The Iowa Senate Ethics Committee has received a formal complaint from Sharon Wegner regarding alleged sexual misconduct by Nate Boulton before he was elected to the legislature, Brianne Pfannenstiel reported for the Des Moines Register on November 19. It’s unclear whether the complaint will lead to a broader investigation of Boulton, who has ignored calls from some leaders of his caucus to resign.

Leslie Carpenter is an advocate for improving the treatment of people with serious mental illnesses in Iowa and across the country. -promoted by desmoinesdem

While speaking at the National Alliance on Mental Illness Iowa Annual Conference on November 16, Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven advised the attendees that it was a good thing that two of the state’s four in-patient mental health institutions (MHIs) were closed, and that we have moved to community-based care. He further shared that it was a good thing to go from more than 700 beds to the current level of 64 beds for adults in the whole state.

We should recall that this reduction of state-operated acute care beds has caused Iowa to be ranked 51st by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Although the Libertarian Party lost full political party status in Iowa when Jake Porter received less than 2 percent of the vote for governor, Libertarians reached a milestone with Thomas Laehn’s election as Greene County attorney on November 6.

Eighth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2018 state and federal elections.

Last week, Bleeding Heartland examined votes for governor in counties containing Iowa’s mid-sized cities, which collectively accounted for roughly 15 percent of Iowans who participated in this year’s election.

Today’s focus is ten counties where more than half of this year’s Iowa voters live. Whereas Fred Hubbell underperformed in all seventeen “micropolitan” areas, the results in larger counties were a mixed bag for the Democratic nominee.

City sidewalks, small-town sidewalks
Dressed in ‘lection day style
In the air there’s a feeling
of Caucus . . .

Yes, the crispness in the air . . . the shortening of days . . . the Black Friday sales . . . they can mean only one thing: Iowa caucus season is right around the corner.

A pro-Republican mailing to thousands of Warren County households last month was not only sleazy, but also unlawful.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board will investigate who paid to send a letter attacking Democratic State Representative Scott Ourth “to every mailbox in Iowa House district 26” and “what campaign finance laws were violated in the process.”

Three-term State Representative Todd Prichard became the new Iowa House minority leader today. Despite suffering a net loss of seats in the upper chamber, Senate Democrats opted last weekend not to change their leadership team.

“No U.S. metro area has larger social and economic disparities along racial lines than Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Iowa,” wrote Samuel Stebbins and Evan Comen in 24/7 Wall St’s latest report on the country’s “worst cities for black Americans.” As in past years, most cities on the list are located in the Midwest.

In a landmark ruling five months ago, the Iowa Supreme Court held that a 72-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions violates the rights to due process and equal protection under the Iowa Constitution.

This summer Governor Kim Reynolds replaced Bruce Zager, one of the justices who joined that 5-2 majority opinion. She will soon replace a second justice who concurred. Daryl Hecht announced today that he will resign from the Iowa Supreme Court in December in order “to commit all of his energy” to battling melanoma.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley told reporters today that he will lead the Senate Finance Committee in the new Congress. The current chair, Senator Orrin Hatch, is retiring. Grassley’s official website notes,

Senator Grassley calls this committee the quality of life committee because of the committee’s jurisdiction, which includes all tax matters, health care, Social Security; Medicare, Medicaid, social services, unemployment compensation, tariffs and international trade. Legislation acted on by the Committee on Finance raises virtually all federal revenue, and expenditures authorized by this committee represent as much as two-thirds of the federal budget.

Seventh in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2018 state and federal elections.

Fred Hubbell’s narrow defeat has generated a new round of conversations about Iowa Democrats struggling outside major metro areas. Although Hubbell received a historically high number of votes for a Democratic candidate for governor and carried Polk County by a larger margin than any previous nominee from his party, he finished 36,600 votes behind Kim Reynolds statewide, according to unofficial results.

