July is a fantastic month for wildflower-spotting in Iowa. In addition to the many plants I mentioned in last week’s post, within the past few days I have seen the first blossoms of 2017 on common evening primrose, blue vervain, and cutleaf coneflower. Near the Windsor Heights trail, I also found two species I don’t recall seeing in past years: monkey flower and catnip. I hope to feature them on an upcoming Wednesday, along with Culver’s root and Joe Pye weed, which are also blooming now in many natural areas.

I took most of the pictures enclosed below in late May at Tipton Prairie in Greene County. Prairie phlox (Phlox pilosa) typically blooms in the late spring or early summer in Iowa. If you see flowers resembling it during July or August, you are probably looking at a cultivar adapted from this species.

Native to much of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains, this plant is also known as downy phlox or fragrant phlox. Its favored habitats “include moist to mesic black soil prairies, rocky open forests, Bur Oak savannas, sandy Black Oak savannas, limestone glades, thickets, abandoned fields, and prairie remnants along railroads.”

According to the Minnesota Wildflowers website, prairie phlox “does well in a garden, in sunny, sandy soil.” The flowers attract a wide variety of pollinators and sometimes ruby-throated hummingbirds. In Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie, Sylvan Runkel and Dean Roosa wrote, “The Meskwaki made a tea of the leaves and used it as a wash for treating eczema. The same sort of tea was drunk to cure eczema and to purify the blood at the same time. Also, the root was used with several other unspecified plants as part of a love potion.”

Iowa Democrats “need to have a good family fight about what the future of our party’s going to be” and ditch the “canned messages” used in too many losing campaigns, according to State Senator Jeff Danielson. Re-elected to a fourth term in the Iowa Senate last year, Danielson is the highest-profile Democrat still thinking about running in the first Congressional district, where four candidates are already challenging Representative Rod Blum and two others recently ruled out the race. He spoke to Bleeding Heartland this week about his plans and how Democrats can regain the trust of voters who increasingly see our party as out of touch.

Danielson’s critique of the Democratic establishment has much in common with points often raised by Iowans who supported Bernie Sanders for president. But his call for “raging incrementalism” and reaching across the aisle is quite different from the ambitious policy agenda typically viewed on the Sanders wing as the solution to the same problem.

TJ Foley, a recent graduate of Valley High School in West Des Moines, on how top Iowa Republicans failed to speak out against an “attack on the most basic principles of equality, freedom, and rural fairness.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

It’s been a rough week for Senate Republicans. Two conservative senators announced that they would oppose the reckless GOP plan to overhaul America’s health care system and drop millions from the health insurance rolls. This legislation emerged from secret negotiations and violated some of the most basic Iowa values we all hold dear.

Former Congressional candidate Kim Weaver is still exploring ways to make sure money she raised for her campaign will be used to oppose Republican U.S. Representative Steve King. She discussed several options in a telephone interview with Bleeding Heartland on July 17.

Both major parties are on the air in Iowa House district 82, where voters will choose a new state lawmaker three weeks from today. Whereas the last two special House elections happened in heavily Republican or Democratic districts, the late Curt Hanson represented a politically balanced area. The outcome on August 8 could shape the media narrative about political trends in Iowa and affect candidate recruitment for other competitive statehouse races.

Republicans were first to run negative advertising in most of the 2016 Iowa House and Senate campaigns, but Democrats defending House district 82 have already launched a brutal spot about the Republican candidate’s “tax problem.”

Laura Hubka wants Democrats who are still fighting about the 2016 primaries to “act like adults and stop name calling and berating each other.” She is an Iowa Democratic Party State Central Committee member and chairs the Howard County Democrats. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I find myself shaking my head most days over the whole Bernie v. Hillary debate. I want people to get over the primary, but they just want to drag it out. Maybe they are thinking one side is going to quit and suddenly realize that they were wrong and the other side was right?

We are all adults here, and there are a lot bigger problems than Bernie being invited to CCI Action to speak, or him appearing on TV to talk about health care or inequality. There are bigger issues than Hillary tweeting about health care.

Bernie is calling out Trump and making a case against the Republican Party. Are those not issues that we ALL support? Does Bernie not have the ear of millions around the nation? Does Hillary have millions of people who voted for her in the general election? I do not CARE who you supported. Move on.

