Dubuque-based business owner Rod Blum is running an aggressive campaign for the Republican nomination in Iowa’s first Congressional district. Instead of waiting for Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen to announce his expected candidacy, Blum went to Paulsen’s home-town newspaper to denounce him as an “opportunist” and “career politician.”  

With Paulsen out of the picture as a Congressional candidate, speculation has turned to State Representative Walt Rogers of Cedar Falls. (Blum has support from the “Liberty” wing of the Republican base, but many people in the GOP are looking for an alternative to him or Cedar Rapids-based businessman Steve Rathje.) Rogers has said he’s analyzing the IA-01 race. I am seeking comment on his plans and will update this post if I hear back from him.

Meanwhile, Blum’s campaign announced the creation of a Black Hawk County Steering Committee last week. I’ve posted the press release after the jump, including the names of more than two dozen steering committee members. Black Hawk County is the second-largest by population in IA-01, and Rogers would presumably need to do well in his home base to win the GOP nomination. Blum is better-known to Republican activists around the district, having nearly beaten establishment favorite Ben Lange in the 2012 primary to represent IA-01.

UPDATE: Justin Bartlett of Rogers’ Iowa House campaign responded to my request for comment, saying that Rogers “is still strongly considering a Congressional run.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee signaled today that Staci Appel will receive “early financial communications, operational and strategic support” in her campaign against ten-term Republican incumbent Tom Latham. The former state senator is one of nine new candidates added to the DCCC’s “Jumpstart” program for recruits the committee considers “standouts.”

Appel will be heavily favored in the IA-03 Democratic primary against Gabriel De La Cerda. Any Democrat will have an uphill battle against Latham, who tends to outperform the top of the Republican ticket and can raise money easily as a House Appropriations subcommittee chairman. The National Republican Congressional Committee is watching this race closely and has already added Latham to its incumbent protection program.

Any comments about the IA-03 race are welcome in this thread. The latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office indicate that the district contains 157,431 active registered Democrats, 164,289 Republicans, and 157,968 no-party voters.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? I’ve been thinking about math, or rather, the inability to do math. This fascinating article by Robert Charette exposes the “myth” of an alleged shortage of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers. The real problem in the U.S., Charette argues, is “a STEM knowledge shortage.”

To fill that shortage, you don’t necessarily need a college or university degree in a STEM discipline, but you do need to learn those subjects, and learn them well, from childhood until you head off to college or get a job. Improving everyone’s STEM skills would clearly be good for the workforce and for people’s employment prospects, for public policy debates, and for everyday tasks like balancing checkbooks and calculating risks.

Speaking of public policy debates, Congressional Republicans are poised for another showdown over the debt ceiling, armed with phony concern about a “growing” federal deficit. In fact, the deficit is falling at the fastest rate in decades, but very few Americans realize that, and self-appointed fact-checkers bend over backwards not to acknowledge it.

Speaking of the inability to count, Governor Terry Branstad’s administration has touted misleading “job creation” numbers for a long time, but the latest propaganda is “inflated” even if you accept the governor’s “bizarre” practice of counting only jobs created while not subtracting jobs lost.

Politicians aren’t the only ones who let ideology interfere with basic numeracy. This must-read piece by Chris Mooney summarizes findings from a new study: “people who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs.”  Regardless of party affiliation, research subjects with higher math skills were better at solving a problem about the effectiveness of skin cream. When the same numbers were presented as evidence related to handgun bans, liberal Democrats and conservative Republicanss were more likely to arrive at the wrong answer if the correct answer went against their opinions about gun control and crime.

This is an open thread.

Elected officials in both parties welcomed Governor Terry Branstad’s decision this week to bring back Larry Noble as Iowa Department of Public Safety commissioner, but some important questions about Brian London’s disastrous tenure have yet to be answered.

Democrat Brian Meyer and Republican Michael Young were both unanimously chosen as candidates for the October 22 special election in Iowa House district 33 during nominating conventions on September 4. Background on Des Moines City Council member Meyer is after the jump; he became the consensus candidate in this heavily Democratic district two weeks ago, preventing a potentially messy nominating process.

