James Larew: Seasoned local citizens, steeped in historical knowledge and aware of the cultural sensitivities of their own neighborhoods, once played significant, anchoring roles in Iowa caucus campaigns. They seldom do so anymore. -promoted by Laura Belin

Starting nearly a half-century ago, in 1972, and continuing for every presidential election year, thereafter, our state—initially, colored deep-red, more recently taking on a purplish hue—has hosted waves of intense political campaigning.

In the first waves of every presidential election cycle, large casts of candidates and their campaign entourages have competed ferociously in our sometimes-troubled democratic experiments called the “Iowa caucuses.”

Then, nine months later, general election campaigns have ended in hard-fought, expensive, exhausting efforts aimed to capture our state’s meager six electoral college votes.

Herb Strentz: After a combined nine decades in elected offices, Iowa’s longtime senator and former governor are increasingly a liability to democracy. -promoted by Laura Belin

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley and former Governor Terry Branstad have served in elected offices for a combined 94 years. It really is time for Iowans to bid goodbye to them. The two have more than paid their public-service dues, but sadly are increasingly a drain on public confidence and a liability to democracy. The evidence of the latter includes their unconscionable silence when it comes to holding former President Donald Trump accountable and their implicit support of him.

Both Grassley, 87, and Branstad, 74, were around when the Iowa legislature merited praise. Now they insist on sticking around when the Republican Party needs new people to lead it back to being concerned about the fate of our state and nation instead of soothing Trump’s ego, downplaying his temper tantrums and thousands of lies, and catering to a lunatic fringe to help assure re-election.

Jim Chrisinger: When elected officials act in bad faith, they poison the well of democracy in many ways. -promoted by Laura Belin

We now know that democracy is more fragile than we thought; democracy requires more than laws and institutions.  For example, elected officials need to speak and act in good faith.  

Acting in good faith may not seem like the most important thing right now.  What makes bad faith so bad?  

Bad faith is insidious because people are by definition not honest about what they are doing and why they are doing it.  Dishonesty is corrosive, to relationships and to democracy.  For example, Iowa Republicans have just passed a voter suppression bill without admitting why they did it.  

Ira Lacher makes the case that the Iowa caucuses are too important for Democrats to do without. -promoted by Laura Belin

Kill the Iowa caucuses? Really, Jason Noble and Kevin Cooney?

Yes, the 2020 edition of the quadrennial Iowa Winter State Fair was a worldwide embarrassment, at least on the Democratic side, due to poor results reporting, stacked atop tremulous party management, training, and supervision. (Don’t look so smug, Republicans; you’ve had your kaukus kerfuffles too.)

But the arguments published recently in the Des Moines Register by those otherwise well-regarded gentlemen, who have been close to the process, as journalists and then (for Noble) as a Democratic Party insider, are far less convincing than the Pepsi Challenge.

UPDATE: Governor Reynolds signed the bill on March 8. Top Democratic election attorney Marc Elias posted on Twitter, “This is the first major suppression law since the 2020 election. Expect litigation here and elsewhere GOP legislatures follow this path.” Bleeding Heartland covered the lawsuit Elias filed here. Original post follows.

On a party-line vote of 30 to 18, the Iowa Senate on February 23 approved Senate File 413, a new version of a bill that would restrict every aspect of the early voting process. The following day, the Iowa House approved the bill on a party-line 57 to 37 vote. Governor Kim Reynolds is expected to sign the bill; Republican Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley have each endorsed limits on early voting in recent days.

Although State Senator Roby Smith’s amendment addressed a few of the concerns raised by county auditors and advocates for vulnerable populations, the revised legislation would make it even harder for thousands of Iowans to have their absentee ballots counted. In a new twist, it shortens election-day voting hours as well.

Anne Schechinger: President Joe Biden and Congress must reform a wasteful and unfair farm subsidy system. This report first appeared on the Environmental Working Group’s website. -promoted by Laura Belin

Taxpayer-funded farm subsidies have long been skewed in favor of the richest farmers and landowners. But under the Trump administration, even more money went to the largest and wealthiest farms, further shortchanging smaller, struggling family farms.

The Environmental Working Group’s analysis of records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture finds that subsidy payments to farmers ballooned from just over $4 billion in 2017 to more than $20 billion in 2020 – driven largely by ad hoc programs meant to offset the effects of President Trump’s failed trade war.

Janice Weiner is a community activist and city council member in Iowa City. The Iowa Senate approved an amended version of this bill, which cuts early voting in many ways, along party lines on February 23. A forthcoming Bleeding Heartland post will discuss those changes in detail. -promoted by Laura Belin

The draft bill aimed at fixing voting problems that don’t exist, which is moving through the Iowa legislature at breakneck speed, galvanized me to speak out. We had only two minutes each for public comment at the February 22 public hearing. This is the original slightly longer version of my remarks:

I come at this from many directions.

