federal law by sending out an “attempt to mislead recipients.” Even if Maloney’s bill moved forward, it would come too late to stop this fundraising drive.

Apparently the RNC’s mailing is legal, according to the postal service, because “it doesn’t use the full name of the U.S. Census Bureau or the seal of any government agency.” But Ben Smith writes at Politico,

Even some who have been involved with the program, however, acknowledged that it walks the line.

“Of course, duping people is the point. … That’s one of the reasons why it works so well,” said one Republican operative familiar with the program, who said it’s among the RNC’s most lucrative fundraising initiatives. “They will likely mail millions this year [with] incredible targeting.”

Shameful.

Yet another study has found that exposure to the weed-killer atrazine is associated with a higher rate of a birth defect:

Living near farms that use the weed killer atrazine may up the risk of a rare birth defect, according to a study presented this past Friday [February 5] at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in Chicago.

About 1 in 5000 babies born in the U.S. each year suffers from gastroschisis, in which part of the intestines bulges through a separation in the belly, according to the March of Dimes. The rate of gastroschisis has risen 2- to 4-fold over the last three decades, according to Dr. Sarah Waller, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues. […]

The researchers looked at more than 4,400 birth certificates from 1987-2006 – including more than 800 cases of gastroschisis — and U.S. Geological Survey databases of agricultural spraying between 2001 and 2006.

Using Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards to define high chemical exposure levels in surface water, they found that the closer a mother lived to a site of high surface water contamination by atrazine, the more likely she was to deliver an infant with gastroschisis.

The birth defect occurred more often among infants who lived less than 25 km (about 15 miles) from one of these sites, and it occurred more often among babies conceived between March and May, when agricultural spraying is common.

A separate study published last year in the medical journal Acta Paediatrica compared monthly concentrations of “nitrates, atrazine and other pesticides” in the U.S. water supply with birth defect rates over a seven-year period. The researchers found, “Elevated concentrations of agrichemicals in surface water in April-July coincided with higher risk of birth defects in live births with [last menstrual periods in] April-July.” The association was found for “eleven of 22 birth defect subcategories” as well as for birth defects as a whole.

The European Union banned atrazine in 2003 because of groundwater contamination, but tens of millions of pounds of the chemical are still sprayed on American farms. It has been proven to enter the water supply and is correlated with increased rates of breast and prostate cancers.

During the Bush administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintained that atrazine had no detrimental effects in humans. But in a policy shift last October, the EPA announced that it would ask the independent Scientific Advisory Panel to conduct a thorough scientific review of atrazine’s “potential cancer and non-cancer effects on humans,” including “its potential association with birth defects, low birth weight, and premature births.” The panel will also evaluate research on “atrazine’s potential effects on amphibians and aquatic ecosystems.” Conventional agriculture groups aren’t waiting for the results of the review; they are already lobbying the EPA not to restrict or ban the use of atrazine.

I’d have more respect for the “pro-life” movement if they supported restrictions on chemicals that threaten babies in the womb. I don’t think I have ever heard an anti-abortion activist railing against atrazine or pesticides that can cause spontaneous abortions, though.

A few weeks ago, a long-lost elementary school classmate scanned our entire sixth-grade yearbook from May 1981 and posted the contents on Facebook. In addition to the usual goofy photos, we all contributed brief notes for our “20th reunion,” describing our lives as we imagined they would be in 2001.

The reunion notes were good for a lot of laughs. Then, like the geek I always have been, I decided to take a closer look at how my sixth-grade classmates envisioned our futures. What I found is after the jump.

A note on demographics: this sample of 76 children is in no way representative of American eleven- and twelve-year-olds in 1981. The three classrooms of sixth-graders at my school included 73 Caucasians, 2 Asians and one African-American. We lived in middle-class or upper middle-class neighborhoods in the Des Moines suburbs. Almost everyone was Christian; mostly Protestant, I think, with more mainline Protestants than evangelicals. There were also quite a few Catholics and four Jews.

Republican State Representative Kent Sorenson is trying to amend the Iowa Constitution to bring back elections for the seven state Supreme Court justices.

Republicans Dwayne Alons and Jason Schultz joined Sorenson in introducing House Joint Resolution 2013 this week. It would amend the constitution to require Supreme Court justices to be elected to six-year terms. Lower-court judges would continue to be appointed, as they have been since Iowa approved a constitutional amendment in 1962 to eliminate judicial elections. Under the current system, the governor appoints district and Supreme Court judges from lists of nominees submitted by judicial nominating commissions.

Other social conservatives have vowed to defeat the three Supreme Court justices who are up for retention in 2010 because of last year’s Varnum v Brien ruling, which cleared the way for same-sex marriage in Iowa. But even that isn’t good enough for Sorenson and his allies. They are so upset about one court ruling that they would toss out a method for selecting judges which has worked well for nearly a half-century. The Des Moines-based American Judicature Society has plenty of resources on the importance of judicial independence and the benefits of a merit-based system over judicial elections. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United case lifted restrictions on corporate spending to influence elections, providing another reason not to mess with Iowa’s judicial selection process.

Sorenson’s constitutional amendment probably won’t go anywhere, but he may use the proposal as a rallying cry in his campaign against Staci Appel in Iowa Senate district 37 this year. Appel’s husband, Brent Appel, is an Iowa Supreme Court justice. He is not up for retention this November.

UPDATE: Via the latest from Todd Dorman I learned that State Representative Rod Roberts, a Republican candidate for governor, has introduced his own constitutional amendment:

His proposal, House Joint Resolution 2012, calls for appointing nine justices – one from each judicial district and one at-large. It would require justices to continue to live in the district as long as they sit on the court.

“Even people in the legal profession tell me this would help the court get connected at the grass roots level,” he said.

Dorman comments,

Justices should answer to the state constitution, the law and precedent, not to public sentiment. They’re appointed through a bipartisan, drama-free process that focuses on their experience and qualifications. They already face regular retention votes.

So explain to me why we would throw out that system in favor of open electioneering. It’s a horrible idea.

And picking them by geography instead of qualifications isn’t much better.

How is this stuff conservative?

You don’t want judges who “legislate from the bench,” so you elect them just like legislators?

The Iowa Bar Association opposes the proposals from Sorenson and Roberts.

The conservative Washington Times newspaper noticed yesterday that some vocal opponents of last year’s stimulus bill haven’t been walking the walk:

More than a dozen Republican lawmakers, while denouncing the stimulus to the media and their constituents, privately sent letters to just one of the federal government’s many agencies seeking stimulus money for home-state pork projects.

The letters to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, expose the gulf between lawmakers’ public criticism of the overall stimulus package and their private lobbying for projects close to home.

“It’s not illegal to talk out of both sides of your mouth, but it does seem to be a level of dishonesty troubling to the American public,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The Washington Times learned that Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley

was yet another lawmaker who voted against the stimulus and later backed applications for stimulus money in two letters to the Agriculture Department.

“If the funds are there, Senator Grassleys going to help Iowa, rather than some other state, get its share,” spokeswoman Jill Kozeny said.

Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan commented in a statement, “Someone needs to tell Chuck Grassley that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t vote against something and then take credit for the funds coming to Iowa.”

Sure he can, and he’ll keep doing that until Iowa journalists report that Grassley was against the spending before he was for it.

Longtime Bleeding Heartland readers may recall that Representatives Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) have played this game too. Last March, Latham bragged about earmarks he inserted in the 2009 omnibus spending bill he voted against. King sought out favorable publicity for stimulus money allocated to widen U.S. Highway 20 in northwest Iowa, even though he voted against the stimulus bill. Those actions earned King and Latham spots on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Hypocrisy Hall of Fame.” It’s not an exclusive club, though: 71 House Republicans have already been inducted.

I seem to have jinxed things by praising Democratic state legislators who allowed the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ new clean water rules to go forward this week.

I learned yesterday from Iowa CCI, 1000 Friends of Iowa and the Iowa Environmental Council that a horrible bill, House File 2324, is being fast-tracked through the Iowa House. This bill was introduced to the House Agriculture Committee on Monday afternoon, and on Tuesday it was unanimously approved by a subcommittee and then the full House Agriculture Committee. An action alert from the Iowa Environmental Council explains the substance:

DNR has proposed rules that would require existing facilities need to have at least 100 days of storage, in order to qualify for an emergency exemption for winter application because of full storage structures.  But HF 2324 exempts confinement feeding operations constructed before July 1, 2009 from this rule.  Specifically the bill states:

“A confinement feeding operation constructed before July 1, 2009, and not expanded after that date is not required to construct or expand a manure storage structure to comply with this section.”  

Lack of adequate manure storage during winter months is a major cause of water pollution in Iowa.  Without adequate storage, farmers apply the manure to frozen or snow-covered farm fields, risking run-off into nearby streams at the first thaw or rain.

From a statement issued by Iowa CCI:

Iowa already suffers from some of the worst water quality in the nation. High levels of ammonia pollution all across Iowa were traced back to manure application on frozen and snow-covered ground. This bill would gut the state law that bans the spreading of manure on frozen and snow-covered ground by exempting more than 5,500 factory farms that were built before July 1, 2009 due to a lack of storage for their manure.

“Poor manure management is not an emergency,” [CCI Executive Director Hugh] Espey said.

The Environmental Protection Agency came down strongly in favor of a ban without exceptions last year.  Passage of this new legislation would be a clear violation of the Clean Water Act and would also undermine the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ authority to regulate factory farms.

Shame on the members of the House Agriculture Committee for fast-tracking this bill. Yet again, Iowa environmentalists have to fight efforts to circumvent DNR rules aimed at protecting the public interest. We should be making CAFOs pay for the harm they cause, not exempting them from reasonable manure storage requirements. But no, proponents want to rush through a gift for factory farms.

It’s a disgrace that a legislative committee unanimously recommended this bill, especially in a Democratic-controlled legislature. This kind of thing is one reason why I have stopped donating to the House and Senate Democratic leadership committees.

Last year many legislators tried to circumvent the DNR’s rule-making on the application of manure on frozen ground, prompting several Iowa non-profits to spend staff time and energy mobilizing against the bad bill. By a minor miracle, last-minute amendments greatly improved that bill before it passed in the closing days of the 2009 session.

The Iowa Environmental Council makes it easy for you to send an e-mail urging your state legislators to vote down HF 2324. But some lawmakers don’t read all their e-mail, so I recommend calling your representative as well. The House switchboard is 515-281-3221.  

