Former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker was the first Republican to jump into the race for Tom Harkin’s Senate seat last year and has been campaigning around the state for nearly a year. However, he launched his campaign’s first television commercial just last week, a little more than a month before the June 3 primary. (I’m not counting a tv ad for Whitaker’s law firm, which ran in heavy rotation during the Winter Olympics, although I suspect that spot was designed to raise Whitaker’s profile.)

After the jump I’ve posted the video and script for Whitaker’s campaign ad, along with highlights from the candidate’s first-quarter financial report and his most prominent endorsement so far, from Texas Governor Rick Perry. A separate Bleeding Heartland post will focus on several recent Senate candidate debates. I’m not sure whether Whitaker’s forceful debating style will strike Republican voters as strong and principled or overly aggressive.

Matt Schultz is touting his management of the Iowa Secretary of State’s office in a television commercial promoting his campaign in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

But new reports by Ryan Foley of the Associated Press indicate that when reorganizing the Secretary of State’s office, Schultz showed preference to a political appointee and allowed him to keep collecting a large salary despite doing little if any work for the government.

I’ve lived in Cedar Rapids since high school (I attended the same high school at the same time of Monica’s daughters). Anyone who knows Cedar Rapids is fully aware that there are parts of town that have been depressed for many years. We know the neighborhoods on the southeast side of town that have been plagued with high crime rates and poverty. The folks in these neighborhoods who are working hard jobs for low wages are in the throes of an epic and unfortunate struggle.

I recently saw an ad released by Monica Vernon’s campaign that began with the narrator claiming Monica Vernon “understands the struggle.”  From what I know about Monica, she comes from a wealthy home, was the previous owner of a successful business, is married to a well-to-do attorney, and lives a stone’s throw from the country club.

My question to Monica Vernon is simple: what exactly do you know about the struggle? I came from extraordinarily humble beginnings, where you’d be hard pressed to find anyone with a country club membership let alone a home right next to one. I’d like to know where Monica Vernon’s struggle experience originated.

Monica’s ad is everything that is wrong with politics because it is willfully dishonest and leads people to believe that she has experience with real struggles, and had to work doubly hard just to get by, and raise her daughters largely on her own. This is the sort of thing that cheapens our politics and Iowans deserve better.

In my opinion, Monica’s largest struggle will come after she loses this Primary and must decide whether or not to remain in the Democratic Party, or revert back to the Republican Party, where she undoubtedly is more comfortable. 

In what may be merely a coincidence, two stories related to Iowa’s U.S. Senate race made a big splash yesterday on national blogs and cable news networks as well as in local media.

In what may be merely a coincidence, State Senator Joni Ernst’s campaign released its first television commercial on the same day the 501(c)4 group Priorities for Iowa released a video drawing national attention to a gaffe by Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley.

In what may be merely a coincidence, several prominent Ernst supporters run that 501(c)4 group, which was created a few weeks after Ernst’s campaign launch.

It’s common nowadays for candidates’ campaigns to spend money spreading positive messages, while outside entities (political action committees, 501(c)4 advocacy organizations, or 527 groups) pay to get the best opposition research into the public sphere. But candidates are not allowed to coordinate messaging or timing with those outside groups.

I’m not saying someone from the Ernst campaign gave Priorities for Iowa a heads-up on when they were planning to release their tv ad. I’m not saying someone from Priorities for Iowa let Ernst staffers know ahead of time when they planned to drop their bomb on Braley. I’m just saying, the clip from a two-month-old speech by the Democratic candidate couldn’t have been released at a better time for Ernst to capitalize on her attention-getting “castration” spot.

Former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker was the first Republican to enter the race for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat but has struggled a bit in the fundraising department. Whitaker ended 2014 with $232,092.45 cash on hand in his campaign account, including $50,241.07 in loans from the candidate and $28,525 that can’t be spent until the general election period (if Whitaker were to win the Republican primary).

Considering that Whitaker’s campaign spent just under $60,000 during the last three months of 2013 without running television or radio commercials, it’s clear that Whitaker won’t be able to afford much (if any) television advertising before the June primary.

However, campaign commercials aren’t the only way for a candidate to raise his name recognition. Central Iowa viewers of the winter Olympics on NBC Sports have seen a lot of Whitaker these past couple of weeks. The cable tv ads are promoting his law firm, not his Senate campaign, but they hit on several themes that will resonate favorably with rank-and-file Republicans. Follow me after the jump for my unofficial transcript of the spot for Whitaker, Hagenow and Gustoff LLB. I would like to know whether any Bleeding Heartland readers living outside the Des Moines media market have seen the same commercial on cable, either during Olympics coverage or at other times.