Young is a Marine Corps veteran who has lived on the south side of Des Moines for most of his life. He serves on the city’s Access Advisory Board, dealing with implementation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

It would be a monumental upset for Meyer to lose this election. Not only do Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 5,000 in House district 33, south side voters have elected Meyer to the Des Moines City Council twice. Democrats would be wise to take nothing for granted in a low-turnout special, though.

This week’s featured Iowa native is one of the tallest of the tallgrass prairie plants. Like ox-eye, sawtooth sunflower, common sunflower, and its close relative cup plant, compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) is a member of the aster family with yellow flower heads. Its great height makes it easy to distinguish from the other yellow asters. Generations of people have used the plant to help find their way. Several photos of compass plant are after the jump.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. Happy new year to the members of the Bleeding Heartland community who celebrate Rosh Hashanah.  

Governor Terry Branstad’s office announced today that the governor’s legal counsel Brenna Findley will serve as interim chief of staff until outgoing chief of staff Jeff Boeyink’s replacement is found. Having run Representative Steve King’s office in Washington for years, Findley is better-qualified for the chief of staff position than she is for her current job. She worked as an attorney only briefly after finishing law school and did not maintain an active license to practice in Iowa during her years on King’s staff. Branstad had to hire outside counsel to represent him in a high-profile lawsuit (at significant taxpayer expense), because Findley is a co-defendant in that case, accused of trying to strong-arm Iowa Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Chris Godfrey in 2011.

Branstad tapped Findley to be his legal counsel shortly after she lost the 2010 election for Iowa attorney general. He had promoted her candidacy heavily and even appeared in one of her campaign commercials, which he did not do for other GOP statewide candidates.

According to the press release I’ve posted after the jump, Branstad will name a permanent replacement for Boeyink sometime after September 18, when the governor is scheduled to return to Iowa from a trade mission to India and Japan.  

Governor Terry Branstad accepted Brian London’s resignation last night as head of the Iowa Department of Public Safety. This morning the governor announced that he is reappointing former State Senator Larry Noble to the position. Noble served as Department of Public Safety commissioner from January 2011 until June 2012.

Follow me after the jump for background on London’s short and rocky tenure.

Several members of Congress from Iowa spoke out about potential U.S. intervention in Syria last week, and Bleeding Heartland sought comment on the issue from the declared Congressional candidates. News clips and the statements I’ve received so far are after the jump. I will update this post as needed. Note: most of the comments enclosed below came before President Barack Obama confirmed on August 31 that he will seek Congressional authorization for a strike on Syria. (He never sought approval for military action in Libya two years ago and he believes he has “the authority to carry out this military action [in Syria] without specific congressional authorization”.)

I am 100 percent convinced that both the House and the Senate will approve the use of force in Syria, perhaps after revising the administration’s first draft, which “is not particularly constrained.”  

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I am no expert on foreign policy or the Middle East, but my gut feeling is that military intervention will not accomplish anything good in Syria. It’s a “tall order” to “mount a limited, targeted, and effective strike that will indeed deter Assad without drawing the United States deeper into the ongoing civil war, causing unacceptable unintended consequences.” By the way, former State Department official William Polk wrote the most interesting analysis I’ve read so far about the situation there.  

Happy Labor Day! The U.S. Department of Labor provides a short history of the holiday here. A couple of years ago, Bleeding Heartland readers discussed favorite labor-themed music, inspired by Peter Rothberg’s top ten Labor Day song list. Here are three dozen reasons Americans should be grateful to the organized labor movement. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from President Abraham Lincoln’s December 1861 State of the Union address.

Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer for many people. The heat wave smothering Iowa for the last week finally broke, so I hope everyone is able to enjoy some time outside today.

This is an open thread. The big news of the weekend is that President Barack Obama will seek Congressional authorization for military intervention in Syria. A post is in progress about Iowa political views on how and whether the U.S. should get involved militarily there.

The national unemployment rate is down somewhat this year, but our economy would be a lot healthier if we hadn’t sacrificed so much job-creating potential on the altar of federal budget austerity. We should have been taking advantage of low interest rates to invest in high-speed rail, clean water infrastructure and other long-lasting public works. But those efforts have been a dead letter since Republicans took back the U.S. House. The sequester set in motion by the 2011 clash over raising the debt ceiling is not only affecting federal employees directly, but also many people who rely on federal programs. Even some of the fact-checkers have bought into the “growing deficit” propaganda, despite the fact that the deficit is falling faster than it has in decades.

