Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jack Hatch announced today that Cedar Rapids City Council member Monica Vernon will be his running mate. In addition to following the Iowa tradition of female lieutenant governors, Vernon balances the ticket geographically and ideologically. An elected official in Iowa’s second-largest city for seven years, she has been campaigning around northeast Iowa since last summer as a Democratic candidate for Congress. She carried Linn County and finished a strong second to Pat Murphy district-wide on June 3.

Some Democrats are grumbling that Vernon is a longtime Republican who joined our party just five years ago. But frankly, Hatch isn’t running in a Democratic primary. He needs to appeal to a statewide electorate including thousands who have become disaffected from the GOP, just like Vernon did. Anyway, she is arguably more progressive than Governor Chet Culver’s running mate, lifelong Democrat Patty Judge. Despite the complaining, there shouldn’t be any major snags when the Iowa Democratic Party’s statewide convention officially nominates Vernon for lieutenant governor this Saturday.

After the jump I’ve posted background on Vernon and other recent news from the Hatch campaign, including his first television commercial for the general election and highlights from his weekend appearance on Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program.

With only a few days left before special convention delegates choose a Republican nominee in Iowa’s third Congressional district, David Young got a boost from a “poll” by the conservative blog Caffeinated Thoughts. The blog set up a closed, online survey last week and circulated the link to delegates via e-mail.

There’s no way to know whether the 118 people who filled out the survey are representative of some 500 district convention delegates or alternates who will gather in Urbandale on June 21. If they are, it’s good news for Young, who finished fifth in the June 3 voting. Asked which candidate they support, 27 percent of delegates named Young, equal to the percentage backing State Senator Brad Zaun, who won a plurality of votes in the primary. Some 19 percent of delegates who responded named Robert Cramer, 14 percent Monte Shaw (widely seen as Governor Terry Branstad’s favored candidate), and just 8 percent named Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz. The results were even better for Young on the “second choice” question: 34 percent of respondents named him, way ahead of 17 percent for Zaun, 14 percent for Schultz and Cramer, and 10 percent for Shaw.

Young’s campaign was quick to spread the news in an e-mail blast I’ve enclosed below.

I had assumed Shaw held the advantage in a convention scenario, as he has longstanding ties with GOP activists, and to my mind, would be seen as a less-offensive alternative to some other candidates in the race. But if this survey is representative, Young has a chance of filling that “least offensive” niche. Maybe conservatives working together to block Shaw are succeeding in creating a bit of a backlash against the leading establishment candidate.

I was so focused on the environmental impacts of Governor Terry Branstad’s recent vetoes, I failed to look closely at other appropriations in a supplemental spending bill he axed. Today I learned from Democratic State Senator Rob Hogg,

Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the start of Freedom Summer and the murder of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney – it is too bad Governor Branstad vetoed the $300,000 the Legislature appropriated on a bipartisan basis to help the African-American Museum of Iowa collect Iowa’s civil rights history and educate the public about these historic events.

There it is on page 4 of Senate File 2363: $300,000 for “an oral history of civil rights” at the African-American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids.

It’s maddening that Governor Branstad has no problem with tens of millions of dollars in tax giveaways to wealthy corporations, yet he pleads fiscal prudence when vetoing spending like this, which serves the public interest without major impact to the state budget. Many of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights activists have already passed away, and those who haven’t are senior citizens. “Freedom Summer” was a major event in 20th century American history. Some Freedom Summer veterans with connections to Iowa City or the University of Iowa have already told their stories to historians or recorded their memories on paper or film. The Historical Iowa Civil Rights Network are doing their part too, and you can follow their work here. I’m disappointed that the African-American Museum of Iowa won’t have the funding to collect and archive these stories on a larger scale.  

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday that a District Court should hear a lawsuit eight Muscatine residents have filed against the Grain Processing Corporation. Muscatine locals have long had to breathe some of Iowa’s dirtiest air, and the Grain Processing Corporation has long been one of the area’s major polluters. Despite being forced to pay a $538,000 civil penalty for air pollution violations eight years ago, the corporation continued to emit excessive amounts, leading to a lawsuit by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller in 2011. Earlier this year, the company settled that lawsuit, agreeing to pay a $1.5 million civil penalty and to take several steps to reduce toxic emissions from the facility.

