U.S. Representative Rod Blum continues to send taxpayer-funded mail to constituents in Iowa’s first Congressional district, with some Linn County residents receiving his latest mailing just one week before the election.

Dan Guild follows up on his previous analysis of Democratic chances to take the U.S. House. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In this last piece before the 2018 general election, three quick points:

Ira Lacher was an assistant sports editor at the Des Moines Register during the 1980s. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Remember how we used to eagerly open the Wednesday Des Moines Register the day after an election to get the local and national results? Don’t bother this year.

Anyone who has knocked doors in Iowa has probably experienced the depressing phenomenon Allison Engel describes. -promoted by desmoinesdem

On Saturday, October 27, as I was door-knocking in Johnston for Democratic candidates, I had a depressingly familiar experience. A middle-aged man answered the door, and I asked to speak to his wife, a registered Democrat, by name. He saw the campaign flyers on my clipboard and without a word, slammed the door in my face.

All volunteer canvassers get doors slammed in our faces occasionally, but in this election cycle, there is a noticeable and alarming trend for men not to allow their wives or adult daughters to come to the door to listen to us or receive our literature. It has happened to me every time I’ve door knocked over the past four months. A few weeks ago, I had a father brusquely tell me that his daughter wasn’t home when I could see her standing right behind him. To her credit, she said, “Yes, I am,” and proceeded to fill out an absentee ballot request as he seethed.

Earlier this year, Kim Reynolds wasn’t widely seen as one of the country’s most vulnerable Republican governors. But she trails Fred Hubbell in the most widely respected Iowa poll, and Democrats have built up a larger advantage in early votes than the party had going into the last midterm election.

Democrats should not be complacent, though. The governor’s race still looks more like a toss-up than a campaign with a clear favorite.

Latest deep dive by Tyler Higgs. -promoted by desmoinesdem

If you’ve followed part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 of this series, you get the drift. I create a short guide about how to corrupt some aspect of local government to hopefully hook you into reading on as I nerd out on a bit of campaign finance disclosures or local political controversies.

But this time, I’ll provide a little bit of good news and relief: many Dallas County political campaigns have clean finances.

Nearly 450,000 Iowans have already voted in the 2018 general election, according to figures the Iowa Secretary of State’s office released on November 2. Early voting is on track to far exceed the number of Iowans who cast ballots before election day in 2014. But as of Friday, county auditors had not yet received some 82,000 absentee ballots mailed to Iowa voters this fall.

If you’re among the roughly 35,000 Iowa Democrats, 25,000 Republicans, or 22,000 no-party voters who have not yet returned their absentee ballots, you still have time. But don’t simply drop the ballot in the mail if you want to guarantee your vote will count. Here are your options:

Continuing a Bleeding Heartland tradition, I encourage readers to post their general election predictions as comments in this thread before 7 am on Tuesday, November 6. Predictions submitted by e-mail or posted on social media will not be considered. Please contact me if you want to participate and need to create a Bleeding Heartland account.

Anyone can enter, whether you now live or have ever lived in Iowa. You can change your mind, as long as you post your revised predictions as an additional comment in this thread before the Tuesday morning deadline.

No money’s at stake, just bragging rights like those most recently claimed by Bleeding Heartland user rf for 2016 general election predictions and David Osterberg for having the best guesses about this year’s primary elections.

Latest analysis of U.S. House prospects by Dan Guild. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In my last post here I wrote about the close seats that will decide who controls the House. I will get to that in a forthcoming post. For now, I want to focus on the possibility of a wave larger than people are expecting.

Des Moines attorney Gary Dickey has filed an unusual civil action charging that Jason Besler “is unlawfully holding the public office of district court judge” in Iowa’s Sixth Judicial District. In a November 1 court filing, enclosed in full below, Dickey argued that “all publicly available information” indicates Governor Kim Reynolds failed to appoint Besler within the 30-day window specified by Iowa’s constitution. Bleeding Heartland reported in September that Reynolds took no formal action to appoint Besler until four days after her authority to fill the judicial vacancy had lapsed.

Tanya Keith‘s first-person account from Representative Steve King’s November 1 appearance in Des Moines. -promoted by desmoinesdem

On Tuesday, I got a Facebook wall post from a friend of mine in California that said, “Go get em Tanya and call him out on his anti-Semitism.” The post included a link to a Des Moines Partnership event: “2018 Candidate Forum with Congressman Steve King.”

I live in Des Moines, outside Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. I am well known for not ever being a fan of King–especially lately, as a Jew who used to live on the edge of Squirrel Hill while attending Carnegie Mellon University. I had an appointment until 11:30 am on the day of the event, but I sat smoldering in disgust that the Partnership would give a platform to a racist who uses anti-Semitic language.