State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald confirmed today that he has decided against running for governor next year.

“Democrats have three good candidates out there and I look to running on the ticket with any one of them,”  Fitzgerald told Radio Iowa.

He says there wasn’t any one particular thing that made him decide not to run for governor. “I think it was a combination of things and it boiled down to I can serve the State of Iowa better as state treasurer,” he says.

Fitzgerald is the country’s longest-serving state treasurer and will be heavily favored for re-election in 2014. He defeated Republican challenger Dave Jamison by approximately 53 percent to 47 percent despite the massive GOP landslide of 2010.

State Representative Tyler Olson and former State Representative Bob Krause are already running for governor, and State Senator Jack Hatch plans to kick off his gubernatorial campaign with events in several cities on September 17.

Governor Terry Branstad will be shopping for a new chief of staff for the first time since the 1990s. Jeff Boeyink announced today that he is stepping down for an unspecified private sector job, effective September 6. After many years with the conservative advocacy group Iowans for Tax Relief, Boeyink briefly served as executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa before leaving to manage Branstad’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. After the 2010 election, Boeyink co-chaired the governor’s transition team, and he has served as chief of staff ever since.

I’ve posted the press release from the governor’s office after the jump. Note the careful mention of Branstad’s “potential” re-election bid, and the conspicuous effort to mention Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds’ name and title as often as possible. The governor’s re-election campaign has engaged in similar branding of the Branstad-Reynolds “team,” fueling rumors in some circles that Reynolds will become the last-minute gubernatorial candidate next spring.

The Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs listed some possible successors to Boeyink. The governor’s legal counsel Brenna Findley used to serve as Representative Steve King’s chief of staff before she ran for Iowa attorney general in 2010. David Roederer has long been in Branstad’s inner circle and now heads the Iowa Department of Management. Former Iowa GOP staffer Chad Olsen is currently chief of staff for Secretary of State Matt Schultz. Michael Bousselot has been advising Branstad on health care and other issues. Sara Craig was state director of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in Iowa before the 2012 caucuses. Matt Hinch has held many political jobs and is now senior vice president of government relations and public policy for the Greater Des Moines Partnership. I can’t imagine that Doug Gross would want to go back to the job he held nearly 30 years ago. Former Iowa GOP Chair Matt Strawn is busy with his new consulting and lobbying firm.

Congress routinely exempts itself from federal regulations, but I didn’t realize until reading Stephen Lurie’s latest piece for The Atlantic that only 35 of the 100 U.S. senators pay their interns. Neither Senator Tom Harkin nor Senator Chuck Grassley offers any financial compensation or stipend to interns.  

The Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Treasury confirmed today that legally married same-sex couples will be able to file the same kind of federal tax returns (jointly or separately) as married heterosexual couples. The move was widely anticipated after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key provisions in the Defense of Marriage Act in June, but Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cleared up one important question today:

“Today’s ruling provides certainty and clear, coherent tax filing guidance for all legally married same-sex couples nationwide. It provides access to benefits, responsibilities and protections under federal tax law that all Americans deserve,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in a statement.

“This ruling also assures legally married same-sex couples that they can move freely throughout the country knowing that their federal filing status will not change.”

In other words, federal authorities will recognize the marriages of same-sex couples wed in Iowa since April 2009, even if those couples now live in a state that does not recognize their marriage. Donna Red Wing, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group One Iowa, released a statement hailing “a good day for same-sex couples and their families” and thanking the administration for “moving quickly and judiciously.”

Despite growing calls for him to resign, Republican State Senator Kent Sorenson signaled yesterday that he will fight a new ethics complaint based on alleged payments from Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. The Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs reported that Peter Waldron plans to file a second complaint with the Iowa Senate, claiming that Sorenson worked with Paul campaign officials “to solicit and conceal compensation” for himself and others. Waldron is a political consultant who worked for Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign. Earlier this year, he filed complaints against Sorenson with the Federal Election Commission as well as with the Iowa Senate.

Documents and audio recordings published by The Iowa Republican blog indicate that intermediaries negotiated with Paul campaign officials on Sorenson’s behalf, and that Sorenson later received a big check from a Paul campaign manager. But Sorenson’s attorney Ted Sporer told the Des Moines Register that the charges are “gibberish.”

