In an effort to halt Donald Trump’s momentum and also to preserve some self-respect, a growing number of Republicans are vowing never to vote for Trump, even if he becomes the GOP presidential nominee. As Megan McArdle reported for Bloomberg, the #NeverTrump faction represents “all segments of the party — urban professionals, yes, but also stalwart evangelicals, neoconservatives, libertarians, Tea Partiers, the whole patchwork of ideological groups of which the Republican coalition is made.”

Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman said she would consider voting for Hillary Clinton over Trump. At a funeral in Des Moines this past weekend, the daughter of the deceased (like Whitman a moderate Republican) struck a chord with some of the mourners when she joked during her eulogy that she was a little envious her mother would not have to vote in the presidential election now.

At the other end of the GOP ideological spectrum, staunch conservative U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska became the first member of Congress to take the #NeverTrump pledge, laying out his reasoning in a long Facebook post.

So far, the most prominent Iowa Republican to join the #NeverTrump camp is right-wing talk radio host Steve Deace, who explained his stance in a column for the Conservative Review website. Deace worked hard to persuade fellow Iowans to caucus for Ted Cruz. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio endorser and former Waukee City Council member Isaiah McGee described himself to me as a “founding member” of #NeverTrump.

Early signs suggest that few, if any, elected GOP officials in Iowa will join the club.

March 2 update: Kroeger ended his Congressional campaign. Added his comments on switching to the state legislative race at the end of this post.

One of the three Democratic candidates in Iowa’s first Congressional district may file instead as a candidate in Iowa House district 60, covering parts of Waterloo and Cedar Falls. I sought comment from Gary Kroeger this morning after Pat Rynard mentioned “talk in some Democratic circles” that Kroeger may switch to the statehouse race. Kroeger replied, “I am considering whatever is best for the Democratic Party in terms of my candidacy. State races are also imperative.”

Kroeger launched his Congressional campaign last April, positioning himself for the primary as “an unapologetic progressive, lifelong progressive and a proud lifelong Democrat.” Since Ravi Patel exited that race and Pat Murphy launched his second Congressional campaign last summer, Murphy has claimed the labels of “progressive” and “lifelong Democrat.” A longtime Iowa legislator and the 2014 nominee in IA-01, Murphy is better known around the district than Kroeger, who has trailed far behind Murphy and Monica Vernon in the few opinion polls released so far. Raising enough money to run a district-wide campaign has also proved challenging for Kroeger. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has endorsed Vernon, while the Blue America PAC is supporting Murphy.

That said, the kind of money Kroeger has raised for his IA-01 campaign would go very far in a state legislative race. His local name recognition would make him a strong challenger to three-term State Representative Walt Rogers.

Rogers defeated Democratic incumbent Doris Kelley in the previous version of this swing district in 2010. He held the seat in 2012 by more than 600 votes, even as residents of House district 60 preferred President Barack Obama to Mitt Romney by 50.15 percent to 48.91 percent.

A rising star in the Iowa House GOP caucus, Rogers launched his own Congressional campaign in IA-01 in 2013 but abandoned that race a few months later to seek a third term in the state legislature. He easily defeated Democratic challenger Karyn Finn amid the 2014 Republican wave. Joni Ernst outpolled Bruce Braley among House district 60 voters by nearly a 10-point margin, even though Braley himself is from Black Hawk County.

The latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office show that House district 60 contains 5,887 active registered Democrats, 7,007 Republicans, and 7,950 no-party voters. Those numbers do not include people who changed their party registration on February 1 in order to participate in the Iowa caucuses. A presidential year electorate creates a better opportunity for a Democratic challenger here.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. A map of House district 60 is after the jump. UPDATE: The Secretary of State’s Office just posted updated voter registration totals, showing 6,164 active registered Democrats, 7,253 Republicans, and 7,208 no-party voters for this House district.

