Senator Tom Harkin promised Iowa Democrats Saturday night that the U.S. Senate would soon approve the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to protect the workplace rights of LGBT Americans. Today a fifth Republican senator indicated that he will vote for the ENDA. Those five plus the 55 members of the Democratic caucus (including newly sworn-in Cory Booker of New Jersey) will give supporters the 60 votes needed to break the inevitable Republican filibuster. President Barack Obama has called on Congress to pass the law.

Passing ENDA was a priority for Senator Ted Kennedy, the longtime chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pension committee Harkin now leads. In 1996, an earlier version of this legislation fell just short of passage on the Senate floor. Harkin voted yes, while Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley voted no. In recent years, most Congressional Democrats have supported a version of ENDA that protects transgender employees as well as gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. Such a bill passed the U.S. House in 2007 but died in the Senate.

More details on the current bill’s provisions are after the jump. House Speaker John Boehner opposes ENDA and would be unlikely to put it to a vote in the lower chamber.

UPDATE: On Monday night the Senate approved a motion to proceed with debating the bill by 61 votes to 30 (roll call). Grassley was one of the 30 Republicans who attempted to filibuster. After the jump I’ve posted a video of Harkin’s floor statement supporting ENDA, which he called “another step in the direction of opening America up and making our society more inclusive rather than exclusive.”

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

The Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner was an entertaining affair. I’ve posted some highlights after the jump. The “news” of the evening was Senator Chuck Schumer of New York endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, but for my money that wasn’t the most interesting part of his speech.

Jon Neiderbach announced this morning that he will seek the Democratic nomination for Iowa state auditor in 2014. An attorney, Neiderbach served a term on the Des Moines School Board and worked in state government for many years, first at the Legislative Fiscal Bureau and later at the Iowa Department of Human Services. I’ve posted more background on Neiderbach after the jump, along with the introductory post from his campaign website, Realtaxpayerswatchdog.com. In that post, he praised the work of longtime Republican State Auditor Richard Johnson but argued that “recent State Auditors have violated our trust.”

They have myopia, looking only at what is close to them: how money is handled. Of course money handling is very important, but they ignore the larger and even more critical issues the State Auditor is required by law to address.

Our recent State Auditors have not examined the quality of management, the efficiency of operations, or the effectiveness of programs. They have allowed theft and fraud to go undiscovered for years, using clearly inadequate auditing procedures. And to make matters worse, recent State Auditors have gotten involved in politics: they have become spokespersons for Governor Branstad’s policies and rubber stamps for the political cronies he has appointed.

Neiderbach is referring to Johnson’s successor David Vaudt, who served as state auditor from 2003 through April of this year, and to Mary Mosiman, whom Governor Terry Branstad appointed after Vaudt resigned.

Neiderbach will discuss his campaign to become “Iowa’s Chief Accountability Officer” with people at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Des Moines on November 2. He is encouraging voters to call him at (515) 984-0021 or contact him via e-mail: realtaxpayerswatchdog AT gmail.com.

I am not aware of other candidates planning to challenge Mosiman next year. In 2010, Jon Murphy did not enter the race against Vaudt until after the Democratic primary.  

This summer, Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate reached an informal deal to allow presidential nominees to be confirmed more smoothly without any new limits on the minority’s filibuster powers. The deal held for a while, allowing a bunch of stalled nominations to move forward. But filibuster reform may be back on the agenda soon, because today Republicans including Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley blocked the confirmation of two more presidential nominees today: Patricia Millett for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Representative Mel Watt to be the Federal Housing Finance Agency director. All the Senate Democrats, including Iowa’s Tom Harkin, voted for the cloture motions on the Millett and Watt nominations.

Millett is highly qualified for the judgeship, so instead of pretending to have a substantive case against her, Grassley says the D.C. Circuit doesn’t have a large enough caseload to justify more judges. That didn’t stop him or other Senate Republicans from voting to confirm all of President George W. Bush’s nominees for that court, as Judith E. Schaeffer explained in this excellent background piece on the controversy. Other analysts have discussed the many problems judicial vacancies are creating in the federal court system. As the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley helps set the tone for the GOP on these confirmations.

After the jump I’ve posted Grassley’s Senate floor statement on the Millett nomination, comments from the Iowa Fair Courts Coalition, and an excerpt from Schaeffer’s post on Grassley and the D.C. Circuit. I haven’t seen any comment from Grassley on the Watt nomination but will update this post if he explains why he opposed him. According to Peter Schroeder of The Hill, “GOP lawmakers argued Watt lacked the experience to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Yesterday was a big news day for two Democratic candidates seeking to unseat Governor Terry Branstad. Iowa’s largest labor union endorsed State Representative Tyler Olson, while State Senator Jack Hatch released a major tax reform proposal. Details are after the jump.

