How’s your weekend going? Don’t forget to enter Bleeding Heartland’s election prediction contest if you think you know Iowa politics.

It’s Halloween and probably the last weekend for political commercials on Iowa television until Republican presidential candidates start running ads next year. Negative ads far outnumber positive ones, especially in the Iowa House and Senate races.  Judging from this blog’s traffic, a lot of people are searching for information on “Iowa heated sidewalks,” presumably because Republican House candidates are using the “heated sidewalks” canard against many Democratic incumbents. I also see references to flowerpots or trolleys in Des Moines and Iowa’s so-called billion-dollar deficit that doesn’t exist. Bleeding Heartland readers in other Iowa media markets have told me they see similar claims in ads for Republican statehouse candidates.

Many commercials feature “zombie lies,” claims that have been debunked repeatedly.  

The “newspaper Iowa depends upon” won’t endorse a candidate in this year’s races for attorney general, state treasurer, secretary of state, secretary of agriculture or state auditor, Des Moines Register editorial page editor Linda Fandel confirmed to me this week. Fandel told me the newspaper has been inconsistent about endorsing candidates for those offices in the past. She said limited staff time and resources lay behind the decision not to endorse this year. The Register did endorse candidates in the races for governor, U.S. Senate and all five U.S. House seats, as well as the Iowa Supreme Court retention vote, which the editors called the most important election in the state this year.

I understand limits on resources. Compared to previous election cycles, the Register’s newsroom staff is smaller, and its editorial pages contain less content. However, a newspaper that claims to have a statewide profile shouldn’t punt on elections offering such significant contrasts to voters. More thoughts on these campaigns are after the jump.

Today is the last day for Iowans who want to vote by mail to request an absentee ballot. Tomorrow county auditors’ offices will be open across Iowa for early voting in person. Meanwhile, political parties and candidates have many outstanding absentee ballots left to chase. Today’s numbers from the Secretary of State’s Office show that Iowans have requested 372,778 absentee ballots, but county auditors have received only 295,132 ballots. Some ballots are in the mail en route to county auditors, but tens of thousands of Iowans probably have ballots sitting at home.

Approximately 34,000 ballots requested by Iowa Democrats haven’t been received yet by county auditors. Republicans have about 25,000 ballots requested but not returned, and the comparable figure for no-party voters is about 20,000. Voters sitting on an absentee ballot have these options:

Absentee ballots CANNOT be delivered to polling places on Election Day. On Election Day, voters who have been issued an absentee ballot but have not yet returned their absentee ballot to their county auditor have the following options:

The voter may deliver the ballot to the county auditor’s office before the polls close on Election Day.

The voter can “surrender” the absentee ballot at the polling place for the precinct in which the voter is registered to vote. The voter will then be allowed to vote a regular ballot at the polling place.

If a voter cannot “surrender” the absentee ballot at the polling place, the voter will be allowed to vote a provisional ballot at the polling place for the precinct in which the voter’s registered to vote.

If returned by mail, the ballot must be clearly postmarked by the day before the election by an officially authorized postal service and received by the county auditor’s office no later than noon on the Monday following the election. For school elections and some city and special elections there may be an earlier deadline. Read the instructions sent with the ballot.

Volunteers who can help with “calling and chasing” absentee ballots should contact your county Democrats or a nearby state legislative campaign. Early voting saved several Iowa House and Senate Democrats in 2008 and won the House district 90 special election for Curt Hanson last year, so it’s imperative not to leave those votes on the table.

The big purple Judge Bus completed its Iowa tour on October 28, but the groups urging Iowans to oust three Supreme Court justices aren’t winding down their voter persuasion efforts. Representative Steve King has recorded a radio commercial asking Iowans to “send a message against judicial arrogance.”

The ad script is after the jump, along with news on the Judge Bus and the “Homegrown Justice” events, which called on Iowans to retain all the judges on the ballot.

Despite the salmonella outbreak and egg recall that made national news two months ago, Iowa’s secretary of agriculture race has been overshadowed this fall by campaigns for other offices and the unprecedented drive to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices. In fact, Democrat Francis Thicke’s campaign has attracted more interest from nationally-known sustainable food advocates than from many Iowa news organizations. Peter Rothberg wrote in The Nation, “there may not be a more important contest this year for farmers and food activists nationwide.”

Republican Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey has been running television commercials for several weeks, but Thicke starts running his own campaign ad in the Des Moines market today. His campaign has an opportunity to increase the ad buy, and due to an unusual situation I’ll cover below, any additional air time Thicke reserves will reduce Northey’s television exposure during the final days of the campaign.

Commercials for Northey and Thicke are after the jump.

