Iowa has long been one of the worst states for racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Gwen Hope reviews some depressing relevant data. -promoted by desmoinesdem

If you’ve been convicted of falling short of the law in Iowa, it pays to be white. This is nothing new, racial bias nationwide has long been a known and understood problem rooted in the prejudices of the past and present. How much bias, however, might surprise some people.

This is nearly 2019, after all, many white Americans live as if racism is a thing of the past no longer dealt with in their illusory post-racial modern world. In 2018, the evidence here in Iowa shows the continuation of one of the longest, most abhorrent trends in US history – white privilege, black punishment.

A former leader of the Iowa State Bar Association is waging an unprecedented campaign for a seat on the panel that chooses finalists for Iowa’s two highest courts.

Many attorneys received a mailing on December 28 promoting the candidacy of Robert Waterman, Jr., a partner in the Davenport firm Lane & Waterman. The mailing appears to have targeted every member of the bar in 24 counties that make up the second Congressional district. The paid postage mark indicates that the Republican political consulting firm Victory Enterprises handled the mailing.

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.

Though the bitter cold and snow have mostly failed to materialize this winter in Iowa, I thought a dose of spring, summer, and fall would be welcome on a short December day. I enclose below links to all 29 editions of Iowa wildflower Wednesday from 2018, with one picture from each post.

During my seventh year chronicling native plants, I made a few new discoveries within a mile or two of my home, and guest authors and photographers provided more material than ever.

Please let me know if you would like to contribute wildflower pictures next year, especially if you have photographs of species not covered before at this site. Plants I hope to feature in 2019 include green dragon, four o’clock, lead plant, sweet coneflower, pale purple coneflower, showy tick trefoil, clasping bellwort/Venus’ looking glass, cardinal flower/red lobelia, Joe Pye weed, false Solomon’s seal, bracted spiderwort, bastard toadflax, Missouri evening primrose, and sawtooth sunflower.

Democratic candidate Kayla Koether filed notice late last week that she is contesting the Iowa House district 55 election. According to the certified result following a recount, Republican State Representative Michael Bergan received 6,924 votes to 6,915 for Koether. However, 29 absentee ballots from Winneshiek County were never tallied, even though the U.S. Postal Service confirmed that they were mailed on or before the legal deadline.

Koether had hoped Polk County District Court Judge Scott Beattie would order the disputed ballots to be opened and counted. But on December 20 he dismissed her lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds, saying the state constitution and Iowa Code give the legislative branch–not the courts–power to rule on contests of elections for state House or Senate seats.

A few thoughts on what should happen next, what will happen instead, and what might have happened if Democrats had pursued a different legal strategy.

I’ve held off on declaring winners from Bleeding Heartland’s latest election prediction contest until we know the final number of seats for each party in Congress and the Iowa legislature. The last U.S. Senate race was settled in late November, and it seemed like the final U.S. House race was too. But a new election may need to be called in North Carolina’s ninth district, due to absentee ballot fraud by Republican operatives.

In addition, Iowa House district 55 won’t be settled until next month. Democratic challenger Kayla Koether filed a notice of contest on December 21; the certified results put her nine votes behind Republican Michael Bergan, with 29 legally cast ballots uncounted.

Even without knowing whether the Republican majority in the Iowa House will be 54-46 or 53-47, we have enough information to calculate results from our contest. You can find everyone’s guesses in this comment thread.

As a group, Bleeding Heartland prognosticators did fairly well this time around, a big improvement on our predictions about the June primary.

Cedar Rapids native Austin Wu is a University of Iowa undergraduate. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Since Bleeding Heartland covered the planned closure of the University of Iowa Labor Center in July, much has happened regarding the center’s fate and future. Public reaction against its demise has been swift and sustained, coming not only from traditional beneficiaries of the Labor Center, but from UI students as well.

The Iowa Senate Ethics Committee convened for less than five minutes on December 20 to consider a complaint filed against Democratic State Senator Nate Boulton. Speaking on behalf of the six committee members (three from each party), Republican Chair Jerry Behn said the committee had not attempted to verify the facts underlying Sharon Wegner’s allegations of sexual misconduct. Rather, they determined the panel had no jurisdiction over matters that occurred before Boulton was elected in November 2016.

Boulton had made that point on the first page of his written response to the complaint. He didn’t need to say anything else to achieve the desired outcome at yesterday’s committee meeting. Instead, he submitted more than 30 pages of written material seeking to discredit his accuser. That was a huge mistake.

A message for the holiday season from Ed Fallon. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I’ve gotta tell you this crazy dream I had last night about beer and baseball. I was playing major league baseball (yeah, only in my dreams). I came to the plate and struck out four times (ok, that part’s realistic). After my last strikeout, I sauntered out to center field where I was surprised to find my rocking chair. I sat down and prepared to watch the rest of the game.

The other team’s leading slugger stepped up to the plate. Suddenly, the fans rose to their feet while children poured onto the field. Led by a seven-year-old girl standing at the pitcher’s mound, everyone raised a beer to toast the slugger, singing, “We like beer, yes we like our beer.” The girl and other under-age kids raised cans and bottles of soda pop instead.

Let’s start with the good news: Democrat Royceann Porter made history by winning the December 18 special election for Johnson County supervisor. The longtime community activist and labor organizer gained 5,444 votes (56 percent) to 4,167 votes (43 percent) for Republican Phil Hemingway, a member of the Iowa City school board. Porter is the first African American to win a county-wide office in Johnson County and will be one of four women on a five-member board that never had more than two women serving at the same time before this November’s election.

John Deeth took a granular look at the county’s urban and rural voting patterns in his preview of this election and his analysis of the unofficial results. He sees signs of a possible “watershed moment in county politics.”

