UPDATE: This morning Secretary Northey unblocked me and said the blocking had been unintentional. Glad to hear it.

Pulling together some links for a future post about how Iowans have responded to a new Environmental Protection Agency clean water rule, I checked Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey’s Twitter feed yesterday and saw this:

Northey may be the first Iowa Republican elected official to block me. Certainly he is the only statewide official ever to do so. A guy who is likely to run for governor in a couple of years might want to grow a thicker skin.

UPDATE: I learned this morning that I am unable to view Iowa House Judiciary Committee Chair Chip Baltimore’s Twitter feed. That was not the case a few months ago. He may have deleted that account; the old @ChipBaltimoreIA feed has no new tweets since 2013. I haven’t mentioned Baltimore at Bleeding Heartland in a while, but in April I did tweet a link to an unflattering story about him.

SECOND UPDATE: It seems Baltimore deleted that @chipbaltimore Twitter account.

“Blocking” is a way of preventing another Twitter user from following you, viewing your tweets, tagging you in their own tweets, or sending you direct messages. Twitter doesn’t set criteria for blocking; you can block anyone for any reason. Most people I know only block spammers or users who have been harassing them.

I was unable to figure out how long Northey has been blocking me. In the past I could view his posts, but I’ve hardly mentioned him on my Twitter feed or at Bleeding Heartland all year. Hence my plans to catch up on his reaction to the EPA Clean Water Rule. When the final rule came out in late May, Northey said it would “take some time to thoroughly analyze and understand its full impact.”

I’ve made no secret of supporting Northey’s Democratic opponents in each of his three campaigns for Iowa secretary of agriculture. I disagreed with Northey’s support for a lawsuit challenging California law on egg production; a federal judge threw out that lawsuit last year. I wish Northey had fought harder for conservation funding that Governor Terry Branstad vetoed after the 2014 legislative session.

Most of all, I’ve criticized Northey for supporting water quality funding only in the absence of real goals for getting pollutants out of Iowa waterways or timelines and monitoring to see if we are spending the money effectively. Quoting from a 2014 Bleeding Heartland post on the subject:

From the beginning, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey has insisted on an all-voluntary approach to reducing excessive nutrients that leach from “non-point sources” (primarily agriculture) into Iowa waterways. He rejected suggestions from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others who warned that without numeric criteria for phosphorus and nitrogen, the Nutrient Reduction Strategy would fail. Northey resisted any mandatory regulations for farmers as well as calls for more accountability to help Iowans find out which, if any, watershed projects were actually reducing water pollution. Environmental advocates including the Iowa Environmental Council, with which I’m involved, would like to see “a more targeted voluntary incentive program” that focuses state budget funds where they will do the most good for clean water.

Northey strongly supports the Nutrient Reduction Strategy, as long as no farmer is forced to do anything and no one can evaluate the strategy’s success in a meaningful way.

All of my criticism of Northey has been grounded in policy disagreements. I have never attacked him personally, “trolled” his Twitter feed, or attempted to send him a direct message through Twitter. References to him on my feed were primarily related to water quality issues and occasionally about electoral politics or agriculture/food news.

If Northey advanced policies to protect Iowa’s world-class soil, I would happily give him credit. I’ve long been active in 1000 Friends of Iowa, a non-profit promoting responsible land use. When Northey came to our 2008 annual meeting to announce the creation of a working group on farmland protection, I was encouraged. I wish I could have written pieces for Bleeding Heartland about that working group’s recommendations and any state government efforts to implement them.

Unfortunately, the farmland protection working group never even got to the stage of producing a report to gather dust on a shelf. According to several people who were appointed to it, the group fizzled out after two or three meetings, lacking support from the agriculture secretary. I can no longer find any reference to its creation on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship’s website.

Getting back to the main point of this post, being blocked from a newsmaker’s Twitter feed is not a major hardship. I’m hardly going to miss any state secrets. But it is unusual for a statewide elected official to block a constituent. I wonder why Northey, or possibly a staffer who manages his social media, felt compelled to block me. I assume the decision relates to my writing at this blog or on Twitter, but I am seeking comment from Northey’s office and will update this post if I hear back. UPDATE: Northey responded via Twitter that the blocking had been unintentional.

Republicans and Democrats expect Northey to run for governor in 2018. He has been thinking about seeking that office since before Terry Branstad got back into political life. Although he has appeared on a statewide ballot three times, secretary of agriculture campaigns tend to be low-profile affairs. Northey has never run in a competitive primary.

In contrast, Northey will likely face two or three GOP rivals seeking to replace Branstad, including Lieutenant Governor (or perhaps by 2017 sitting governor) Kim Reynolds and Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett. If Northey wins the GOP nomination, he can expect a fierce general election battle. Iowa Democrats will be highly focused on winning back the governor’s mansion in 2018, when neither U.S. Senate seat will be on the ballot.

A gubernatorial campaign would subject Northey to much harsher attacks from rival candidates and their supporters than anything Bleeding Heartland has thrown his way.