Daniel G. Clark, a former journalist who covered Muscatine city government, reports on the latest developments in the power struggle between Mayor Diana Broderson and the city council that unanimously voted to remove her from office. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The never-ending tale of Iowa’s first impeached mayor inched forward in front of a new judge this morning.

Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker will not challenge U.S. Representative Rod Blum in 2018, he announced this morning.

Only 29 percent of Iowans “mostly support” the “direction Congressional Republicans are heading in health care legislation,” according to a new poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom. About 58 percent of the 800 Iowa adults surveyed between July 9 and 13 said they “mostly oppose” the GOP approach to the issue.

Two-time U.S. Senate candidate Tom Fiegen, who left the Democratic Party after last year’s primary election, currently has no plans to run for governor in 2018 as an independent, he told Bleeding Heartland today.

Public policy experts, health care advocacy groups, and insurance industry representatives often don’t agree on how the government should regulate the sector that accounts for roughly one-sixth of our economy. But all have reached the same conclusion about the bill that may come to a vote in the U.S. Senate next week: the latest version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) would cause Americans with chronic or expensive medical conditions to pay much higher rates or lose insurance coverage entirely.

Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst have repeatedly said people with pre-existing conditions would be protected in any Republican bill to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Now, they are poised to break that promise.

First-person accounts of political events are welcome at Bleeding Heartland. The Norris campaign is online here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Last weekend I was able to attend John Norris’ gubernatorial campaign kickoff at Living History Farms in Urbandale. As someone who is relatively new to Iowa politics, I was pleasantly surprised to see about 200 people out for this campaign potluck event.

As a lifelong Democrat, Norris certainly impressed me with his campaign speech, and spoke about many issues that I, and many other Democrats, are passionate about.

Governor Kim Reynolds has said many times that she was a “full partner” in former Governor Terry Branstad’s administration. Other well-placed Iowa Republicans likewise have attested to Reynolds’ role as a “full partner” or “active partner” in running state government during nearly six and a half years as lieutenant governor.

But when Democratic State Representative Chuck Isenhart recently requested communications with the governor’s office pertaining to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, staff for Reynolds informed him that “our office cannot reach back and review and release records from the previous administration.”

Summer wildflowers are coming on strong now. On native or restored prairies, you may find cup plants or compass plants in bloom, along with yellow coneflowers, purple coneflowers, rattlesnake master, blazing star, black-eyed Susan, partridge pea, and several kinds of milkweed, including common, swamp, butterfly, or whorled. Along wooded trails, the purple, star-shaped blossoms of American bellflower are a frequent sight.

This week’s featured plant typically starts blooming in the late spring; in most parts of Iowa, the flowers are gone by July. Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis) is also known as meadow anemone, round-leaf thimbleweed, or windflower. This member of the buttercup family is native to most of North America, except for states in the deep South or west of the Rocky Mountains. It can thrive in a range of usually wet habitats, such as “moist prairies, sedge meadows, openings in floodplain woodlands, woodland borders, banks of streams, and swampy areas.” I took some of the enclosed pictures along bike trails in Des Moines and Clive and others on lower ground at the Tipton Prairie in Greene County.

According to the Minnesota Wildflowers website, Canada anemone “can form sizable colonies via spreading rhizomes.” The Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden site advises, “In the home garden it can make a good ground cover beneath trees and shrubs but in a restricted setting it needs control due to its spreading habit. For full flowering potential, it needs a mostly sunny area.” Likewise, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s site notes that this plant “can become quite aggressive in too favorable conditions.”

Thomas Heckroth joined the field of Democratic challengers to Representative Rod Blum in Iowa’s first Congressional district yesterday, calling for policies that “start investing in people” to create an “economy that values work more than wealth.”

Heckroth has been considering the race for several months. On his first day as a candidate, he stopped in Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Waverly, talking about his vision and criticizing Blum’s votes for the Republican health care bill and for rolling back key financial reforms in the law known as Dodd-Frank.

Before Heckroth launched his website and released an announcement video, Iowa political reporters heard he was running for Congress from an Abby Finkenauer press release, which portrayed her newest primary rival as not Iowan enough.