UPDATE: Added excerpts from Danny Homan’s November 2 guest editorial for the Des Moines Register below.  

Happy Halloween to the Bleeding Heartland community! I don’t have any scary nature photos to share. Instead, to mark the holiday, this week’s featured Iowa wildflower is a mystery I haven’t been able to identify. I hope a native plants expert will be able to tell me which kind of blazing star (Liatris) it is. Some have suggested rough blazing star (Liatris aspera) or dotted blazing star (Liatris punctata). I thought rough blazing star looked more like these plants, but I’m not sure.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Today members of the U.S. House and Senate began conference committee negotiations on the farm bill. The last five-year farm bill expired in 2012, and the latest extension of most federal farm programs (except for some related to conservation and sustainable agriculture) lapsed on September 30. Two Iowans are on the 41-member conference committee: Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and Republican Representative Steve King (IA-04).

One issue is likely to dominate the Congressional talks: funding levels for nutrition programs, especially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. This summer, both Harkin and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley voted for the Senate farm bill, which cut SNAP by about $4 billion over 10 years. Iowa’s four U.S. House members split along party lines when the House approved a Republican bill with $39 billion in cuts over the same time frame. Keep in mind that regardless of what happens in the farm bill talks, all SNAP recipients–including an estimated 1 million veterans and approximately 421,000 Iowans–will see their food assistance reduced as of November 1. Click here for a detailed report on those cuts, which will occur as extra funding from the 2009 federal stimulus bill runs out.

After the jump I’ve posted the latest comments about the farm bill from Iowa politicians.

UPDATE: Added King’s opening statement from the conference committee meeting below.

SECOND UPDATE: Added new comments from Harkin.

If President Barack Obama said it once, he said it a hundred times: Americans who liked their health insurance would be able to keep their health insurance. Now, on top of a website that still doesn’t work properly, the president is dealing with the fallout from this reality: millions of Americans will not be able to renew their current health insurance policies.

In order to win an Iowa Senate majority, Republicans need to defeat at least one Democratic incumbent next November. One of the likely targets, three-term Senator Daryl Beall, got his first Republican challenger earlier this month in Iowa Senate district 5.

Follow me after the jump for my first take on Tim Kraayenbrink’s chances against Beall. I’ve enclosed a district map and the latest voter registration numbers, along with background on both candidates.

Via the On Brief blog, I saw that yesterday the Iowa Supreme Court made public proposed changes to rules about electronic media coverage of its proceedings. I’ve posted the full press release after the jump.

The new rules are based on recommendations by a Committee on Expanded Media Coverage, appointed last December. Iowa Supreme Court Justice Bruce Zager chaired that committee, which included journalists as well as court officials and submitted its final report in August 2013. You can view the proposed rule changes here; words to be removed are crossed out, while suggested new language is underlined. Instructions on submitting a public comment on or before January 6, 2014, are here. People may submit their comments in person, by regular mail, or via e-mail.  

Judging from the reception he got in Des Moines and Le Mars on Friday and Saturday, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is still a hot property for conservative Iowa Republicans. I’ve posted links and highlights about Cruz’s latest visit after the jump. Any comments about his impact on Iowa politics or his potential as a presidential candidate are welcome in this thread.

I see Cruz as a showboater who will peak long before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, as people tire of his over-promising. Granted, many Republicans savor the fantasy that everything would go their way if the evil establishment only listened to “constitutional conservatives” like Cruz. Nevertheless, I expect Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will have a winning message during the next caucus campaign. He can claim to have delivered on more conservative dreams than members of Congress like Cruz, Senator Rand Paul, or Representative Paul Ryan. I would love to be wrong and see the GOP nominate Cruz for president, though.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread. I’ve been thinking about Iowa icons. A separate post is in progress summing up “lowlights” from U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s two-day visit.

On Friday my Facebook and Twitter feeds were full of tributes to Peggy Whitworth, who lost her battle with cancer at the age of 71. She was an influential activist and mentor to countless Democrats in Linn County and statewide. The Iowa Democratic Party gave Whitworth a Hall of Fame award two years ago, and she continued to take leadership volunteer roles for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and Brad Anderson’s bid to become Iowa’s secretary of state.

