Ira Lacher reports on the People’s Forum in Des Moines. -promoted by Laura Belin

While thousands sat in single-lane traffic at Water Works Park hoping to hear seventeen presidential candidates deliver ten-minute stump speeches, several thousand Midwesterners from five states crammed into the Iowa Events Center on September 21 to listen to four candidates explain at length why they deserved the votes of progressives.

State Representative Molly Donahue: “Amy Klobuchar is running to be the president of all the people, not half the people.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Amy Klobuchar isn’t just a smart, funny, gritty, senator from Minnesota who gets things done. She is someone who studies and weighs the pros and cons of policy. She not only knows her own policies in and out, but she also knows the policies of her fellow presidential candidates.

Amy’s one-liners are filled with a wealth of knowledge about how the system works and how to get to where we want to be, while uniting those around her. She has proven her strength is uniting by getting people to work together towards a common cause as a senator, and she has shown time and again that she can stand up to Trump and his policies.

Amy has fought to expand affordable health care options, building on and improving the Affordable Care Act, and working across the aisle to reduce prescription drug prices while allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. She wants to end the stigma of mental illness in this country, and to make sure that services are available and affordable for the people in need.

She believes in providing a pathway for citizenship for undocumented workers, and that we must begin to reduce carbon emissions with a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 while embracing natural gas as a “transition” fuel to help the U.S. move away from foreign oil. She has experience working with agriculture and knows that our farmers and rural communities are at risk because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. She has a plan to put our rural areas back to work and help farmers be sustainable into the future while protecting the environment.

Amy doesn’t look at things and say they can’t be done. Instead, she asks, how do we get there with everyone, not just part of the country? She is running to be the president of all the people, not half the people.

She is the daughter of a public school teacher, and knows the importance of a public education for a successful future. Amy stands for the people, the workers of America and stresses the importance of the unions to strengthen our work force and continue to build a strong middle class with good jobs, wages, benefits, and safety in the workplace. She supports expanding access to vocational training and other post-secondary education in an affordable way, so students aren’t burdened with insurmountable debt.

Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action have praised Amy for her strong stance on gun violence prevention. She jokes she isn’t looking to hurt her uncle, who’s a big hunter. Rather, she supports instituting universal background checks, banning assault rifles, and Extreme Risk Orders, also known as “red flag” laws – which allow law enforcement to remove guns from people they determine to be a threat.

Amy speaks about our allies around the world, and how she will bring them back to the table to stabilize the damage done by the Trump administration. She is a fighter for LGBTQ and women’s rights.

From campaign finance reform to foreign policy, Amy Klobuchar is a great candidate who can win.

I am very happy to announce that I have endorsed Amy Klobuchar for president. She is the person we need to unite this country and to move the country forward. Amy will work across the aisle to pass progressive policy and has what it takes to not only stand up to Trump, but to beat Trump.

She has the work ethic and values that the country wants in a leader, and she will put the people first when she implements the policies and changes for her administration.

Plain and simply, Amy Klobuchar will provide a great future for our kids as president of the United States.

Editor’s note: Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts related to the Iowa caucuses, including but not limited to candidate endorsements. Please read these guidelines and contact Laura Belin if you are interested in writing.

Top image: Senator Amy Klobuchar (left) and State Representative Molly Donahue in Cedar Rapids at a September 1 “climate conversation” event organized by State Senator Rob Hogg. Photo provided by the author and published with permission.

Industry-funded groups have recently spent more than a million dollars on television and online advertising in Iowa opposing Democratic plans to expand access to health insurance.

Some ads primarily focus on single-payer plans (often known as Medicare for All), which more than half a dozen presidential candidates are supporting. But Partnership for America’s Health Care Future has used its hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Des Moines market targeting more modest proposals to offer a “public option” on exchanges selling private health insurance policies.

Many central Iowa Democratic activists were surprised and upset to see Loretta Sieman, a longtime West Des Moines city council member, in one of the partnership’s commercials. Sieman spoke to Bleeding Heartland on September 11 about why she opposes the public option and why she agreed to appear in the ad, now in heavy rotation on YouTube as well as Des Moines broadcast and cable stations.

First disclaimer: I don’t agree with the Democratic National Committee’s debate criteria and encourage Iowans to keep listening to all the presidential candidates.