In another display of dominance intended to show there will be no serious competition in the Republican gubernatorial primary, Governor Kim Reynolds’ campaign announced today that U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst will join Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey as state co-chairs.

An Iowan with in-depth knowledge of the health care sector looks at lesser-known benefits that could be lost if Congress replaces the Affordable Care Act. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The debate on Republican efforts to repeal and replace the 2010 health care reform law has focused on the provision of health care and the repeal of some taxes. In particular, attention has been directed at the effort to reduce Medicaid coverage.

What isn’t being discussed: the Affordable Care Act (ACA) included many provisions aimed at addressing serious issues in the health care system, such as quality, safety, and workforce shortages. None of those can be found in the House-approved American Health Care Act (AHCA) or the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), proposed by Senate Republican leaders.

So, in addition to reducing (or eliminating) coverage for poor people and individuals with illnesses, the Republican bill would be a step backward in terms of efforts to improve the health care system, which accounts for 17 percent of our gross domestic product.

Curt Hanson won the most important Iowa legislative special election of the last decade. So it’s fitting that the election to replace the Iowa House Democrat, who passed away last month after a long battle with cancer, is shaping up to be our state’s most consequential special legislative race in years.

What happens here on August 8 won’t determine the outcome of Iowa’s 2018 elections but could have political repercussions beyond the three counties in House district 82.

Former Iowa Democratic Party executive director Troy Price will seek the state chair position, he confirmed this afternoon. I enclose below the e-mail Price sent to State Central Committee members, who will elect Derek Eadon’s successor on July 22. Excerpt:

I have previously served as Executive Director of IDP, where among other things I developed and managed an $8 million coordinated campaign – the largest non-presidential coordinated campaign in Iowa’s history. My state leadership roles also include two presidential campaigns, staring with President Obama’s re-election in 2012, building and nurturing donor and organizational relationships all across the state. I have developed and managed communications for two Democratic Governors. Plus, I ran One Iowa, the State’s largest LGBT civil rights organization, during a time of great challenge following the loss in 2010 of three Supreme Court justices who supported the Varnum decision.

The biggest challenge for Price over the next two weeks will be winning over State Central Committee members elected by delegates who favored Bernie Sanders for president. Some Sanders supporters retain strong anti-establishment feelings, and Price was Hillary Clinton’s political director here before the 2016 caucuses. I have not heard of any “Berniecrat” planning to run for chair, though. During the last leadership contest, Blair Lawton had the most support from the Sanders wing on the State Central Committee, followed by Kim Weaver. Neither Lawton nor Weaver is seeking the position now.

Julie Stauch is the only other confirmed candidate to lead the Iowa Democratic Party. Bill Brauch told me this afternoon, “I have withdrawn as a chair candidate, for my own health reasons.” Kurt Meyer is still considering another bid for party chair.

For the last several months, Price has been running State Representative Todd Prichard’s gubernatorial campaign. Going forward, John Davis will manage day-to-day operations for Prichard, and Jesse Harris will be a policy adviser.

UPDATE: Bob Krause joined Stauch and Price at a forum organized by the Iowa Democratic Party’s Veterans Caucus in Waterloo on July 8. Krause was one of eight candidates who campaigned for the party’s top job last winter; I posted more background on him here.

Meanwhile, Meyer told Bleeding Heartland on July 9 that he has decided against running for state party chair again.

I looked long and hard at what the Party needs and what I could do to be helpful. I engaged in conversations with a number of people, mostly people inside the Party, activists, candidates, etc. I urged Troy Price to run for the Chair position and am very pleased that he’s seeking the post. I decided the best way for me to be of service is to do everything I can to help the Party’s efforts to raise money… that’s what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future. I’ve agreed to head up a statewide Finance Committee. And although I agreed to this post when the previous Chair was in place, I am very eager to work with our new incoming Party Chair.

Only 27 percent of Iowans support the Senate Republican proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, according to a recent Public Policy Polling survey. By a 20-point margin, respondents said Senator Joni Ernst “should fix and improve our current health care law” rather than “continue trying to pass the Republican plan to repeal and replace it” when Congress goes back to work after the July 4 recess.

Those numbers reflect answers given before respondents had heard any negative messages about specific provisions in the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which Senate leaders hope to bring up for a vote soon.