Monarch butterfly enthusiasts have prepared more than 50,000 balls containing common milkweed seeds for riders participating in next week’s Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). As its name suggests, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is the most prevalent among the 17 types of milkweed found in Iowa. However, the use of genetically-modified Roundup Ready corn and soybeans greatly diminished common milkweed on Iowa cropland. “Kelly Milkweed” Guilbeau and a friend scattered some milkweed seeds while doing RAGBRAI in 2014, then prepared about 2,000 balls of seed to hand out during last summer’s ride across Iowa.

Elizabeth Hill, who manages the Conard Environmental Research Area at Grinnell College, has collaborated with Guilbeau on the Milkweed Matters initiative, greatly expanded this year. I wish them every success; driving around Iowa last week, I saw huge stands of wild parsnip along too many roadsides.

I enclose below two pictures of common milkweed blooming, as well as a press release explaining where riders can pick up seed balls to toss in unmowed ditches along the RAGBRAI route, which runs across southern Iowa from July 24 through 30.

You can learn more at the Milkweed Matters website and receive regular updates on Twitter (@milkweedmatters) or Facebook. Butterfly fans can find more good links at the Monarchs in Eastern Iowa website. Although I’m not skilled at identifying butterflies, I enjoy the occasional “butterfly forecasts” by the Poweshiek Skipper Project.

P.S.- Hill will always have a special place in my heart as the accidental godmother of Bleeding Heartland’s Iowa wildflower Wednesday series.

In more support for forecasters who view Iowa as a toss-up state, Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by a statistically insignificant 40 percent to 39 percent in a new CBS News Battleground Tracker Iowa poll conducted by YouGov. About 3 percent of the 998 “likely voters” surveyed between July 13 and 15 back Libertarian Gary Johnson, 2 percent Green Party candidate Jill Stein, 7 percent “someone else” and 8 percent are “not sure.”

Among respondents supporting Clinton, 50 percent said it is mainly because they like her, 37 percent said mainly to oppose Trump, and 13 percent said mainly because she will be their party’s nominee. The opposite was true for respondents planning to vote for Trump: 53 percent said they will do so mainly to oppose Clinton, 36 percent said mainly to support Trump, and 11 percent said because Trump will be their party’s nominee.

In Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, the CBS/YouGov poll found Senator Chuck Grassley ahead of Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 45 percent to 37 percent, with 16 percent not sure and 2 percent favoring “someone else.” In his previous re-election bids, Grassley has never been below 50 percent and less than 10 points ahead of his challenger in any public survey by a reputable pollster. YouGov now becomes the third firm (after Public Policy Polling and Loras College) to find a single-digit lead for the incumbent.

The full questionnaire for the CBS/YouGov poll is available here, along with cross-tabs. Assuming random sampling techniques produced a representative respondent pool, the margin of error for this survey would be plus or minus 4.8 percent. One possible problem with the sample: 41 percent of respondents said they are currently registered Republicans, 42 percent registered Democrats, and just 14 percent “not affiliated with either party.” More than 31 percent of Iowans who cast ballots in the 2012 general election were no-party voters. It’s possible that many of the registered Republicans or Democrats sampled by YouGov think of themselves as “independents” but changed their registration in order to participate in the February 1 Iowa caucuses or June 7 primaries.

YouGov polls are conducted over the internet; the firm received a “B” grade in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings.

Local Democrats have nominated Ryan Drew to run in Iowa House district 88, which became a potentially competitive race when House Ways and Means Committee Chair Tom Sands decided not to seek re-election. Drew was unopposed at the July 14 special district nominating convention. Bleeding Heartland posted background on the longtime labor activist from the Burlington area when he announced his campaign last month.

Drew will face David Kerr in November. I never did hear a good explanation for why Republicans nominated Kerr with as little publicity as possible, instead of Jason Delzell, the early establishment GOP candidate to succeed Sands.

House district 88 includes most of Des Moines County outside the cities of Burlington and West Burlington, all of Louisa County, and a large area in Muscatine County, not including the city of Muscatine. I enclose a district map below.