Second disclaimer: I doubt anything that happens more than four months before anyone votes will significantly affect the battle for the Democratic nomination. As Dan Guild has shown, history tells us more than half of Iowa Democrats who participated in the 2004 and 2008 caucuses decided in the final month.

That said, here are my thoughts on last night’s three-hour debate at Texas Southern University in Houston.

Former State Senator Jack Hatch appears to be seriously considering a campaign for mayor of Des Moines.

In recent days, numerous Democrats living in the capital city have received a lengthy telephone poll testing positive messages about Hatch and mostly negative messages about Mayor Frank Cownie, a four-term incumbent who has held the position since 2004.

Hatch did not immediately respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment on his plans and whether he commissioned the poll. I’ve paraphrased the questions below, based on detailed notes from a source who took the survey on September 9, and will update this post as needed when Hatch makes his intentions clear.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee put up a billboard on a busy Des Moines street this week, seeming to attack Democrat Kimberly Graham. It’s part of a strategy to elevate the profiles of “lower-tier candidates” for U.S. Senate in states including North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, and Georgia, Nathan Gonzales reported for Roll Call on August 14.

Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker has ruled out running for U.S. Senate in 2020, he announced in a post published on his website on August 8. He made the “quite difficult decision” mainly because the Democratic primary “was already heavily skewed in favor of one candidate.”

I’ve read a lot of statements by politicians bowing out of a campaign. Few have spoken as frankly about their reasons as Walker.

After seven-term Democratic U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack announced plans to retire after his current term, I argued that the open-seat race in Iowa’s second Congressional district looked like a toss-up.

Bobby Schilling made his campaign official on July 8, setting up a likely general election match-up against Rita Hart. Although Democrats should take nothing for granted here, and the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball still rate IA-02 as a toss-up, I’m now considering this a lean Democratic seat for the following reasons.

Ira Lacher warns it would be a mistake for the Democratic presidential nominee to promise to take away millions of Americans’ employer-provided health insurance. -promoted by Laura Belin

Looking back at the 2016 election, there were at least five types of Americans who voted for Donald Trump: nativists and xenophobes who consider America a white country; independents who absolutely detested Hillary Clinton; Obama voters fed up with the Democratic Party for apparently tossing them under the bus in favor of big corporations; dyed-in-the-wool Republicans who would have voted for Thanos, if he had run as a Republican; and all of the above: those who couldn’t cope with the accelerating change, already at warp speed, altering our culture, politics, economics, and the very framework of America.

In one analysis of the way people react to change, the first five reactions are all negative: denial, anger, confusion, depression and crisis. Psychologist James Prochaska postulated that there are various aspects of change, from preparation through action. As we go through each of these stages, he said, we can ready ourselves for the next, and put ourselves in the best position to cope with the alterations.

Des Moines resident Jon Muller has worked in public policy analysis for 27 years. -promoted by Laura Belin

While I will be voting for whoever wins the Democratic nomination for president, Andrew Yang stands out among the nearly two dozen candidates.

There are two fundamental questions most Democrats are considering, broadly, and I’m not much different.

1. Which candidate has the best chance of winning in 2020?
2. Which candidate best conforms to my sense of the best direction for this nation?

In my view, Andrew Yang is the answer to both of those questions. Let’s take the second question first.

Nineteen presidential candidates had five minutes each to make their case to more than 1,000 activists at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame event in Cedar Rapids on June 9. Most offered at least one really good applause line. Teams of reporters from the Des Moines Register and Iowa Starting Line pulled together some of the memorable parts of each speech here and here.

I decided to focus on how the candidates spoke about health care and women’s ability to access abortion for a couple of reasons. First, while the candidates highlighted a wide range of problems and proposals, almost all of them addressed those topics in some way.

Second, this post represents my gesture toward what media critic Jay Rosen has called the “citizens agenda” approach to covering campaigns. Although I lack survey data to know for sure what Iowa Democrats want the presidential contenders to be talking about, I believe health care and reproductive rights are among the most salient for caucus-goers, because:

Tyler Mills is a Democrat in Keokuk (Lee County). -promoted by Laura Belin

John Hickenlooper is the voice the country needs right now. His bid for the Democratic nomination for president will move us forward, particularly when it comes to a policy discussion. His accomplishments as governor of Colorado from 2011 to 2019 are quite impressive.