UPDATE: Adam Mason of Iowa CCI informed me that another bad bill, House File 2365, was introduced in the House Agriculture Committee yesterday. It would change the definition of a “residence” in proximity to a CAFO, excluding homes that are “off the grid.” Iowa law restricts how close factory farms can be to residences, but this bill would make it harder for some homeowners to fight a factory farm permit. So far HF 2365 hasn’t received subcommittee or full committee approval, but it bears watching.

SECOND UPDATE: There is also an Iowa Senate version of the bill that would undermine regulations on winter spreading of manure: it’s Senate File 2229. It was referred to a subcommittee on February 9, but no further action has been taken as of February 14.  

Republicans in the Iowa House and Senate failed this morning to force floor votes on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In the Senate, minority leader Paul McKinley asked colleagues “to sign a petition that would allow Senate Joint Resolution 2001, which would begin the process of amending the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage, to be brought to the Senate floor for a vote despite not being approved by a committee.” Only one of the 32 Iowa Senate Democrats (Tom Hancock) joined the 18 Republicans in signing this petition.

Later this morning, House Republicans tried a procedural maneuver that could have allowed a floor vote on House Joint Resolution 6 (a constitutional amendment on marriage) despite the fact that no House committee has approved it. The procedural motion needed 51 votes to pass, but only one Democrat, Dolores Mertz, voted with the 44 House Republicans. Mertz is a co-sponsor of the marriage amendment and votes consistently with Republicans on social issues.

Last April, two Democrats (Mertz and Geri Huser) joined with House Republicans on a similar procedural vote. Good for Huser for voting with the majority this time around. One House Democrat was absent today: Mark Kuhn, who also missed yesterday’s proceedings in the chamber. It seems likely that he is either sick or was unable to get to Des Moines from his home in rural Floyd County. North-central Iowa just got hit with another major winter storm.

House Republican leader Kraig Paulsen acknowledged today that opponents of marriage equality don’t have the 51 votes needed to force a vote this session in the Iowa House.

McKinley warned in a statement, “the voters this November will have an opportunity to decide if they are content with the continued Democrat obstruction and inaction.” Republicans keep saying they want to “let the people vote” on marriage. As it happens, this November Iowans will have an opportunity to pass a ballot initiative on convening a constitutional convention. Some Republicans want to take that route, but most are afraid to back a constitutional assembly. It seems like they want a campaign issue to use against Democrats more than they want to amend the constitution by the quickest means possible.

Unfortunately for Republicans, recent polling data suggests gay marriage is not a high priority for most Iowans. Every statehouse Democrat should be echoing the words from House Speaker Pat Murphy’s official statement today:

“In these tough economic times, Iowans want the Legislature to keep focused on help for middle class families and small businesses.  In this shortened session, my goal is to keep the House focused on key priorities — balancing the state budget without raising taxes while creating good-paying jobs for Iowans and making sure every child receives a quality education and affordable health care.”

Murphy and Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal strongly supported the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling, and they deserve a lot of credit for holding their caucuses together today. As Gronstal has promised, Republicans will not succeed in writing discrimination into our state’s constitution.

In related good news, the New Hampshire House Judiciary Committee voted down two bills today that were aimed at repealing same-sex marriage rights in that state.

UPDATE: Jason Clayworth has more details and reaction at the Des Moines Register’s blog.

The House spent almost 30 minutes on a rarely used “call-of-the-House” in which each of the 100 members were ordered into the chambers to vote unless they were previously excused.  

Hancock explained why he joined the Senate Republicans as follows: “I live in a highly Catholic area and I think that’s what the folks wanted me to do […] I never received that many contacts to say not to.”

Pat Murphy said Republicans “can go ahead and use” the House vote in the upcoming campaign, but added, “I would advise Republicans that ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’”  

Yesterday the National Republican Congressional Committee gave another sign that Jim Gibbons is their man in the five-way primary for Iowa’s third Congressional district. Gibbons is among a dozen or so Republicans who have been added to the NRCC’s list of “on the radar” candidates.

The Young Guns program is designed to assist Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives achieve goals and benchmarks throughout the election cycle focused on the fundamentals of a winning campaign. By achieving ‘On the Radar’ status, Gibbons has already proven his ability to build a successful campaign structure and achieve important fundraising goals.

“The NRCC is committed to working with Jim Gibbons as he continues to meet the rigorous goals of the Young Guns program,” said NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions. “Jim is an accomplished, independent leader who has already built significant momentum behind his campaign. I am confident that Republicans will be successful in our effort to defeat Leonard Boswell, who is an out-of-touch politician solely focused on his party’s big-government, big-spending agenda rather than job creation.”

“On the radar” is the third tier for NRCC-backed challengers in Democratic-held districts. Republican candidates with somewhat better prospects are on the NRCC’s list of “contenders.” Republicans with the best pickup opportunities are called “young guns.” (The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a similar three-tier structure, from the top-ranked “red to blue” districts to “emerging” candidates and “races to watch.”)

Washington Republicans have indicated before that Jim Gibbons is their choice in the IA-03 primary, but yesterday was the closest thing to an official endorsement we’ve seen from the national party insiders.

For some reason, there’s no asterisk denoting an “official” NRCC endorsement on this list of candidates in the Young Guns program. But that doesn’t matter much. By singling out Gibbons as an “on the radar” candidate, the NRCC is telling major donors and out-of-state political action committees where they should put their money. That is bound to increase Gibbons’ money advantage over his rivals in the primary.

I still don’t fully understand why Republicans are so much more interested in a former wrestling coach and financial advisor than in State Senator Brad Zaun, a former mayor of a major Republican vote-producing region of Polk County. Perhaps they think Gibbons can bring over Democratic-leaning Cyclone fans. If some well-connected Republican cares to enlighten me, please post a comment in this thread or send a confidential e-mail to desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

THURSDAY UPDATE: More establishment support emerges for Gibbons, as former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert will headline a fundraiser to be hosted by former Representative Greg Ganske, who represented the fourth district (including Polk County) from 1995-2003. Hastert’s influence wasn’t enough to carry his son Ethan through in the recent GOP primary for Illinois’ 14th district (Hastert’s old seat).  

Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama released holds on most of the Obama administration nominees he has been blocking, the Washington Post reports, citing a statement from Shelby’s office:

“The purpose of placing numerous holds was to get the White House’s attention on two issues that are critical to our national security – the Air Force’s aerial refueling tanker acquisition and the FBI’s Terrorist Device Analytical Center (TEDAC). With that accomplished, Sen. Shelby has decided to release his holds on all but a few nominees directly related to the Air Force tanker acquisition until the new Request for Proposal is issued. The Air Force tanker acquisition is not an ‘earmark’ as has been reported; it is a competition to replace the Air Force’s aging aerial refueling tanker fleet. Sen. Shelby is not seeking to determine the outcome of the competition; he is seeking to ensure an open, fair and transparent competition that delivers the best equipment to our men and women in uniform.”

I wonder whether any of Shelby’s GOP colleagues leaned on him to take this step. They may have been worried about mainstream media coverage of Shelby’s grotesque hostage-taking exercise, or they may not want to push things too far in case Senate Democrats change the rules on putting “holds” on nominees.

Shelby’s power play is not over yet, because he is still vowing to block nominees “directly related to the Air Force tanker acquisition.” Emptywheel found out which nominees are covered by Shelby’s hold:

    * Terry Yonkers, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment, and Logistics (Nominated August 4, 2009)

    * Frank Kendall, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (PDUSD) for Acquisition and Technology (Nominated August 6, 2009)

    * Erin Conaton, Under Secretary of the Air Force (Nominated November 10, 2009)

Democrats should blast Republicans for indulging Shelby while key Air Force positions remain vacant during wartime. I would encourage Roxanne Conlin’s campaign not to drop its “fight the hold” effort until Republicans allow the Senate to vote on all of these nominees.

The Iowa Attorney General’s Office filed the first criminal charges in connection with the film tax credit scandal today.

Tom Wheeler, who stepped down in September as manager of the office, faces a charge of non-felonious misconduct in office. Wheeler, 41, is accused of failing to verify the eligibility of applicants for the state’s film tax credit program.

Also charged is Wendy Weiner Runge, who was executive producer of a 2008 film, “The Scientist.” Runge is charged with first degree theft and is accused of taking property belonging to the state of Iowa by unlawfully reporting inflated values on applications for tax credits.

UPDATE: A later version of the Des Moines Register story noted that charges have also been filed against “Matthias Alexander Saunders, another business owner and photography director; and three limited liability corporations tied to the movie [“The Scientist”].”

The Attorney General’s Office press statement is here, and on that page you can download documents related to the charges filed. Governor Chet Culver fired Wheeler shortly after the scandal broke last September. Iowa Department of Economic Development Director Mike Tramontina and deputy director Vincent Lintz both resigned.

It sounds as if Wheeler’s attorney will be Gordon Fischer, a name familiar to many Iowa Democrats. WHO-TV journalist Dave Price posted a statement from Fischer at the Price of Politics blog. Excerpt:

We are disappointed with the Attorney General’s decision to file criminal charges under the facts and circumstances of the situation as we know them. The state has decided to pursue a novel theory of criminal liability and it is our position that their decision is a mistake that is not supported by the facts or the law. However, because they have chosen this path, Tom’s focus must now necessarily shift from trying to help the state develop a functional, and economically beneficial, tax incentive program to defending against the criminal charges. Because of this shift in focus, we will need time to review the state’s charging documents before anyone can make specific comments about the facts underlying the Attorney General’s allegations.

UPDATE: The Des Moines Register published more comments from Wheeler’s advocate:

Gordon Fischer, whom Wheeler hired shortly after a multi-agency investigation began in September, said the state was making Wheeler the fall guy for poor oversight of a program overrun with applications.

“It’s really, really disappointing that they made the decision to try to criminalize this,” Fischer said. Wheeler, he said, “continually raised to his supervisors that the workload was very heavy (inside the firm office), and he was doing the best he could with limited resources.”