The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in an appeal of Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand’s defamation lawsuit against his 2010 opponent, Rick Mullin, and the Iowa Democratic Party. Des Moines attorney and law blogger Ryan Koopmans live-tweeted the hearing, and Mike Wiser and Grant Rodgers published summaries.

We’ll know the verdict within a few months, but I’ve posted some thoughts and predictions below.

Before I got sidetracked by the shocking news about Tom Latham, I was working on a post about Republican Mark Jacobs’ first television commercial, which hit the airwaves yesterday. Follow me after the jump for the video and transcript.

I’m not sure it’s a great use of campaign funds to advertise during the holiday season nearly six months before the primary, but Jacobs is the only Republican candidate for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat who can afford to buy tv time. He may as well exploit that advantage. The Jacobs campaign went up on statewide radio earlier this month. This relatively small buy of $138,000 will run the introductory spot on cable statewide and on network television in the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Sioux City markets through January 4. Sioux City is the home base for Senate candidate Sam Clovis, who needs a strong showing in northwest Iowa to have any hope of winning the nomination.  

Time to catch up on news about the many Republicans running for or thinking about running for Senator Tom Harkin’s seat next year. Links about most of the contenders are after the jump.

Any comments about the IA-Sen race are welcome in this thread.

Only one Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Iowa seems to have the financial resources to run paid advertising statewide, and Mark Jacobs is poised to exploit that advantage. Jennifer Jacobs (no relation) reported for the Des Moines Register that the Jacobs campaign is running a 60-second radio spot.

In the ad, Jacobs talks about being born and raised in Iowa, “growing up around a small family business,” and early jobs delivering newspapers and working at Hy-Vee. A voice-over repeatedly refers to Jacobs as a leader in the business world, adding that Jacobs was “educated in Iowa schools.” The language touches on major themes of the Jacobs campaign while addressing one of his big weaknesses–having lived outside Iowa for a few decades. I’ve posted the script after the jump and will add the audio if the candidate posts it on his YouTube channel or campaign website.

Speaking of websites, whoever is running Jacobs’ “news” page needs to stop posting the full text of newspaper articles about the candidate. I’m not an attorney, but my understanding is that “fair use” under copyright law would involve a link to the original publication in the Fort Dodge Messenger or the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, plus an excerpt of a few paragraphs. Currently the Jacobs campaign website rips off the entire texts of newspaper profiles, then adds a useless link at the bottom: “View article as it originally appeared here.” No one’s going to click through once they’ve read the whole piece already. Unless Jacobs has explicit permission from the original publishers, his website should post shorter excerpts.

UPDATE: Scroll to the end of this post to listen to the audio.

SECOND UPDATE: Jacobs was a guest on the December 8 edition of Dave Price’s program “The Insiders” on WHO-TV. Toward the end of the show, Jacobs said he had never voted for any Democratic candidate. Asked about the 2012 Iowa caucuses, Jacobs said he did not support anyone in those caucuses–but tactfully did not mention that he didn’t move back to Iowa until later that year.

Next Tuesday, Iowans in Senate district 13 (Warren and Madison counties) will elect either Republican Julian Garrett or Democrat Mark Davitt as successor to the disgraced Kent Sorenson. Last night I saw a television commercial promoting Garrett several times on CNN. I don’t know whether the spot is running on broadcast networks as well. UPDATE: Bleeding Heartland user rockm points out in the comments that the ad is running on Des Moines area broadcast networks.

I wasn’t able to find it on YouTube, but I got it on tape, and I’ve posted my annotated transcript after the jump. You can see one still shot from the ad on Garrett’s Facebook page.

Garrett isn’t hiding his party affiliation in this Republican-leaning district; his red and white campaign logo includes an elephant. But in an apparent effort to distance himself from Washington-style politics, this commercial portrays Garrett as a pragmatist interested in “fixing problems,” not “fixing the blame.” It also emphasizes his “life on the farm,” not mentioning his long career as an attorney.

State Senator Jack Hatch is spotlighting Governor Terry Branstad’s speeding scandal in the first television commercial of the 2014 Iowa gubernatorial campaign. I’ve posted the “Smokey and the Branstad” video after the jump. It’s apparently running on Des Moines broadcast networks between August 11 and 14, and Hatch for Iowa is seeking donations to keep it on the air longer. To my knowledge, Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Todd Dorman was the first to put the “Smokey and the Branstad” label on this scandal.