As the Iowa Democratic Party considers reforms to the caucus system, here’s a case for Democrats to “reset our priorities” and get back to basics to make the event about “our caucus attendees first, the nation second.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

Let’s take off the sunglasses; close the makeup trailer; and put the script away. What would the Iowa Democratic Caucuses look like if there were no camera lights, reporters, or news media satellite dishes affiliated with the quadrennial event? The Iowa Democratic Caucuses might be boring, but they would be functional, effective, and ours.

Like many star struck Hollywood wannabe who suddenly reaches fame, Iowa’s Democratic Caucuses forgot who brought it to the dance. Over the past few decades, Iowans have given the Coastal Media some discretion as to how the caucuses function in return for cheap national publicity. Is it worth it?

A counter-intuitive take, grounded in a close look at GOP delegate allocation rules. -promoted by desmoinesdem

To date, Donald Trump has appeared to be an unstoppable train. He has a significant lead in delegates, and leads in virtually all of the polling on Super Tuesday. There would appear to be little drama.

And yet in fact there is. The reason for this is to be found in the delegate selection rules. In state after state (Texas is the notable exception) the polling is reasonably stable: Trump between 30 and 40, and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio hovering around 20%. When you actually project these polling numbers into delegates however, two things became very apparent:

1. Many states award delegates only to candidates who win 15 or 20%. In state after state both Rubio and Cruz’s polling shows them within a few points of these numbers. As a result a few percentage points can have an enormous effect on the results.

2. With each poll that is released, it is becoming less and less likely that Trump will get a majority of delegates on Super-Tuesday. In fact, while he will win a plurality of delegates on Super Tuesday, it will be very far from decisive. My current projection shows Trump getting 274 delegates on Super Tuesday, about 50 less than the other candidates combined.

As Donald Trump appears increasingly likely to win the Republican nomination, more elected officials are supporting him. This past week, two U.S. House representatives became the first current members of Congress to back Trump. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Maine Governor Paul LePage endorsed Trump on Friday. The LePage about-face was hilarious, coming less than a week after he called on GOP governors “to draft an open letter ‘to the people,’ disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics.” On Sunday, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama went public supporting Trump–a embarrassing turn of events for Senator Ted Cruz, who has repeatedly cited Sessions as cover for his stance on immigration reform.

Before the Iowa caucuses, only one GOP elected official in our state publicly supported Trump: State Senator Brad Zaun. That endorsement didn’t reflect any coherent ideology, since Zaun had backed Mitt Romney before the 2008 caucuses, Michele Bachmann before the 2012 caucuses, and was a co-chair for Scott Walker’s campaign last year, saying “we needed someone with some executive experience.” The pivot to Trump had a certain logic, though, as all the presidential candidates Zaun endorsed as a state lawmaker were leading Iowa Republican polls at the time he jumped on the bandwagon.

High-profile endorsements may drive a news cycle or two, but whether they influence a significant number of voters is another question. Join me in taking a close look at how Trump did in Zaun’s Iowa Senate district, which covers much of northwest Polk County.

Two Republicans are actively campaigning in Iowa House district 77, a Democratic-leaning seat where State Representative Sally Stutsman recently announced plans to retire this year. Both Royce Phillips and Paula Dreeszen filed documents forming House campaign committees earlier this month.

Dreeszen’s campaign Facebook page calls for efficient government, asserting that “Our state wastes too much money.”

Phillips is pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Coralville and the former mayor of Tiffin, the second-largest city in House district 77. He sought the Republican nomination in Iowa Senate district 39 in 2014, finishing third in the three-way primary. His campaign is on Facebook and Twitter, and his pitch is “a consistent conservative with a record of results.”

I enclose below excerpts from the Dreeszen and Phillips campaign announcements, as well as a map of House district 77.

The likely Democratic nominee is Amy Nielsen, mayor of North Liberty. That rapidly-growing city is the largest in the district. Click here for background on Nielsen. She’s on Twitter and Facebook and has a campaign website dating from her run for mayor.

I have not heard of any other prospective Democratic or Republican candidates for the open seat, though that may change before the March 18 filing deadline. Qualifying for the primary ballot is relatively easy, as candidates for the Iowa House need only 50 valid signatures from residents of the district on their nominating papers.