The Iowa legislature is likely to eliminate the state film tax credit this session. Last week Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson wrote a good column at InsiderIowa.com about why this program was flawed from the start:

An ad hoc cabal of arts boosters, state and local economic developers, impressionable legislators, and an uncritical me-too response to other states’ attempts in this extremely iffy arena led to what was proudly billed as half-price film making in Iowa.  That is, incredibly, 50 percent of qualifying in-state film-making expenditures could be claimed as state income tax credits.  And even if you didn’t generate enough economic activity to use the credits, you could sell them on the secondary market to some other Iowa company that wanted to lower their state taxes.

It was a fiasco on three fronts. First, the grant of a fully-refundable credit on 50 percent of costs was fiscally unsustainable, legislatively irresponsible, and set the stage for the documented abuses that occurred. Second, Iowa does not have the population, talent, geography, climate, visual amenities, and the whole array of agglomerations that would support a meaningful and sustainable year-round film industry. It never will. And third, the creative economy, as in arts and entertainment, will not be a leading driver of the Iowa economy because they all had it backwards:  arts and entertainment clusters of the kind described by Mr. [Richard] Florida [author of The Rise of the Creative Class] are a result of other economic growth not the cause.

Iowa does not have a Hollywood, Nashville, Taos, Santa Fe, Austin, Memphis, or even Branson to build from.  Iowa is farms, biotechnology research and development, manufacturing, finance and insurance, health care, and universities.  Those are Iowa’s key industries, and the creative content of many of those industries is quite high.  They are full of biologists, agronomists, actuaries, mathematicians, chemists, engineers, computer scientists, and other physical, medical, and social scientists.  That is Iowa’s creative economy, and that is the portion of the state that will drive most job growth and innovation in the next decade.  It has art and cultural centers, but no art and cultural centers that are driving regional or statewide growth in other industries.

The film tax credit will end up costing Iowa taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. It’s a costly reminder that consensus ideas aren’t always good ideas.  

State legislators have allowed clean water “anti-degradation” rules to stand, a step toward filling a significant hole in Iowa’s water quality regulations. A last-ditch effort by Republicans failed to win enough votes on the Iowa legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee (ARRC) to set aside rules adopted by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

I’ve joked that the ARRC’s unofficial motto is “Where good rules go to die,” because on several occasions the committee has rejected rules oriented toward environmental protection. Today Republican Senator Merlin Bartz tried to keep that tradition going with a motion to object to the new water quality rules. However, only Bartz’s three fellow Republicans on the committee (Senator James Seymour and State Representatives Dave Heaton and Linda Upmeyer) voted for rejecting the DNR’s rules. The six Democrats on the ARRC (Senators Wally Horn, Jack Kibbie and Tom Courtney, and State Representatives Marcella Frevert, Tyler Olson and Nathan Reichert) all voted against Bartz’s resolution.

Governor Chet Culver’s chief legal counsel, Jim Larew, spoke in favor of the rules at today’s ARRC hearing, saying they would help Iowa reverse the trend of declining water quality. Unfortunately, we’ve got a long way to go on this front. Further regulation of pollution is warranted, but the political will to accomplish that is currently absent in the state legislature.

Several non-profit organizations deserve special recognition today. Without their efforts, the DNR might not have moved forward to adopt the anti-degradation rules, as required by the Clean Water Act. The Iowa Environmental Council issued a release today with more background and details about the anti-degradation rules. Excerpt:

With the passage of the federal Clean Water Act in 1972 states were required to enact Antidegradation rules to prevent the further pollution of lakes, rivers and streams in the nation by 1985.  Iowa adopted rules but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency informed Iowa that its rules violated federal law as early as 1997.  

Repeated delays in rewriting the rules led a coalition of environmental organizations – Iowa Environmental Council, Hawkeye Fly Fishing Association, the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Environmental Law & Policy Center – to file a Petition for Rulemaking with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in 2007 requesting that the State act immediately to adopt antidegradation implementation rules.  This action initiated a rule-making process that included several opportunities for public comment and a hearing before the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, which approved the revised rules in December of last year. Monday’s meeting of the legislative Administrative Rules and Review Committee marked the final step in the decades-long process.

The full text of the press release is after the jump.

Thanks again to the Iowa Environmental Council, the Hawkeye Fly Fishing Association, the Sierra Club Iowa chapter, and the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

UPDATE: I’ve added the press release from the Sierra Club’s Iowa chapter after the jump.

Iowa Republicans let Attorney General Tom Miller run for re-election unopposed four years ago, but Brenna Findley confirmed today that she is stepping up to the plate for the GOP this year:

Raised on a farm near Dexter in southwest Dallas County, Findley, 33, attended Drake University in Des Moines and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History and minor in Russian with honors. After Drake, Findley attended the University of Chicago Law School. While at the University of Chicago, she served as Symposium Editor of The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable, a law journal, and worked for small business clients in the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship to help entrepreneurs start their own businesses. Upon graduation from law school, she worked in private practice.

“Iowa needs an Attorney General who is a strong advocate for Iowa’s economy and understands what it takes to create private sector jobs in every community and in every county,” said Findley. “My background and experience have given me the understanding about what it takes to ensure Iowa is a family friendly state where jobs, opportunity and prosperity can thrive in every community. Small business is the engine for job growth- my office will be small business friendly,” she added.

Findley has served as Chief of Staff and senior Judiciary Committee staff member to Iowa Congressman Steve King (R-Kiron) since 2003. In her work with the Judiciary Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, she has dealt with and gained significant expertise on many of the most pressing legal issues of the day. As Chief of Staff to Congressman King, Findley serves 32 counties in western Iowa, managing six offices and staff.

Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican is excited about Findley’s candidacy for many reasons:

Brenna Findley is not just the young go-getter up against an incumbent past retirement age. Findley is the rare combination of youth and accomplishment. Findley has spent time in Iowa’s campaign trenches and worked throughout the GOP’s caucus-to-convention process. But, most importantly, Findley has battled the constitution’s demolition crew in the Judiciary Committee in the United States Congress.

For those who are unaware, the Judiciary Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives is the front line in America’s culture war. Conservatives debate with the loony left like John Conyers, Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters, and Sheila Jackson Lee each and every day on each and every issue. In this venue, Findley has seen and heard every liberal argument for dismantling the rule of law. Findley has proven she can handle the legal distortions from the best the intellectually challenged Left has to offer.

I have to laugh when a close associate of Steve King is held up as a champion of the rule of law. King is the member of Congress who disrupted the testimony of former top Pentagon official Douglas Feith during a Judiciary Committee hearing and suggested to former White House spokesman Scott McClellan that he could have “done this country a favor” if he had kept his mouth shut about Bush administration lying and law-breaking. In King’s world, Congress should only conduct oversight of the executive branch if Democrats are in power.

Anyway, Findley has no hope of defeating Miller, who has a long and distinguished record. He was first elected attorney general in 1978, left the position to run for governor in 1990 (he lost the Democratic primary), and was re-elected in 1994 despite the enormous Republican landslide in Iowa that year. It sounds as if Findley will try to depict Miller as unfriendly to small business, but I doubt she’ll have much luck there.

Still, this race should be a good opportunity for Findley to build name recognition. It may also be good for Iowa Republicans to have a woman on the ballot–not because she will leave liberals to “tic, twinge, and sputter,” as Robinson suggests, but because the Iowa GOP hasn’t nominated a woman for a statewide office in a while. Findley’s someone to keep an eye on, and I’ll be curious to see how she positions herself during this campaign.

CORRECTION: John Deeth reminds me in the comments that Mary Ann Hanusa became the GOP candidate for secretary of state in 2006 after the nominee withdrew from the race.

More than 60 percent of Iowans think gay marriage “does not deserve the Legislature’s limited time” this session, according to the latest poll conducted by Selzer and Associates for the Des Moines Register. The poll surveyed 805 Iowa adults from January 31 to Feburary 3, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

The question named six issues on which legislation has been introduced during the 2010 session, which has been shortened by 20 days due to budget constraints:

The state Legislature can address large and small issues during the course of the session. For the following issues, please tell me if you think the issue does or does not deserve the Legislature’s limited time. Puppy mills. Gay marriage. Driving and texting. Gun control. Gambling. Payday loans.

62 percent of respondents said gay marriage does not deserve the legislature’s time, while only 36 percent said it does.

Here’s hoping this poll will bolster the spine of any wavering statehouse Democrats. Iowa House Republicans are expected to use procedural maneuvers this week to try to force a vote on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. When they tried that last April, two of the 56 House Democrats joined Republicans on a procedural vote. House Minority leader Kraig Paulsen wasn’t deterred by the latest poll, telling the Des Moines Register,

“The majority party has successfully convinced people that that’s something that takes a lengthy period of time,” Paulsen said. “There’s no reason it should have to take more than 30 minutes.”

Poll respondents presumably know little about how much committee and floor time a marriage vote would consume, but I think Paulsen is missing the point here. Selzer in effect asked Iowans what’s important for the legislature to handle. More than three-fifths of respondents said gay marriage doesn’t rise to that level this session.

Notably, a recent poll commissioned by Republicans also suggests that gay marriage is a low priority for most Iowans. Voter Consumer Research conducted that poll in late January for The Iowa Republican blog and the Concordia Group (a political consulting firm run by Nick Ryan, with ties to the American Future Fund). Respondents were asked which three issues are most important to them: “Forty-one percent said jobs and unemployment, thirty-three said the economy, and twenty-eight percent said education.” Way down the priority list was “moral values” with just 14 percent, Craig Robinson indicated in this comment thread.

Last September, a Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register asked several questions about same-sex marriage. About 41 percent of respondents said they would vote for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 40 percent would vote against such an amendment. In addition, 92 percent of respondents said marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples had led to “no real change” in their own lives.

The conservative GOP base expects Republican legislators to try every trick in the book to bring a marriage vote to the floor. Iowa Democrats should make sure the public knows that while they were focusing on more important issues, Republicans kept trying to waste time on a marriage vote. Based on this polling as well as the results from last year’s special election in Iowa House district 90, I doubt gay marriage will be a winning issue for Republican candidates this November.

Later today I’ll discuss some other findings from the latest Des Moines Register poll. I was surprised to see that of the six issues Selzer asked about, only driving while texting had a majority (72 percent) say it was worth the legislature’s time to tackle this session.

Whether you call it hostage-taking or shark-jumping, we can all agree that Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama is abusing Senate conventions. He has put a blanket hold on all Obama administration nominees until his state gets more than $40 billion in federal money.

