Over at Iowa Independent, Lynda Waddington has been keeping track of the presidential candidate endorsements by Democrats in the Iowa legislature.

So far Hillary Clinton has 16 endorsements from legislators, Barack Obama has 15, Joe Biden has 13, John Edwards has 10 (Lynda published his total as nine, but State Representative Bob Kressig of Cedar Falls endorsed Edwards today), and Chris Dodd has three.

More than two dozen Democrats in the legislature have yet to endorse, and it's unclear how many of them will publicly support a presidential candidate.

When you think about it, it's surprising that Hillary Clinton hasn't got a bigger lead in the endorsement race, with a former two-term president and a former two-term governor trying to win people over to her side. Her big lead in national polling would seem to make endorsing her the “safe” play as well. 

Why aren't more legislators supporting her presidential bid? 

I am also surprised that no one in the legislature has backed Bill Richardson. He's too conservative for me on economic issues, and I'm mad that he is going around telling people that Edwards would leave 100,000 troops in Iraq, which is demonstrably false.

But truly, he's a successful governor with legislative and diplomatic experience and good ideas in many areas (I am partial to his environmental and transportation policy plans). I am surprised that he's not getting more support from Democratic elected officials. Maybe most of the pro-gun Democrats lost their seats during the 1990s?