Kimberly Graham is the first declared Democratic challenger to U.S. Senator Joni Ernst. Her campaign website is kimberlyforiowa.com, and she’s on Facebook and Twitter @KimberlyforIowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

Our current junior senator ran on a promise to get rid of corruption in Washington and “make ‘em squeal,” but the only people squealing are Iowans harmed by her votes.

My name is Kimberly Graham. I’m running for the United States Senate. Here’s who I am, who I’m running for, and why:

Bruce Lear: “Swinging for the bleacher seats every time will often leave a player sitting in the dugout with a sore back. The same is true for candidates.” -promoted by Laura Belin

I love baseball. It’s a game of chess with four bases on a field instead of knights and rooks on a board. The object is to defend against runs and advance your runners around the bases. An easy game? No!

It has no clock, so the game isn’t lost until the final out at the plate or in the field. It’s slow. It’s methodical. It’s a game of statistics. The season is 162 games, so there are times of utter despair and utter joy.

James Earl Jones sums it up best in the now 30-year-old Iowa epic Field of Dreams:

“The one constant throughout the years, Ray has been baseball. America has rolled like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”

For me, baseball is a lot like politics. Winning is based on a strategy about finding that sweet spot in a very long season. It’s slow. It’s methodical. It’s based on statistics we call polls.

This year’s crop of Democratic candidates could perhaps learn from baseball hitters through the ages. Remember, Babe Ruth led the league in home runs but also in strike outs. In politics when there is a binary choice between candidates, too many times waving or watching a fast ball or curve might get you a gig on CNN or Fox instead of the Presidency.

Scott County Supervisor Ken Croken may seek the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s second Congressional district, where U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack will retire at the end of his current term.

Bill Lukitsch was first to report the news for the Quad-City Times on April 30. Croken spoke to Bleeding Heartland about his plans on May 4.

Cindy Garlock is an Indivisible activist in Cedar Rapids. -promoted by Laura Belin

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst has earned a noteworthy distinction, Iowa media recently reported. One would hope it might be something that improved the lives of ordinary Iowans. But no. She is touting what her campaign is claiming as the largest first-quarter fundraising in an off-year election in the history of Iowa politics.

The $2.8 million cash on hand that she has amassed brought a few questions to my mind. In looking for answers, I found some things Iowans may be interested in knowing about our senator and where much of her campaign funding has come from.

Tyler Higgs is a school psychologist who lives in Clive. -promoted by Laura Belin

If a teacher were president…

She would rebuild the middle class because she knows that students who come from a lower socioeconomic background are at a disadvantage when it comes to their education, physical health, and career readiness. This affects our society as a whole.

She would fight for high quality universal child care and early childhood education, which have a high return on investment for her students and for America.

Thomas Nelson of the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier was first to report last week that former U.S. Representative Rod Blum’s campaign has spent $11,365 on polling this year. Blum’s quarterly filing with the Federal Election Commission showed two disbursements to the candidate’s longtime pollster in early January.

The payments exceeded the $4,119 Blum for Congress owed The Polling Company at the end of December, indicating that Blum commissioned new surveys in the first district and wasn’t merely settling debts left over from the 2018 campaign.

While I have not been able to find details about the questions asked, his campaign likely tested voters’ views on key issues as well as approval and favorability numbers for himself and Representative Abby Finkenauer. Blum hasn’t ruled out running for office again. Nelson noted that he appeared at a Jones County GOP event on April 11.

No Republican has confirmed plans to run against Finkenauer. I see Blum as a weaker challenger than State Representative Ashley Hinson, who has said she’s considering the race and will make her intentions known after the legislative session ends.

Sue Dinsdale is the executive director of Iowa Citizen Action Network. -promoted by Laura Belin

Nine years ago this week, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, giving us a chance and a choice when it comes to health insurance. But since that time there has been threat after threat against it. And each time it is threatened, everyday Americans have spoken out.

Here in Iowa and across the country, small business owners, students, retirees, farmers, workers, seniors, young people, veterans and other constituents have been telling our Members of Congress: Stop these cruel and careless threats on our health and financial security.

Matt Chapman closely follows Iowa legislative happenings, including bills affecting Iowans on public assistance. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowa Senate Republicans on March 19 approved new work requirements for tens of thousands of Iowans on Medicaid or receiving food assistance. Senate File 538 would instruct the Iowa Department of Human Services to request a federal waiver for the Iowa Health and Wellness Plan, our state’s version of Medicaid expansion. Approximately 170,000 adults receive Medicaid through that plan, and roughly 61,000 of them also receive Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) benefits.