Sporer confirmed [Dimitri] Kesari, against Sorenson’s wishes, surreptitiously handed Sorenson’s wife a check drawn on a retail business’s bank account. But the check is still in Sorenson’s possession, he said.

“It has never been cashed,” Sporer said. “Obviously we can show it’s never been cashed. And an uncashed check is simply an autograph.”

Three weeks ago, Sporer told a Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter, “There was no money that changed hands. There was no direct or indirect payment from the Ron Paul campaign.”

The Iowa Senate Ethics Committee won’t be able to punt this time, but it may take months to investigate the new charges. Meanwhile, I haven’t heard of anyone planning to challenge Sorenson in the GOP primary to represent Iowa Senate district 13. If I were a Republican in Warren or Madison County, I’d have started looking for a more viable candidate months ago.

Today’s wildflower offers some of the most striking colors on the tallgrass prairie in late summer. Blazing star, also known as button snakeroot, gay-feather, or prairie blazing star, is closely related to the rough blazing star that Bleeding Heartland featured last year.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Fifty years ago today, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his most famous speech to a crowd of at least 250,000 people during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After the jump I’ve posted the “I Have a Dream” video and other links related to this moment in American history.

Former Republican Party of Iowa Chair Matt Strawn’s name came up earlier this year as a possible candidate for U.S. Senate, but don’t expect him to be a serious contender for any statewide office in the foreseeable future. News broke yesterday that the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois has hired the firm Strawn and two prominent Illinois Republicans founded earlier this year to to lobby GOP lawmakers in Illinois to support a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. This spring, Illinois appeared to be on the brink of adopting a marriage equality bill, but supporters never brought it up for a vote in the state House. They plan to try again when the legislature returns in November. Although Strawn’s partner Pat Brady, the former Illinois GOP chair, will do the heavy lifting on this job, social conservatives who dominate the Iowa GOP’s activist base will surely hold a grudge against Strawn.

I got a kick out of Craig Robinson’s rewriting of history yesterday, saying Strawn “abdicated” the Iowa GOP chairmanship, but that “some Iowa Republicans still consider him to have been a good chairman, especially in comparison to his successor.” Robinson was the loudest voice demanding Strawn’s resignation in the wake of the 2012 Iowa caucus vote-counting fiasco. Be careful what you wish for.

Governor Terry Branstad doesn’t care for our state’s merit selection process for nominating judges. He would prefer to nominate whomever he wants, subject to confirmation by the Iowa Senate, instead of being forced to appoint judges from short lists drawn up by the State Judicial Nominating Commission. But changing that procedure would require amending the Iowa Constitution, a lengthy process for which there is no support in the Iowa Senate. Branstad has moved to “correct” an imbalance by appointing Republicans to the State Judicial Nominating Commission. (Conservatives have long charged that Democrats came to dominate that commission under Governors Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver.)

Putting conservatives in a position to select judges is one thing, but is it too much to ask the governor to pick people with a clue about separation of church and state? Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reports today that Scott Bailey, a 2012 Branstad appointee, asked Assistant Iowa Attorney General Jeanie Vaudt during a public interview, “Did you make covenant vows with your husband, and do you feel you have or that you are breaking those in this situation?” Excerpts from Foley’s report are after the jump.

Judicial Nominating Commission members aren’t supposed to inquire about applicants’ marital status at all, let alone ask whether they are adhering to a “covenant” marriage. Vaudt was one of 22 applicants for a vacancy on the Iowa Court of Appeals and made the short list of three forwarded to Branstad last week.

Traditionally, the governor’s appointees to judicial nominating commissions are non-lawyers. Branstad ought to insist on non-lawyers with some clue about how the judicial system works. Red flags were there from the beginning with Bailey, a leader of the “Christ-centered” Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators who admitted on his own application that he would like “to help identify qualified candidates who will judge without partiality and uphold both civil and natural law.” Unfortunately, Bailey has been confirmed to serve on this commission through the end of January 2018. Here’s hoping that Branstad will be more discerning next time he fills a vacancy on the commission.

UPDATE: Radio Iowa posted the audio of Vaudt’s opening statement and Bailey’s question. Bailey commented to O.Kay Henderson, “I was happy that she and her husband were unified on this and it wasn’t causing a disturbance to their marriage.” Not a factor he needs to consider.