The Democratic nominee will be favored to succeed Stutsman, who easily defeated a GOP opponent in 2012. According to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, House district 77 contains 7,043 active registered Democrats, 5,213 Republicans, and 7,727 no-party voters. Those numbers do not include people who changed their party registration on February 1 to participate in the Iowa caucuses.

President Barack Obama won more than 58 percent of the vote among House district 77 residents in 2012. Bruce Braley outpolled Joni Ernst by 9 points here in the 2014 U.S. Senate race.

Polls just closed in South Carolina, where Hillary Clinton is favored to defeat Bernie Sanders easily, possibly by as large a margin as Sanders’ big win in New Hampshire. Any comments about the Democratic race for the presidency are welcome in this thread. Here are a few links to get the conversation started.

African-American voters are critically important for Clinton and will make a large share of the electorate not only in South Carolina but also in at least six of the states that vote on “Super Tuesday” (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia). This chart shows data from the 2008 primaries on the non-white percentages of electorates in the states that will vote on March 1.

Toni Monkovic argued recently, “We’re living in an era when blacks have essentially played kingmaker in the most important elections in the nation.” Sanders did extremely well among white working-class voters in the first three states, but “he does not really have a path to victory unless he can significantly narrow or even erase Mrs. Clinton’s edge among nonwhite voters,” Nate Cohn argued earlier this month. The prevalence of moderate Democratic voters in several of the Super Tuesday states should also work to Clinton’s advantage.

Tim Murphy wrote an interesting piece for Mother Jones on “Clinton’s Most Valuable Allies in South Carolina: the Moms of Black Lives Matter.”

Terrell Jermaine Staff profiled Marcus Ferrell in Fusion. Ferrell’s job with the Sanders campaign is “convincing black folks to ‘feel the Bern.’”

David Sirota took a close look at what economists say about whether Sanders’ plans on single-payer health care and free education at public universities “add up.”

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com laid out which states Sanders needs to win on Super Tuesday and beyond to win the Democratic nomination.

Excerpts from all of those articles are after the jump.

For comic relief, I recommend Steve Deace’s latest column for the Conservative Review on how 2016 is shaping up to be “the devil’s favorite presidential election.” He takes some ridiculous shots at Clinton and Sanders but the real venom comes out when he writes about Donald Trump. Deace is furious the strong anti-establishment sentiment in the Republican electorate is working mostly in Trump’s favor, rather than pushing Ted Cruz ahead.

UPDATE: Clinton is on track to outperform her lead in South Carolina polling. She gave her victory speech less than an hour after polls closed, and sounded like she was running against Donald Trump, not Sanders. I’ve added excerpts from her speech below. She recognized by name all of the “Black Lives Matter” moms, as well as their children who were killed.

SECOND UPDATE: Wow. A crushing victory for Clinton by nearly a 3 to 1 margin. I don’t remember seeing anyone predict she would even win 2 to 1. Harry Enten speculates that South Carolina “may be the beginning of the end for Sanders.” Added excerpts at the end of this post.

Having spent most of the last month catching up on other political stories, I realized today that I never tabulated the results from Bleeding Heartland’s 2016 Iowa caucus prediction contest.

Follow me after the jump to find out who has bragging rights, at least until the June primary prediction contest. Spoiler alert: it ain’t me.

Many thanks to jpascoe for the first-person account of a February 23 meeting that the University of Iowa neither live-streamed nor recorded, for reasons unknown. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Well that was ugly and unsettling. J. Bruce Harreld’s “town hall meeting” dramatized what happens when you carry out a sham presidential search, install a puppet president, promise an open forum, replace it with a “town hall meeting,” and release a fusillade of PowerPoint slides documenting the UI’s skid down the rankings. Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that J. Bruce Harreld is a leadership expert. As I looked around the auditorium full of University of Iowans cleft in two by the sordid events of the last six months, some of them happy to move on, some of them hell-bent on unseating Harreld, none of them looked happy to be going where Harreld led. I long ago pitched my tent with the resisters, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for all of us.