Roxanne Conlin, one of three Iowa Democrats running against five-term incumbent Chuck Grassley, may be the first Democratic candidate in the country to organize against Shelby’s power play.

The coming week will be busy at the state capitol, because February 12 is the first “funnel” date. All bills excluding appropriations bills that have not been approved by at least one committee by February 12 will be dead for the 2010 session, unless something extraordinary happens.

Also, Iowa House Republicans are expected to try to suspend the rules this week to force consideration of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. If last April’s events are any guide, they can expect help from two Iowa House Democrats: Geri Huser and Dolores Mertz. Meanwhile, Mertz is working with a group of Republicans on a constitutional amendment that would “recognize human eggs as persons worthy of legal protection.” Such an amendment would outlaw abortion and probably some forms of birth control as well.

With the compressed legislative calendar and severe budget restraints, there may be fewer bills passed in 2010 than in previous sessions. If you’re keeping your eye on any bill, let us know in this thread. I hope the Iowa Senate Labor and Business Relations Committee will pass Senate File 2112, introduced by Senator Pam Jochum, on “workplace accommodations for employees who express breast milk.” It’s already cleared the subcommittee. Last hear State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad introduced a similar measure in the Iowa House, and I think there’s a decent chance of getting this bill through the House Labor Committee. Employers also benefit from practices that make it easier for their employees to continue breastfeeding.

Jochum is an all-around outstanding legislator. If I lived in the first district, she would definitely have my vote for Congress whenever Bruce Braley decides to run for U.S. Senate.

This thread is for anything on your mind this weekend. Am I the only one out there who doesn’t care who wins the Superbowl?

After the jump I’ve posted details on other Iowa political events scheduled for this week.

The top story at The Iowa Republican blog today suggests that seven-term Representative Leonard Boswell may be retiring. The so-called evidence is a poll in the field in Iowa’s third Congressional district:

The poll asked how likely they were to vote, whether or not the respondent was Republican or Democrat, and how they would rate the performance of President of Obama and Congressman Boswell. The poll also asked a series of questions about the favorability/unfavorability of a number of well known Iowa Democrats.

Those surveyed included questions about President Obama, Congressman Leonard Boswell, former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, State Representative Geri Huser, and Des Moines Area Community College President Rob Denson. Respondents were also read brief bios of Boswell, Vilsack, and Huser and then asked if they were more/less likely to support them.

Jane Slusark of Boswell’s office told me emphatically today that Boswell “is running for re-election” in 2010. His “campaign is active,” and they are already raising money for the race. Over at Campaign Diaries, Taniel noted that Boswell raised more in the fourth quarter of 2009 than he did in the last three months of 2007. I signed nominating papers for Boswell at the off-year caucuses on January 23. If he were retiring, I don’t think he would leave Iowa Democrats so little time before the March filing deadline to organize a campaign.

But Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican claims there is “rampant” speculation that the Democratic National Committee is behind the current poll. He adds, “If the DNC is polling the favorable and unfavorable of potential Boswell replacements, it is likely that Leonard Boswell may have already made his decision to retire.”

I haven’t heard anything about the poll in the field, but it seems illogical for the DNC to poll Geri Huser and Rob Denson as possible replacements for Boswell while leaving out other likely Democratic candidates such as Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie, former Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson and various state legislators.

It sounds to me like someone close to either Huser or Denson might have commissioned that poll to see how they would stack up against Christie Vilsack. The former first lady is widely expected to run for Congress in 2012 or whenever IA-03 opens up. Huser may not enjoy life in the Iowa House as much now that she’s no longer chairing the Transportation Committee. I wouldn’t support Huser in a Democratic primary, and I doubt that any member of the “six-pack” would win a Democratic primary, but I wouldn’t mind seeing her run for Congress if it gives us a chance to elect a better Democrat from Iowa House district 42.

I encourage Bleeding Heartland readers who have received this survey to post a comment in this thread or e-mail me confidentially: desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com. If you get the call, please try to take notes on the questions, ask what organization is conducting the survey, and write down the phone number they give you at the end.

Yesterday the Iowa House State Government Committee voted down a Republican plan to cut state spending by $290 million in the coming year. State Representative and gubernatorial candidate Chris Rants offered the plan as an amendment to the government reorganization bill. He said his party was trying to “work in a bipartisan way” and make “tough decisions” to balance the budget for the coming year. All twelve Democrats on the House State Government Committee voted against the GOP amendment, while the nine Republicans voted for it. Later the same day, the committee approved the reorganization bill on a 20-1 vote, with only Rants opposed.

We are sure to hear more from Rants and other Republicans about how big, bad Democrats rejected their good ideas for spending cuts. A closer look reveals funny math in the Republican “plan.”

The biggest line item is “$92.3 million, end all state benefits to adult illegal immigrants.” The Iowa House Republican caucus claims this number comes from the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. The implication is that the state of Iowa hands out $92.3 million in cash to illegal immigrants.

But that’s not the case. From a report by the Legislative Services Agency on “Undocumented Immigrants’ Cost to the State” (pdf file):

The only government services that illegal immigrants are eligible for are elementary and secondary public education and emergency health care.1 Most citizens do not gain direct benefits from a majority of government spending. Instead, government programs are intended to benefit society as a whole through maintenance of a healthy economy, satisfying public health and safety concerns, providing basic infrastructure, etc. Although undocumented immigrants do not receive most direct benefits, the total benefit of State spending is assumed to accrue to undocumented immigrants at the same rate as legal residents.

The LSA divides total spending from the state general fund by the state’s total population to calculate roughly how much in “benefits” each Iowa resident receives annually. This isn’t a cash payment from the state to residents; it represents each individual’s share of benefit from the state paying for schools, roads, and so on.

Iowa House Republicans arrived at the $92.3 million figure by dividing total general fund expenditures by the number of undocumented immigrants currently estimated to be living in Iowa. They call the remainder “benefits” that illegal immigrants receive. But there’s no magic wand we can wave to make immigrants stop benefiting indirectly from what state government does. The same LSA report noted:

Undocumented immigrants qualify for few services at the State level, and those for which they do qualify are largely mandated by federal law or the Courts. Therefore, decreasing undocumented immigrant eligibility for State spending does not appear to be a viable policy option. Additionally, if the assumption that undocumented immigrants accrue benefits even without receiving direct services is considered valid, attempting to reduce direct State expenditures on undocumented immigrants would have a minimal effect.

By the way, proof of citizenship and identification are already required for Iowans participating in Medicaid and HAWK-I (the children’s health insurance program).

Scoring points against undocumented immigrants may be good for Rants politically, but that won’t help the state of Iowa save $92.3 million in the coming year. That one item represents nearly a third of the Republican-proposed spending cuts.

I’ve posted the full list of cuts after the jump. Some ideas may have merit, but most of them reflect skewed Republican priorities for state government. GOP legislators want to save $45 million by reducing access to pre-school for four-year-olds. They also want to invest less in renewable energy production and energy efficiency measures by eliminating the Power Fund and the Office of Energy Independence, which would $25 million. Many Republicans never liked the core curriculum, so it’s no surprise they’d like to save some money by delaying its implications. The Des Moines Register’s Iowa poll in November indicated that Iowans support higher spending on renewable energy research and development and are divided over whether to cut funds for expanded free pre-school.

Some of the smaller Republican-backed cuts would please conservative interests. The religious right would love to eliminate the family planning waiver. Rants has always been a good friend to tobacco companies, who would love to see the state scrap the “Just Eliminate Lies” anti-smoking campaign. There’s also $4 million saved by cutting “taxpayer-funded lobbyists,” which sounds great until you realize that would leave corporate groups unchallenged as they lobby for bills that might counter the public interest. Anyway, last year taxpayer money for lobbying totaled about $1.8 million, and a lot of that didn’t come from the state general fund. Municipalities, county agencies and associations like the League of Cities hire lobbyists too.

Iowa Republicans have been throwing around misleading talking points about the I-JOBS program since the Iowa legislature approved the infrastructure bonding initiative last spring. I’m still waiting for Republicans to address some basic questions, like where would they have found $45 million for flood recovery efforts in Linn County without I-JOBS? What was their plan for repairing ten flood-damaged structures at the University of Iowa, if they didn’t want to issue $100 million in state bonds to leverage $500 million in federal funds to rebuild the campus?

Some Republicans have called for delaying infrastructure projects until we have enough cash to pay for them up front, but Iowa’s worst-ever flooding hit the state during the most severe national recession since World War II. There was no realistic way to pay for flood recovery efforts without state borrowing. Even David Yepsen, a notorious skeptic about state spending, could see that. During the summer of 2008, Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson pointed out, “When you borrow money, that allows you to fix things as quickly as possible,” he said. “You can’t move as quickly on a ‘pay-as-you go’ basis.” Yet every Republican in the legislature voted against borrowing money to repair the damage from the devastating 2008 floods.

In addition to the flood recovery funds allocated to Linn County and the University of Iowa, the I-JOBS program included $118.5 million for “reconstruction of local public buildings and flood control prevention,” to be awarded by competitive grants. It wasn’t enough to fully meet local infrastructure needs across the state; requests for that portion of the I-JOBS money totaled $333.6 million. But it was a good start.

Republicans recently seized on a new talking point: some I-JOBS money is supposedly being spent on projects unrelated to disaster recovery. By way of example, State Representative Pat Grassley mentioned the community center in the Des Moines suburb of Windsor Heights. I contacted Windsor Heights City Manager Marketa George Oliver about this allegation, and she forwarded a copy of a letter from Mayor Jerry Sullivan to Grassley. You can view the whole letter here, but the small print is hard to read, so here’s the relevant excerpt (emphasis in original):

The City is currently constructing a new Community Center. The structure that used to be in [Colby Park] at this location was originally built in a flood plain and was repeatedly flooded. It sustained flood damage year after year and flood after flood. The new structure is being built out of the flood plain and protected from any future flooding, mitigating the effects of a natural disaster. The Center, once finished, will be a heating/cooling facility in the event of prolonged power outages, which is much-needed in our region. In the event of natural disasters, it will also be available as temporary housing. […]

The I-Jobs program gave us the ability to make a substantial investment in mitigating and responding to natural disasters. The program was also able to support our efforts in a timely manner, unlike many other grants programs.

Oliver explained to me that a heating/cooling center is a place residents without power can go during a cold spell or dangerous heat wave.

