Senator Chuck Grassley will become ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, Ed Tibbetts of the Quad-City Times reported on November 11. Grassley and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama made a deal in May 2009 to let Sessions be ranking member on Judiciary temporarily. The position became open when Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic Party, but Grassley (who is senior to Sessions) wanted to remain the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee through the end of 2010. Sessions is now expected to become ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. The GOP Senate caucus term-limits its committee chairs and ranking members.

Speaking to Tibbetts on November 10, Grassley said,

“I would hope to be doing roughly the same things on health care in the Judiciary Committee as I did in the Finance Committee,” he said.

Grassley has been a tenacious investigator of the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry. He also said he would remain active overseeing nonprofits.

Grassley said fraud-related issues are squarely within the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction.

Also, the New Hartford Republican has a history of casting a wide net in his oversight activities. In the 1980s, Grassley targeted waste in the Pentagon budget while he sat on a subcommittee of Judiciary, not a Defense-related panel.

In his new role, Grassley will be a more prominent figure in battles over confirming President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees as well.

Over in the U.S. House, Steve King (IA-05) is set to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration. He has been ranking member on that subcommittee since 2007. John Deeth notes that a Hispanic Republican group based in the southwest is objecting due to King’s use of “defamatory language that is extremely offensive to Hispanics.” Good luck getting the House Republican caucus to care, even if Latino voters did swing last week’s elections to Democrats in Colorado, Nevada and California.

Some people hardly notice Veterans Day except for the lack of mail delivery. This day reminds others of their own or a loved one’s life-altering military service.

A few thoughts and links on the holiday are below.

Politics-watchers from both sides of the aisle welcomed yesterday’s news that Charlie Smithson will be the new Iowa House chief clerk:

Smithson has been the Executive Director for the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board since 2001 and the board’s attorney since 1998. He previously served as the attorney for the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.

Raised in Pocahontas, Iowa, Smithson graduated from WestmarCollege in Le Mars before earning a Juris Doctorate from Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas.

Smithson has lectured and written several articles on government, ethics, lobbying, and campaign finance as well as contributed to the book,” Money, Politics, and Campaign Finance Reform Law in the United States.” He also teaches election law at the Drake University Law School in Des Moines.

The chief clerk serves as the House Parliamentarian, supervises House personnel and oversees the budget for the lower chamber’s operations.

Smithson will be a tough act to follow at the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. Kathie Obradovich commented,

Smithson has capably led as executive director of the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board and has the right personality and reputation for fairness to have immediate credibility in the clerk’s role.

What I’m sorry about is that he won’t be at the ethics board any more. He’s been unfailingly knowledgeable, competent and accessible in a very important role. We can only hope his successor has as strong of an interest in transparency and public access to campaign records. I’m also going to miss Mark Brandsgard, whose dry wit was often the only reward for listening to hours of mind-numbing House debate.

Brandsgard became chief clerk of the Iowa House in early 2009, having held various House staff positions since 1977.

Time for another Bleeding Heartland foray into counterfactual history, inspired by conversations with many Democrats and a few Republicans during the past week.

In early 2009, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee included Representative Leonard Boswell on its list of 40 “Frontline” Democrats, incumbents acknowledged to be vulnerable. House Democrats lost more than 60 seats on November 2, with most “tossup” seats falling to the GOP. Chet Culver lost the governor’s race by more than 100,000 votes, and Democrats fared worse than expected in the Iowa House and Senate races. Yet voters re-elected Boswell in a swing district (partisan voting index D+1). Not only that, he won by a larger margin than Bruce Braley. Who would have predicted that six months ago?

All of the above raises an obvious question: would Boswell be heading back to Congress if Republicans had nominated Jim Gibbons rather than Brad Zaun?  

County auditors have been certifying election results this week, and the Iowa House is almost certain to be split 60-40 in favor of Republicans. Three seats were determined by extremely narrow margins. Democrat Donovan Olson does not plan to seek a recount in House district 48, where he trails Chip Baltimore by fewer than 30 votes. Republican Roger Arthur does not plan to seek a recount in House district 18, where he finished 36 votes behind Andrew Wenthe. Republican Lannie Miller has not decided whether to ask for a recount in House district 7, but John Wittneben’s margin of 32 votes is unlikely to be overturned in a recount.