During my 26 years as a U.S. diplomat, I served places where people literally risked their lives to vote. When I spoke with them, I held up my home state as a shining example of making it easy to exercise the franchise.

Andy Kopsa: Iowa’s new member of Congress from the fourth district brags that he “delivers for farmers.” Unless you are a Black farmer, that is. -promoted by Laura Belin

Politicians love farmers. Every caucus season they prove it: they throw a foot up on a hay bale and stump to a crowd at the Iowa State Fair, shove a pork chop into their mouth, use the term “heartland” and “kitchen table” a minimum of 400 times.

Vice President Mike Pence and the Iowa GOP love farmers so much that he came to town just after the August 2020 derecho to launch the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump Coalition. Senator Joni Ernst and Governor Kim Reynolds took time out of their disaster recovery schedule to accompany Pence to Living History [not a real] Farms. Pence didn’t visit a single farm, but he found time to host an exclusive fundraiser in Urbandale before flying away home.

U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) also loves farmers a lot. He introduced an amendment to allocate more aid to Iowans impacted by the derecho last year during a House Agriculture Committee markup of the proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. Feenstra’s amendment passed by a single vote.

That vote came from Representative Cindy Axne (IA-03), the lone Democrat to cross the aisle.

James Larew, an attorney in Iowa City, delivered part of these remarks at a February 22 Iowa House public hearing on a bill that would restrict early voting. -promoted by Laura Belin

We live in troubling times.

The good news is that a democracy, such as Iowa’s, is inherently self-correcting.

Here, the people are sovereign.

Inept politicians can be replaced.

Foolish policies can be changed.

Disastrous mistakes can be reversed.

The greater the voter participation, the more likely, the more speedily, self-corrections will be made.

Laura Hessburg is the public policy director of the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence. -promoted by Laura Belin

We believe the sweeping election bill rapidly advancing through the Iowa legislature (Senate File 413 or House File 590) is bad for everyone. Iowans with the most to lose are those who rely on early voting: working people, busy people, senior citizens, college students, and survivors of intimate partner violence.

Current Iowa law gives people multiple opportunities and choices to exercise this fundamental right before election day. That is exactly what victims of domestic violence need to vote safely. Iowans can vote early at satellite voting stations conveniently located near them, they can drop a ballot off at a drop box, ask a friend to drop off a ballot for them, or they can vote completely by mail.

By undermining every single one of these choices and limiting the time and opportunities for early voting, this bill makes it harder for Iowans to vote and will disenfranchise victims of domestic violence. That is not what democracy looks like.

C.J. Petersen is a rural organizer and board member of OPE PAC. He was the 2020 Democratic nominee in Iowa Senate district 6. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowa nice. It’s the thing anyone who hails from the land of rolling cornfields and hog barns dotting the horizon loves to brag about. 

Ask anyone—you’ll hear an anecdote about farmers rallying together to finish a harvest due to an unforeseen illness, that time somebody from two towns over changed a teenage girl’s tire when she had a flat, or the way the community came together to clean up after a storm. My own neighbors invariably scoop my driveway before I have a chance to trudge out of the garage with my snow blower at least once every harsh winter. And at almost every gas station you’ll find a coffee can filled to the top with dollar bills to help a family with medical expenses they can’t afford.

In a nationally televised interview this week, Former Governor Terry Branstad joined the ranks of prominent Iowa Republicans who still refuse to debunk Donald Trump’s Big Lie about fraud in the 2020 election.

Ira Lacher: Maybe Iowa has become a place to grow hatred, especially of government, because the state, as has its rural neighbors, lost much of its small-business economy, community institutions, and sense of self. -promoted by Laura Belin

The harrowing news coming out of Texas is a warning of what could happen in Iowa.

Fortunately, we believe our power installations could freeze, and our elected officials didn’t blame last summer’s derecho on the Green New Deal.

But make no mistake — we are heading in that direction by punching our ticket on the reactionary railroad, terminating at Denialville, where science, education, and common sense are mothballed on rusted tracks.

Charlie Wishman is president of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO. -promoted by Laura Belin

The COVID-19 pandemic has been not only a public health disaster, but also an economic disaster. Many Iowans have experienced filing for unemployment for the first time this past year. As a result, many now realize just how important this lifeline can be for working people and their families. 

You can tell a lot about what kind of legislature we collectively elected by looking at how lawmakers respond to the economic disaster that is COVID-19. Right now, the Republican-controlled Iowa House and Senate are moving a bill forward that would reduce unemployment benefits, inexplicably, during a global pandemic. 

Are we as a state going to continue to allow the rich to stuff their pockets during this pandemic while families suffer? Or worse, will we actively encourage it? Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening now.

Zach Wahls and Todd Prichard, the Democratic leaders in the Iowa Senate and House, co-authored this post. -promoted by Laura Belin

Public education has long been the foundation of our state. For generations, Iowans could count on a great public education from Iowa schools to set them up for success in life. When we were growing up, our public education system regularly led national rankings.