Republicans will continue to attack the I-JOBS program during this year’s campaigns for governor and state legislature. Democrats need to be ready to defend these infrastructure investments, because journalists will sometimes pass along ill-informed claims like Grassley’s without providing context or an opposing view. In addition, some Republican candidates may falsely suggest that I-JOBS pays for ongoing spending programs instead of capital projects, like bridge and sewer repairs. Maybe they are thinking of Republican Terry Branstad, who borrowed money to solve the state’s cash flow problems in 1992.

The Des Moines Register dinged Governor Chet Culver recently for not scheduling as many press conferences and public appearances as Terry Branstad and Tom Vilsack did as governor, but Culver’s been active around the state since he submitted his draft budget to the legislature last week.

Lots of links are after the jump, along with an update on Jonathan Narcisse, who supported Culver in 2006 but recently launched his own gubernatorial campaign.

Seven-term Representative Leonard Boswell is the 64th most vulnerable Democrat in the House of Representatives, according to new analysis by Crisitunity at Swing State Project. Crisitunity’s “vulnerability index” takes into account both the partisan voting index of each member’s district (based on presidential election results) and the House incumbent’s performance in the previous election.

Republicans are optimistic about their chances against Boswell in Iowa’s third Congressional district. I’ve talked to a few nervous Democrats too. Boswell performed better than John Kerry in 2004, but he underperformed the top of the ticket in 2006, the last midterm election. Even against a no-name challenger in 2008, Boswell performed only about as well as Barack Obama in the third district.

I still think Boswell is in a relatively strong position going into this campaign. He has brought a lot of money to the district (the stimulus bill helped, of course). The crowded GOP primary will raise the name recognition of the eventual winner, but the campaign could turn nasty, raising their nominee’s negatives. The Republican candidates will spend down their campaign accounts before June while Boswell continues to raise money.

I don’t see the National Republican Congressional Committee stepping in with a lot of help during the general election campaign. The NRCC still has much less cash on hand than the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. House Republicans have dozens of more appealing targets than IA-03, and Boswell is in the DCCC’s Frontline program, ensuring that they will spend money on his behalf if he seems to be in trouble.

In my opinion, the biggest risk for Boswell is a total collapse in Democratic turnout. He hasn’t inspired enthusiastic support from the Democratic base, and if the economy doesn’t improve, this could be a very tough year for us to get our voters out. On the other hand, Democratic party registration in Polk County has grown substantially, and I think the party’s GOTV here is stronger than in some other parts of Iowa.

A second danger factor for Boswell is that corporations will be able to spend unlimited amounts of money to elect Republicans. Then again, corporate-funded political action committees were running ads against his votes on the climate change bill and health care reform long before the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers? Can Boswell survive a Republican wave, if it comes to that?

A helpful Bleeding Heartland reader sent me a copy of a memo from Brian Dumas of Victory Enterprises to State Senator Brad Zaun’s campaign for Congress. The memo describes a poll conducted on January 27 and 28 of 400 Republicans in Iowa’s third Congressional district who are likely to vote in the June primary.

The poll shows 60 percent of respondents were undecided about whom to support in the primary. Zaun had 26 percent support, compared to 5 percent for Jim Gibbons, 3.6 percent for Dave Funk, 2.1 percent for Pat Bertroche and 1 percent for Mark Rees. In Polk County, the population center of the district, 37.5 percent of respondents supported Zaun.

About half the respondents hadn’t heard of Zaun. (This poll was in the field before he started running television ads in the Des Moines market.) I was more surprised to see that 67.8 percent of respondents said they had never heard of former Iowa State wrestling coach Jim Gibbons.

Several of the candidates will gain more name recognition in the coming months as they begin to advertise and hold campaign events around the districts. Gibbons clearly will have the resources for an extensive paid media campaign. National Republicans seem to have picked Gibbons already, which is one reason he’s pulled in so much out of state PAC money.

I posted the whole memo from Victory Enterprises after the jump. The Zaun for Congress campaign employs Victory Enterprises as consultants, but it’s not clear from the memo whether Victory Enterprises or some other entity conducted the poll. I am seeking more information and will update this post if I get it.

UPDATE: Victory Enterprises confirms that it conducted this poll.

SECOND UPDATE: Craig Robinson brings you the pro-Gibbons spin at The Iowa Republican blog:

Zaun’s early activity is similar to that of another former Victory Enterprises client, 2008 2nd Congressional District candidate Peter Teahen. In May of 2008, Victory Enterprises polled the 2nd Congressional District. Teahen, the better known candidate from the largest county in the district, had a big lead in the poll.

In VE’s 2008 poll showed Peter Teahen with 36% of the vote, while Miller-Meeks had 14 percent, and Lee Harder netted 7.5 percent. Forty-one percent of likely GOP primary voters were undecided. Despite the Teahen’s early lead, Miller-Meeks won the primary by 218 votes.

The difference between the 2008 2nd District race and this year’s 3rd District primary is that Gibbons has created a huge fundraising advantage over his opponents. Thus far, Gibbons has not run any ads, sent mail, or paid for phone calls.

The money race between Teahen and Miller-Meeks in the primary was tight. While Miller-Meeks outraised her opponent, Teahen had the ability to loan his campaign a considerable amount of money. Gibbons has already raised more money in his first fundraising quarter than Miller-Meeks and Teahen spent combined in the 2nd District primary.

I agree with Robinson that this race is up for grabs with so many Republicans undecided and most of the candidates lacking name recognition.

Financial reports for the end of 2009 were due with the Federal Election Commission on January 31. Here are some highlights.

The Iowa Democratic Party announced yesterday that it raised about $2.47 million across all accounts in 2009, while the Republican Party of Iowa raised $1.46 million. IDP chair Michael Kiernan said the party had met its goal of securing “the resources needed to win this November.” Details:

IDP filed $1.23 million in the state report. RPI filed $450,137 in the same report.

Filed 19 January 2010. Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board.

http://iowa.gov/ethics/

IDP filed $148,574 in State Party Building Fund Report. RPI filed $177,365.

Filed 28 January 2010. Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board.

http://iowa.gov/ethics/

IDP filed $1.09 million filed in Federal Year-End Report. RPI filed $837,406.

Filed 31 January 2010. Federal Elections Commission.

http://fec.gov

The money reported in the federal year-end report can be used to support any candidates and campaigns. The money in the state fund can be used on statewide races or Iowa House and Senate races. The State Party Building Fund money can’t be used on candidates or campaigns, but only on expenses for the building where the party headquarters is located (such as equipment or maintenance).

The Iowa GOP responded that it entered 2010 with about $100,000 more cash on hand than Iowa Democrats, but I don’t know whether its cash is in restricted or unrestricted accounts. (UPDATE: The Iowa Democratic Party disputes this claim. Adding the amounts from all three reports filed, the IDP has $449,334.94 on hand, while “RPI has $265,281.06 on hand between all three reports filed.”)

As for the federal races, Senator Chuck Grassley raised about $810,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009, spent about $156,000 and ended the year with about $5 million cash on hand. That’s about ten times as much as Democrat Roxanne Conlin has on hand for her campaign. Democrats Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen reported approximately $3,500 and $400 on hand, respectively.

IowaPolitics.com posted numbers for the Congressional candidates here. I was most interested in the numbers from the second and third districts. In IA-02, two-term incumbent Dave Loebsack raised $94,479 in the fourth quarter, spent $36,572 and ended the year with $336,311 cash on hand.

Surprisingly, Steve Rathje led the money race on the Republican side, raising $59,130 in the fourth quarter, spending $12,648 and ending with $46,242 cash on hand. The 2008 GOP nominee, Mariannnette Miller-Meeks, raised $20,660 (including $4,000 she gave herself), spent $39 and had $20,620 on hand. IowaPolitics.com didn’t mention numbers for Chris Reed, but The Iowa Republican blog reported that Reed raised “a miniscule $2,833.75 in the last quarter of 2009,” ending the year with “just over $2000 cash on hand.”

In the third district, seven-term incumbent Leonard Boswell raised $169,377 in the fourth quarter, spent $50,643 and had $462,193 cash on hand. Most of his money came from political action committee contributions.

Jim Gibbons led the crowded Republican field, thanks to support from heavy-hitters like Bruce Rastetter as well as a number of political action committees. Gibbons raised $207,310, spent $2,240 and ended the year with $205,069 on hand and $2,686 in debts owed. Craig Robinson of the Iowa Republican blog is ready to declare victory for Gibbons in the primary already, based on these numbers. However, Bleeding Heartland user mirage (a supporter of State Senator Brad Zaun) noted in the same thread, “About $51,000 of Gibbons funds will be restricted (meaning they can’t be used against Zaun in a primary), and about $130,000 came from outside the 3rd district.”

Speaking of Zaun, he raised $30,600, spent $93 and ended 2009 with $30,507 on hand. Presumably he has raised more money since January 1, because he made a television ad buy last week. But as Robinson noted triumphantly, “Even if [Dave] Funk or Zaun raised $1000 everyday between now and the primary, they still wouldn’t match what Gibbons currently has in his campaign account.”

Funk, the IA-03 candidate favored by the Tea Party crowd, raised $22,685 in the fourth quarter, spent $19,553 and ended the year with $16,507 on hand. According to mirage, much of Funk’s remaining money is restricted for use after the primary. I don’t think he’ll be needing that.

Mark Rees, who is running as a more moderate Republican, raised $3,100 and loaned his own campaign $52,647. He spent $3,247 and ended the year with $52,500 and $52,647 in debts owed to himself. I don’t know how much of a moderate GOP base is left in the Des Moines suburbs, but if conservatives divide their support among three or four candidates, Rees could slip through.

Last week attorney Ben Lange of Independence told Ed Tibbetts of the Quad-City Times that he will run against two-term incumbent Bruce Braley in Iowa’s first Congressional district. According to Tibbetts, Lange will make a formal announcement next month and was collecting signatures for his nominating petitions at the January 23 Republican caucuses. Before returning to Iowa to raise a family, Lange worked in Washington for Representative John Kline of Minnesota.

Iowa’s first district has a partisan index of D+5, and Braley was re-elected with 64 percent of the vote in 2008. Even if 2010 turns out to be a Republican wave election (and it’s sure starting to look that way), I doubt Braley is in danger in a district with 35,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. But voicing what Republicans across the country must be feeling, Lange told Tibbetts, “If it can happen in Massachusetts, it can happen in eastern Iowa.”