The Iowa Senate is headed for a 26-24 Democratic majority. Certified election results put Democrat Keith Kreiman 12 votes behind Mark Chelgren in Senate district 47, while Democrat Tod Bowman is 71 votes ahead of Andrew Naeve in Senate district 13. If I were Kreiman, I would ask for a recount to be sure, but even a tiny margin of 12 votes (0.06 percent of the votes cast in that Senate race) probably wouldn’t be reversed.

Jennifer Jacobs reported in the Des Moines Register,

Election results show that voters angry about the Iowa Supreme Court’s gay-marriage ruling played a role in defeating Kreiman.

In 2006, Kreiman won 71 percent of the votes in his home county, Davis County. This year, 774 more Davis County residents voted on judicial retention than in 2006.

Davis County was one of seven counties where the anti-retention vote was above 70 percent.

I suspect Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ strong Congressional campaign played at least an equally important role in Chelgren’s win. Senate district 47 includes Miller-Meeks’ home base, the Ottumwa area, and she worked extremely hard all year.

Senate Republican leader Paul McKinley tried to psych out Democrats this week by saying he has “thought about” trying to convince state senators to switch to the GOP: “I think there are individuals that we know that clearly were put in tough situations over the past two or three years and might be more prone to that, but we thought about it. We’ll analyze where we are and proceed accordingly.”

Two Democrats flipping together could give Republicans a majority in the upper chamber, but I very much doubt that will happen. The moderate Democrats in the Senate caucus have more pull with Senate Majority leader Mike Gronstal than they would as junior members of a Republican majority. Also, it’s not as if McKinley could promise party-switchers a smooth ride to re-election. U.S. Representative Parker Griffith of Alabama got crushed in a GOP primary this year after deserting the Democratic Party. An incumbent in a vulnerable Iowa Senate seat would not survive a Republican primary after voting for I-JOBS and all four of Chet Culver’s budgets.

Governor-elect Terry Branstad announced yesterday that David Roederer will serve as his budget director, in charge of the state’s Department of Management. Roederer has been part of Branstad’s “inner circle” for decades. The Des Moines Register’s Thomas Beaumont wrote in September,

Roederer, a lobbyist from Johnston, is a multi-faceted troubleshooter, a role he carved out serving in several key posts for Branstad, including chief of staff and campaign manager, during a difficult stretch of the administration.

A serious problem-solver with the ability to bring people together, Roederer is often at work behind the scenes on key campaign issues and has worked on presidential and congressional campaigns since Branstad left office.

Roederer was a key sounding board for Branstad in June as the Republican nominee evaluated a list of prospects for his lieutenant governor running mate.

Jeff Boeyink will be Branstad’s chief of staff in the new administration. Boeyink spent many years working for Iowans for Tax Relief. He served as the Republican Party of Iowa’s executive director for a few months in 2009, but left that position to manage Branstad’s gubernatorial campaign.

Tim Albrecht, who handled communications for the Branstad campaign, will be communications director for the new administration. Since September, Albrecht has been running the right-wing news aggregator The Bean Walker in addition to dealing with the media on behalf of Branstad. No word on how long he plans to combine those jobs.

I’ve been waiting to see what position Branstad would give to Jim “Burn the Boats” Gibbons. He lost to Brad Zaun in the third Congressional district primary but had major donors and supporters who are also close to the incoming governor. Yesterday Matt Schultz announced that Gibbons will chair his secretary of state transition team, “advising on issues and personnel decisions related to the business services division of the office.” Maybe Schultz will give Gibbons a senior staff position. Incidentally, Story County Auditor Mary Mosiman will advice Schultz “on issues and personnel decisions related to the elections division.”

UPDATE: Todd Dorman cracks a few jokes about Branstad taking his wife Chris on a “much-deserved” 10-day vacation in France. I don’t begrudge them their trip, but can you imagine what conservatives would say if a newly-elected Democrat took off for Europe?

Reading up on the carnage that was last week’s Congressional elections, I noticed that two House Democrats lost their seats despite having run unopposed in 2008. The unlikely losers were Rick Boucher in Virginia’s ninth district and Phil Hare in Illinois’ seventeenth district, including the Quad Cities area (though polls had shown Hare in trouble this fall).

I wondered whether any Iowa Democrats suffered the same fate. It turns out that three of the 13 Iowa House incumbents defeated last week did not have a Republican opponent in 2008. In each case, special circumstances may have exacerbated the generally bad environment for Democratic candidates this year.

