Republicans are all but guaranteed to maintain control of the Iowa Senate after November and could expand their majority, now at 29 out of 50 seats. However, Democrats have a chance to pick up a few districts as they work toward winning back the chamber in 2020.

Every year I learn to identify new wildflowers, and this week’s featured plant is a recent “discovery.” Obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) is a member of the mint family that is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Its pink, lavender, purple, or white flowers open in the late summer or early fall. Most of the images enclosed below were taken during the month of August.

The Minnesota Wildflowers website explains, “Obedient Plant gets its common name from the fact the individual flowers can be repositioned and will continue to grow that way.” Another common name for this species is false dragonhead, “on account of the fancied resemblance to a European plant by that name,” according to the Illinois Wildflowers site.

“We need to use every tool we have to reclaim our country,” U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley told me during his latest visit to Des Moines. “We are at the verge of a tipping point, and maybe we’re almost past it, in which the power of the mega-wealthy is so profound that we can’t tip the balance back in to we the people.”

The senator from Oregon spent much of Labor Day weekend in central Iowa supporting Democratic candidates for the state legislature. His fifth trip here since the 2016 election won’t be his last: he will be a featured speaker at the Polk County Steak Fry later this month. During our September 2 interview, I asked Merkley about the most important matters pending in the U.S. Senate, prospects for Democrats in November, and his possible presidential candidacy.

“LGBTQ youth are forgotten even by members of the LGBTQ community,” writes advocate Nate Monson in this thought-provoking commentary. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Since 2007, I have served as the executive director for Iowa Safe Schools, a non-profit founded in 2002 to support LGBTQ youth through education, outreach, victim services, and advocacy. The organization works on the overall improvement of the queer youth experience for thousands of students across the state. The queer experience is the culmination of events and relationships a person has based on their LGBTQ identity. LGBTQ students are more likely than their heterosexual peers to experience a range of issues such as bullying, homelessness, and suicide.

In early April, I gave a Tedx Talk at Wartburg College about the Post-Modern Queer Youth Experience.

Working in the LGBTQ equality movement for over a decade has given me a front row seat to its inner workings. What I’ve found is that LGBTQ youth take a back seat in this broader conversation on equality, even though LGBTQ youth represent one of the most marginalized and at-risk populations.

Joe Stutler is an Army veteran and member of the Iowa Democratic Veterans’ Caucus. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Democrats have a patriotism perception problem…one with a simple solution.

Let’s start by acknowledging the elephant in the room. Literally. The GOP (symbol: you guessed it, the pestiferous pachyderm) owns the idea of “patriotism,” that deep pride in and love of country that is such an emotional driver for many. And drive it does…straight to the polls.

Des Moines resident Ira Lacher noticed a striking contrast in two commentaries published this weekend. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Page 3 of the Sunday Des Moines Register opinion section told us everything we need to know about the people who are in the top positions in America.

On one hand, there was Rob Tibbetts’ heartfelt plea for decency in the wake of the murder of his daughter, Mollie.

Below it, was Donald Trump Jr.’s pathetic attempt to sustain hatred of brown people.

As signs mount that national GOP strategists are ready to let his district go, two-term Representative Rod Blum seems to be staking his political career on appealing to fans of President Donald Trump.

While some vulnerable Republicans keep their distance from an unpopular president, Blum welcomed Trump to Iowa’s first Congressional district in July and continues to praise trade policies that hurt the farm economy. More recently, he has sought attention by portraying himself as the news media’s victim.

The Republican Party is not fielding a candidate in more than two dozen Democratic-controlled Iowa House or Senate districts, while Democrats have left only seven GOP-held legislative seats uncontested. The disparity in party strategies is a departure from the last midterm election, when each party failed to nominate a candidate in more than two dozen state House districts alone.

For a team that’s run a smooth and successful operation all year, Fred Hubbell’s campaign was surprisingly inept at managing the controversy over whether the candidate would release his tax returns.

Jeani Murray managed Leonard Boswell’s 1998 campaign and served on his Congressional staff. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Leonard Boswell was mortally wounded from Agent Orange poisoning in February of 1969 while serving as an assault helicopter pilot in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

Retired Colonel Charles Teague, a longtime colleague and dear friend of Leonard, shared that revelation with us while giving an impressive eulogy last Saturday.

It took 50 years and six months to take his life, but that flight sealed his fate. And the astonishing thing is he didn’t have to go on that mission. He was the commander; he could have sent any one of his airmen to do the job. But as a leader, Leonard Boswell would never ask his pilots to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

So many times Leonard said the same thing to me when I worked for him. Never ask your team to do something you are unwilling to do yourself. That lesson on leadership has remained with me to this day.

White vervain (Verbena urticifolia) may be the most difficult plant to photograph of some 180 species Bleeding Heartland has featured for this series since 2012. Tiny white flowers are always a challenge to capture in focus, and these blossoms are even smaller than those of Aunt Lucy or wild chervil.

Though fairly common in its native range, covering much of the U.S. and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains, white vervain is easily overlooked because of its small flowers. Like its relative hoary vervain, it can thrive in low-quality habitats. The Illinois Wildflowers website comments,

Habitats include open disturbed woodlands, woodland borders, thickets, powerline clearances in wooded areas, semi-shaded areas along paths, damp meadows along streams, gravelly seeps, and abandoned fields. White Vervain is usually found in habitats with a history of disturbance. It is somewhat weedy, but rarely forms colonies, existing primarily as scattered individual plants.