In October, businessman and columnist Rod Blum of Dubuque announced plans to run against Braley, but I’ve heard virtually nothing about him since. I noticed that Blum did not file a year-end financial report with the Federal Election Commission, suggesting that either he is not running, or he has raised less than $5,000.

Braley’s FEC filing indicated that during the fourth quarter of 2009 he raised $172,670 and spent $80,319. At the end of the year his campaign committee had $538,008 cash on hand and owed $21,657 in debts.

During his State of the Union speech last week, President Barack Obama promised, “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.” Today the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing today on the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made headlines by saying he believes “the right thing to do” is to let gays serve openly:

Adm. Mike Mullen’s statement was the strongest yet from the uniformed military on this volatile issue, although he stressed that he was “speaking for myself and myself only.”

He told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday he is deeply troubled by a policy that forces people to “lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate committee he also supports ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. However, he is appointing a panel to study how to lift the ban for a full year, meaning that hundreds more men and women are likely to be discharged under the policy before it goes away. The Obama administration is expected to implement new rules on purging troops under this policy, but it’s not yet clear how much that will reduce the number of discharges while Gates’ panel studies the issue. According to MSNBC, “more than 10,900 troops have been fired under the policy” since 1993, but “The 2009 figure – 428 – was dramatically lower than the 2008 total of 619.”

Meanwhile, at today’s hearing Senator John McCain argued against reviewing the policy at this time, saying it boosts “cohesion” and “unit morale.” He also presented a letter signed by 1000 officers who support Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Come on, McCain. Even a jerk like Joe Lieberman understands why this policy is stupid.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin made the case for ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in this piece for the Politico, but it doesn’t sound like he’s in a big hurry:

So there is little reason to continue this policy. But as we proceed, it is vital that we are sensitive to any complications of this policy shift. Change is always hard, especially when it involves social issues or personal beliefs. Lack of care as we proceed might spark opposition from those who could be open to change, and inflame the opposition of those already against it. And I would encourage those who favor change not to mistake deliberation for undue delay.

Point taken, but I am concerned by the timetable Gates is setting with a yearlong study. I hope Congress will act this year, because if Republicans retake the House or the Senate this November, there will be no chance of ditching Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for the forseeable future.

Daily Kos user TennesseeGurl notes that even if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is repealed, LGBT Veterans will still get a raw deal. Unfortunately, I see no realistic path to fixing that problem.

UPDATE: Levin “said an amendment could be added to the must-pass Defense Authorization bill which outlines military policy for the year.” Taking that path would allow the Senate to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell with a simple majority (as opposed to the 60 votes required to break a Republican filibuster).

Last night the Iowa Senate passed Senate File 2088, which would reorganize state government, after four hours of debate. All 32 Democrats in the chamber voted for the bill, along with three Republicans: Shawn Hamerlinck, Larry Noble and Pat Ward.

Click here for the full text of the bill. According to analysis by the Legislative Services Agency, Senate File 2088 would reduce state spending from the general fund by $74 million in fiscal year 2011 and $36 million the following year (here’s the link to the fiscal note on the bill). In addition, “Other funds, including local government pots of money, would save $44 million next budget year and just under $14 million the following year.” Jennifer Jacobs posted some of the key provisions and amendments at the Des Moines Register’s blog.

Unlike the 1985 state government reorganization, the current bill does not merge any state agencies. It doesn’t close any of Iowa’s four mental health institutes, but downsizes the one at Clarinda. That switch outraged legislators from southwest Iowa, because the Iowa Department of Human Services had recommended closing the Mount Pleasant Mental Health Institute in southeast Iowa instead.

Senate File 2088 requires bulk purchasing and centralized payroll and technology systems for most state agencies but exempts the three state universities from those provisions.

Rod Boshart recapped one of the more contentious episodes during last night’s debate:

The debate stalled when 11 majority Democrats joined the 18-member GOP minority in supporting an amendment to block a proposal to move the community empowerment program for early childhood education from the neutral state Department of Management to the Department of Education.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, switched his vote to be on the prevailing side then called a closed-door caucus after which senators voted 31-19 to reconsider the issue and approve the move of empowerment to the education agency by a 27-23 margin.

I wasn’t familiar with the Iowa Community Empowerment program, which is geared toward families with children under age six. Since early education programs are part of the Iowa Empowerment Board’s mission, it seems logical to bring the program to the Department of Education.

The original bill had eliminated the Property Assessment Appeal Board, but an amendment to keep that body intact passed by 46 to 4. Politically, that was a smart vote for the senators. Many Iowans are likely to see property tax increases this year, so it’s not a good time to make it more difficult for citizens to challenge their assessments.

Several Republicans have expressed doubt that the bill would guarantee the promised savings. Democrats rejected a number of Republican amendments, including one that would have increased health insurance costs for state employees and one that would have required a two-thirds vote in the legislature to approve any state bonding. (Such a threshold would have prevented last year’s passage of the I-JOBS infrastructure bonding initiative.) A complete bill history, including all amendments considered, is here.

Earlier in this session, the Iowa Senate approved Senate File 2062, a separate bill on early retirement incentives. That measure is expected to save about $57.4 million in fiscal year 2011, “including a $26.4 million savings to the state’s general fund.” That bill passed on a bipartisan 41-7 vote. The full text is here, and the bill history is here.

UPDATE: Over at Iowa Independent, Lynda Waddington reports,

Mental health advocates haven’t gotten everything they wanted in relation to new state policies governing psychiatric medications for individuals receiving state assistance. But they scored a big win Monday night when the Iowa Senate approved new language that ensures existing patients’ medications won’t be automatically switched in order to save the state money.

Read her whole story for more details and background.

Anyone following the Iowa governor’s race must read Todd Dorman’s recent interview with Republican front-runner Terry Branstad. The Branstad so many Iowans remember from his four terms as governor shines through.

Branstad is at his most incoherent when speaking about gay marriage, but his answer to an open-ended question about the state budget was also revealing. The whole interview is worth your time. I discuss a few of my favorite excerpts after the jump.

Governor Chet Culver submitted his draft budget to the Iowa legislature last Wednesday, but with the State of the Union and other news of the day, I didn’t have time to write up the story.

The complete budget document can be downloaded at the governor’s official website, and you can view Culver’s press conference on the budget here.

For more links, reactions and commentaries, follow me after the jump.

The Republican National Committee won’t be imposing the “purity test” proposed by committeeman James Bopp of Indiana. During last week’s meetings in Honolulu, a group of state GOP chairs unanimously voted against requiring Republican candidates to agree with at least eight out of ten conservative policy stands in order to receive RNC support during the 2010 campaign.

Bopp withdrew his motion from the floor on Friday after a compromise had been reached. RNC members then unanimously passed a non-binding resolution that “only ‘urges’ party leaders to support nominees who back the party’s platform,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported.

Republican candidates for U.S. Senate in Illinois and Delaware would have failed Bopp’s purity test and therefore not qualified for RNC support. The resolution that passed does not penalize candidates who disagree with various “core principles” of the GOP. Still, Bopp tried to spin the compromise as a victory:

“You’ve got to determine that the candidate supports all the core principles of the Republican Party before you support them,” he said, explaining the alternate measure.

But when asked whether it was binding, Bopp was cut off by Oregon GOP Chairman Bob Tiernan, who was standing nearby the impromptu press briefing.

“That resolution passed is not binding; it’s a suggestion,” said Tiernan.

As Bopp began to again make his case for the compromise, Tiernan again interjected.

“There’s nothing mandatory or required in there,” the Oregonian noted.

“Can I answer the question, Mr. Chairman?” Bopp shot back.

Continuing, Bopp explained that he thought the RNC’s decision to, for the first time, make it party policy to urge candidates to pledge fealty to the GOP platform represented a significant step.

But Tiernan, standing just over Bopp’s shoulder, again rebutted his committee colleague.

“I’m not going to take that back and make my candidates sign it, that’s ridiculous,” Tiernan said, gesturing toward the compromise resolution in a reporter’s hand. “We don’t have a litmus test and we rejected the litmus test today.”

As Bopp continued, Tiernan again spoke up.

“There’s nothing binding in there,” said the state chairman.

“Can I finish?” a plainly annoyed Bopp asked.

“Read the words,” replied Tiernan.

“Shut up,” Bopp finally said.

Although the RNC papered over this dispute, clearly tensions remain over whether Republican leaders should insist that candidates be conservatives.

Two of Iowa’s RNC members, Steve Scheffler and Kim Lehman, supported Bopp’s purity test. Our state’s third representative on the RNC, Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn, didn’t comment on Bopp’s effort when it first emerged or last week, to my knowledge. I assume he agreed with other state party chairs, who according to various reports strongly opposed the idea. If that is inaccurate, I hope someone will correct me.

The Des Moines Register threw a sold-out party Saturday night to announce the route for the 2010 Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. The 38th RAGBRAI will go through northern Iowa, beginning in Sioux City on the Missouri River and ending in Dubuque on the Mississippi. The other overnight stays will be in the towns of Storm Lake (Buena Vista County), Algona (Kossuth County), Clear Lake (Cerro Gordo County), Charles City (Floyd County), Waterloo (Black Hawk County), and Manchester (Delaware County).

Perry Beeman writes for the Des Moines Register,

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. 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.

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

I’ve never done RAGBRAI, and I probably never will unless my kids become cycling fanatics as they get older. But I would love to have one or more Bleeding Heartland users post updates from RAGBRAI this summer. In an election year you can count on plenty of candidate sightings and funny road/yard signs along the route.

Speaking of fanatics dedicated riders, on February 6 several hundred brave souls will complete the 32nd annual “BRR Ride,” a 24-mile loop from Perry to Rippey and back.

UPDATE: Click here for more on the full route, including pass-through towns.

This thread is for anything on your mind this weekend. After the jump I’ve posted details about lots of upcoming events in early February.

If you want to watch Senator Chuck Grassley do the “Friday Happy Dance” on WHO-TV, head on over to Dave Price’s blog.

The Polk County Democrats need more submissions of original recipes for the “Liberally Seasoned” cookbook they are compiling. By February 6, send polkdems AT gmail.com a word document including your full name and precinct, a paragraph about the dish, and a picture of the dish or yourself if possible. Categories: salads, appetizers, main dishes, vegetarian, desserts and drinks. They plan to have the cookbook ready by the Polk County Convention on March 12. For questions, call 515-285-1800.

