State Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald swore in Dr. Phil Miller yesterday as the newest member of the Iowa House. At a House Truman Fund event a short while later, I asked the winner of the August 8 election in House district 82 about his plans and goals as he prepares for the 2018 legislative session.

Iowa’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman has “eliminated virtually all staff visits” to our state’s 850 nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, Clark Kauffman reported for the Des Moines Register on August 23. A large reduction in state funding led to the policy change, announced last month. Republican legislators passed the health and human services budget on party-line Iowa House and Senate votes. Governor Terry Branstad approved the cuts in his final batch of bill signings.

Reducing oversight of nursing homes has long been a goal for Branstad, whose Department of Inspections and Appeals didn’t even fill all the nursing home inspector positions funded by state lawmakers. Iowa already ranked last among the 50 states in terms of ombudsman visits to nursing homes at least once per quarter, according to 2015 statistics cited by Kauffman.

Ending on-site visits by ombudsmen will put approximately 53,000 Iowans at greater risk of receiving substandard care.

We all have our biases, and one of mine is to focus on native plants for this blog’s wildflower series. Over the last six years, Iowa wildflower Wednesday has featured approximately 160 species, only seven of which are non-native. But after Lora Conrad contributed a stunning post on Deptford pink (a European plant) in June, I decided to take some pictures of another beautiful plant that has become naturalized here.

The city of Windsor Heights insists officials did not violate the First Amendment when attempting to restrict displays of signs opposing construction of new sidewalks and other local government policies. In a letter to the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, which is representing affected homeowners, attorneys for the city revised the legal grounds for previous actions and asserted that Windsor Heights is enforcing content-neutral sign regulations.

State Senator Nate Boulton and Fred Hubbell have locked up more support among state lawmakers than the five other Democrats running for governor combined.

Whether legislative endorsements will matter in the 2018 gubernatorial race is an open question. The overwhelming majority of state lawmakers backed Mike Blouin before the 2006 gubernatorial primary, which Chet Culver won. Last year, former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge won the nomination for U.S. Senate, even though about 60 current and 30 former Democratic lawmakers had endorsed State Senator Rob Hogg.

Nevertheless, prominent supporters can provide a clue to activists or journalists about which primary contenders are well-positioned. Where things stand:

President Donald Trump changed the subject last night. Instead of another day of news on the fallout from his horrific response to a white supremacist rally, the commander in chief announced a new strategy for the U.S. in Afghanistan in a prime-time televised address. It wasn’t a typical Trump speech: he read carefully from a teleprompter.

Foreign policy isn’t my strong suit, so I’ve spent much of today reading analysis by those who have closely followed our military and diplomatic strategy during our country’s longest war. The consensus: Trump’s strategy for Afghanistan is neither new nor likely to produce the victory the president promised.

To my knowledge, the only Iowan in Congress to release a public statement on last night’s speech was Senator Joni Ernst. I enclose her generally favorable comments near the end of this post, along with a critical statement from Thomas Heckroth, one of the Democrats running in Iowa’s first district. James Hohmann compiled some other Congressional reaction for the Washington Post.

Paul Elliott Dahl announced his candidacy for Iowa’s fourth Congressional district yesterday, describing himself as “a progressive populist wanting to serve Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in the United States House of Representatives with integrity, industry, and innovation.” A resident of Webster City, Dahl is a transit bus driver in Hamilton County. His previous work experience includes some adjunct teaching and fifteen years as either a librarian or library director. He promised to focus his Congressional campaign on seven issues: agriculture, campaign finance reform, education, environment, government spending, health care, and Social Security.

In the past month, J.D. Scholten and Leann Jacobsen launched their own campaigns against Representative Steve King. I asked Dahl about any previous election experience or Democratic Party activism, as well as why he decided to run for Congress, rather than for some other office where there aren’t already two Democrats running. (Dahl lives in Iowa House district 48, represented by Republican Rob Bacon.)

He replied via e-mail that he sought the Democratic nomination in what was then Iowa’s fifth Congressional district in 1994, when he was living in Humboldt County and working as a United Methodist pastor. He grew up in Black Hawk County, where his father was a United Auto Workers official and “quite active in Democratic politics.” Dahl sees himself having a fundraising advantage over the competition, since the counties where he has lived have a larger combined population than the counties where Jacobsen and Scholten are now based.