Great commentary; this line of attack is also one of my pet peeves. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Content warning: tone policing, poxes on both houses, general curmudgeonliness.

The 2016 Democratic primary reflects an internal conflict that I suspect is fairly common for aging liberals like myself. My idealistic heart thrills to hear genuinely liberal ideas debated seriously by a party that has often seemed leftist only by contrast to the headlong rightward scramble happening in the GOP. My pragmatic (and oft disappointed) brain is painfully aware that Congress will set itself on fire before it will cooperate with any president who isn’t the love child of Ronald Reagan and Genghis Khan. I’m happy that we’re having a vigorous primary contest – I caucused for O’Malley in a sadly futile attempt to keep the field as wide as possible – but I’m terrified by the notion that enough liberal voters from either camp could defect after a primary loss that they’ll end up throwing the general election to the Trump/Voldemort ticket.

While I love the spirited policy debate, I can’t help but cringe watching the primary campaigns and their supporters lobbing other election propaganda at each other. It’s obvious that the Republicans don’t need our help inventing creative ways to slander us and our ideals, but it does feel a little like we’re doing their job for them when we call each other names and question the character of our primary candidates. I’ve reluctantly resigned myself to ignore most of the character assassination (at least until we get past the primary and can get back to being appalled by conservatives full time), but there’s one soundbite accusation that I just can’t choke down no matter how much of my tongue I try to swallow: the accusation of “flip-flopping” on core liberal values.

The Des Moines Register’s Jason Noble snagged a surprising scoop yesterday: former Lieutenant Governor and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge is considering running for the U.S. Senate this year. Referring to Grassley’s approach to the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, Judge told Noble,

“Iowans have always been straight shooters, and up until the recent time I would have said the same thing about Chuck,” Judge said. […]

“I don’t like this double-speak,” Judge said. “I don’t like this deliberate obstruction of the process. I think Chuck Grassley owes us better. He’s been with us a long time. Maybe he’s been with us too long.”

To qualify for the Democratic primary ballot, Judge would need to submit nominating papers with the Secretary of State’s Office by March 18, three weeks from today. That doesn’t leave much time to collect at least 2,104 signatures, including minimum amounts in at least ten Iowa counties. But Judge could pull together a campaign quickly, having won three statewide elections–for secretary of agriculture in 1998 and 2002 and on the ticket with Chet Culver in 2006.

Three other Democrats are seeking the nomination to run against Grassley: State Senator Rob Hogg, former State Senator Tom Fiegen, and former State Representative Bob Krause. Former State Representative Ray Zirkelbach launched a U.S. Senate campaign in November but ended his campaign last month, Zirkelbach confirmed by phone this morning.

Dozens of Democratic state lawmakers endorsed Hogg in January. I enclose the full list below. Any comments about the Senate race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Rebecca Tuetken notes, “Patty Judge does meet one apparent Iowa requirement: she told @SenatorHarkin ’08 steak fry that she can castrate a calf.” Truly a classic moment for Judge, when Joni Ernst was still the little-known Montgomery County auditor.

The Iowa House approved House File 2281 on February 23 by 62 votes to 36. All 57 Republicans voted yes, joined by Democratic State Representatives David Dawson, Rick Olson, Jim Lykam, Mary Wolfe, and Patti Ruff. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Yesterday, the WaPo posted an op-ed opposing a bill in the Iowa legislature that makes it legal for kids under 18 to use a handgun under direct parent supervision. The bill is being lambased as a “toddler militia” bill that would let 1 and 2 and 3 year olds use guns.

I’m a parent very much concerned about gun violence in the US. One of my top reasons for supporting Hillary Clinton is her outstanding record on common sense gun control. However, I don’t oppose this bill, and in fact, I think it offers an opportunity for folks on both sides of the gun issue to come together.