Former U.S. Representative Ed Mezvinsky recently donated his papers to Iowa State University. The collection looks extremely interesting, even if some of the House Judiciary Committee papers related to the Watergate investigation will be sealed until August 2024. A native of Ames, Mezvinsky narrowly lost his first Congressional campaign in 1970 but was elected to represent Iowa’s first district in 1972. (This Mezvinsky television commercial, playing on his difficult-to-pronounce name, is a classic.) He served two terms in the House before losing to Jim Leach in 1976. The boxes donated to Iowa State include material from Mezvinsky’s various political campaigns in Iowa and later in Pennsylvania, but not material related to fraud and other crimes for which he served five years in federal prison.

In all the years I watched “The Simpsons,” I never knew that Marcia Wallace, the voice of Mrs. Krabappel, was born and raised in Creston, Iowa. She died recently at the age of 70, and “The Simpsons” will retire her character. During the 1970s, Wallace played Bob receptionist on “The Bob Newhart Show”–an underrated sitcom in my opinion.

Johnny Carson grew up in Nebraska, but he was born in a small house in Corning, Iowa (Adams County). Locals recently completed a restoration of the house, where some mementos of the longtime “Tonight Show” host are on display.

I highly recommend a visit to the restored Orpheum Theater in Marshalltown, where you can find memorabilia from Marshalltown native Jean Seberg, a famous actress from the 1950s to the 1970s. A new documentary about Seberg’s life will premiere at the Third Annual Jean Seberg International Film Festival, which will take place at the Orpheum from November 15 to 17.  

State Representative Anesa Kajtazovic received her first labor endorsement this week in the Democratic primary to represent Iowa’s first Congressional district. The United Food and Commercial Workers Locals 431 and 1149 decided to support Kajtazovic because “she understands better than anyone the concerns of Iowa’s working families,” and “She shares the experience of arriving to Iowa as an immigrant with many of our members.” According to the press release I’ve posted after the jump, the UFCW Locals 431 and 1149 represent more than 2,500 workers living in IA-01.

Former Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy had seven organized labor endorsements going into this week. Today his campaign announced that Murphy has the backing of five more labor unions: the Iowa State Association of Letter Carriers, the Iowa Statewide American Postal Workers Union, Iowa Statewide United Transportation Union (SMART Union), Statewide Ironworkers Labor Union Local 89, and the Teamsters Local 90. I enclose the full press release below. It does not mention the number of members who live in IA-01.

The Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Building Trades Council endorsed Cedar Rapids City Council member Monica Vernon last month. The other two Democrats running in IA-01 are Dave O’Brien, who supports organized labor’s agenda, and Swati Dandekar, who was not known as a pro-labor member of the Iowa House and Senate.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced yesterday that her office and “the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) have jointly secured a $1 million civil settlement against two out-of-state organizations for violations of the California Political Reform Act.” In addition, a political group registered in Iowa called the “California Future Fund for Free Markets” is supposed to to pay a $4.08-million penalty to the state of California. The 501(c)4 group American Future Fund, run by longtime Iowa Republican operative Nick Ryan, was the sole source of funding for the now-defunct California Future Fund for Free Markets.

Follow me after the jump for details on the scheme to evade California’s campaign finance disclosure rules last year.

Via Radio Iowa I saw that a report just came out about spending in judicial elections across the country in 2011 and 2012. Researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and the nonpartisan group Justice at Stake collaborated on the report, which you can download here (pdf). Excerpt:

Spending in the Iowa Supreme Court retention election totaled more than $833,000 in 2012, down from the $1.4 million spent in 2010 but still substantial in a state with no recorded spending on high court races during the previous decade. Anti-retention groups spent $466,000 on the 2012 election, including $318,000 by Iowans For Freedom and $148,000 by the National Organization for Marriage. Both groups ran television ads. Pro-retention groups spent $367,000, including $320,000 by Justice Not Politics, $37,000 by the Iowa State Bar and roughly $5,000 each by Progress Iowa and the Human Rights Campaign.

Major donors to Iowans for Freedom (a campaign group fronted by Bob Vander Plaats) included “CitizenLink, Patriot Voices, The Family Leader, the National Organization for Marriage, and CatholicVote.” Of the $466,000 spent on the “No Wiggins” campaign, an estimated $163,600 went toward broadcasting two television commercials. Bleeding Heartland posted videos and transcripts of those ads here and here.

Justice David Wiggins didn’t create a campaign fund or raise money directly. The largest donor to Justice Not Politics Action was the LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, which gave $135,000. That’s more than a third of the total funds spent campaigning for retention.