Ties to larger-population counties don’t automatically translate into campaign contributions. I would be surprised if Dahl is competitive with the other Democrats running against King on this front. Scholten has connections through sports all over the fourth district, and former candidate Kim Weaver has helped him raise money through her large e-mail list of supporters. Jacobsen has extensive business experience and is a past president of Technology Association Iowa. We’ll see when the campaigns file their third-quarter financial reports with the Federal Election Commission in October.

I’ve posted more background on Dahl below. You can find his campaign on the web at Dahlforthehouse.net, or on Facebook.

UPDATE: I didn’t remember that Dahl ran for governor in 2013, and he didn’t mention that short-lived campaign. John Deeth wrote about it at the time. Dahl didn’t qualify for the 2014 primary ballot.

Are Iowa Democrats more likely to support a successful businessman who is not a politician? Are they sympathetic to the argument that a self-funding candidate for governor is less susceptible to influence by special interests? Are they more impressed by private- or public-sector jobs Fred Hubbell has held, or by his charitable giving to causes like Planned Parenthood?

A recent survey of Democratic voters appears to be the Hubbell campaign’s first attempt to answer those and other questions.

Steve Bannon’s position as chief White House strategist appeared to be secure this week after President Donald Trump doubled down on framing “both sides” as equally at fault for last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville. But after a couple of ill-advised interviews with the New York Times and the American Prospect, Bannon was dumped on a Friday afternoon, like several Trump associates gone before him. Among other things, the president apparently didn’t appreciate Bannon’s habit of taking credit for his election victory.

Representative Steve King told the New York Times earlier in the week that conservatives would be “crushed” if Bannon were ousted. On August 17, he lamented to Philip Rucker of the Washington Post, “With Steve Bannon gone, what’s left of the conservative core in the West Wing?”

King didn’t elaborate on what conservatives admired in Bannon, but he has never espoused the “economic populist” agenda of higher taxes on the rich or tearing up trade agreements. Rather, Bannon and Republicans like King share a delight in exploiting racial and ethnic resentments for political gain.

I am inclined to agree with Sarah Kendzior: “Bannon may be just as useful for Trump outside the White House as he was within it–perhaps more so.” Bannon himself told Bloomberg reporter Joshua Green, “I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America.” (Green wrote the book Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency.)

Another sign Trump has not repudiated Bannon’s views: white supremacist allies Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka remain the president’s senior policy adviser and deputy assistant, respectively.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. The funniest political story I read this week was by John Bresnahan and Rachael Bade for Politico, detailing the “agonizing, 8-page memo” of instructions for staffers charged with driving GOP Representative Todd Rokita of Indiana. I’ve heard some good stories from Iowans who have chauffeured candidates or elected officials, but nothing approaching that level of high-maintenance behavior.

UPDATE: Added below more comments from Bannon and Trump.

Former Congressional candidate Kim Weaver will soon form a political action committee “with the sole purpose of taking down [U.S. Representative] Steve King and others like him,” she announced on Facebook yesterday.

Austin Frerick is building his Congressional campaign around the case against economic concentration, which he has called “the fundamental issue of our time.” His opening shot was a Des Moines Register guest column last month. In that piece, Frerick called for the federal government to block the proposed Monsanto-Bayer merger and break up “Big Ag corporations” that command near-monopoly power, “limiting farmers’ choices and making the products they need even more expensive.”

Frerick’s column provoked a response in the Register by the head of a conservative think tank, who defended the Monsanto-Bayer merger and questioned Frerick’s “political motivations.” At last week’s Iowa Wing Ding event and in a statement released today, the Democrat embraced this fight with “a right-wing organization” funded by the Koch Brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

“Uncomfortable humidity, water‐logged spring soils, extreme rain events, mold, and mosquitoes are all expected to become more prevalent in Iowa due to a rarely discussed impact of climate change: increased humidity,” 190 scientists at academic institutions warned last week. In the sixth annual Iowa Climate Statement, science faculty and researchers from 39 colleges and universities noted that “Increases in humidity have been measured across the Midwest and in Iowa across all seasons and at all long‐term monitoring stations.”

High levels of humidity create hazardous conditions for Iowa workers and sensitive populations through the danger of heat exhaustion and heatstroke. Allergic rhinitis and asthma are worsened by heightened exposures to mold and dust mite allergens in humid environments. There also is evidence for increased aggression and societal violence associated with hot, humid weather.

For Iowa agriculture, increased warm‐season humidity leads to increased rainfall, extreme rain events, water‐logged soils during planting season, soil erosion, and runoff of chemicals to waterways. Rising humidity also leads to longer dew periods and higher moisture conditions that elevate costs of drying grain and increase populations of many pests and pathogens harmful to both growing plants and stored grain. Increased nighttime temperatures coupled with humidity causes stress to crops, livestock and pets and, in extreme cases, heat stress can cause loss of life.