Cutting spending from the current-year budget as well as from the budget for fiscal year 2012 will be statehouse Republicans’ top priority, incoming Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen told journalists yesterday. Paulsen said Republicans will seek to reduce fiscal year 2011 spending by “hundreds of millions” of dollars.

Mid-year spending cuts would make sense if Iowa faced revenue shortfalls, like the declines that prompted Governor Chet Culver’s across the board budget cut in October 2009. However, state revenues have been coming in ahead of projections since fiscal year 2011 began, and the 2011 budget was balanced when Democratic legislators approved it in March. The Revenue Estimating Conference will meet again in December. If their projections show that Iowa’s finances are on solid ground, with revenues still exceeding expectations for the current-year budget, how will Republicans justify their planned cuts?

Paulsen asserts there are “several hundred million dollars in the current year’s budget of marginal or no value to Iowans,” but a large share of the budget goes toward education and human services. Todd Dorman posted the wish lists for spending cuts Iowa House Republicans offered during the last two legislative sessions. Some of the ideas are more realistic than others. Republicans could save tens of millions by scrapping the preschool program and the Power Fund. However, Iowa doesn’t spend anything like the $92.3 million Republicans claim we could save by ending “all state benefits to adult illegal immigrants.” I expect the Legislative Services Agency to point that out next year.

Republicans have said $18.5 million could be saved through privatizing the state’s vehicle fleet. However, Democrats have disputed those projections:

Since December 2009, the Department of Administrative Services has already achieved more than $10.5 million in cost savings under [Executive Order] 20 and [Senate File] 2088 on fleet management reforms. A 2007 Iowa Legislative Services Report concluded that selling off the entire state fleet would cost taxpayers millions of dollars, instead of saving money.

I doubt it would be workable to combine administrative functions at the University of Iowa, Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa, which Republicans claim would save taxpayers $62 million.

Republican plans to save $4 million by eliminating “taxpayer-funded lobbyists” are misleading too. Although some state employees register as lobbyists during the legislative session to weigh in on bills that would affect their departments, the state does not hire any contract lobbyists. A Des Moines Register report from last summer identified $1.8 million in Iowa taxpayer-funded lobbying costs, but that figure included lobbying expenses of “state agencies, municipalities, county agencies and associations where member dues are paid by taxpayers, such as the Iowa League of Cities.”  

Any comments about the state budget are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: In the comments, willinIA points out that the $62 million in supposed savings from merging administrative functions at the regents universities was pulled out of the air by Ed Failor of Iowans for Tax Relief.

The elections kept me so busy that it’s been more than two months since my last food post. I’m starting a new Bleeding Heartland tradition of posting one recipe every Monday.

Black-eyed peas are a traditional southern American food that I don’t recall ever eating when I was growing up in Iowa. I love to cook with them now. They contain a lot of vitamins and minerals and are more digestible than some other beans. I like to substitute them for the pinto beans in any chili recipe (here’s my favorite).

Black-eyed peas are especially convenient if you like to cook your own dried beans. Unlike many legumes, they don’t need to be soaked before cooking. Bring a pot of unsalted water with some peas to a boil, reduce to simmer, and they should be ready to eat or add to a recipe after 45 minutes to an hour.

After the jump I’ve posted my favorite way to eat black-eyed peas. I adapted this recipe from Vegetarian Indian Cookery by Shehzad Husain, a British food writer.

Governor-elect Terry Branstad expressed concern today about the cost of new passenger rail links between Chicago and cities in Iowa.

“Well, I want to analyze the situation,” Branstad said. “I’m very concerned about the federal debt.” Public transportation advocates say if states like Ohio and Wisconsin reject high speed rail, it could stymie projects all across the Midwest. Branstad says he doesn’t want to rush to judgment.

“I want to carefully review and analyze the circumstances and I understand there are concerns about the huge cost of this and how cost effective it is and how much it would really be utilized,” Branstad said.

In late October, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced $230 million in funding for a new Amtrak route connecting Iowa City to Chicago via the Quad Cities. Senator Chuck Grassley has spoken approvingly about the project. A spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration told me last week, “The money has been awarded.” One question mark is whether the route could be completed if the Iowa legislature declines to fund our state’s share of the costs in future years:

The project will cost $310 million, and Iowa and Illinois will pay pro-rated shares of costs not covered by the federal government. Iowa lawmakers have already appropriated $10 million and need to come up with another $10 million, said Tamara Nicholson, director of the Iowa DOT’s rail office. The state would also pay an estimated $3 million annually in operating subsidies. […]

Train supporters hope the route will someday be extended to Des Moines and Omaha. Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie has endorsed the idea and Tom Kane, executive director of the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning organization, says passenger trains are important to the future of Des Moines and the national transportation system.