DAWN’s List, which works to elect Democratic pro-choice women in Iowa, is seeking nominations for awards that will be given in five categories. Details are below, and nominations are due by the end of the day on February 1.

This week Matt Campbell made the official announcement he’s been planning for some time: he will seek the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s fifth Congressional district. Bret Hayworth was there for the Sioux City Journal. I agree with Campbell’s observation that four-term incumbent Steve King has “no major legislative accomplishments” (unless you count that House resolution recognizing the importance of Christmas in the Christian faith).

Campbell joins Mike Denklau, who announced his candidacy in IA-05 last October. Denklau responded to Campbell’s announcement with a press release emphasizing his background in business and finance, as well as his earlier start for this campaign.

You can learn more about both candidates at their campaign websites. Campbell is an attorney specializing in tax-related issues, and Denklau has professional experience in the banking world. Both have deep family roots in Iowa. To learn about the candidates’ policy priorities, read the issue pages on Campbell’s site and on Denklau’s site.

Running for Congress isn’t easy. I give full credit to these two Democrats who have stepped up to challenge King. The fifth district is unfortunately safe Republican territory for now; Rob Hubler ran hard for nearly two years and still lost to King by more than 20 points in 2008. However, we should not give any Republican incumbent a pass, especially one as offensive and ineffective as King. Last year King made the list of voices fellow Congressional Republicans said they would most like to “mute,” according to a survey by the National Journal. He tends to make the news in embarrassing ways and is proud of things that would make others feel ashamed.

Assuming Campbell and Denklau fight fair this spring and agree to support the eventual winner of the primary, it will help the Democratic Party in western Iowa to have two candidates out there mobilizing moderates as well as liberal voters. I hope both campaigns will work to register new Democratic voters before the primary, and both candidates will stay involved in Iowa politics no matter who goes on to the general election.

UPDATE: On February 2 State Representative Roger Wendt of Sioux City endorsed Denklau.

Rasmussen released a new poll of Iowa’s U.S. Senate race yesterday, and they found Chuck Grassley in safe territory, leading Roxanne Conlin 59-31, Bob Krause 59-26 and Tom Fiegen 61-25.

Conlin performs best among Democratic voters, but all three Democrats lose anywhere from 22% to 30% of their own party’s vote to Grassley. The Republican carries voters not affiliated with either party by more than 35 points against any of the Democrats.

Rasmussen surveyed 500 “likely voters” in Iowa on January 26. The poll has a margin of error of 4.5 percent.

Even taking into account Rasmussen’s “house effect” (a tendency to show more favorable results for Republican candidates), Grassley is above 50 percent and therefore in safe territory for an incumbent. He is going to be re-elected unless he starts making unforced errors. In 2006, Senator George Allen of Virginia had commanding leads over Jim Webb for quite some time before multiple gaffes allowed Webb to win. Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky almost blew a very big lead in 2004 against Dan Mongiardo.

Despite the long odds, it’s still worth taking the fight to Grassley. Iowa Democrats have given him a pass too many times. Under pressure, he may start making mistakes on the campaign trail. Even if he doesn’t, keeping him below 60 percent would be a lot better for down-ticket Democrats than letting Grassley win with 70 percent, as happened in 2004.

Share any thoughts about the Senate race in this thread.

After deliberating for less than an hour, a Kansas jury found anti-abortion fanatic Scott Roeder guilty of first degree murder for shooting Dr. George Tiller in church last May. Roeder admitted killing Tiller and will be sentenced in March. Prosecutors are seeking a 50-year sentence with no possibility for parole. If Roeder is sentenced to life in prison, he could be eligible for parole in 25 years. During the trial,

[Sedgwick County District Judge Warren] Wilbert had barred Roeder from using a so-called necessity defense, aiming for an acquittal by arguing that the killing was necessary to prevent a greater harm – killing babies. But the judge allowed Roeder to present evidence that he sincerely believed his actions were justified to save unborn children – a defense that could have led to a conviction on the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter.

On Thursday afternoon, however, Wilbert ruled that he would not give jurors the option of considering a voluntary manslaughter conviction, because such a defense requires that a person must be stopping the imminent use of unlawful force.

Unfortunately, Roeder succeeded in shutting down Tiller’s clinic, one of very few facilities where women could receive late-term abortions. Contrary to the propaganda you may have heard from the anti-choice movement, women seeking care from Dr. Tiller didn’t just casually decide during the second or third trimester that they didn’t feel like having children.

Kansas state law allows abortions on viable fetuses after the 21st week only if carrying the pregnancy to term would endanger the mother’s life or cause a “substantial and irreversible impairment” of a major bodily function. Courts have interpreted a “major bodily function” to include mental health.

Amanda Marcotte wrote before Tiller was murdered,

The argument for attacking Tiller is that he performs late term abortions, which are supposedly worse than early term ones, even though anti-choicers claim that a fertilized egg is the same thing as a 5-year-old child, so that shows that their targeting of late term providers is cynical politicking on its face.  But if you actually bother to look at why women get late term abortions, the targeting Dr. Tiller becomes even more horrifying.  Generally speaking, you’re talking about women who really wanted to have a baby, but who can’t have this one, because something is wrong with her health or that of the fetus.  Because of the sensitive nature of the situation, Dr. Tiller’s office offers a great deal of counseling services to their patients, who are often suffering trauma because of what’s happening to them.  In addition to counseling, there are baptism and funerary services, as well as photographing and footprinting, for people who want to say goodbye to the baby that they expected to have but couldn’t.  The levels of hate projected at Dr. Tiller are directly proportional to the levels of care he shows for women during this rough period of their lives.

Although Roeder will spend a long time in prison, it’s hard to feel justice has been served when he accomplished his goal.

State Senator Brad Zaun announced today that his campaign started running this television ad:

Five Republicans are competing in the primary to face Leonard Boswell in Iowa’s third Congressional district. Zaun is the first to go up on television. The ad hits very safe themes, with Zaun promising to “restore trust” and “common sense conservative values.” He also calls for ending deficits and “corporate bailouts” and notes that he will listen and believes the Constitution “means something.” I will update this post if I receive more details on the ad buy. I heard it is running on the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, but I don’t know yet about cable networks.

I haven’t seen any fundraising numbers from Zaun’s campaign. Jim Gibbons, who is backed by some very large Republican donors, raised about $207,000 during the last six weeks of 2009. He hired a campaign manager last month.

Dave Funk, darling of the Tea Party crowd, raised about $39,500 last year and started 2010 with about $16,500 on hand. He has hired several campaign staffers.

Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican said Mark Rees has given his own campaign $50,000. Rees is campaigning as a relatively moderate Republican, and I’m curious to see whether he can get traction in a crowded field. He hired a campaign manager earlier this month.

The Senate voted to confirm Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve today, but it was hardly a ringing endorsement:

The 70 to 30 vote was the thinnest approval ever extended to a chairman in the central bank’s 96-year history.

The confirmation was a victory for President Obama, who had called Mr. Bernanke an architect of the recovery, but also signaled the extent to which the Fed, once little known to the public, has become the object of populist outrage over high unemployment and Wall Street bailouts.

In several hours of debate, senators said the Fed had abetted, then ignored, the housing and credit bubbles and allowed banks to keep dangerously low capital reserves and to make reckless lending decisions that ruined consumers. Some even blamed Mr. Bernanke for the falling dollar and questioned his commitment to free enterprise.

In contrast, Mr. Bernanke’s supporters were muted. Like a mantra, they said that the Fed had made mistakes but that Mr. Bernanke had helped save the economy from a far worse recession.

Eleven Democrats, 18 Republicans and independent Bernie Sanders voted against confirming Bernanke (roll call here).

Senators of both parties who opposed Bernanke said his monetary policy and poor oversight contributed to the financial meltdown of 2008. Various Democrats who voted against Bernanke said he had been too beholden to Wall Street interests.

I still think it was a mistake for Obama to nominate Bernanke for another term, but let’s hope the Fed chairman our mild-mannered economic overlord improves on the job.

UPDATE: MIT economist Simon Johnson argues that Bernanke’s reappointment was “a colossal failure of governance.” Worth a read.

SECOND UPDATE: Bleeding Heartland user ragbrai08 notes that seven senators voted for cloture (allowing the Senate to proceed to consider Bernanke’s nomination) before voting against confirming him. Here is the roll call on the cloture vote. The senators who voted for cloture but against Bernanke are Democrats Tom Harkin, Barbara Boxer (CA), Byron Dorgan (ND), Al Franken (MN), Ted Kaufman (DE), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), along with Republican George LeMieux (FL).

Republican Kent Sorenson’s narrow victory over State Representative Mark Davitt in Iowa House district 74 was perhaps the biggest upset in the state in 2008. The Democratic-leaning district includes much of Warren County, including Indianola and the Simpson College campus. Sorenson decided to run against Staci Appel in Iowa Senate district 37 instead of running for re-election to the House.

Scott Ourth announced plans to run for this seat in October and was already pounding the pavement months before that. I’d heard he was working hard, and I noticed that he reported strong fundraising in his filing with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. I didn’t realize until today that Ourth raised the bar for Democrats running for the Iowa House:

Ourth, a 50-year-old Democrat from Ackworth, claimed $37,359 in campaign contributions for 2009. The earnings, listed on a Jan. 19 disclosure form, trumped Rep. Tyler Olson’s 2005 record for the most money raised by a first-time Democratic candidate in the year prior to election year, according to Pat Murphy, speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives.

“No first-time candidate for the Iowa House from our party has ever gained this much financial support this early in the campaign cycle,” Murphy said in a prepared statement. “Mr. Ourth works very hard. His fundraising report definitely bears that out.” […]

More than 200 people donated by Jan. 1, including slightly more than 20 political action committees.

Ourth spent nearly $4,500, leaving him with approximately $32,800 on hand. Most of his expenses consisted of office equipment – he plans to use his home for a campaign headquarters, he said – and event invitations, according to his disclosure form.