Attribution such as “first reported by” is an appropriate way for journalists to acknowledge another media outlet’s role in breaking news. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Ethics Guide states,

Any information taken from other published or broadcast sources should receive credit within the body of the story. Reporters and editors also should be aware of previously published/broadcast work on the same subject and give those news organizations credit if they have broken new ground or published exclusive material before any others.

One of Iowa’s leading newspapers doesn’t hold its reporters to the same standard.

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has put a spotlight on Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. After wavering last week on whether he would be willing to hold hearings on President Barack Obama’s choice to replace Scalia, on Tuesday Grassley joined all other Republicans on the committee to vow that no Supreme Court nominee will get any consideration this year. Not only that, Senate Republican leaders will refuse to meet with the nominee. Grassley is open to discussing the Supreme Court vacancy with the president, but only as an “opportunity to explain the position of the majority to allow the American people to decide.”

Grassley’s hypocrisy is evident when you compare his recent statements with what he said in 2008 about the Senate’s role in confirming judicial nominees, even in the final year of a president’s term. His refusal to do one of the key tasks of the Judiciary Committee may also undercut what has been the central slogan of the senator’s re-election campaigns: “Grassley works for us.”

UPDATE: Former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge is thinking about jumping in to the U.S. Senate race, because of Grassley’s “double-speak” and “deliberate obstruction of the process.” My first thoughts on a possible Judge candidacy are here. I’ve also enclosed Grassley’s response to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid at the end of this post.

Party-building is said to be one of the key benefits of the Iowa caucus system, and high participation in this year’s caucuses produced “substantial gains” in voter registration totals for both major parties, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced yesterday. Iowa’s same-day voter registration law allows citizens to change their party affiliation at the precinct caucus site. Tens of thousands of people did so on February 1 as Republican turnout exceeded the previous Iowa caucus record by more than 50 percent, while Democratic turnout was the second-highest in Iowa caucus history. CORRECTION: John Deeth notes in the comments that “Both parties allowed party changes, address changes, or new registrations [on caucus night] long before the Election Day Registration law started in 2008.”

I enclose the full press release below. As of February 22, Democrats have had a net gain of 29,181 registered voters, and Republicans have had a net gain of 21,262 registered voters. Both numbers will rise in the coming weeks, since county auditors have 45 days to process voter registration forms. The GOP will likely add more voters than the Democrats, because the Polk County Auditor’s office has not yet processed some 9,000 forms from Republican caucuses in Iowa’s most populous county, according to Kevin Hall, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office. It’s not clear how many of those forms represent new registrants and party-switchers and how many are change of address forms for voters already on the rolls.

A plurality of registered Iowa voters are still aligned with neither party, but the number of no-party voters dropped by 47,211 between February 1 and February 22 and will decline further as county auditors continue to process forms from the caucuses.

Note: readers may notice that the numbers from different categories in the press release don’t add up to the overall net gains for each parties. Hall explained the discrepancy in comments I’ve posted below.

Dave Swenson

Is it extortion when one party pays up even though it was never threatened?

Recently, the state of Iowa awarded $17 million in state assistance to Dow-DuPont for pledging to keep its Pioneer-related research and development activities in Johnston. In a Des Moines Register interview of Tina Hoffman, a spokesperson for the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA), we were told they were sure “Pioneer wasn’t going to up and close down shop. That was clear from the beginning ….” Still, the state is spinning this to be all about job retention.

Except it wasn’t.

As expected, Donald Trump won the Nevada Republican caucuses tonight. I’ll update this post later with details on the size of his victory and whether Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio took second place. Either way, the odds on anyone stopping Trump from getting the GOP nomination are getting longer.

Conservative talk radio host Steve Deace has used his megaphone and his access to national media to promote Cruz’s campaign since last summer but has lately been frustrated by the Cruz campaign strategy.

Deace said the voters in South Carolina were responding to Cruz’s reluctance to fight with Trump and his apologies to Rubio and Carson: They are “sending Cruz a message, and I think that message is that they want him to go back to being that alpha male conservative leader that people fell in love with.”