It’s time for political junkies in the Bleeding Heartland community to make their best guesses about what will happen next Tuesday. Twenty questions about this year’s elections in Iowa are after the jump. To enter the contest, post your predictions in this thread before 7 am on November 2. Remember, percentages don’t always have to add up to 100 percent; several contests feature minor-party candidates.

The contest winner will receive no prize, just bragging rights for being the the Bleeding Heartland community’s most astute observer of Iowa politics in 2010. Can you match American007’s performance in 2008 or ModerateIADem’s prowess in this year’s primary election contest?  

Exactly one week before election day, State Auditor David Vaudt released his report on Iowa’s film tax credit program, which Governor Chet Culver halted in September 2009. The audit found problems with about $26 million of the $32 million in tax credits awarded under the program. The Des Moines Register summarized the key findings and covered the civil and criminal cases filed so far in connection with fraudulent film tax credits.

Getting this fiasco back in the spotlight is likely to hurt Culver and help GOP candidate Terry Branstad, whom Vaudt has endorsed and joined on the stump. Branstad’s campaign seized on the chance to slam inadequate oversight of the film tax credit program. Vaudt probably also benefits from making news just before voters will see his name on the ballot. The audit featured prominently in newscasts on October 26 and was a front-page story in many Iowa newspapers the following day. According to Radio Iowa,

Vaudt, a Republican, was asked about the timing of the release of the report the week before the election.

Vaudt says the governor actually requested the investigation, and his office worked in collaboration with the Department of Revenue and the Attorney General’s office. Vaudt says they handled this report like any other and released it once the report was completed.

More like two months after completing the report. Radio Iowa posted the full report here (pdf file). On page 6, a cover letter from Vaudt and his chief deputy, Warren Jenkins, states, “Copies of this report have been filed with the Department of Management, the Division of Criminal Investigation, the Attorney General’s Office and the Polk County Attorney’s Office.” That letter was dated August 19, 2010. What’s Vaudt’s excuse for waiting nearly ten weeks to release the report to journalists?

Culver told the Des Moines Register on Tuesday, “The timing is interesting. It was purely political but [Vaudt]’s been the most partisan auditor that we’ve ever had so it’s not a surprise.” Scott Harrington, campaign manager for Democratic candidate for state auditor Jon Murphy, on 26 October asked Vaudt “to provide a detailed timeline as to how today was determined to be the appropriate date to release this report.” I’m not holding my breath until that happens.

State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald has been mostly invisible during this year’s campaign. As the longest-serving state treasurer in the country and a survivor of the 1994 Republican wave, Fitzgerald may have less reason to be worried than other Democratic incumbents. Still, I’ve been wondering when he was going to get around to asking voters to re-elect him.

Today I caught the first television commercial for Fitzgerald’s campaign. As far as I know, it went up on the air this week. I haven’t found a video to embed here, but my transcript and description of the visuals are after the jump, along with the transcript of the radio ad Fitzgerald’s opponent is running. UPDATE: I’ve added the script for Fitzgerald’s radio commercial.

Six days before the general election, the number of early ballots already returned in Iowa now exceeds the total early votes cast in any previous midterm election, the Secretary of State’s office announced today.

As of this morning, 355,192 Iowans have requested an absentee ballot and of those ballots, 254,836 have been received back by auditors’ offices.

In the 2006 General Election, 242,385 Iowans voted absentee. Four years prior in the 2002 General Election, 242,357 voted absentee.

Among Iowans who have requested absentee ballots, 158,286 (44.6%) are registered Democrats, 129,316 (36.4%) are Republicans, 67,288 (18.9%) are no-party voters and 302 have some other registration. Those whose ballots have already been returned to county auditors include 114,193 Democrats (44.8%), 97,398 Republicans (38.2%), 43,037 no-party voters (16.9%) and 208 voters with a different registration.

The total number of Iowa votes cast in the 2006 general election was 1,044,459.

Both parties have improved their early voting programs, especially the Iowa GOP, which didn’t have much going on this front in past midterms. On election night we’ll find out which party had more success banking early votes in the battleground state legislative districts.

From the numbers released today, it’s not clear whether most of the early votes came from Iowans who would have turned out anyway on November 2. Although everyone’s vote counts the same, an absentee ballot returned by someone who normally votes only in presidential years is more valuable than an absentee ballot returned by someone who never misses an election.

There’s still time for Iowans to vote early. I posted three ways to do so here.  