But the Grain Processing Corporation stood and fought when local residents filed a class-action lawsuit two years ago, citing health risks as well as damage to personal property related to the air pollution near the plant.

In 2013, a District Court judge granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss the case, prompting plaintiffs to appeal. The Iowa Supreme Court found that the Grain Processing Corporation “was not entitled to summary judgment” and sent the case back to District Court, which will consider the lawsuit on its merits. You can read the full text of Justice Brent Appel’s ruling here (pdf). (It’s more than 60 pages long and gets into some technical legal issues.) All the other Iowa Superme Court justices concurred, except for Justice Edward Mansfield, who recused himself because some of his former law partners were representing the corporation.

After the jump I’ve posted more background on the lawsuit and excerpts from Jason Liegois’ report for the Muscatine Journal on the Iowa Supreme Court ruling. The plaintiffs are not guaranteed to succeed in District Court, but at least they can present their case. In addition to fighting the lawsuit at the lower court level in Iowa, the Grain Processing Corporation could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the federal Clean Air Act preempts claims like the ones the Muscatine residents are making.

The Prison Policy Initiative, a non-partisan non-profit organization created “to document and publicize how mass criminalization undermines our national welfare,” has published a fascinating report on the “global context” of sky-high U.S. incarceration rates. I knew that our country locks up more of its residents per capita than any other country on earth, but I didn’t realize that if you consider the 50 states and Washington, DC individually, three dozen American states have a higher incarceration rate than Cuba, which has the world’s second-highest incarceration rate. Iowa now has 437 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 residents, putting us among the states with the ten lowest incarceration rates. Even so, just three other countries (Cuba, Rwanda, and the Russian Federation) imprison more residents per capita than Iowa. The report notes,

Utah, Nebraska and Iowa all lock up a greater portion of their populations than El Salvador, a country with a recent civil war and one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Five of the U.S. states with the lowest incarceration rates – Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island – have higher incarceration rates than countries that have experienced major 20th century social traumas, including several former Soviet republics and South Africa.

States in New England tend to have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by the Midwest. Most states with the highest incarceration rates are in the South.  

The Prison Policy Initiative recently published a detailed comparison of state prison systems. The Iowa profile shows the growth in the incarceration rate as well as the massive racial disparities other researchers have found in our state. I’ve posted a few graphs after the jump. (Note that one graph shows an incarceration rate a little below 300 per 100,000 residents, rather than 437. That’s because the graph below includes only people serving a prison term longer than one year.) Click here for links to all state incarceration rates by race and ethnicity and here for a report “tracking state prison growth in all 50 states.” Data on that last page show how “state-level policy choices have been the largest driver of our unprecedented national experiment with mass incarceration.”

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

The Republican Party of Iowa held its state convention today in Des Moines. Links and highlights are after the jump.

Sam Clovis, who finished a distant second in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, will likely be nominated for state treasurer at the Iowa GOP’s statewide convention on June 14, The Iowa Republican blog reported last night. No Republicans stepped up to run for the office long held by Democrat Mike Fitzgerald in time for the March filing deadline. John Thompson, a native of Jefferson and army veteran, recently declared his candidacy for state treasurer and was hoping to be nominated at the state convention. Earlier this week, Iowa Republican blogger Craig Robinson published a hit piece backgrounder on Thompson that read like a desperate plea for some other candidate to seek the treasurer’s office.

Today’s exclusive report by Kevin Hall says “Clovis has received a lot of encouragement to run over the past couple of days,” including a “Thursday evening phone call” from Governor Terry Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds. They offered to help Clovis raise money for a statewide campaign, and he would need their help, as fundraising was his weakest area by far as a Senate candidate. Apparently the governor does not want to run on a ticket with Thompson, given the “interesting background” Robinson highlighted.