Francis Thicke is a soil scientist and organic dairy farmer. He has served as the National Program Leader for Soil Science for the USDA-Extension Service and was the 2010 Democratic candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The room was packed for an August 28 hearing on a new proposed confined-animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Jefferson County. Lots of people expressed their frustration that Iowa’s laws make it nearly impossible to stop a CAFO that will compromise the quality of life for the neighbors.

Here are my comments:

Randy Richardson, retired associate executive director of the Iowa State Education Association, has closely followed contract negotiations in Iowa public schools for many years. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Since the 2017 passage of a Republican bill to strip collective bargaining rights from public employees, a little more than 8,000 teachers (out of a total of just over 36,000 statewide) in 107 school districts have lost the benefits and rights they enjoyed in their master contracts.

The new law allowed districts to remove items that were deemed “permissive” from collective bargaining agreements. That included such topics as leaves, grievance procedure, and in-service days. Many of those items had been bargained years ago and had been in master contracts for well over 30 years.

I thought it might be worthwhile to see if these districts had any commonalities.

John Morrissey delved into a little-noticed financial report by AmeriHealth Caritas. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Although it left the Iowa Medicaid program more than seven months ago, AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa, Inc. continues to string along claims payments due to Iowa providers.

AmeriHealth – which is owned by Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia – reported $14.6 million in unpaid liability for claims submitted last year by Iowa Medicaid providers, according to the company’s most recent quarterly financial filing with the Iowa Insurance Division. Meanwhile, the managed-care organization has racked up more than $6 million in administrative costs so far this year to manage the now-closed operation.

Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst are among ten U.S. Senate Republicans co-sponsoring a bill that purports to protect health insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions.

There’s a catch: the legislation would require insurance companies to sell policies to people with pre-existing conditions, but it wouldn’t stop them from excluding coverage for those very conditions.

Ira Lacher shares his perspective on an unpleasant surprise waiting for many Des Moines Register readers on Saturday, August 25. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I was assistant sports editor of the Des Moines Register for four and a half years in the mid-1980s. As my soon-to-be bosses, sports editor Mike Wegner and managing editor Arnie Garson, explained to me during my application interview, if there was one thing that distinguished the Register as “The Newspaper Iowans Depend Upon,” it was our unparalleled coverage of Iowa high school sports.

The second-most important night of the week, besides Saturday night, when we produced The Big Peach sports section, was Friday night during high school football season. We labored mightily to get the scores and stories in from all around Iowa, beginning first with the out-state editions, and ending with the Golden Circle and Des Moines metro results.

So, imagine my shock when I saw the blurb in last Saturday’s paper saying that if you wanted to read about high school football coverage in print, wait for Sunday’s paper!

For the first time, at least one third-party candidate has qualified for every Congressional or statewide office in Iowa. Although third parties haven’t traditionally fared well in Iowa, Libertarians had their best showing ever here in 2016 and have nominated a record number of candidates for this November. Since several U.S. House or statewide races could be very close, even a small percentage of the vote for candidates other than the Democratic or Republican contenders could become significant.

With the filing period for Iowa’s general election ballot closed as of 5:00 pm on August 25, it’s time for an overview of the landscape. The full candidate list is posted on the Iowa Secretary of State’s website. UPDATE: John Deeth notes that candidates may have filed on the last day, which wouldn’t be reflected on the version currently posted online. I will update as needed; the key point is that there will be no statewide or Congressional races in Iowa this year with only Republican and Democratic options on the ballot. SECOND UPDATE: The Secretary of State’s office uploaded an amended candidate list on August 27. No new candidates filed for statewide office, but one additional person qualified for the ballot in the fourth Congressional district. Scroll down for further details.

UPDATE: Anderson did not collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. His statement appears at the end of this post. By his account, Governor Kim Reynolds supported his efforts.

Republican lawyer Patrick Anderson has launched a last-minute campaign for Iowa attorney general, seizing on the brutal murder of Mollie Tibbetts as his driving issue.

Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board staff are examining campaign expenditures by State Representative Mike Sexton, the board’s executive director Megan Tooker confirmed on August 22.

Tooker initiated the audit after Bleeding Heartland raised questions last month about the campaign committee paying $11,200 since 2016 to a real estate company controlled by the candidate’s wife, Rebecca Sexton.

While some consider today’s featured plant an undesirable weed, ground cherry attracts many pollinators, including some specialist bees. The berries make tasty jam or pies and are a good food source for various birds, mammals, and even some turtles.

Several closely related Physalis species are native to most of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. Clammy ground cherry (Physalis heterophylla) and smooth ground cherry (Physalis subglabrata) are prevalent in Iowa. Photographer and ecological consultant Leland Searles says he sees more of the smooth ground cherry along roadsides.

I took most of the enclosed pictures this month near the bank of Walnut Creek, where the Windsor Heights trail curves west toward Colby Park after passing Wal-Mart. The Illinois Wildflowers and Minnesota Wildflowers websites provide some tips on distinguishing the ground cherry species, and I think I was photographing smooth ground cherry–but I wouldn’t swear by that ID.