The attorney general’s race isn’t getting much coverage in Iowa print or broadcast media. Higher-profile campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate, as well as the unprecedented drive to oust Iowa Supreme Court judges, don’t leave much of a “news hole” for candidates seeking down-ballot statewide offices. I doubt many Iowans caught Attorney General Tom Miller and Republican Brenna Findley’s debate, since it has only been broadcast at odd hours on Mediacom Channel 22. The candidates had little time to discuss issues in depth during their joint appearance on Iowa Public Television.

As a result, 30-second commercials during news and entertainment programs will be all most Iowa voters see about the attorney general race. This week new ads targeting Miller and Findley hit Iowa tv screens. To my knowledge, none of the video clips have been posted online, but I taped the ads. Transcripts and descriptions of the visuals are below. UPDATE: Scroll down for a description of the Findley campaign’s latest commercial.

Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic challenger Roxanne Conlin are debating at 7 pm tonight on WHO Radio in Des Moines. Iowa Public Television will broadcast the debate statewide at 9 pm.

I’ll update this post later with my thoughts about the debate. Meanwhile, I encourage Bleeding Heartland readers to weigh in on the debate or the Senate race in general.

LATE UPDATE: I forgot to post my notes on the debate, but they are now after the jump. The short version is, I think both candidates did fairly well and gave their supporters reasons to stick with them. Conlin kept Grassley on the defensive, but he seemed to have answers to most of her criticisms. Since she is behind in the race and needs to win over undecided voters and Grassley leaners, a tie in the debate is for all practical purposes a win for Grassley. I suspect being able to refer to notes during this debate helped him greatly improve on his performance during the candidates’ joint appearance on Iowa Public Television last month.

If you missed the debate, Kay Henderson’s write-up is worth a read.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and Republican challenger Brenna Findley debated at the University of Iowa law school on October 20. I read the news coverage of the debate highlights at at the Des Moines Register blog, WCCC.com, Radio Iowa and IowaPolitics.com, but I was anxious to watch for myself. This afternoon Mediacom showed the debate, and I was able to take detailed notes, which you can read below. Both candidates communicated their central message well. Findley tried to keep the incumbent on the defensive, but I thought Miller handled her points and defended his record well. He also noted several times when her ideology or lack of experience seemed to affect her views on the attorney general’s proper role.

Unfortunately, Iowa Public Television isn’t showing this debate, and to my knowledge Mediacom has not posted the full video. Miller and Findley appeared jointly on IPTV earlier this month (video and transcript here), but although they touched on some of the same issues, that discussion lacked the depth and intensity of the one-on-one debate. Mediacom cable subscribers have one more chance to watch the attorney general candidates’ debate on Channel 22 this Sunday, October 31, at 7 am.

I have another post in progress on this campaign, because both candidates are running new negative television commercials this week. Also, the Progress Project, which is closely linked to the American Future Fund, is up on television with an attack on Miller.

My play-by-play of the Miller-Findley debate is after the jump.  

So-called reckless spending has been one of the Republicans’ top talking points in this year’s state legislative elections. Direct mail, television and radio commercials targeting at least two dozen incumbent Democrats have decried wasteful, pork-barrel spending. A few specific spending programs come up most frequently in GOP candidates’ messaging. Bleeding Heartland already discussed the misleading talk about “heated sidewalks” here. Three other popular examples of alleged out-of-control spending are $120,000 for flowerpots in Des Moines, $690,000 for trolley service in Des Moines, and $1.8 million for kayak waterways.

Follow me after the jump for background on those appropriations.

Representative Leonard Boswell and Republican challenger Brad Zaun are about to hold their only debate of the campaign on KCCI-TV at 7 pm. (They also taped a joint appearance on Iowa Public Television earlier this month.)

I’ll update this post later with thoughts on the debate. Share any thoughts about the debate or the third Congressional district race in this thread.

TUESDAY UPDATE: I only caught part of last night’s debate live, but watched the whole tape this morning. Boswell and Zaun had their strong and weak points, and I doubt many people’s minds were changed by the debate. Both candidates gave strong closing statements framing the choice in this election. More specific comments about the debate are after the jump.

The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded $230 million in federal funding today for a new Amtrak route connecting Chicago and Iowa City, Senators Tom Harkin and Dick Durbin announced. The route will go through the Quad Cities. From a statement released by Harkin’s office:

The project – scheduled for completion in 2015 – will create 588 jobs per year for the first four years of design and construction.  Once initiated, the new service is expected to increase business activity at $25 million per year. […]

The new Chicago – Quad Cities – Iowa City route will provide two daily round-trips and carry trains traveling at speeds up to 79 miles per hour (mph) with an expected trip time of less than 5 hours.  The long-term vision for the line includes expanding the frequency of trains to offer more than two daily round-trip trains; extending the route; and making additional infrastructure investments to increase speeds from 79 mph to 90 mph, or even 110 mph.