If the waiver were approved, Medicaid recipients would face new reporting obligations for “community engagement.” If not part of an exempted group, they could lose coverage due to paperwork errors, even if they were working the requisite number of hours per week. Nonpartisan analysis estimated this bill would cost the state budget nearly $5 million the first year after the waiver and nearly $12 million each subsequent year.

During floor debate (beginning at 11:53:20 of this video), Republicans characterized the bill as a way to hold Iowans accountable. Democrats offered two amendments that would have extended that accountability to large employers and the for-profit insurers known as managed-care organizations (MCOs), which oversee Iowa’s privatized Medicaid.

Paul Deaton: “It’s easy to say we should balance our politics and policy. I’m not sure about that. A better approach is to recognize there is political bandwidth and tune in.” -promoted by Laura Belin

The 2020 general election will be challenging for a lot of reasons, not the least of which for me is deciding whether policy or politics is the most important part of it.

Politics is the art of what’s possible. I’m over the naive notion that policy matters more than politics, although the art of what’s possible has produced some problems.

Matt Sinovic is the executive director of Progress Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

This week, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for fiscal year 2020, which revives a call to repeal the Affordable Care Act and lays out massive cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The administration’s budget reveals just how steadfast it remains in trying to take away Americans’ health care.

Here are five things you need to know about Trump’s Health Care Sabotage Budget:

Matt Chapman has attended Iowa House and Senate subcommittee meetings nearly every day. These bills were among the most significant he has tracked lately. -promoted by Laura Belin

Over the past week, Iowa Senate subcommittees considered five bills drafted to address fraud in Iowa public assistance programs. Each bill would direct revenue generated by Iowa taxpayers to private vendors, who are charged with finding fraudulent claims. If investigation supports the claims of fraud, those funds could be recovered, and criminal charges filed.

Sometimes I feel nostalgic for my “past life” covering Russian politics. Social media didn’t exist, and my colleagues and I had no information about which articles most interested our readers. Potential for clicks or shares didn’t factor into our story selection. We wrote up what seemed important to us.

On any given day, a half-dozen or more newsworthy Iowa politics stories present themselves, but I only have the capacity to cover one or two. I look for ways to add value: can I highlight events not covered elsewhere? Can I offer a different perspective or more context on the story everyone’s talking about?

Although chasing traffic will never be my primary goal, doing this for more than a decade has given me a decent sense of which topics will strike a chord with readers. But you never really know. Just like last year and the year before that, surprises lurked in the traffic numbers on Bleeding Heartland posts published during 2018 (353 written by me, 202 by other authors).

The Bleeding Heartland community lost a valued voice this year when Johnson County Supervisor Kurt Friese passed away in October. As Mike Carberry noted in his obituary for his good friend, Kurt had a tremendous amount on his plate, and I was grateful whenever he found time to share his commentaries in this space. His final post here was a thought-provoking look at his own upbringing and past intimate relationships in light of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Friese was among more than 100 guest authors who produced 202 Bleeding Heartland posts during 2018, shattering the previous record of 164 posts by 83 writers in 2017. I’m thankful for every piece and have linked to them all below.

You will find scoops grounded in original research, commentary about major news events, personal reflections on events from many years ago, and stories in photographs or cartoons. Some posts were short, while others developed an argument over thousands of words. Pieces by Allison Engel, Randy Richardson, Tyler Higgs, and Matt Chapman were among the most-viewed at the site this year. In the full list, I’ve noted other posts that were especially popular.

Please get in touch if you would like to write about any political topic of local, statewide, or national importance during 2019. If you do not already have a Bleeding Heartland account, I can set one up for you and explain the process. There is no standard format or word limit. I copy-edit for clarity but don’t micromanage how authors express themselves. Although most authors write under their real names, pseudonyms are allowed here and may be advisable for those writing about sensitive topics or whose day job does not permit expressing political views. I ask authors to disclose potential conflicts of interest, such as being are a paid staffer, consultant, or lobbyist promoting any candidate or policy they discuss here.

Nancy Pelosi won an important U.S. House Democratic caucus vote on November 28, and all three Iowans who will be part of the majority next year backed her for speaker.