Deace believes “At first Team Cruz was brilliant not to attack Trump from a position of weakness, like so many others did early and failed.” However, in his view, “once Cruz won Iowa, the sole focus should’ve been on Trump instead of worrying about Rubio doing an end-run.” He summarized last week’s Republican political combat as “Cruz-Rubio bicker over bronze medals, mailers, and robocalls. Trump debates the pope and Islam.”

While I see where Deace is coming from, there was a logic to the strategy of trying to eliminate the main competition to be the last man standing against Trump, as opposed to taking on the front-runner first. What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread. Incidentally, the Nevada caucuses were much more poorly organized than Iowa’s. But that won’t help us keep our place in the nominating process. Rather, the widespread problems and mismanagement in Nevada will become ammunition for those seeking to ban all caucuses for presidential selection.

UPDATE: Republican strategist Adrian Gray posted some data yesterday that explains why the GOP establishment is terrified of Trump at the top of the ticket. First look at how Hillary Clinton’s favorability numbers compare to other presidential nominees since 1992. Then look at the eye-poppingly low favorables for Trump.

SECOND UPDATE: A crushing victory for Trump. With 96 percent of results in, the billionaire has 45.9 percent, Rubio 23.9 percent, and Cruz 21.4 percent. I wonder whether Ben Carson’s 4.8 percent was enough to keep Cruz out of second place. Bringing up the rear, John Kasich had 3.6 percent.

THIRD UPDATE: Added below excerpts from Trump’s victory speech. The full transcript is available at Quartz. It sounds like a Monty Python routine.

Iowa’s Medicaid program will shift to managed care for some 560,000 recipients on April 1, in accordance with waivers granted by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS had previously denied the request from Governor Terry Branstad’s administration to privatize Medicaid by January 1, citing numerous signs that the state was not ready. In a letter the Branstad administration released today, Vikki Wachino of CMS noted “significant improvement” in several areas: the provider networks of three insurance companies picked to manage care for Medicaid recipients; plans for reimbursing out-of-network providers for services; better communication between state officials and Medicaid providers and recipients; and training of case managers to assist Medicaid beneficiaries during the transition.

I enclose below reaction to today’s news from the governor, key state lawmakers, and other stakeholders, as well as the full five-page letter from CMS to Mikki Stier, director for Medicaid in the Iowa Department of Human Services. Federal officials set several conditions on their approval of Iowa’s plans, such as monitoring the actions of the three managed-care organizations, making sure call centers are running their helplines competently, and preserving some “continuity of care” for Medicaid recipients.

Although the delay until April 1 will allow more time to prepare for the transition, the policy’s likely impact remains the same: more money for insurance company overhead and profit and less for health care services; a deterioration in care for disabled people, as seen in Kansas and other states; and less access to health care providers (a key issue for the three Iowa Senate Republicans who recently voted with Democrats to terminate Medicaid privatization).

Senate Democrats continue to push for “tough, bipartisan oversight and accountability protections.” Chelsea Keenan reported for the Cedar Rapids Gazette that the Senate Human Resources Committee will consider that bill (Senate File 2213) on February 24. I don’t expect that legislation to go anywhere. All I’ve heard from Iowa House Republicans is happy talk, backed up by no evidence, that privatizing Medicaid will save the state money and improve patient care.

Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts, including first-person accounts of Iowa campaigns. A millennial shares her reflections on volunteering before the Iowa caucuses as a personal rebuttal to the “over-hyped” narrative “about my generation’s apathy towards Secretary Clinton’s candidacy.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

It was a long journey from Boston to Black Hawk County, Iowa. I’d set aside the normal rhythms of my life to follow my brother, an organizer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, to his district to get out the vote for the caucus. My family and I had spent years cheerleading for Secretary Clinton from the sidelines, as voters but never as volunteers. In the wake of a primary season that has left us anxious and frustrated, we knew that we had to become louder and bolder in our support of Secretary Clinton.

Robert Rees, the former conservative talk radio host who is challenging U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley for the Republican nomination, may not make it onto the primary ballot.