Fitzgerald is the longest-serving state treasurer in the country, having been first elected in 1982, the same year Branstad was elected governor for the first time. He has been re-elected seven times, twice amid huge Republican landslides (1994 and 2010). He defeated Dave Jamison by more than 60,000 votes in 2010.

One of Branstad’s staffers, Adam Gregg, will be nominated for attorney general at tomorrow’s GOP convention. That’s the only other statewide office for which no Republican filed in time to appear on primary ballots.

Final Iowa trivia note: Fitzgerald’s 2002 opponent was Matt Whitaker, the fourth-place candidate in this year’s GOP Senate primary.

The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission voted 3-2 today to grant a casino license for a $40 million project near Jefferson (Greene County) in western Iowa, between Boone and Carroll counties. Residents had overwhelmingly approved a gambling referendum last year, but the outcome was in doubt because the commission recently voted down a casino proposal for Cedar Rapids. According to Dar Danielson’s report for Radio Iowa, the commissioners who opposed the license cited evidence a new casino would largely take business from existing Iowa casinos, and that the Greene County community didn’t need a gambling facility as much as other amenities. The commissioners who favored the license cited the potential economic impact for a rural area.

The Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino in Polk County had lobbied the commission to reject Greene County’s application, citing potential impact on its business. Jefferson is a little more than an hour’s drive northwest of the Des Moines metro area. But in casting the decisive yes vote, Racing and Gaming Commission Chair Jeff Lamberti noted,

We have lots of advantages in Polk County and I think we have lots of advantages that are going to come in the future,” Lamberti explained. “We’ve got significant population growth amongst all of our suburbs. We’ve got some good things that are in the work that are pretty historic by Iowa standards. And quite frankly, we have advantages that a lot of other parts of the state don’t have, and quite frankly I think we are going to be just fine.”

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett, who has vowed to keep working toward a casino for his city, sounds furious about today’s decision. I’ve posted some of his comments below.  

Hardly a month goes by without news about Des Moines scoring a top-ten national ranking on some economic or livability metric. Here’s something I didn’t expect, though: the new “Vocativ Queer Index” rates the Des Moines metro fourth among the top 35 queer-friendly cities in the U.S.

Vocativ examined the 100 largest metro areas on sixteen factors related to the quality of life for the LGBT community. Click through to read the full list and how Des Moines scored in each category. In particular, the website hailed the Iowa capital’s “inclusive attitude toward adoption and marriage equality, not to mention its high-profile out politicians” like State Senator Matt McCoy and State Representative Daniel Lundby (whom they mistook for a member of Congress).  

Happy Pride Month to everyone in the Bleeding Heartland community. After the jump I’ve posted recent news about how Iowa Safe Schools, a Des Moines-based advocacy group, is working to improve the environment for LGBTQ students in public schools all around the state.

This week’s featured wildflower can be grown in gardens without too much trouble and is popular with many species of bees. According to Wildflowers of Iowa Woodlands by Sylvan Runkel and Alvin Bull, Penstemon species are commonly called beardtongue because “One of the five stamens is sterile and does not produce pollen. It is often modified into a hairy or bearded tongue and probably attracts insects.” The blue or purple lines sometimes seen inside the tubular flowers are also believed to “function as nectar guides to visiting insects.”

After the jump I’ve enclosed several pictures of beardtongue in bloom, not far from Gray’s Lake in Des Moines. The last two photos show this wildflower near other plants I haven’t identified. If you know what they are, please post a comment in this thread or send me an e-mail: desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

This post is also a mid-week open thread: all topics welcome.

Roughly 500 Republican delegates from the third Congressional district will meet at Des Moines Christian School in Urbandale on June 21 to select a nominee against Staci Appel. I consider Monte Shaw the best-placed candidate going into the convention, despite his fourth-place finish in the June 3 voting. Several signs point to the other campaigns developing a strategy to stop Shaw at the convention. Executing that strategy won’t be easy.