Nate Williams is a labor attorney and served in the Iowa House from 2009 through 2012. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I am not sure whether to think of this as “three mistakes Fred Hubbell’s campaign made” or “one mistake the Hubbell campaign made and two missed opportunities.”

Either way, there are three things I wish the Hubbell campaign would have done very differently.

ReShonda Young of Waterloo has been an advocate for small business owners on a variety of issues. -promoted by desmoinesdem

My U.S. House Representative Rod Blum, along with his Iowa colleagues David Young and Steve King, has repeatedly voted to take away health care from me, my brother, my employees, and many other Iowans.

This is personal for me, as it is for most of us. I have a serious health condition and, as a business owner, have employed people with serious conditions of their own.

Hundreds of Iowa Democrats got their first chance to hear U.S. Senator Kamala Harris on October 22. On her first major swing through the state, the senator from California had a packed schedule, including:

Though Harris is widely viewed as a potential 2020 presidential candidate, she kept her focus on the election happening November 6. I enclose below the full audio and partial transcript of the evening speech, which was similar to remarks Harris delivered earlier in the day.

Whereas some politicians tend to use convoluted, run-on sentences, Harris was striking in how she used simple sentence construction and repetition to great effect.

Governor Kim Reynolds and Democratic challenger Fred Hubbell debated for the third and last time today in Davenport. Too bad not many viewers are likely to tune in at 8:00 am on a Sunday morning, because the discussion was yet another study in contrasts. For those who prefer a written recap, I enclose below my detailed notes. Click here and here for Bleeding Heartland’s analysis of the first two Hubbell-Reynolds debates.

As during the second debate, journalists kept the candidates on topic and within the time limit, so kudos to moderator David Nelson of KWQC-TV6 and panelists Erin Murphy of Lee Enterprises, Forrest Saunders of KCRG-TV9, and Jenna Jackson of KWQC-TV6.

Both candidates recycled many talking points from their first two meetings. My impression was that Reynolds performed about equally well in all three debates, while Hubbell improved each time. For instance, after Reynolds noted that Iowa had moved up in mental health rankings three years in a row and was now rated sixth in the country for mental health, Hubbell pointed out that the study the governor cited covered the years 2013 through 2015. That was before the Branstad/Reynolds administration closed some mental health institutions and privatized Medicaid, which has led to worse care for thousands of Iowans.

For those who prefer to watch the replay, KCRG-TV posted the video in a single file, which is the most user-friendly option. You can also find the debate on KWQC-TV (with closed captioning) and WOWT-TV’s websites, but you will have to watch a series of clips, with advertisements before each segment.

Laura Hubka chairs the Howard County Democrats, is vice chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Disability Caucus, and is the first district liaison to the party for the Veterans Caucus. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I decided to go to Obama.org just to check it out after looking at one of President Barack Obama’s posts on Twitter (my heart jumped and sank at writing that last statement). It was full of videos from the campaign in 2008. Almost all of it from Iowa. Young people, music, chanting and all the excitement of what could be. The hope, the change, the light in the peoples faces. I had to fight back the tears.

I feel like something inside me has faded. A light inside me is dim. I am afraid that the winds of change from 2016 have blown out my candle. I keep trying to light it but it is like lighting a wet wick. I can’t seem to find a hot enough fire. My heart literally aches.

With just seven weeks remaining before election day, “No Republican organization has put money toward TV ads that could benefit” U.S. Representative Rod Blum in Iowa’s first Congressional district, Barbara Rodriguez and Brianne Pfannenstiel reported for the Des Moines Register on September 17. Their analysis of television air time data from Kantar Media showed that groups supporting Democratic challenger Abby Finkenauer “have spent or reserved more than $1.2 million for airing political ads” in IA-01. Blum’s campaign has placed $129,000 in television ad buys, and no GOP-aligned groups have indicated plans to advertise in the district.

In many battleground Congressional races, candidates run mostly positive tv ads, while outside groups pay for the hatchet jobs. That normal division of labor won’t be available to Blum. He will have to cover the cost of any negative ads about Finkenauer from his own campaign funds, leaving less money to make an case for himself on the air.

Sue Dinsdale of the Iowa Citizen Action Network reports on efforts to mobilize Americans who need quality, affordable health care, with protections for pre-existing conditions. -promoted by desmoinesdem

After watching U.S. Representatives Rod Blum (IA-01), David Young (IA-03), and Steve King (IA-04) vote time after time to repeal their coverage, Iowans understand that it has never been more important for lawmakers to stand up for our right to health care. And as one poll after another shows, health care will play a significant role in this year’s election.

