As Republicans in Iowa and across the country ponder how to improve their chances in the next presidential election, bashing the Ames straw poll is all the rage.

Most strategists and politicians recognize that the Republican Party of Iowa needs to dump or radically reinvent its largest pre-caucus fundraiser, traditionally held during the August before the Iowa caucuses. But a few people can’t read the writing on the wall.

Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen has announced who will lead all the standing and appropriations committees for the 2013 legislative session. Below I’ve posted the full list of Republican House leaders and committee chairs. Where relevant, I’ve noted changes since last year.

Democrats will hold a slim majority in the next Iowa Senate: most likely 26-24 or 27-23, depending on the outcome of one recount and one special election in December. But the experience gap between the two parties’ caucuses is wider than I’ve ever seen, and perhaps unprecedented.

Only five Republicans who will serve in the next Iowa Senate have more than four years experience in the legislature’s upper chamber. Most of the old hands aren’t on the GOP leadership team. By comparison, eighteen Senate Democrats have held that office for more than four years. Thirteen of those have served in the upper chamber for at least a decade.

Many newcomers to the Iowa Senate have helped oversee public-sector budgets and programs as county supervisors, mayors, or members of city councils and school boards. Nevertheless, new legislators have a steep learning curve because state government is more complex than local government, and Iowa House and Senate members consider a wider range of issues during a typical legislative session. Whereas eleven Senate Democrats previously served in the Iowa House, only three sitting Republicans came to the Senate with that background. If the GOP had gained control of the upper chamber in this year’s elections, they would have been forced to put quite a few rookies in charge of standing committees.

After the jump I’ve posted details on the tenure of all incoming Iowa Senate members, indicating members of each party’s leadership team and past service in the Iowa House.

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? I hope you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday and will have time to relax this weekend.

For those who cooked a big meal yesterday, here are four ways to make soup from Thanksgiving leftovers (two using leftovers from roasting a turkey, one using sweet potatoes, and one using mashed potatoes). You can mix extra cranberry sauce with diced apples to make a pie.

Share your own favorite recipes or comments on any topic below. This is an open thread.

The Iowa PIRG Education Fund released its 27th annual report on dangerous toys today. The five most common hazards in products marketed for children are: lead, phthalates, magnets, choking hazards, and noisy toys.

You can download the full text of “Trouble in Toyland” here (pdf). I’ve posted the executive summary after the jump. U.S. PIRG has created this toy safety interactive website, which consumers can access on smartphones.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida addressed a full house last Saturday while helping Governor Terry Branstad raise about a half-million dollars for his re-election campaign. Since Rubio is a likely presidential candidate  

A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew substantially during the last decade, both in Iowa and across the country. The authors used “the latest Census Bureau data to measure post-federal-tax changes in real incomes among high-, middle- and low-income households in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia at four points: the late 1970s, the late 1990s, and the mid-2000s – similar points (“peaks”) in the business cycle – and the late 2000s.”

Click here to read the full report and view data from each state. After the jump I’ve posted the key findings about income inequality in Iowa, where the average incomes among the richest 5 percent of households are 3.5 times as large as the average incomes in the middle 20 percent and 8.7 times as large as average incomes in the bottom 20 percent of households. Speaking to the Public News Service, Elizabeth McNichol of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained why growing income inequality is bad for the economy as a whole.

Iowa officials formally unveiled a new strategy yesterday “to assess and reduce nutrients delivered to Iowa waterways and the Gulf of Mexico.” As the Des Moines Register’s Perry Beeman reported last week, the policy related to farm runoff was drafted without input from key Iowa Department of National Resources personnel. Instead, it closely resembles positions advocated by the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

The best time to roll out a policy that goes against the public interest is when few people are paying attention. Citizens will have only 45 days to comment on the new Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. Most of the comment period falls during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s holiday season. More details are below.

Leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People urged Governor Terry Branstad yesterday to change Iowa’s extreme restrictions on voting rights for ex-felons and to address the huge race disparity in Iowa incarceration rates.

More than 100 scientists and researchers from 27 Iowa colleges and universities have signed a new statement on the relationship between climate change and weather extremes like the drought of 2012.

Iowa Senate Democrats caucused at the state capitol yesterday to choose their leaders for the next legislative session. As expected, Mike Gronstal remains Senate majority leader. The big change will be Pam Jochum of Dubuque as Senate president to replace Jack Kibbie, who retired last year.

After the jump I’ve enclosed background on Jochum and details on the rest of the Iowa Senate leadership team. Republicans elected leaders of their Senate caucus last week. Both parties will announce committee assignments before the end of the year.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? Many Republicans have been pondering what their party needs to do to win the next presidential election.

Yesterday Local 61 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) released its first proposal for the next two-year contract covering roughly 20,000 state employees in Iowa. I’ll be shocked if these contract talks don’t end up in arbitration.

Yesterday Democratic candidate Susan Judkins formally requested a recount in Iowa House district 43, where she trails Republican incumbent Chris Hagenow by 22 votes out of 17,477 cast (approximately 0.1 percent). The recount will take place sometime before December 3.

Unofficial vote counts for Hagenow and Judkins in each of the 13 precincts are available on the Polk County Auditor’s website. Judkins carried the three Windsor Heights precincts. Each candidate won three West Des Moines precincts and two Clive precincts.

If Hagenow’s lead holds, Republicans will have a 53 to 47 majority in the Iowa House for the next two years.

Governor Terry Branstad’s plan to transfer water quality programs from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship stalled during the 2011 legislative session. However, state officials appear to be letting corporate agriculture interests control Iowa’s water pollution rules anyway.

Policy statements from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation were lifted almost verbatim for a new state plan to reduce runoff from farms, according to an exclusive report by Perry Beeman in today’s Des Moines Register.

He should have quit while he was behind, but Mitt Romney stepped in it again this week during a conference call with major Republican donors.

Senator Tom Harkin and several other Congressional Democrats spoke out today against cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of any broad deficit-reduction agreement.

After another disappointing election cycle, Iowa Senate Republicans chose Bill Dix to be the new leader of their caucus yesterday.

Democratic candidate John Beard will ask for a recount in Iowa Senate district 28, where he trails Republican Mike Breitbach by 36 votes after the official canvass this week.

Senator Tom Harkin has recommended federal public defender Jane Kelly and Iowa Court of Appeals Judge Mary Tabor to President Barack Obama as he considers a successor to Judge Michael Melloy on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Melloy plans to retire, effective January 30.

Background on Kelly and Tabor are after the jump. Harkin also included Tabor on the short list of candidates to fill the last vacancy on the federal bench from Iowa. Obama nominated Stephanie Rose for that judgeship in the Southern District. Rose formally began her service yesterday.