Hubbell outpolled Reynolds in only eleven of Iowa’s 99 counties. In contrast, Tom Vilsack carried 48 counties in 1998, when he became the first Democrat elected governor in three decades. He won 68 counties when re-elected in 2002, and Chet Culver nearly matched that result, beating his Republican opponent in 62 counties in 2006.

While many commentators have focused on declining Democratic performance among rural voters, attrition in Iowa’s mid-size cities is a more pressing problem for the party’s candidates at all levels.

Luther College Associate Professor Beth Lynch shares her knowledge and photographs of a native vine related to cultivated squashes, gourds, and cucumbers. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In August I received a phone call from a woman I did not know asking about a plant. It turned out that she was sitting in my friend Phil’s kitchen, having just made the drive from the Twin Cities to Decorah. On the drive, she had seen massive mounds of a flowering vine clinging to trees and shrubs along the roadside and was sure it must be the first wave of an invasion.

In fact, what she and many others noticed this summer was the exuberant growth of the native wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata). This plant is native to eastern North America, but for some reason people seemed to really take note of it this year. It has likely become more common because it is well suited to nutrient-rich, disturbed landscapes created by humans.

Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley will become the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate when Congress reconvenes in January, and junior Senator Joni Ernst will join the Republican leadership team for the first time.

Sixth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2018 state and federal elections.

Cindy Axne beat two-term U.S. Representative David Young in Iowa’s third Congressional district, while Fred Hubbell lost to Governor Kim Reynolds. So Axne must have done better than Hubbell, right?

Wrong.

Hubbell received more votes than Axne in each of IA-03’s sixteen counties, according to unofficial results. And contrary to what the red and blue counties above might lead you to believe, Hubbell outpolled Reynolds in the third Congressional district as a whole.

Bruce Lear: “The post mortem for this election cannot be done exclusively in Des Moines by party professionals or even elected party committee people.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

The corpse of an election is barely cold when the concealed knives come out for the official, or more commonly, the unofficial autopsy to determine cause of death. What happened to those campaigns that looked so healthy in the glossy brochures and slick TV ads? The next of kin (the party faithful) are left to blame, grieve, and figure out how to get their affairs in order.

“It’s not helpful, I don’t agree,” Governor Kim Reynolds says she has told Representative Steve King after some of his racist statements made national news.

Her two-faced approach to Iowa’s most famous bigot isn’t fooling anyone.

Randy Richardson comments on the outcome in Iowa’s third Congressional district. -promoted by desmoinesdem

During the 2016 presidential election. I began to notice that several news channels made extensive use of county maps to explain election results. Following the 2018 midterm elections, several Iowa newspapers used similar maps to highlight the rural/urban split in election results.

However, those maps tend to give a skewed view of the election.

A West Des Moines police officer followed and eventually arrested an African American man who was canvassing on behalf of U.S. Representative David Young. Keilon Hill came to Iowa to work for a Republican-aligned super-PAC and recorded his interactions with Officer Clint Ray on October 29. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement released those videos today, saying the incident provides “more evidence of racial profiling among police officers in the Des Moines metro area.”

Fifth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2018 state and federal elections.

Republicans ended straight-ticket voting in Iowa last year as part of a law imposing several new barriers for voters. For months, I’ve been trying to work out how eliminating that option would affect this year’s outcome.

More than 400,000 Iowans filled in the Democratic or Republican oval on their 2014 general election ballot, which worked out to roughly 37 percent of those who participated. I expected a much larger “undervote” for lower-profile statewide offices or legislative races this year, as many who would have voted straight ticket marked their ballots for governor and Congress alone.

That didn’t happen.

Fourth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2018 state and federal elections.

The largest group of women ever to run for the Iowa legislature has produced the largest contingent of women lawmakers in state history.

For the first time, women will make up more than a third of Iowa House members and a majority of the lower chamber’s Democratic caucus.

The number of women serving in the Iowa Senate will exceed the previous record set in 2013 and 2014. In a major shift from the recent past, the women senators will include almost as many Republicans as Democrats.