Today’s news is a pleasant surprise. Although Governor Chet Culver and several members of Congress strongly advocated for expanding passenger rail in Iowa, the U.S. Department of Transportation did not fund an earlier grant request supporting Amtrak routes between Chicago and Iowa City and Chicago and Dubuque.

A 2008 Amtrak feasibility study on passenger rail from Iowa City to the Quad Cities estimated annual ridership on the route at “about 187,000 passengers, based on two daily round-trips and if improvements are made allowing maximum speeds of 79 mph.” Typical passenger trains reach maximum speeds of 79 mph; anything faster than 110 mph is considered “high-speed rail.”

More details on today’s announced funding are in the full statement from Harkin’s office, which I’ve posted after the jump. The Quad-City Rail Coalition website has additional background information on the proposed route. Central Iowa business and political leaders hope a Chicago-Iowa City passenger rail link could eventually be extended through Des Moines to the Council Bluffs-Omaha metro area.

UPDATE: I’ve added a press release from the governor’s office with more details. It states that first-year ridership on the route between Iowa City and Chicago is projected at 246,800.

TUESDAY UPDATE: Senator Chuck Grassley also expressed support for this passenger rail link: “You’re finding a situation where, connected with the problems of Homeland Security, the problems of terrorists on airplanes, the fact that airlines are having trouble providing the service they used to provide, alternative service like rail service is something that, at least on a regional basis, is going to pay off.”

Catching up on some news from last week: on October 20 U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pratt denied a preliminary injunction request against Iowa’s new campaign finance disclosure requirements for corporations. The Iowa Right to Life corporation filed a lawsuit challenging the new law in September, claiming it places unconstitutional restrictions on corporate political speech.

More background on the law in question and Iowa Right to Life’s lawsuit are after the jump.  

On Monday, Family Research Council Action and the National Organization for Marriage will launch a “Judge Bus Tour” to campaign against retaining Iowa Supreme Court justices Marsha Ternus, Michael Streit and David Baker. Organizers will take their bus through 45 Iowa counties, stopping at 20 planned rallies. Featured speakers at the rallies will include nationally-known heroes on the religious right: Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins, National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown, Representative Steve King of Iowa’s fifth Congressional district, and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

My hunch is the big purple judge-hating bus will drive more votes toward retaining than ousting the Supreme Court justices.

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

The weather’s been dry and unseasonably warm this October, ideal for candidates and volunteers. It’s not too late to spend a few hours helping a campaign near you. The state legislative candidates can especially use help with phone-banking and door-knocking. Even if your home district is a shoo-in for one party, you probably live near one of the two dozen Iowa House districts or four Iowa Senate districts considered competitive.

For instance, the Des Moines area has basically no swing districts, other than House district 59 in the western suburbs, but it’s easy for Democrats in the metro to volunteer for State Senator Staci Appel’s campaign in Senate district 37. You don’t even have to drive down to Warren or Madison County. Volunteers can make phone calls for Appel at the AFSCME Local 61 office (4320 NW Second Avenue in Des Moines) on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4 pm to 8 pm, on Saturdays from noon to 6 pm, or on Sundays from 1 pm to 6 pm. I did this one evening, and it’s so easy.

If you want to help but don’t know how or where, I recommend calling your county Democrats or the Iowa Democratic Party (515-244-7292). Volunteers will also be needed on election day for phone-banking and contacting likely Democratic supporters who haven’t voted yet.

Newspapers across the state have been weighing in on the elections. I’ve been browsing the endorsement editorials, and a few have left me wondering what the editors could have been thinking. Some examples are after the jump.

UPDATE: Click here for the 2012 version of this post.

Iowans will set a new record this year for early voting in a midterm election. About 242,000 voters cast early ballots here in 2002 and 2006, but as of October 22, the Secretary of State’s office reported that voters have requested 317,973 absentee ballots, and county auditors have received 202,037 ballots. Those numbers include mailed ballots as well as early voting in person.

Iowans who want to vote before election day have three options. Details and the partisan breakdown of early votes cast so far are after the jump.

With so many Democratic incumbents around the country endangered this year, U.S. Senate candidate Roxanne Conlin hasn’t received much campaign assistance from Democratic organizations outside Iowa or their allies. That changed this week when the advocacy groups Democracy for America and Progressive Campaign Change Committee started running a 60-second television commercial targeting Republican Senator Chuck Grassley.

Unfortunately, the ad fails to make a persuasive case against sending Grassley back to Washington.

Follow me after the jump to watch the new commercial, along with more Grassley and Conlin campaign ads.