Most political consultants wouldn’t recommend advertising in August before the election year, but this speeding scandal has generated a lot of negative chatter about Branstad, even from conservative editorial boards like the Sioux City Journal, Cedar Rapids Gazette, and Quad-City Times. A lawsuit filed late last week by fired Department of Criminal Investigation agent Larry Hedlund may keep the story in the news well into 2014.

Most candidates launch a television advertising campaign with some kind of biographical spot, but Hatch opted to introduce himself with a broadly-held opinion (“Nobody’s above the law”) instead. The words on screen in the middle of the ad (“Cited: Cronyism, Pressuring Public Officials”) allude to conclusions of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which published a report last month on the country’s worst governors.

I’ve also posted below State Senator Matt McCoy’s endorsement of Hatch, which he announced over the weekend.

Yesterday I heard an ad on a Des Moines radio station criticizing Representative Steve King for taking a “five-week taxpayer-funded vacation instead of working to create jobs.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid for the ad in IA-04 and 17 other Republican-held House districts. The ad script is in a press release I’ve posted after the jump. This radio campaign is not targeting Representative Tom Latham in IA-03 for whatever reason. (The National Republican Congressional Committee recently added Latham to its incumbent protection program.) King has received so much unflattering media attention over the past two weeks because of his comments about undocumented immigrants that the DCCC may have felt it was the right time to focus on driving up King’s negatives with Iowans.

Meanwhile, during an interview with Sioux City-based KSCJ Radio, King criticized the Obama administration’s decision to close some U.S. embassies this week. Excerpts from his comments are after the jump, along with reaction from IA-04 Democratic candidate Jim Mowrer, who accused King of politicizing national security.

The typical division of labor in campaigns nowadays is for the candidate to stay mostly positive when communicating with voters, while political parties or outside groups do the hatchet work on opponents. That pattern is already developing in the race for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat. Democratic candidate Bruce Braley is touting his record and his stands on the issues as a way to get his name out and identify supporters. Meanwhile, the Iowa Democratic Party has taken a few shots at candidates seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.

If future salvos look anything like the website the Iowa Democratic Party created to mock David Young, Braley might be better off without their help.

David Young and his campaign recently released an introductory video to youtube that runs about two and a half minutes.  The video is here.  I am sure I do not agree with Mr. Young on much and I have any number of critiques of his video.  However, it is a good video.  It does seem genuine; genuinely nerdy, but genuine.  

The biggest thing that struck me is the emotional experience of going back to your hometown to tell the people who will always know you best that you are going to ask them for their vote.  It is a combination of the beginning of a person’s biggest professional challenge in their lifetime with a “this is your life” trip bringing back personalities and memories from childhood.  David Young does not strike me a person who wears his emotions on his sleeve, but from personal experience I guarantee that this was a powerful event for him.  

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

I recently came across a six-minute promotional video Drake University created in 1987. Shorter versions of this pitch aired as commercials on MTV at the time. Fans of 1980s haircuts and vintage computers will enjoy the full-length video, which I’ve posted after the jump. It’s as much an advertisement for the Mac Classic (or are those Mac IIs?) as for Drake.

Speaking of putting your best foot forward, Representative Steve King said in a fundraising e-mail that he’s “living proof conservatives don’t have to sacrifice everything we believe in to win elections.” Of course they don’t, if they’re running in districts like IA-04. A statewide campaign is a different story.

King didn’t care for the recent “autopsy” report from the Republican National Committee. On Friday he told the panel on “Iowa Press,” “I think the [Republican] party would have been significantly better off if that document had never been released.”

Finally, they say that any publicity is good publicity, but State Senator Brad Zaun probably didn’t appreciate his appearance this week on the front page of the Des Moines Register and its website.

State Representative Tyler Olson told Radio Iowa’s O.Kay Henderson that he has enough support on the Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee to be chosen as state party chair this Saturday. Some background information on Olson is after the jump.

The campaign in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district set records for fundraising by a U.S. House incumbent and challenger in Iowa and attracted nearly $5 million in spending by outside groups. For weeks, television stations around the district have been saturated with ads for and against five-term Representative Steve King and Democratic challenger Christie Vilsack.

A final news roundup on IA-04 is after the jump, including Vilsack’s key campaign themes and King’s closing message to voters.  

Whatever happens in tonight’s Iowa legislative races, one mystery will remain: why couldn’t Republicans recruit a stronger candidate to run against Mike Gronstal in Iowa Senate district 8?  