“We know that much of the air traffic out of Chicago is for trips of less than 500 miles, so why are we flying? There will also be future congestion on the interstate highway system, particularly from freight and trucks. This will give our transportation consumers a choice,” Kane said.

Kane’s point is valid, but Republican lawmakers would probably rather widen interstate highways, even if that proved more costly than adding rail capacity.

The best hope of bringing Branstad around is a lobbying effort by business interests. Quite a few corporations and business groups support the Quad Cities Passenger Rail Coalition. The Greater Des Moines Partnership and central Iowa Young Professionals Connection back extending passenger rail across Iowa. This year’s chairman of the Greater Des Moines Partnership is Doug Reichardt, who is close to Branstad and was rumored to be on his short list for running mates last year. One of the partnership’s past presidents, Teresa Wahlert, “played a lead role in Branstad’s economic development agenda” during this year’s campaign.

Today the Iowa House Republican caucus elected Kraig Paulsen to be incoming House speaker and Linda Upmeyer to be majority leader. The vote was no surprise, since Paulsen and Upmeyer were the top House Republicans during the previous two sessions. It’s still a historic achievement for Upmeyer; no other woman has ever served as Iowa House majority leader. James Q. Lynch wrote a nice profile of Upmeyer here. I didn’t know her late father was Del Stromer, who served in the Iowa House for 23 years, rising to the position of speaker. Upmeyer will be the “gatekeeper” who decides which bills come to a floor vote in the House.

The rest of the House GOP leadership team includes Jeff Kaufmann as speaker pro tem, Erik Helland as majority whip, and four majority assistant leaders: Matt Windschitl, Renee Schulte, Dave Deyoe and Steve Lukan. There was some speculation last year that Helland’s drunk driving arrest might cost him his leadership spot in the GOP caucus.

Republicans are likely to hold a 60-40 majority in the House next year, unless recounts change the outcome of one or more close races this week.

UPDATE: Iowa Senate Republicans re-elected Paul McKinley as their leader Monday. The Senate Republican whip will be Steve Kettering, and there will be five assistant minority leaders: Merlin Bartz, Brad Zaun, Pat Ward, David Johnson and Tim Kapucian. Johnson and Bartz have been the most visible Senate Republicans in the battle to overturn marriage equality in Iowa.

Republicans are likely to hold 24 of the 50 seats in the upper chamber, unless a recount overturns Mark Chelgren’s 13-vote lead over Democrat Keith Kreiman in district 47.  

This summer, the Libertarian Party in Iowa embarked on a “10 percent strategy,” hoping to win 2 percent of the vote for governor in order to secure major-party status in 2012. Iowa lacks a tradition of strong third-party voting like our neighbor to the north, and the unofficial results indicate that no alternative to Terry Branstad and Chet Culver cleared the 2 percent threshold in the governor’s race. Iowa Party candidate Jonathan Narcisse came closer to that mark than Libertarian Eric Cooper.

Although no third party is set up to have a larger statewide impact in 2012, minor party candidates received an unusually high share of the vote in some areas. In a few races, the votes for third-party candidates exceeded the difference between the Democrat and the Republican.

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers?

The Iowa House will probably have a 60-40 Republican majority unless provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots change the unofficial results reported so far. The two races most likely to flip are House district 18, where Democratic incumbent Andrew Wenthe leads by 28 votes, and House district 48, where Democratic incumbent Donovan Olson trails by 26 votes.

A 26-24 Democratic majority appears to be the most likely outcome in the Iowa Senate. Democrat Tod Bowman has expanded his lead to 73 votes in the open Senate district 13. Republican Mark Chelgren has a 13-vote lead over incumbent Keith Kreiman in Senate district 47. If absentee and provisional ballots allow Kreiman to overcome that deficit, the Democrats would have a 27-23 majority in the upper chamber.