Tony Bisignano will be the Democratic nominee in Iowa Senate district 17, as second-place finisher Nathan Blake declined to request a recount. From a Facebook status update Blake posted yesterday:

According to the official canvass from the Polk County Auditor’s Office, I ended up 18 votes behind in the Democratic primary election for Iowa State Senate District 17. I congratulate Tony Bisignano on a hard-fought victory. Thank you to my supporters, volunteers, and all who voted. Thanks especially to my wife and partner, Andrea, and our two kids for their patience, support, and sacrifices over the last year. I am proud of the campaign we ran. We won over 60% of the Election Day vote, even if we came up a few votes short.

As for the future, I am committed to to electing Democrats up and down the ballot in Iowa this November. I will continue my work in public service, fighting for consumers as an Assistant Iowa Attorney General. I promise to stay involved in progressive politics and will seek future opportunities to serve in elective office. The issues we care about are too important to sit on the sidelines.

A recount wouldn’t have changed the result, so I think Blake did the right thing not to go through the motions. He did manage a very strong election-day turnout, which is promising for any future candidacies.

Senate district 17 was the best chance for Democrats to elect Iowa’s first Latino state legislator, but two other opportunities remain this year in House district 60 and Senate district 47.

UPDATE: In a Facebook post, Bisignano said of Blake, “I can’t say enough about his poise and character. He has a very bright future in public service and I’m looking forward to helping him. His positive and respectful campaign shows what people want and expect from their public officals.”

Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) has long been one of the leading voices in Congress against any immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He even lost out on a subcommittee chairmanship because of his perceived hostility to immigrants, especially those who came to this country illegally. In early 2013, many pundits predicted King and his allies would not be able to stop a bill like the one that passed the U.S. Senate with bipartisan support, because of the Republican Party’s urgent need to improve its standing with Latino voters. But the anti-reform Republicans won promises from House leaders not to bring the Senate bill up for a vote on the House floor. (It would surely have passed with a few dozen Republicans joining most of the Democratic caucus.)

Every few months, pro-reform forces mount a new push to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and King mobilizes opposition. I think he can rest easy now that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor just lost his Republican primary to a little-known tea party challenger in Virginia’s seventh Congressional district. While immigration wasn’t the only issue brought up during the campaign, it was a salient issue in the primary.

[Challenger David] Brat ran hard against immigration reform, and the issue dominated conservative talk radio in recent days as the Obama administration’s request of funds to cope with an influx of recently detained young illegal immigrants from Central America.

Cantor sought to neutralize the issue, running hard negative television attacking Brat as a “liberal professor” and sending direct mail pieces saying he fought President Obama on “amnesty.”

Regardless of what Cantor said in campaign mailers, beltway insiders considered him a pro-immigration reform Republican.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

P.S. – During my childhood, there were several Jewish Republicans in Congress. Cantor was the last remaining after Senator Arlen Specter switched parties in 2009. Don’t hold your breath waiting for another one to be elected.

UPDATE: King commented on Twitter, “Earthshaking primary results in Virginia tonight. Resounding rejection of #Amnesty and support for Rule of Law. Personal regrets to Eric.”

SECOND UPDATE: King posted on June 11, “Wanted: Applicants for Majority Leader in US House who have a record opposing amnesty. Come see me.”

THIRD UPDATE: Senator Tom Harkin believes Cantor was defeated because he “lost touch with his district.” He pointed out that Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina survived his GOP primary this week, despite openly supporting immigration reform. But Graham had six opponents splintering the protest votes, not one challenger making a coherent case against him.

Past time for a post-mortem on the five-way Democratic primary in the open first Congressional district. Here are the unofficial results from June 3:

A few thoughts struck me as I reflected on this campaign and looked more closely at the results.  

Forty men and ten women currently serve in the Iowa Senate. No senators are African-American, Latino, or Asian-American.

Seventy-five men and 25 women currently serve in the Iowa House. Five state representatives are African-American and none are Latino or Asian-American.