I planned to write several posts this fall about the third Congressional district race between Representatives Tom Latham and Leonard Boswell. Instead, every time I sat down to write about the campaign, I found myself turning to other topics. Central Iowa radio and television stations have been so over-saturated with cookie-cutter attack ads against both candidates. If a political junkie like me finds it off-putting, I can’t imagine how disengaged other people feel when they hear the beginning of yet another negative commercial.

Neither Latham nor Boswell has offered a compelling case for re-election, but after the jump I review the main messages from both campaigns and from various outside groups that have been advertising in Des Moines and Omaha.

Shortly before election day 2010, Representative Bruce Braley and his staff were sweating it. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent significant funds to help Braley fend off a ton of attack ads funded by conservative groups. Braley defeated Ben Lange by just 4,209 votes. If not for Iowa Democrats’ early vote program and the presence of two minor-party candidates on the ballot, Lange might be in Congress today.

This year, Iowa’s first Congressional district looks far less competitive. A final review of Braley’s rematch against Lange is after the jump, including some fireworks from the candidates’ Iowa Public Television debate last week.  

Three-time candidate for Iowa governor Bob Vander Plaats has made news this fall primarily on the “No Wiggins” campaign trail. However, the social conservative group he runs is supporting some Republican Iowa Senate candidates as well.

Last week the FAMiLY Leader launched radio advertising campaigns in two competitive Senate races–but notably, not in the district where Vander Plaats’ longtime right-hand man Matt Reisetter is running.  

Four new Iowa polls were released during the past 24 hours, and both Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s campaigns have scheduled multiple rallies in Iowa this week. Follow me after the jump for clips on those stories and related news.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Added another poll below and excerpts from a new Romney campaign memo on Iowa.

This thread is for any comments about Congressional races you are following, whether in Iowa or in other states. Steve King and Christie Vilsack held their seventh (!) debate tonight, but I was unable to listen, because Windsor Heights holds trick-or-treating the night before Halloween.

Democrats are starting to talk about a net gain of U.S. Senate seats, but I am not that optimistic. While some races are trending toward the Democratic candidates, others where Democrats led last month are tightening (Virginia, Wisconsin).

To me, the most amazing development in a Congressional race is President Bill Clinton campaigning for Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and recording a television commercial for her. Bleeding Heartland readers who are old enough to remember 1990s politics, could you ever have believed that Bill Clinton would be considered an asset to a Democratic candidate in North Dakota a week before the election?  

The second “No Wiggins” television commercial hit Iowa television screens on October 26, featuring an “Iowa mom” who happens to be Iowa’s new Republican National Committeewoman. The video, transcript, and related news clips are after the jump. Bleeding Heartland covered the first “No Wiggins” ad here.

It’s time for another discussion thread on any competitive U.S. House and Senate races. More detailed posts about the four Iowa Congressional districts are in progress, but after the jump I’ve posted the latest information on independent expenditures for and against the major-party candidates. Bleeding Heartland covered the third-quarter financial reports for the Iowa Congressional candidates here. Early voting totals for each of the four Congressional districts are here.

I’ve also added a few links on U.S. Senate races around the country. I’m amazed that Democrats still appear to be favorites to hold a small Senate majority. For me that has been one of the most surprising political stories of the year. Republicans could still win a majority, but they would have to run the table in the tossup races.

The latest Federal Election Commission disclosure reports are out, covering money raised and spent by Congressional candidates between July 1 and September 30. Details from Iowa’s four races are after the jump, along with information on groups that have made independent expenditures in each of the districts. The latest voter registration totals in the Congressional districts are here, and I’m updating absentee ballot totals for each district on weekdays here.

Any comments about these campaigns are welcome in this thread. I’d be particularly grateful if some Bleeding Heartland reader could explain what Tom Latham has been saving his money for, and why the PAC of the Credit Union National Association is supporting both Latham in IA-03 and Christie Vilsack in IA-04.

Medicare and alleged “job-killing” policies are the focus of the latest television commercials from Representative Dave Loebsack and his GOP challenger John Archer. Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee is taking cheap shots over a committee hearing Loebsack attended three and a half years ago.

Videos and transcripts of the latest television commercials in Iowa’s second Congressional district are after the jump. Bleeding Heartland covered previous ads from this race here, here, and here.