Because of the urgency surrounding this issue, across Iowa and across the country, there is an aggressive mobilization effort underway in all 50 states by Health Care Voter in order to hold Republicans feet to the fire for their efforts to undermine and repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst are among ten U.S. Senate Republicans co-sponsoring a bill that purports to protect health insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions.

There’s a catch: the legislation would require insurance companies to sell policies to people with pre-existing conditions, but it wouldn’t stop them from excluding coverage for those very conditions.

Former U.S. Representative Leonard Boswell passed away on August 17 at the age of 84. He had long battled a rare cancer called pseudomyxoma peritonei. Boswell publicly speculated in 2015 that exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War could have caused his abdominal tumors. According to a former staff member, a link to the powerful herbicide was later confirmed. In a recorded message to Iowa Democrats last year, Boswell said his doctors agreed that his disease stemmed from getting “pretty well soaked” while flying a crop-duster mission.

Surviving two tours of duty as an assault helicopter pilot in Vietnam was itself beating the odds. Boswell received numerous honors for his actions in that extremely dangerous role.

Following 20 years of military service, Boswell became a cattle farmer in southern Iowa. First elected to the Iowa Senate in 1984, he served three terms in the legislature, the last as Senate president. He was well-liked in Democratic circles. When I met him briefly during the 1994 campaign (he was the lieutenant governor nominee on a ticket with Bonnie Campbell), he seemed to have a larger-than-life personality.

After winning an open U.S. House seat in 1996, Boswell represented parts of central and southern Iowa in Congress for sixteen years. His proudest legislative accomplishment was sponsoring the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act, which President George W. Bush signed in 2007. Though he belonged to the conservative “Blue Dog” caucus, Boswell voted for the major legislation of President Barack Obama’s first term, including the economic stimulus bill and the Affordable Care Act.

Rarely does a presidential candidate focus a stump speech on an out-of-the box idea. But in his first appearance before a large Iowa audience on August 10, Andrew Yang devoted much of his time to the “Freedom Dividend,” a proposal unlike anything I’ve heard on the caucus trail.

After the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding in Clear Lake, Yang spoke to Bleeding Heartland about how the U.S. could pay for a nationwide universal basic income plan. He also explained how he envisions selling the idea to voters who have heard politicians denigrate “hand-outs” and welfare for decades.

Jeff Cox sees Democrats “campaigning only on issues that reliable Democratic voters care about.” He thinks a winning message will require addressing broader concerns among Iowans. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In the past decade, the Democratic Party has lost control of both houses of the Iowa legislature as well as the governor’s office. It is difficult to overstate the damage that has been done to the people of Iowa by the Republicans. If they keep control of the governor’s office and legislature next November, they can add the judiciary to their list of conquests. When that happens, things will get even worse–much worse.

A newly-formed political non-profit sent two mass mailings to Iowa Democrats this week in support of Eddie Mauro, one of three candidates seeking the nomination in the third Congressional district. The website and Facebook page for Iowans for a Progressive Tomorrow do not indicate who is funding the effort, nor has the group filed 24-hour independent expenditure reports with the Federal Election Commission. UPDATE: The group belatedly submitted reports; added details below.

With less than three weeks remaining before the June 5 primary, many Democrats (including myself) are still undecided in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district. All three candidates left standing in the once-crowded field have raised enough money to run strong, district-wide campaigns.

This post focuses on how Cindy Axne, Pete D’Alessandro, and Eddie Mauro have presented themselves in stump speeches, direct mail, and television commercials aimed at Democratic voters.

Republican lawmakers made big promises last year that Iowans would have “more access” to family planning services under a new state program that excluded Planned Parenthood.

As anyone could have foreseen, the opposite was true. In the first nine months of the State Family Planning Program’s existence, the number of Iowans enrolled dropped by a third. The number who obtained at least one reproductive health care service fell by more than 40 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter the program was operating. The number of health care providers billing the program also declined by 40 percent during the same time frame.

Republican lawmakers don’t want to hear how poorly the new system is serving their constituents. Even worse, GOP state senators voted unanimously last week to compound the mistake by blocking Planned Parenthood from participating in sex education programs.