Time for a look at how those numbers might change after the November election, now that primaries have determined the major-party nominees in all state legislative districts. Click here for the June 3 unofficial election results and here for the full list of candidates who filed to run in the primaries.

Earlier this year, I would have predicted high Republican turnout for Iowa’s June 3 primary elections. The five-way race for the U.S. Senate nomination was highly competitive, as was the six-way contest in the open third Congressional district. Multiple candidates contested GOP primaries in the first and second Congressional districts too. The 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses, which involved going out for an hour or more on a cold night in January, attracted a record turnout of roughly 122,000 people.

Yet according to unofficial results, just 158,031 Iowans cast ballots in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate, and 156,275 cast ballots in the governor’s race, where Terry Branstad had a token challenger.

The 2010 midterm election saw much higher Republican turnout, with some 227,404 people voting for one of the three GOP gubernatorial candidates. There weren’t any high-profile statewide Republican primary contests in 2006, but in the 2002 midterm year, 199,234 Iowans cast ballots in the three-way GOP primary for governor, and 197,096 Iowans cast ballots in the two-way GOP primary for U.S. Senate.

In IA-03, five of the six Republican candidates raised enough money to run district-wide campaigns before this year’s primary. Yet only 42,948 Iowans voted in a Congressional district with 160,660 active Republican voters as of June 2014. The seven-way 2010 GOP primary in IA-03 attracted more than 46,000 votes in a district that included only one-fifth of the state’s population at the time and 118,850 active Republican voters. (Iowa lost one of its Congressional districts after the 2010 census).

A similar story took shape in IA-02, where about 30,500 people cast ballots in this year’s GOP primary, compared to nearly 40,000 who voted in the 2010 primary, at a time when the district covered one-fifth of the state’s population rather than one-fourth.

In this thread, please share your thoughts on why Republicans didn’t show up to vote in larger numbers this year. Julie Stauch, a veteran of many Democratic campaigns, speculated that the low turnout “is the cumulative result of every extreme and outrageous statement over the last four years. The current Republicans in Iowa are only talking to those who agree with them 100 percent, which creates a rapidly shrinking base as every outrageous statement drives away a few more people. We can see the effect of this from the loss of 40 percent of the 2010 participants. That’s a serious decline over any range of time, but very bad over four years.”

In a 5-2 split decision, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a District Court judge should determine whether Iowa Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Chris Godfrey can sue Governor Terry Branstad and five other administration officials individually for defamation, extortion and other claims. Follow me after the jump for background, links and details about the opinion.  

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

Gubernatorial candidate Jack Hatch will announce his choice for lieutenant governor sometime before the Iowa Democratic Party’s statewide convention on June 21. He has been vetting and interviewing possible choices for several weeks. According to Hatch,

“I want to choose a running mate that can become governor on Day One, at any time, and that really supplements and adds to my experience as an elected official and a business person,” he said.

He added he would not be “restricted” by demographic concerns such as a candidate’s gender or geographic location – suggesting he would not consider women exclusively.

I think we can all agree that it would be a huge mistake for Hatch to choose a man, when Iowa Democrats are nominating only one woman for statewide office (Sherrie Taha for secretary of agriculture) and only one woman for federal office (Staci Appel in the third Congressional district).

The last five Iowa lieutenant governors have been women: Jo Ann Zimmerman (independently elected), Joy Corning (Terry Branstad’s running mate), Sally Pederson (who served under Tom Vilsack), Patty Judge (Chet Culver’s running mate), and current Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds.

The logical choice for Hatch would be a woman from eastern Iowa, where two-thirds of the state’s voters live. A few days ago, Iowa Senate President Pam Jochum of Dubuque told Erin Murphy that she won’t be the lieutenant governor candidate and “declined to comment on whether Hatch had asked her to run with him.” State Senator Liz Mathis, from the Cedar Rapids metro area, told James Q. Lynch, “I have been approached and encouraged, (but) it is not the right time for me to do that.”