Today, however, many Iowans are watching with dismay as a decade of under-investment from Republican leadership has resulted in Iowa placing in the middle of the pack in national rankings. We’re wondering: When will Iowa schools lead the nation again?

Logun Buckley is the Organizer for the Iowa Alliance for Retired Americans. -promoted by Laura Belin

On February 16, organizational and community leaders called on U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson to stand up for Iowans when it comes to pandemic relief legislation.

Iowans have been struggling for the past year dealing with the lack of response and urgency to the COVID-19 crisis. Whether it is the need for state and local aid to keep government staffing and services available to the public in this uncertain time, funding for vaccines and vaccine distribution, the need for loans and other financial assistance to the small business that are giving it their all just to hold on, or the moral imperative that the passage of the coronavirus relief bill would provide to the many Iowans who have lost their jobs, their health insurance, and are just barely scraping by each month – we need Hinson to vote in favor of President Joe Biden’s COVID relief plan.

Herb Strentz: Republican bills to ban tenure at Iowa’s state universities have moved forward in both chambers. Governor Kim Reynolds isn’t concerned. -promoted by Laura Belin

When one surveys the efforts of the Iowa legislature and Governor Kim Reynolds this legislative session, the words “striving for equality” may not come to mind — what with efforts to undercut public education, sabotage access to abortion, punish the LGBTQ community and enact other vindictive measures, as noted by Kathie Obradovich in Iowa Capital Dispatch.

“Equality” does come to mind, however, albeit in an oddball way — the efforts of some legislators to bring Iowans down to their level of what Iowa should be about.

That may be a harsh way to look at Iowa law-making, but it is merited by House File 49 and Senate File 41, proposals to make Iowa the first state in the nation to outlaw tenure at its public universities, in our case Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Northern Iowa.

Mark Langgin is a Des Moines-born, Ottumwa-raised, current Des Moines resident and board member of New Frontier Action. He’s on Twitter @marklanggin. -promoted by Laura Belin

I still remember going to the doctor as a child. I was a skinny kid. I lived about 15 miles outside of Ottumwa on a gravel road in an area that used to be a tiny town called Ormanville. I was in the woods and running around our acreage every day, but I would get slammed with strep throat regularly.

So, off to the clinic in Ottumwa, just off Main Street on the south side of town, the doctor would prescribe an antibiotic and a day home from school. The other instruction? Take ALL the medicine. Don’t just take it until you are feeling better – take it the full ten days.

Now, like many other kids, I hated the taste of that medicine. It made my stomach feel gross, I would gag, and I would do about anything not to take it. But, my parents made me get it done. And I was better for it.

They listened to the doctors, and I got better, and now I’m a grown man that remembers to take his medicine.

It doesn’t seem like Governor Kim Reynolds has learned this introductory lesson when it comes to COVID-19 or a barely functioning vaccine distribution plan.

Editor’s note: Paul W. Johnson died on February 15, 2021. His family wanted to share the text of these previously unpublished remarks, delivered to the Iowa Environmental Council’s Annual Conference on October 11, 2013. Paul was introduced by Ralph Rosenberg and recorded by Matt Hauge. Mike Delaney shared this text in a February 16, 2021 special edition of the email “Raccoon River Watershed Association News.”

I can’t help but comment on Ralph; he was the chair of our Energy and Environmental Protection Committee for years in the Iowa legislature when I was there, and when David [Osterberg] was there. We had a wonderful time–it was almost Camelot–we couldn’t do anything wrong. Whatever we wanted to do Ralph would guide us and we got it done. We did REAP [Resource Enhancement and Protection]; we did energy efficiency we did groundwater protection, a number of things, and it was a lot of fun. And it was bipartisan believe it or not; we really worked together.

We had a unanimous vote on REAP in the Iowa House of Representatives. I think there were 98 members there that day, and everyone voted for it, so it was a good time, and I often think back on those times as some of the best times of my life.

UPDATE: The Iowa Senate and House approved a revised version of this bill on February 23 and 24. Original post follows.

Republican-controlled states “are increasingly not ‘laboratories of democracy,’ but ‘laboratories of democratic backsliding,’” political scientist Jake Grumbach noted in a new article by Perry Bacon Jr. for FiveThirtyEight.com.

Look no further than the Iowa legislature, where House and Senate Republicans unveiled a wide-ranging election bill on February 16. The 37-page legislation would make it much harder for Iowans to obtain and cast absentee ballots, either using the mail or voting early in person.

While House Republicans worked with Democrats to remove many voter suppression provisions from election bills the Iowa Senate had approved in 2019 and 2020, House State Government Committee chair Bobby Kaufmann is now on board with every piece of this year’s attempt to make it harder for Iowans to vote.