Both parties are likely to target this race. According to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, House district 88 contains 5,594 active registered Democrats, 6,388 Republicans, and 6,801 no-party voters. President Barack Obama outpolled Mitt Romney here by 50.9 percent to 47.9 percent in 2012. Antipathy to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump could become a factor in the large Latino communities of West Liberty and Columbus Junction.

As public sector bad behavior goes, this example may not be as repulsive as a member of Congress from Iowa displaying a Confederate flag on his desk, but prepare to be disgusted by this July 13 story from the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s Vanessa Miller:

I was hoping for Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump’s “gut” wanted to go with Chris Christie, but family members and campaign chairman Paul Manafort managed to persuade the impulsive billionaire that Mike Pence was the smart pick. The Indiana governor is a strong conservative and could do the most unify the party, having endorsed Ted Cruz in April.

Trump should have been able to get a boost from his running mate choice going into the Republican National Convention. Instead, he fumbled the rollout in several ways, summarized well by Philip Bump. It must have humiliated Pence to have CNN, the New York Times, NBC News, and other media outlets focus on Trump’s last-minute doubts about the pick, instead of on what Pence brings to the ticket. Christie suffered an even greater blow at the hands of the man he endorsed in February.

I’m no graphic design expert, but the Trump-Pence logo is a disaster. I thought it was a joke the first time I saw it yesterday, when a Facebook friend shared this not-safe-for-work commentary. Gregory Krieg reported more delicately for CNN that the logo “is raising eyebrows” and “drawing titters from cheeky tweeters.” Iowa Twitter user @jbelcap pointed out that there is a “hidden negative space H” in the graphic as well.

Any comments about the Trump-Pence ticket are welcome in this thread. UPDATE: It took only one day for the Trump campaign to dump the logo and scrub all images of it from the website. The new logo is after the jump.

First-person accounts of politically-oriented events are always welcome here. Thanks to IowaBadger for this perspective. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Chief Justice Mark Cady’s leadership of the Iowa Supreme Court has been bookended by two major cases. First came his unanimous majority opinion in the Varnum v. Brien decision recognizing marriage equality under the Iowa Constitution, resulting in the defeat of then Chief Justice Marsha Ternus (and two other justices) in the 2010 retention election, and Cady’s elevation to Chief Justice. Then, several weeks ago, was his 4-3 majority opinion in Griffin v. Pate, deciding that the Iowa Constitution’s prohibition against voting by anyone who has committed an “infamous crime” bars anyone with a felony conviction from voting, absent a restoration of voting rights from the governor.

Yesterday, the Des Moines Register held an event entitled “The Cady Court At Five,” which gave five panelists the opportunity to talk about both cases, and how the court has gotten from one to the other. Anyone hoping for post July 4th fireworks would have been disappointed, and anyone hoping for definitive answers will have to heed desmoinesdem’s post from yesterday recognizing that we will only understand Justice Cady’s rationale for his vote in Griffin and its seeming inconsistency with his previous opinion in Chiodo v. Panel when he’s interviewed about it years down the road. But for those of us who follow the Iowa Supreme Court closely, we did gain some insight into the Chief Justice’s thinking and what that might mean for future decisions.

Commentaries on either party’s platform are welcome here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

As an adult, I accept that not everyone is going to share my views on all things. Part of living in a democracy means that we come together to discuss our individual perspectives and try to find means of compromise that allow us to move forward together.

But I have my limits.

Behold, an amendment to the Republican national platform, addressing—of all things—no-fault divorce:

“We believe children have a natural right to be raised in an intact biological family. While brokenness can befall children in a myriad ways [sic], we acknowledge that children are made to be loved by both natural parents united in marriage.”

As an adoptee, I find this language viscerally offensive, bordering on the obscene.

I don’t usually write posts like this one.

Check that: I don’t think I’ve ever written a post like this one.

I’m making an exception because the question has been nagging at me since the Iowa Supreme Court announced its 4-3 decision in Griffin v Pate two weeks ago today, and because a number of people who share my interest in felon voting rights have asked for my opinion.

Only Chief Justice Mark Cady knows the answer, and we won’t hear his side of the story until he writes his memoirs or speaks to some interviewer in retirement.

So with no claim to telepathic powers and full awareness that my analysis may therefore be flawed, I will do my best to understand why the author of the 2014 opinion that inspired Kelli Jo Griffin’s lawsuit ultimately decided our state constitution “permits persons convicted of a felony to be disqualified from voting in Iowa until pardoned or otherwise restored to the rights of citizenship.”