Iowa voters retained Wiggins by a margin of 680,284 votes to 567,024 (about 54.5 percent to 45.5 percent). Whereas just ten counties had voted to retain the three Iowa Supreme Court justices up for retention in 2010, 36 counties voted yes on Wiggins in 2012.

The wildflower season is winding down, but I plan to do a few more of these posts before putting the series on break for the winter.

Most Iowa wildflowers have gone to seed, but you may still find some goldenrods or asters blooming on prairies or at woodland edges. After the jump I’ve enclosed several photos of a striking yellow aster I found recently along the Meredith bike trail between Gray’s Lake and downtown Des Moines.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

The Branstad administration has offered no response more than one month after the Iowa Accountability Project submitted a request for open records pertaining to the 'gross over the month employment gains' statistic invented by Iowa Workforce Development. Progress Iowa issued the request as part of the project, to determine how the newly invented number is calculated, as it is not recognized by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The request was made thirty four days ago, on September 19th. According to the Iowa Open Records Law, delay in permitting examination and copying of public records 'shall not exceed' 20 calendar days and ordinarily 'should not exceed' 10 business days. A copy of the request letter can be found by clicking here.

For the first time yesterday, I heard radio commercials supporting Chris Diebel’s campaign for the at-large Des Moines City Council seat. The National Association of Realtors Fund paid for the radio spots. I managed to tape one this morning and have posted the transcript after the jump, along with a comment from Diebel.

Both Diebel and Skip Moore, the incumbent he is challenging, are Democrats, but the realtors’ ad seems designed to appeal to Republican-leaning voters. The election will take place on November 5.

During the past ten days, two people who are well-known to Iowa Democrats have endorsed Anesa Kajtazovic for Congress: Tim Dwight and Zach Wahls. A former Iowa Hawkeyes star and successful professional football player, Dwight now runs the solar energy company iPowerCorp and is president of the Iowa Solar/Small Wind Energy Trade Association. In recent years he has lobbied state legislators to help make Iowa a leader in “distributed generation, which is solar, small wind and also solar thermal.” Distributed generation holds many economic benefits beyond what Iowa gains through large wind farms.

Since her first election to the Iowa House in 2010, Kajtazovic has recognized the huge potential for solar energy in Iowa. She has supported several bills to promote solar power, including new state tax credits enacted in 2012. That law reduced the payback time for small solar power systems installed in Iowa homes and businesses. Dwight described her as “a true champion for solar.” After the jump I’ve posted the press releases announcing support from Dwight and Wahls and a video of Kajtazovic discussing her work on solar power.

Wahls gained national fame as an advocate for marriage equality when a video of his comments to an Iowa House hearing went viral in 2011. He was a speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. John Deeth was to my knowledge the first to report that Wahls was supporting Kajtazovic for Congress. On Monday, her campaign confirmed that endorsement.

Underscoring the candidate’s appeal to a younger generation, Dwight spoke of Kajtazovic’s “fresh ideas,” while Wahls said “it’s time for fresh, new voices” in Washington. Kajtazovic is the only candidate under age 50 in the five-way Democratic primary to represent IA-01. In the press release announcing Wahls’ support, she condemned former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum’s views on equality for LGBT couples. Santorum recently endorsed State Representative Walt Rogers, a Republican candidate in IA-01. Whatever other issues may divide Democratic voters in this district, you can bet that all of them dislike Santorum’s politics.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

Maria Bribriesco announced today that she is running for Iowa Senate district 47 in 2014. The district covers parts of Scott County, including Bettendorf, some neighborhoods in Davenport, and several small towns. Before retiring, Bribriesco was a longtime civilian attorney with the U.S. Army at Rock Island Arsenal, a major employer in the Quad Cities. I’ve posted her campaign press release containing more biographical information after the jump, along with a detailed map of the district. In 2012, Bribriesco unsuccessfully ran against State Representative Linda Miller in House district 94, which covers half of Senate district 47.

The Republican incumbent in Senate district 47 is Roby Smith, who defeated the previous senator Dave Hartsuch in the 2010 GOP primary. Although I haven’t heard anything official and Smith hasn’t updated his campaign website, I assume he will seek re-election next year. I enclosed the bio from his 2010 campaign website below. Smith is an assistant Senate minority leader and serves on the Senate committees on Appropriations, Ways & Means, State Government, and Education (where he is the ranking member).

I consider Smith favored to hold Senate district 47, which contained 13,959 registered Democrats, 15,667 Republicans, and 19,813 no-party voters as of October 2013. However, last year Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in Senate district 47 by 50.65 percent to 48.31 percent.