Incoming Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen is acting like he believes his own propaganda about the state’s dire financial condition. This week he asked Governor Chet Culver to tell his department directors “to freeze all discretionary spending.” Paulsen claimed that step is needed “to align ongoing expenditures with ongoing revenue,” even though revenues have been coming in ahead of projections since fiscal year 2011 began. Culver’s budget director in effect told Paulsen he was full of it. Excerpt:

As you know, the current FY 2011 General Fund budget is balanced and, as Governor Culver’s Administration announced last week, the projected ending balance or surplus will be higher than originally projected. Since the end of the 2011 legislative session, we have continued to replenish the State’s Reserve Funds because we closed the books on the FY 2010 General Fund budget with a $335.6 million ending balance, also higher than originally projected. […]

As you know, discretionary spending is a very small part of the General Fund budget, and the aforementioned controls apply to discretionary spending. Governor Culver does not have the authority to freeze appropriations for programs unless there is a deficit, and there is no deficit projected for FY 2011.

Newly re-elected Representative Tom Latham showed how gullible and uninformed he is on Friday by repeating the latest foam-at-the-mouth talking point about President Obama. Naturally, there’s no truth to the rumor that the president’s visit to India is costing $200 million a day. The real cost is probably about 100 times lower than the lie right-wing media have been spreading. Latham is old enough to know better, as my father would say.

It’s never too early to start the next election season in Iowa. Some Republican county party chairs talked with Bret Hayworth about their favorite presidential prospects.

The Des Moines Register reported a strange story: Polk County prosecutors are trying to permanently ban two anti-war protesters from the Federal Building in Des Moines. They are Christine Gaunt and Elton Davis (a member of the Bleeding Heartland community), who are to be sentenced on November 12 for trespassing at that building in August. I have never heard of a citizen being permanently banned from a federal building and wonder if there is any precedent for the judge to grant that request.

This is an open thread.

NOVEMBER 11 UPDATE: In the comments, Elton Davis says Polk County Attorney John Sarcone has withdrawn the unusual sentencing request, since apparently neither Senator Chuck Grassley nor Senator Tom Harkin supported it.

Governor-elect Terry Branstad would prefer not to spend I-JOBS money that has not already been allocated, but he may not be able to prevent spending those funds on infrastructure. On Thursday, Branstad taped this weekend’s episode of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press”, and Kay Henderson asked him what he planned to do with I-JOBS money that had not already been handed out. Branstad responded,

“First of all, I think most of it has already been spent,” Branstad says. “But that that hasn’t been spent, my general inclination is to say it shouldn’t be spent.” […]

Branstad, who takes office on January 14, says he has no intention of trying to reclaim any state grants that have already been awarded, but he’s going to “analyze” his options for whatever remains in the I-JOBS account.  

“I want to evaluate each and every project based on its merits,” Branstad says. “I don’t think we should just be willy-nilly trying to spend money. Instead, I want to look at protecting the taxpayers’ interest in the process, but if there’s a project that’s been obligated, then we have the responsibility to fulfill it.”

Iowa has already sold all $875 million of I-JOBS bonds. More than $665 million of the bond proceeds have been awarded to specific projects. The incoming governor’s options for dealing with the remaining $200 million are limited:

Deputy Iowa Treasurer Stefanie Devin said it was unlikely that Branstad could stop any of the projects because of rules for how the money is spent.

“They are tax-exempt bonds,” Devin said. “They have to be spent on capital projects. It’s not like you can sit on that money for 20 years.”

I doubt Branstad will be able to find a way around spending this money. Once all the grants have been awarded, he may even quietly acknowledge the benefits of infrastructure projects around the state. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him smiling for the cameras next year at grand openings for projects I-JOBS made possible. Who knows–maybe someday New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (who’s borrowed more in one year than Chet Culver did in four) will persuade Branstad that selling bonds to invest in infrastructure can be “fiscally responsible.”

The Republican takeover of the House of Representatives will change transportation policy priorities, but should not affect recently announced funding for a Chicago to Iowa City passenger rail link. KCCI-TV questioned this week, “Will Election Changes Kill Iowa-Chicago Train Funding?”

Florida Rep. John Mica, the comittee’s ranking GOP member, told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that he believes high-speed trains are a good idea, but he doesn’t agree with the projects selected by the Transportation Department for funding.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was in Iowa just last week, where he joined local leaders to celebrate $230 million in federal money to start work on a passenger rail line. Service on the new GreenLine is expected to begin in 2015 and take passengers from Chicago’s Union Station to the Quad Cities to Iowa City.