The article goes on to say that at least one Republican plans to run in House district 74, but I haven’t heard any names floated. We’ll find out before the March filing deadline. Iowa House Republican leaders raised a lot of money last year, so they will be in a position to help out the eventual candidate here. But if I were in their position I would think hard before investing a lot in this district. Whoever jumps in for the GOP will start out way behind Ourth in retail campaigning as well as fundraising. Republicans have better opportunities to win some Democratic-held seats in other parts of the state, and some of their challengers will also need more money to be competitive.

House district 74 is likely to remain the best pickup opportunity for Democrats this year, but assuming Rod Roberts stays in the governor’s race, I like our chances in House district 51 too. (There are still a lot of Democrats in the Carroll area.) Picking up one or two Republican-held seats would make it much more difficult for the GOP to take back the Iowa House, where Democrats now have a 56-44 majority.

Any comments about state legislative races are welcome in this thread.

The Des Moines Register’s William Petroski reports today that the Obama administration declined requests for federal money to support Amtrak routes between Chicago and Iowa City and between Chicago and Dubuque.

A list of grants issued Wednesday night by the White House shows that Iowa will receive only $18 million in federal railroad passenger money. This includes $1 million to study a proposed passenger train that would run daily between Chicago and Omaha, including stops in the Quad Cities, Iowa City and Des Moines.

The remaining $17 million will be used to install four remote- controlled powered crossovers on the BNSF Railway tracks in the Ottumwa area. This will reduce travel times and improve on-time performance on Amtrak’s existing California Zephyr train that runs across southern Iowa, federal officials said.

Iowa and Illinois officials had sought $256 million in federal funds for the Chicago to Iowa City route, which would go through the Quad Cities, and $139 million for the Chicago to Dubuque route.

Dubuque and the Quad Cities may get passenger rail despite today’s disappointing news:

Even without the federal money, Illinois officials expect to begin Amtrak service between Chicago and Dubuque and Chicago and the Quad Cities, possibly within two years, officials said. That’s because Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a $31 billion capital construction package last year to ensure the rail expansion.

But the federal grants would have bolstered both projects and would have assured the extension of the train service to Iowa City, and possibly eventually to Des Moines, officials said.

A feasibility study from 2008 showed promising numbers for an Amtrak route connecting Iowa City to the Quad Cities. A huge number of University of Iowa students are from the Chicago area, and many people living in that region of Iowa travel to Chicago for business or entertainment.

In comments to the Des Moines Reigster, Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba predicted yesterday that the Chicago to Iowa City train would receive some federal funding by 2013, even if the current grant request was denied. I hope he turns out to be right.

UPDATE: Governor Chet Culver’s response to this news is after the jump.

Representative Bruce Braley advocated a four-point “Blueprint for Recovery” in Politico yesterday. The House Populist Caucus, which Braley formed last year, has endorsed these proposals to “require Wall Street to pay for economic development on Main Street and to pay down our nation’s deficit.”

Compensation. We need to change the culture of limitless bonuses by passing the Wall Street Bonus Tax Act (H.R. 4426). America’s middle-class families saw their savings wiped out by Wall Street’s gambling addictions and then watched as their tax dollars went to save troubled banks. The targeted tax would apply only to executives at banks that received Troubled Asset Relief Program funding who took bonuses in excess of $50,000. The Bonus Tax Act would generate billions of dollars of new revenue that would be directed exclusively to reward small businesses that are investing in new jobs.

Speculation. We need to stop excessive and risky speculation on Wall Street by passing the Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act (H.R. 4191). This legislation would reinstate a tiny transaction fee on speculative stock transactions by Wall Street traders, creating $150 billion annually in new revenue that would be dedicated to job creation and reducing the deficit.

Job creation. A “jobless recovery” is not a recovery for the middle class. With a national unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent, it’s clear America’s middle-class families are still struggling to make ends meet.

That’s why we need to take the following two-pronged approach to creating good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced: We need to pass the National Infrastructure Development Bank Act (H.R. 2521), which would establish a wholly owned government corporation to prioritize infrastructure improvement projects that would create good-paying jobs. We also need to pass the Buy American Improvement Act (H.R. 4351) to eliminate loopholes in existing domestic sourcing laws and ensure that taxpayer money is used to purchase American-made products and support American jobs whenever possible.

Click here for more details on the Wall Street transaction fees the Populist Caucus supports. The idea is worthwhile, but I am skeptical that the current economic team in the Obama administration would get behind it.

I’m not clear on why a new government corporation on infrastructure projects needs to be created (as opposed to just appropriating more funds for existing agencies to spend on high-speed rail, affordable housing or other infrastructure needs). I asked Braley’s office for comment on that part of the blueprint and received this reply:

The Populist Caucus believes we need a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) now to invest in merit-based infrastructure projects-both traditional and technological-by leveraging private capital. In recent years, the private sector has raised more than $100 billion in dedicated infrastructure funds, but most of that money is being invested overseas.  We need an NIB to attract those funds into a U.S. market for infrastructure development.

It’s notable that the Populist Caucus is not backing broader populist measures, such as tax hikes for corporations and the top 1 percent of individual earners. Then again, Braley’s caucus prepared and approved this “blueprint” before Oregon residents approved two tax-raising ballot initiatives this week.

I won’t be liveblogging President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight, but here’s a thread for the Bleeding Heartland community to chat away. If you’re looking for a liveblog, I recommend Congress Matters or Open Left, where the threads don’t get crowded as quickly as at Daily Kos. The Des Moines Register set up a live chat here with “politics reporter Tom Beaumont and featured bloggers Connor Anderson, John Deeth, Graham Gillette, Steffen Schmidt and Art Smith.”

Alternatively, here’s a State of the Union drinking game (another variant is here).

Political Wire already posted excerpts from Obama’s speech. There are no surprises anymore.

Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia will give the Republican response, but I think everyone is more interested to see whether there’s an outburst during the speech similar to Joe “You Lie!” Wilson’s last year.

I’ll update this thread later with some reactions to the speech.

Off-topic: Social historian Howard Zinn died today at the age of 87. Here’s a quotable quote from him: “If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.”

LATE UPDATE: I caught part of the speech. I had the sinking feeling that Congress will act on everything Obama advocates that I oppose (new oil drilling, nuclear power plants, more money for “clean coal”), but won’t do the things I support (ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell). He wasn’t specific enough about how Congress should move forward on health care reform. I did like his line about how Democrats still have the largest majorities either party has had in decades, and Americans elected them to solve problems, not “run for the hills.”

The full text of Obama’s speech (as prepared) is after the jump.

Steven Pearlstein wrote the speech Obama would give “in a more honest world.”

Reacting to the Republican response delivered by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Steve Singiser pointed out a fundamental contradiction in the GOP stance on health care: on the one hand, they say we shouldn’t let the government take over health care, and on the other hand, they promise not to let the Democrats cut Medicare.

Roxanne Conlin’s campaign for U.S. Senate released partial fundraising numbers today, and they are impressive:

Total cash raised (Nov. 2 – Dec. 31):

$603,575.44

Cash on hand:

$502,832.84

Total individual donors:  1,649 (1,395 Iowans/85% Iowans)

Online supporters signed up:  Over 31,000

Donations $100 and under: 1,332

Donations $250 and under: 1,433

All of Conlin’s campaign contributions came from individual supporters, because she has pledged not to accept contributions from federal lobbyists or PACs. (I wouldn’t have advised her to take that stance, because there are PACs and lobbyists fighting for good things as well as those working against the public interest.) In any event, she has shown that she can raise enough money to staff and run a statewide campaign. Conlin is about a third of the way through a 99-county tour she began earlier this month.

I haven’t seen year-end fundraising numbers from Senator Chuck Grassley yet. At the end of the third quarter of 2009, he had more than $4.4 million cash on hand, so clearly he will still be way ahead in the money race. During the third quarter, when Grassley played a high-profile role in health care reform negotiations, he raised $864,622 total, of which $364,295 came from political action committees.

In other words, Conlin raised more from individual donors in two months than Grassley raised from individuals during the third quarter. That’s a strong pace, and it suggests a lot of Iowans are motivated to take the fight to Grassley. Conlin has already raised nearly five times as much as Democrat Art Small spent during his entire 2004 campaign against Iowa’s senior senator.

I don’t have new fundraising numbers from the other Democrats running against Grassley. Bob Krause raised $7,430 during the third quarter, ending with $3,493 on hand. Tom Fiegen raised $3,781 during the third quarter, ending with $519 on hand. I like many of the statements I’ve heard from Krause and Fiegen, but they have yet to show that they will be able to run a statewide campaign, and therefore appear to be extreme underdogs leading up to the Democratic primary in June. Neither Krause nor Fiegen seems likely to drop out of this race, however. On the contrary, Fiegen called on Conlin to quit the race last month, saying Republican attacks on her would divert attention from Grassley and the “needs of working families.” Yesterday Krause criticized one of Conlin’s tax credit proposals.

Grassley will be very tough to beat. His approval rating has fallen but is still above 50 percent, and he has set a goal of raising $9 million for this race. Even if Democrats don’t manage to defeat Grassley, giving him a spirited challenge is well worth the effort. Driving up turnout among Democrats whom Grassley has alienated can only help our candidates down-ticket.

UPDATE: Rasmussen conducted a one-day poll of this race on January 26. Grassley leads Conlin 59 to 31, Krause 59 to 26 and Fiegen 61 to 25 (margin of error 4.5 percent).

Senator Chuck Grassley said today he will vote against giving Ben Bernanke another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. According to the Des Moines Register,

“I’ll vote no because of concerns of inflation and a pattern of resistance to accountability,” Grassley said. […]

Grassley dismissed the argument that defeating Bernanke would throw the financial markets off course. […]

“The Fed takes action once a month that affects the stock market,” Grassley added. “And we’re still going to have a Fed chairman. So, what’s the big deal?”

I find it odd that Grassley is concerned primarily about inflation in the current economic environment, and as Bleeding Heartland user PrairieBreezeCheese pointed out, even 1970s-like inflation is very different from the “hyper-inflation” Grassley warned about yesterday. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the only Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee to vote against confirming Bernanke last month, has laid out a stronger case against giving him another term. I am also in rare agreement with Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, who has called for all senators to have a chance to review some unpublished Federal Reserve documents before voting on Bernanke’s nomination.

I’ve seen many different “whip counts” on Bernanke. It appears he will have little trouble gaining the support of at least 50 senators, and I doubt his nomination will be filibustered, because some Democrats who plan to vote against confirming him will vote for cloture.