Many thanks to Marion County Naturalist Marla Mertz for these views of a spectacular native plant. In case you missed it, check out her first contribution to this series, featuring the much smaller (but still striking) showy orchis. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The prairie presents her Queen! The Queen of the Prairie, Filipendula rubra. Filipendula: from Latin filum for “thread” and pendulus for ‘hanging,” in reference to the small tubers strung together by the fibrous roots. Rubra: from Latin, meaning “red”. The panicle of pink flowers and buds exudes her beauty in the month of June.

To some observers, one may think of cotton candy. She stands high above any prairie grasses and forbs this time of year, and your eyes can’t help but make a connection with this beauty.

On Monday Governor Terry Branstad defended his policy that has kept tens of thousands of Iowans from exercising what he calls the “privilege” of voting.

His excuses don’t change the reality that he has turned a fundamental constitutional right into a “pay to play” situation for Iowans convicted of felonies.

Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for president Tuesday morning during a joint campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well as in an e-mail blast and a Facebook note.

Some enthusiastic Sanders fans, including his captain in the precinct next door to mine, have made their own pitches to their fellow Berners today. I enclose below an e-mail that former State Senator Daryl Beall sent to friends and acquaintances. Johnson County Supervisor Mike Carberry shared the Sanders Facebook post calling on progressives to continue the political revolution. More power to them, and to those who are expressing their newfound support for Clinton in a humorous way.

I still see too many arguments on social media between Clinton backers and #BernieOrBust holdouts. Please stop. Give people time to grieve. Most Democrats who backed Sanders in the primaries will eventually support Clinton this fall. Some small percentage won’t. It’s not productive for those who were “with her” from the beginning to engage with them, especially not now. No amount of arguing on Facebook or Twitter will convince diehard Hillary-haters to support the Democratic nominee. It can only antagonize people.

Some in the #HillYes crowd get upset seeing fellow Democrats bash a woman they admire. My best advice: you don’t have to make it your mission to get them to see what you see. Either try to find common ground with them by talking about down-ballot races, or back off and focus your energy on mobilizing other voters.

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 44 percent to 42 percent, and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley leads Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 52 percent to 42 percent, according to a Monmouth University poll released today.

Only 6 percent of Iowa respondents surveyed between July 8 and 11 were undecided on the presidential race. Monmouth also found 6 percent support for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, 1 percent for the Green Party’s Jill Stein, and 2 percent saying they will vote for some other candidate. No Libertarian presidential candidate has ever received more than 1 percent of the vote in Iowa. Historically, minor-party presidential candidates have performed far less well in November elections than their summer poll numbers would suggest.

Iowa is a toss-up state in many election forecasts, and I’ve always expected a close race here, so I am not surprised to see Trump slightly ahead in a poll. That said, these Monmouth data are difficult to believe:

One unusual finding in the poll is that Trump leads among voters under 50 years old in Iowa. In Monmouth polls conducted nationally and in other states, Clinton has held an advantage with younger voters. Specifically, 51% of Iowa voters under age 50 currently support Trump, compared to 32% for Clinton, 7% for Johnson, and 3% for Stein or another candidate. Among voters age 50 and older, Clinton has the edge with 50% support, compared to 38% for Trump, 4% for Johnson and 1% for Stein or another candidate.

Monmouth’s numbers indicate that Grassley is in for his most competitive re-election bid. The last two public polls of Iowa’s U.S. Senate race were by Public Policy Polling, which does a lot of work for Democratic clients, including Judge’s campaign during the primary. So it was easy for Republicans to dismiss PPP’s findings showing Grassley below 50 percent and only 7 points ahead. In Monmouth’s survey, Grassley leads by just 10 points, which for him is a very small margin. He enjoyed larger leads in 2010 polls, other than those by Research 2000, a firm later discredited for apparently fabricating data.