While a Democrat winning in “the People’s Republic of Johnson County” might not seem newsworthy, Porter’s victory was not a foregone conclusion. A Republican won a low-turnout special election for a county supervisor seat in 2013. The compressed time frame for the special election gave Porter only four weeks to build up her name recognition. Her opponent was better-known, having already won local office. The Farm Bureau chapter drummed up support for Hemingway with a mass mailing, which was unprecedented for a county race, according to longtime area politics-watchers.

Porter also had to contend with a tremendous amount of implicit bias among voters who probably would not consider themselves racist.

Both Senator Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst voted for a criminal justice reform bill that cleared the U.S. Senate on December 18 by a resounding 87 votes to 12 (roll call). Iowa’s senators were also part of the bipartisan majority that rejected three Republican amendments, described by one advocacy group as poison pills “aimed at gutting the substance and intent of the bill.”

Grassley wasn’t an early advocate of criminal justice reform, especially sentencing reform. As recently as March 2015, he slammed what he called the “leniency industrial complex,” which favored reducing long mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses. But he came around about three years ago and helped build Republican support for the current bill, commonly known as the First Step Act.

In one of his final acts as Senate Judiciary Committee chair, Grassley pushed Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly and privately to bring the legislation to the Senate floor. After yesterday’s votes, New York Times photographer Sarah Silbiger captured images of Grassley celebrating with Democratic Senator Cory Booker, who has helped lead the charge on this issue.

Bruce Lear discusses some of the biggest challenges facing public school teachers today. Earlier this year, Randy Richardson identified some of the same problems as leading reasons educators leave the profession. -promoted by desmoinesdem

It was the first day of school of 1979 in rural Iowa. The air was heavy with the sweat of 20 high school students and one mustached first year teacher. Air conditioning was for larger schools with money.

Since Alden was neither large nor rich, the bulletin board so carefully glued was coming a part in a windowless classroom recently converted from a storage room.

The Office of Congressional Ethics found “substantial reason to believe” Representative Rod Blum failed to accurately report all of his business interests on his disclosure forms, and also “substantial reason to believe” the internet company Tin Moon misused Blum’s official photo and “utilized deceptive, false, or unsubstantiated endorsements.”

In a referral approved in July and first published today, the non-partisan office asked the U.S. House Ethics Committee to further investigate possible violations of “federal law, House rules, and standards of conduct.” The report further recommended that the House committee subpoena Blum and top associates, who refused to cooperate with the OCE review. But don’t expect any more shoes to drop: having lost his re-election bid, Blum will not be subject to the committee’s jurisdiction in a couple of weeks.

The full report and supporting exhibits are well worth reading. I’ve enclosed those documents at the end of this post, along with Blum’s combative response to the findings. Some noteworthy highlights:

Julie Stauch has handled strategy, tactics, and management for many campaigns. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This piece reflects the compilation of observations from working closely with Democratic candidates, as well as observing patterns of candidate behaviors. The goal here is to address some real problems that exist and provide insights into what can aid our candidates and improve our electoral outcomes.

The most important variable in winning back any legislative or administrative seat is the candidate who chooses to run, because if no one runs, we definitely won’t win. No matter what motivates each reader to want to see change in our various governments, we are united in the fact that we have to support our candidates.

There is an assumption out there that “candidates have to run twice to win.” Do they? Let’s review the common mistakes and consequences, look at what can be done to prevent those mistakes, and then come back to the question, “Do candidates have to run twice to win?”

I know the Soviet Union had rule by gerontocracy. But this is ridiculous.

Yes, yes, it’s fourteen months before the Iowa Caucuses, and so much can happen during that time. But the new Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom had me reeling. It concluded that most caucus-intensive Democrats prefer as their favorite 2020 presidential candidates Joe Biden and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — with a combined age of 222.

Quipped former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “It appears we’re going to have an old-folks’ home.”

A little more than a year before Iowa Democrats will start the process of selecting a challenger to face President Donald Trump, Selzer & Co has polled likely Democratic caucus-goers for the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom. Brianne Pfannenstiel wrote up the key findings from the survey of 455 Iowans “who say they will definitely or probably participate in the 2020 Democratic caucuses.”

The toplines were not surprising, but I was baffled by some of the choices on which candidates to include.

Second in a series of post-election commentaries by Amber Gustafson, who was the Democratic candidate in Iowa Senate district 19. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Remember the Hippos – A Parable

Once a non-profit organization decided to “help” a poor, rural village in a country in Africa. When the fresh-faced, idealistic, young European aid workers arrived, they noticed many things right away. They noticed that the people in the village were malnourished. They also noticed that the village had no fields, no vineyards, and no orchards.

The aid workers, full of compassion, saw that what the people of the village needed was food; and more than that, they needed to be taught how to farm.

All sixteen current members of the State Judicial Nominating Commission will be able to participate in selecting finalists for the Iowa Supreme Court and Iowa Court of Appeals in early 2019, the judicial branch announced today.

Republican attorney Bill Gustoff had argued that three of the commission’s eight attorneys need to be replaced, as their six-year terms expire on December 31. That would have given the eight political appointees (all Republicans named by Governors Terry Branstad or Kim Reynolds) the votes to control the short list of candidates for the high court vacancies.

The first woman elected to our state’s highest office has picked the third woman to serve as an Iowa governor’s chief of staff.

Sara Craig Gongol will replace Governor Kim Reynolds’ current chief of staff Ryan Koopmans, effective December 15. Craig Gongol was a leading campaign strategist for Reynolds this year and has been “a key member of my team” since 2014, the governor said in a December 11 press release.

The appointment inspired me to look into which women have held the top staff position for governors or members of Congress from Iowa. Like Craig Gongol, who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 Iowa caucus campaign, several women who managed high-level Iowa campaigns went on to serve as chiefs of staff.