I contacted the Federal Railroad Administration today to find out whether there is any way for Congress to reverse the passenger rail funding decisions. FRA spokesman Rob Kulat said, “You’d have to ask Chairman Mica” how he thinks he can do that, adding, “The money has been awarded.” When I asked about a possible review process, Kulat repeated, “The money has been awarded.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on November 3 that the newly elected Republican governors of Ohio and Wisconsin want to cancel passenger rail projects in their states. The same article said Iowa Governor-elect Terry Branstad “has supported expanding rail service between Chicago and cities in Iowa.” However, in late October Branstad’s campaign manager “declined to comment” when the Des Moines Register asked “if Branstad would support the use of state money to establish Chicago-to-Iowa City passenger service.”

Some Republicans claimed the passenger rail grant was a political ploy to help endangered Democrats in Iowa and the Quad Cities. If so, it didn’t work. Representative Phil Hare lost his re-election bid in Illinois’ 17th Congressional district, including Rock Island and Moline. Representative Bruce Braley was re-elected narrowly but trailed his Republican opponent in Scott County, containing Davenport and Bettendorf. Governor Chet Culver didn’t carry Scott County either.

It’s too bad the outgoing Congress didn’t approve a comprehensive transportation funding bill. Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar had a strong vision for balancing priorities and increasing investments in passenger rail and public transit. The Republicans who will write the new highway bill have little interest in rail or the administration’s efforts to make roads more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly. At a Congressional hearing this March, Iowa’s own Tom Latham asserted that every bicyclist is one fewer person paying into the transportation trust fund.

Senate Democratic Leader Mike Gronstal promised this week to block an Iowa Senate vote on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, even if a majority of senators sign a petition asking for a vote. The Republican reaction to Gronstal’s comments makes me wonder whether gay marriage will be in the coming decade what the death penalty was to Iowa Republicans in the 1980s and 1990.

Reinstating the death penalty was a major theme in all of Terry Branstad’s previous election campaigns. But as governor he didn’t deploy his political capital to push that bill through the state legislature, even when Republicans controlled both chambers during his last two years in office. Many Iowa Democrats believed Branstad valued having the issue to run on more than he cared about the policy.

In light of Tuesday’s election results, Republicans sound surprisingly resigned to failure on passing a marriage amendment in the new legislature.

Now that Representative Bruce Braley has survived a Republican landslide despite a bucketload of money thrown at him, I thought I’d check to see how others in his House Populist Caucus fared on Tuesday.

Short story: the Populist Caucus lost five members. As a group, they fared better than the Blue Dogs or New Democrats, but not as well as the Progressive Caucus. The details are below.

Judicial nominating commissions will soon begin evaluating possible replacements for Iowa Supreme Court Justices Marsha Ternus, Michael Streit and David Baker. The law gives the commissions 60 days to submit a short list of candidates for judgeships to the governor, which means soon to be former Governor Chet Culver could nominate justices before Governor-elect Terry Branstad is sworn in. Branstad said yesterday that he should appoint the new members of the high court:

“I think it would be inappropriate to have a governor that was just rejected by the voters try to rush through appointments to a court when the court was just rejected as well. I think we need to really sit down and think this thing through in a really careful way,” Branstad says. “But really my focus is on jobs. That’s why the people of Iowa elected me as governor and that’s where I’m going to put my focus in the days ahead.”

Culver has not promised to let Branstad appoint the new justices. A November 3 statement from the governor’s office said only this:

“I am reviewing the matter carefully to ensure the judicial selection process that is utilized now is consistent with the Iowa Constitution, with Iowa law, and with past practices used in the course of both Democratic and Republican administrations in instances when multiple vacancies in our appellate courts have been created simultaneously.”

Meanwhile, Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn says it would be “unconscionable” for Culver “to thumb your finger in the eyes of the voters who just repudiated those Supreme Court Justices and, quite frankly, repudiated you and the one party, Democrat rule in Des Moines.” Strawn also called for “a further discussion too on how we change the way judges are nominated and selected in this state as well, because I think that too is part of the problem.” Getting rid of Iowa’s judicial nominating commissions would require a constitutional amendment, but a new law could make minor changes. For instance, Branstad has endorsed efforts to require partisan balance on the judicial nominating commissions.