You can’t say Monmouth’s sample is skewed to Democrats, because Trump is leading Clinton. The best news for Grassley is his job approval rating: 56 percent, with only 33 percent disapproving of his work in the Senate. However, only 25 percent of Monmouth’s respondents approve of the Judiciary Committee chair’s decision not to hold hearings on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Grassley’s favorables are in net positive territory, according to Monmouth: 46 have a favorable opinion of him, 31 percent unfavorable. Judge has more room to grow: 30 percent favorable, 14 percent unfavorable, and 56 percent of respondents not knowing enough about her to have an opinion. Grassley’s campaign has been trying to define the Democratic challenger in a negative way, most recently claiming in a press release today that she is harder to find around Iowa than a Pokemon.

Any comments about the presidential or Senate race are welcome in this thread. Monmouth surveyed 401 “Iowa residents likely to vote in the November election” between July 8 and 11, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent. Monmouth’s polling memo did not mention the likely voter screen used.

As this guest author shows, Bernie Sanders supporters aren’t the only Iowa Democrats who support major reforms to the caucus system. -promoted by desmoinesdem

There has been a lot of discussion across the state of Iowa over the past six months about the future of the caucus process. The Iowa Caucus Review Committee appears to be in willful denial about the problems of the caucus process. Last week, Jeff Cox wrote an article that said the process was rigged. This article will examine the popular vote numbers from a few different sources and simply ask for clarity from the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) on how many people were for each candidate. In a society where items can be purchased from a smartphone, there is no reason to keep the results convoluted and hidden from the general public.

The complex caucus math, while relished by Chairman Dave Nagle, is no way for the state to represent itself as “First in the Nation.” The quirky math has no place when selecting nominees for the next leader of the United States. The confusion of the process led to incorrect conclusions of the process being rigged or fraudulent in favor of one candidate. I ask the Iowa Democratic Party to release the popular vote to eliminate doubt of the process being rigged in favor of one candidate.

An advocacy group run by former Iowa House Speaker Chris Rants “is operating with the primary purpose of influencing political campaigns” in violation of federal tax code, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Last month CREW filed Internal Revenue Service complaints against ten 501(c)(4) groups, which claim non-profit status as “social welfare” organizations but spent a large share of their funds on political activity during the 2014 election cycle. One of them was the Iowa-based Legacy Foundation Action Fund, for which Rants serves as president and secretary. (The fund did not seek to influence any Iowa elections in 2014.) CREW also filed criminal complaints against six of the ten groups for “falsely representing the amount of money they spent on political activity in 2014”; the Legacy Foundation Action Fund was not among them.

Although Rants’s 501(c)(4) does not disclose its donors, CREW was able to determine that most of its 2014 funding came from American Encore, a “secretive” 501(c)(4) group “formerly known as the Center to Protect Patient Rights.” American Encore has been described as “the linchpin” of the Koch brothers dark money network. The Legacy Foundation Action Fund reported $980,000 in “contributions and grants” on its 2014 tax return; $880,000 of that amount came from American Encore.

More details on CREW’s IRS complaint are below. Rants responded via e-mail, “I am confident that Legation Foundation Action Fund is in compliance with the IRS rules. Legal counsel is reviewing the tax returns and we will file any amendment necessary to ensure the tax returns accurately reflected the organizations actives.”

Anyone even vaguely familiar with Representative Steve King has probably heard some of his statements about immigrants who are not authorized to be in this country.

But although I’ve followed King’s career closely for more than a decade, I didn’t know until I saw this news segment yesterday that he displays a Confederate flag on his desk.

Insider dealing at the University of Iowa has drawn intense scrutiny since President Bruce Harreld’s hiring last year. This week, several news reports cast an unflattering light on the culture President Steven Leath is fostering at Iowa State University.

The July 9 Des Moines Register carried a front-page story by Lee Rood on Leath’s recent purchase of land from one of the companies controlled by Iowa Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter. After trying to weasel out of answering questions regarding what he called his “personal life,” Leath insisted he got no “special deal” on the land. However, the arrangement appears highly irregular, as discussed below following excerpts from Rood’s article.