Iowa’s two largest public sector unions have defeated Republican efforts to diminish their power for a second straight year.

A personal reflection from Ira Lacher, inspired by the tragic events of the past week. -promoted by desmoinesdem

When I was 22, I left New York and moved to America.

It’s a line I have used over the years to introduce myself. I use it in jest, and it gets a laugh. Most folks who hear it realize that New York City and the Northeast are worlds apart from the land between the coasts.

But I never realized how far apart until now.

Just before Halloween last year, Beth Lynch contributed a fascinating post about witch hazel, a native plant that blooms in the fall.

Since most Iowa wildflowers have gone to seed by late October, I’m reaching back to the late summer for this week’s edition. Marla Mertz took all of these photos in August while exploring prairie habitats in Wilcox Wildlife Area (Marion County).

Rose mallow (Hibiscus laevis) is native to most of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes known as halberdleaf or halberd-leaved rose mallow, it thrives in “marshes, swamps, low areas along rivers and ponds, and soggy islands in the middle of rivers or ponds.” According to the Minnesota Wildflowers site, this plant is a “Robust grower but needs some water in dry weather.” The Illinois Wildflowers site concurs: “The preference is full or partial sun, fertile soil, and wet conditions. Flowers require exposure to sunlight to open up properly. This wetland species doesn’t like to dry out.”

Latest deep dive by Tyler Higgs on money in Iowa politics. -promoted by desmoinesdem

There’s nothing more Iowan than farming, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a corrupt politician. Those idyllic Grant Wood images of Iowa farms and hard-working Iowa farmers are being replaced by logos of the Big Ag monopolies that exploit the Iowa family farmer for financial gain. That is how you corrupt Iowa agriculture.

In this article, I will show the finances of both candidates for Iowa secretary of agriculture, Republican Mike Naig and Democrat Tim Gannon. You can decide who is fighting for the family farmer and who is in the pocket of big agribusiness companies.

The Cook Political Report changed its rating on Iowa’s fourth Congressional district today from “likely” to “lean” Republican. Although eight-term U.S. Representative Steve King carried this R+11 district by more than 20 points in 2016, several factors make a winning path for Democratic challenger J.D. Scholten seem more plausible than a few months ago, when forecasters moved IA-04 from “safe” to “likely” Republican.

Change Research announced last night that its new survey showed King leading Scholten by just 45 percent to 44 percent. The incumbent quickly released results from an internal poll by WPA Intelligence, showing King ahead by 52 percent to 34 percent, with 11 percent undecided and 3 percent inclined to support a third-party candidate.

FiveThirtyEight.com still gives King a 5 in 6 chance of winning a ninth term, but he could have set himself up much better for next Tuesday. Consider:

Iowa law prohibits corporate campaign contributions, so it seems like big news for a business lobby group to seek a “one-time investment of corporate funds” on behalf of a statewide candidate whose election “could return dividends for a decade or more to come.”

Yet media gatekeepers have mostly decided the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation’s plan to elect Republican Mike Naig as secretary of agriculture isn’t newsworthy.

While most print and broadcast outlets ignore the story, pro-Naig advertising that strongly resembles the Republican’s campaign messaging has reached hundreds of thousands of voters.

Robert Niederklopfer is a cartoonist and active Democrat in Des Moines. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Comic books taught me not to be anti-Semitic, and I have my anti-Semitic father to thank for that.

Bruce Lear on the stakes in this midterm: “Public education as we know it hangs in the balance,” which has never been the case before in Iowa. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In January 1976, I trudged through the Pella, Iowa snow to go to my very first presidential caucus because it was the “most important election of our lifetime.” I caucused with about eleven over-eager college students in the basement of the student union. We were a small but determined group. After all, it was a Democratic caucus in Pella, in January.

By the way, I caucused for Fred Harris, a little-known and soon-forgotten senator from Oklahoma. His only claim to fame was he drove around in a recreational vehicle and never used hotels. Instead, he stayed at supporters’ houses and in exchange, gave them a card good for one night in the White House. None were redeemed.

That’s how my involvement with the “most important election of our lifetime” began. For the next 30-plus years, every two years that phrase roared to life on radio, TV, and in countless mailings soon deposited in the circular file to be forgotten until the next most important election of our lifetime.

It got old. It got cliché–until now.

Mike Carberry remembers his friend and fellow Johnson County supervisor Kurt Friese, who was also an occasional guest author at Bleeding Heartland. -promoted by desmoinesdem

“Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.” –Paul Wellstone

A friend posted this on Twitter last Thursday evening and I reposted it. Friday afternoon our world was rocked by the news of the death of Kurt Friese. I immediately thought that quote was perfect for my first post about my dear friend, colleague, and comrade in arms.