Lynch mentioned two of the unsuccessful candidates in Iowa’s first Congressional district: Cedar Rapids City Council member Monica Vernon, who finished second to Pat Murphy, and State Representative Anesa Kajtazovic of Waterloo, who finished fourth. Vernon would be a better fit for the ticket, according to the criteria Hatch laid out for Lynch: a person “who could actually become governor, someone who does not need to be trained, who has had accomplishments in public life and or business, and who brings a level of depth to a campaign that we would want.” Also, since Vernon was a Republican until about five years ago, she has a potentially compelling message for moderates and swing voters.    

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee included Pat Murphy (IA-01) and Jim Mowrer (IA-04) in the latest group of candidates promoted to the highest level of the “Red to Blue” program. (Staci Appel, the Democratic nominee in the open IA-03, was already promoted in the Red to Blue program earlier this year.) Mowrer is running in a tough district for any Democrat but raised more money than incumbent Steve King for the last three quarters. The DCCC had previously named IA-04 as an “emerging race.”

Murphy just won a five-way primary in the Democratic-leaning first district. His opponent will be Rod Blum. Technically, IA-01 isn’t a “Red to Blue” district because it’s not Republican-held now; it’s the open seat Bruce Braley is vacating in order to run for U.S. Senate.  

Red to Blue candidates are eligible for the highest level of support from the DCCC, although the committee won’t necessarily spend much money in every named district. Last week the DCCC reserved television air time in IA-03 and IA-04, though ad buys are subject to change. Details are after the jump.

To my knowledge, the DCCC hasn’t reserved any air time in IA-01 media markets. I doubt Murphy will need major independent expenditures to beat Blum. By the way, Murphy’s four rivals in the Democratic primary endorsed him in statements released by the Iowa Democratic Party today. I’ve enclosed that press release below as well.

Last week Bleeding Heartland mentioned that two Republicans were actively seeking write-in votes in Iowa House district 40, the Iowa GOP’s most spectacular recruiting failure in a statehouse district this year. Normally, major parties rectify such problems by nominating a candidate during the summer at a special district convention. However, little-known conservative activist Jeremy Freeman started aggressively door-knocking last month to obtain write-in votes (at first using a cowboy card that misspelled Governor Terry Branstad’s name). Due to a little-known feature of Iowa election law and low turnout in Urbandale during the 2012 Republican primary, a write-in candidate could have taken the House district 40 nomination outright with 149 or more votes on June 3.

Local establishment Republicans swung into action behind Ronda Bern. An alert Bleeding Heartland reader shared with me a copy of her direct mail piece, which reached voters shortly before the primary. I got a kick out the fib on the front side: “In order to have a candidate on the ballot in November in HD 40, you must follow the write-in instructions on the back of this card.” Not true, as we’re going to find out during the next couple of months. I’ve posted the mailer after the jump, along with an excerpt from the May 23 press release announcing Bern’s candidacy.

On election night, I saw on the Polk County Auditor’s website that 254 write-in votes were recorded in House district 40, and thought perhaps Bern or Freeman made it over the line. But Bern received just 110 write-in votes, Freeman 103. The rest of the write-ins were for people who received either one or two votes apiece, according to the Polk County elections office. Since no one won the nomination through write-ins, Republicans can schedule a district convention anytime to nominate their candidate. All signs point to Bern. I couldn’t find any record of her donating to Iowa House or Senate candidates in the past, but she and her husband maxed out to Matt Whitaker’s unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign. In 2010, she gave $2,000 to Jim Gibbons’ campaign in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

House district 40 is likely to be a battleground race this fall. It’s among a handful of Democratic-held Iowa House districts that Mitt Romney carried in the last presidential election. The latest figures from the Secretary of State’s Office indicate that the district contains 6,385 active registered Democrats, 7,405 Republicans, and 6,037 no-party voters. Both parties ran television commercials here during the open-seat race in 2012, which Forbes won by 1,069 votes. Many local Republicans supported the Democrat, a local pharmacist, business owner, and longtime Urbandale City Council member. The latest financial reports show that in mid-May, Forbes’ campaign had a little more than $19,000 cash on hand.