Two recent stories by Vanessa Miller for the Cedar Rapids Gazette raised further questions about what kind of operation Leath is running. Click through to read about the hiring of former Republican lawmaker Jim Kurtenbach for a high-paying job that was never advertised, as well as Kurtenbach’s restructuring of ISU’s information technology services unit, which involved eliminating 23 positions and paying 19 people not to work since May 25. Excerpts from those stories are below as well.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

P.S.- Speaking of cozy Republican networks, Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press on Friday that the University of Iowa “is retaining a social media startup company with Republican Party ties that benefited from earlier no-bid contracts.” Wholecrowd is run by Jim Anderson, who served as Iowa GOP executive director during part of the time the University of Iowa’s current Vice President for External Relations Peter Matthes was a staffer for the GOP state Senate caucus. Under no-bid contracts Matthes signed with former Iowa GOP state party chair Matt Strawn’s company, Wholecrowd did the same kind of “digital advocacy” work as a subcontractor. The university’s new contract, signed directly with Wholecrowd after a competitive bidding process, seems to have cut Strawn out as the middleman.

We may never comprehend the underlying cause of Micah Johnson’s murderous spree during Thursday night’s Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. The 25-year-old Army Reserve Veteran had served a tour in Afghanistan and had no criminal record or ties to terrorist groups, law enforcement officers believe. He apparently used an AR-15 assault weapon to kill four police officers and a Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer, wounding seven other officers and two civilians. During a standoff before he was killed by a bomb police detonated, Johnson reportedly said “he was upset about the recent police shootings” and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown told the media on July 8.

The fatal shootings of Alton Sterling by a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile by an officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota provoked national outrage and many Black Lives Matter protests, including the one in Dallas. Despite what the alleged gunman reportedly told officers shortly before his death, those shootings may not be the only reason Johnson took it upon himself to end innocent lives. Maybe he had post-traumatic stress disorder related to his service in a war zone (in a non-combat role). Maybe he had unresolved mental health issues not related to his military service. Maybe he had visions of glory similar to those that have inspired other perpetrators of mass shootings. We just don’t know.

Yet Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) confidently traced the Dallas police shootings to a different national phenomenon, which he described as “anti-white/cop events.”

Who’s up for a thread about Hillary Clinton’s potential running mates? Jeff Zeleny and Dan Merica reported for CNN yesterday that Clinton has a short list of “fewer than five” candidates for vice president. Possible names include: U.S. Senator and former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.

Citing unnamed “Democrats close to the process,” Zeleny and Merica say Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and U.S. Representative Xavier Beccera of California “are no longer thought to be in serious contention.”

Karl Schilling is a retired investigator for the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and has long been active with the Iowa Organization for Victim Assistance, for which he currently serves as president. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Until recently I opposed the vote for felons I think, in large part, because of my irritation at three of the reasons commonly given in defense of felon voter rights. They are usually in the same sentence and go something like this, “We all make mistakes, they did their time, and they have paid their debt to society.”

A week ago today, four Iowa Supreme Court justices upheld the lifetime ban on voting for Iowans convicted of all felonies, which are defined as “infamous crimes” under a 1994 state law. Chief Justice Mark Cady’s opinion in Griffin v. Pate and three dissents are available here; Bleeding Heartland posted key excerpts here.

A decision in Kelli Jo Griffin’s favor could have made tens of thousands of Iowans newly eligible to vote in this year’s presidential election. Instead, Iowa will likely retain its place as one of the most restrictive states on felon voting for years.

In theory, those who have completed sentences can apply to have Governor Terry Branstad restore their voting rights. Griffin plans to do so, and I expect Branstad to make a big show of approving her application. In practice, though, that option will be available only to a small minority of those affected by the governor’s January 2011 executive order. During the first five years the new policy was in effect, less than two-tenths of 1 percent of disenfranchised felons managed to regain the right to vote, an average of fewer than 20 people per year.

I am awaiting information from the governor’s office on restoration numbers since the latest “streamlining” of the official form in April, but I don’t expect the number of applicants ever to become more than a trickle. The financial and other barriers will remain too great.

Even if Branstad started receiving substantially more applications and approved them at a rate of 20 per week–unlikely since this work already occupies “meaningful amounts of time every day” for the governor’s staff–only about 1,000 people annually would be able to regain their voting rights. That’s less than 2 percent of the estimated 57,000 Iowans who have been disenfranchised since January 2011. Thousands more join their ranks every year. So much for an “efficient and convenient” restoration process.

Three paths are available to bring Iowa in line with how most states approach voting rights for people with felony convictions.