It’s time to catch up on news from the first Congressional district campaign between three-term Democratic Representative Bruce Braley and his two-time Republican challenger Ben Lange. After the jump I’ve posted my take on yesterday’s debate on Iowa Public Radio, along with videos and transcripts of the latest television commercials by the campaigns and outside groups. (Bleeding Heartland covered earlier tv ads in the IA-01 race here, here, and here.)  

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney stopped in Iowa yesterday to push his economic and farm policies. However, his comments on abortion during an interview with the Des Moines Register overshadowed his speech to supporters at a rally in rural Van Meter (Madison County).

UPDATE: Added the fuller version of Romney’s remarks and Paul Ryan’s reaction below.

Fewer than 30 days remain until the presidential election. Any comments about the race in Iowa or nationally are welcome in this thread. I’ve compiled recent news, analysis, and advertising after the jump. I will update as needed, especially if any new Iowa poll comes out today. Gallup’s national tracking poll shows Mitt Romney gaining ground since last Wednesday’s presidential debate.

UPDATE: Rasmussen Reports has President Barack Obama leading Romney in Iowa by 49 percent to 47 percent, based on a survey of 500 likely voters conducted on October 7 (margin of error plus or minus 4.5 percent). Rasmussen’s previous Iowa poll had Romney leading 47 percent to 44 percent.

SECOND UPDATE: Added latest national polling data at the end of this post.

I haven’t been an optimist about Christie Vilsack’s chances of taking down Representative Steve King, to put it mildly. But over the past month I have become convinced that King and Washington Republicans are genuinely concerned about holding Iowa’s new fourth Congressional district.

Follow me after the jump for a closer look at King’s campaign strategy, along with polling data and some other news from the IA-04 race. Later this week I will post a similar piece about the Vilsack campaign, and a separate review of outside groups’ advertising in this district.

American Research Group released its latest Iowa poll today, which shows the ticket of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden leading Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan by 51 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, with just 4 percent of respondents undecided.  

Boring, cookie-cutter commercials may not help candidates like Republican John Archer much, but at least they do no harm. The same can’t be said for Representative Dave Loebsack’s latest tv ad, unless picking a fight with a major employer in your district has some upside I’m missing.

Republican candidate John Archer is running his first television commercial since the primary in Iowa’s second Congressional district. It’s mostly a positive spot introducing the candidate and doesn’t mention incumbent Representative Dave Loebsack by name. (The National Republican Congressional Committee went up on tv earlier this month with an attack ad on Loebsack.) The video and annotated transcript of Archer’s commercial are after the jump.

A few weeks after reserving television advertising time in Iowa’s second Congressional district, the National Republican Congressional Committee started running a spot against three-term Democratic incumbent Dave Loebsack late last week. Loebsack’s campaign launched its first television commercial of the year today.

The air war in Iowa’s first Congressional district is fully engaged, with four new television commercials in the last week alone. Three-term Democratic incumbent Bruce Braley started running a spot about veterans last week and went up on the air yesterday with a response to a new ad about Medicare, paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Last week Republican challenger Ben Lange launched his second tv spot, which depicts the national debt as unfair to the next generation.

More details on the new commercials, including videos and transcripts, are after the jump. Bleeding Heartland covered Braley’s opening tv spot here and Lange’s here.  

One of Republican Mitt Romney’s latest television commercials in Iowa asserts that cutting government spending and eliminating the federal deficit will create 130,000 jobs in Iowa. Meanwhile, in states with more military bases and defense sector industry, Romney campaign advertising promises to create hundreds of thousands of jobs by reversing planned cuts in defense spending.

Republican candidate Ben Lange launched his first television commercial of the 2012 campaign today. Like incumbent Democrat Bruce Braley’s opening ad in the first Congressional district, the 30-second spot emphasizes values the candidate learned growing up in a small Iowa town.

For the past ten days, GOP strategists have worried anonymously that Representative Paul Ryan’s presence on the national ticket will hurt Mitt Romney’s campaign, especially in the must-win state of Florida. One of the top Democratic talking points of the last year and a half has been Ryan’s plan to “end Medicare as we know it” by forcing future retirees to purchase government-subsidized private health insurance.

Romney’s strategists seem to have decided that the best defense on Medicare is a good offense. A television commercial launched last week attacked President Barack Obama’s record on Medicare, and a brand-new spot echoes that charge. Both videos are after the jump, along with transcripts and one of the Obama campaign’s response ads.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has reserved more than $1 million of television advertising time in eastern Iowa, although it’s not clear how much the committee will spend to assist GOP challengers Ben Lange in IA-01 and John Archer in IA-02.