The Supreme Court has already heard some oral arguments in this year’s caseload. It’s not clear whether the four remaining justices will issue rulings on those cases or rehear the oral arguments once replacements for Ternus, Streit and Baker have been selected.

The November 4 edition of the Des Moines Register published a map showing the judicial retention vote by Iowa county. There was a strong urban/rural split in the voting. In seven counties, more than 70 percent of votes cast on retention said no to all three judges. In 48 counties, the no votes on retention totaled between 60 and 70 percent. In 34 counties, the no votes totaled between 50 and 60 percent. In Clinton County, Streit and Ternus received a majority of votes for retention, but the yes votes for Baker fell below 50 percent. All three judges received a majority of yes votes in the remaining nine counties: Winneshiek (Decorah area), Black Hawk (Waterloo/Cedar Falls), Story (Ames), Polk (Des Moines), Linn (Cedar Rapids), Johnson (Iowa City), Muscatine, Scott (Quad Cities), and Jefferson (Fairfield area). I will update this post with a link to the map if I find it on the Register’s website.

UPDATE: Thanks to Bleeding Heartland user ragbrai08 for posting the map in the comments below. I’ve posted it after the jump as well.

Advocates celebrated passage of a constitutional amendment creating a Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund for Iowa, but there’s no guarantee new money will ever be allocated to protecting soil and water. Governor-elect Terry Branstad and incoming Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen said yesterday a sales tax increase is off the table:

“This election was to a large extent driven by growth in government,’ said Paulsen, a Republican from Hiawatha. “Too much spending. Too much debt. The public did not elect Republicans so we could come down and raise taxes.”

“I don’t see House Republicans passing a sales tax increase for the forseeable future,” Paulsen said. “I don’t even think that will be under consideration.”

Said Branstad, of Boone: “I don’t support any tax increases. I made that clear during the election,” Branstad said. ” If it’s contingent on a sales tax increase, we’ve said there won’t be a sales tax increase. I’m supportive of conservation funding, but not raising taxes.”

Sean McMahon of Iowa’s Water & Land Legacy, the coalition that pushed for the new fund, on Tuesday said his organization is considering its next move. It may leave it up to individual Iowans and various environmental and recreation groups to push for the tax.  The group spent several years pushing the issue to a vote, and some of the preparation went back a decade.

Asking environmental groups and the “hook and bullet” crowd (Izaak Walton League, Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited) to push for a sales tax increase would be a disastrous waste of time. The votes won’t be there in the legislature, and Branstad won’t want to break his promise on tax hikes as quickly as he did in 1983. Anyway, people like me didn’t get involved with the environmental movement to advocate for regressive taxes.

Groups that worked to pass this amendment should focus on lobbying for direct appropriations to the new fund. Voters approved the amendment by a wide margin. Making waterways safer for recreation and improving habitat for wildlife can be viewed as economic development tools for small towns and rural areas. Finding private donors who agree to match all or part of the state’s contribution to the fund might persuade legislators to get the conservation efforts going on a small scale. Successes would build a constituency for increasing the funding in future years.

That strategy may not work, but it’s better than pinning all hopes on a sales tax hike that won’t happen. Bleeding Heartland readers, please share your thoughts or suggestions for getting money allocated to the natural resources fund.

Michael Mauro was a good Secretary of State. He was always interested in our elections. He failed to win his own re-election.

Before Mauro our Secretary was Chet Culver. Culver used his time to become well-known around the state, saying “get out and vote” at every opportunity. The publicity this created was for him as much as for the elections he advertised. Who could be against voting? He used his name recognition to run for Governor.

But Culver left a mess in the elections department. He failed to stop dozens of counties from adopting paperless touchscreen voting machines, ignoring experts who warned against them. Some counties had two entirely different systems in each polling place–a touchscreen plus a paper system as well.

Having been a county auditor himself in Iowa's largest county, Mauro came to the state job with experience and credibility. He dumped the touchscreens soon after his 2006 election. He later created a system for sending ballots overseas that was named best in the USA. He was so respected by Iowa's county auditors that many of them took the unusual step of endorsing his re-election.

Four years in a low profile job is not enough to gain name recognition. Yesterday Iowa's conservative voters kept all the incumbents they recognized except one (Governor Culver). They also passed over the guy they didn't recognize (Mike Mauro). I'm sure they meant no ill will. Thank you, Michael Mauro.

cross posted from IowaVoters.org