I enclose below the full text of this year’s Iowa Climate Statement, with references, along with the news release highlighting key findings. You can view the names and academic affiliations all who signed here.

P.S.-The Center for Global & Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa, which has coordinated the release of the Climate Impact Statement, is set to lose much of its funding in 2022. This spring, Republican legislators approved and Governor Terry Branstad signed into law a bill eliminating a small tax on investor-owned utilities, which has supported the CGRER and the Iowa Energy Center at Iowa State University for 25 years.

You don’t need to venture into a high-quality habitat to find today’s featured plant. Ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata) can thrive on disturbed ground and is a common sight along Iowa roads in July and August. I took about half the enclosed pictures on a restored prairie in Dallas County and most of the others after pulling over to take a closer look at ironweed growing near the shoulder of Iowa Highway 44.

Sometimes known as prairie ironweed, common ironweed, smooth ironweed, or western ironweed, this species is native to about half the U.S., including all of the upper Midwest and plains states.

At the Iowa State Fair yesterday, I chatted with a reader who enjoys my occasional wildflower posts on Twitter @desmoinesdem. Check out this thread for pictures of more than two dozen wildflowers you might find see around Iowa in early August. Here are a few plants I recently found blooming along a wooded trail. This past weekend, I briefly escaped from the Charlottesville ugliness with a thread spotlighting red, white, or blue American wildflowers.

State Representative Todd Prichard suspended his campaign for governor yesterday, saying “my responsibilities to my family, the Army, my constituents, as well as my small business must take priority over the many hours a day it takes to raise the sums of money required to run successfully.”

Fundraising difficulties were also a key reason Rich Leopold, the first declared Democratic candidate for governor, ended his campaign in June. The same challenge may lead one or more of the remaining seven Democrats in the field to leave the race before the filing deadline next March.

The inexplicably intense, years-long debate over installing new sidewalks in Windsor Heights appeared to be heading toward resolution this summer.

Then officials in my home town took the idiotic and unconstitutional step of trying to prevent anti-sidewalk homeowners from displaying signs critical of city government.

Ross Wilburn joined the field of Democratic candidates for governor today, promising to focus on health, education, and economic opportunity. In a news release enclosed in full below, the former Iowa City mayor and city council member said he would govern in an inclusive way, drawing on skills gained through community work and service in local government. He pledged to listen and build consensus, “bringing together sometimes disparate interests,” as opposed to the “fighting” and “divisions” often seen in Iowa politics at the state level.

Wilburn’s campaign is on the web at justbeiowa.com, on Twitter @letsbeiowa, and on Facebook at Ross Wilburn for Governor.

In alphabetical order, the other Democratic candidates for Iowa governor are:

Nate Boulton (website, Twitter, Facebook)
Cathy Glasson (website, Twitter, Facebook)
Fred Hubbell (website, Twitter, Facebook)
Andy McGuire (website, Twitter, Facebook)
Jon Neiderbach (website, Twitter, Facebook)
John Norris (website, Twitter, Facebook)
Todd Prichard (website, Twitter, Facebook)

Glasson is technically still in the exploratory phase, but she has hired campaign staff and spoken to audiences around the state this summer, including the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame event last month.

Supporters are welcome to submit commentaries here advocating for candidates in Democratic primaries. Please read Bleeding Heartland’s guidelines for guest authors before writing.

What a discouraging weekend for the country. Hundreds of white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia on Friday night, carrying torches and chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans. The next day, police mostly stood by while racists (some displaying swastika flags or calling out the Nazi slogan “blood and soil”) clashed with counter-protesters during “the largest public gathering of white supremacists in decades.” One of those anti-fascist protesters, Heather Heyer, was killed after a car struck her while driving into a crowd, allegedly intentionally. Virginia state troopers Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates died in a helicopter crash while assisting in the law enforcement response to the “Unite the Right” rally.

Many Republican officials, including Iowa’s top GOP leaders, condemned this weekend’s acts of domestic terrorism and racist hatred. But President Donald Trump–long an inspiration to white nationalists and neo-Nazis–deliberately avoided calling out the instigators in Charlottesville.

Politicians who enthusiastically campaigned for Trump and continue to support him must demand much more.

More Democrats are running for Iowa’s statewide and federal offices than at any other time in at least four decades. I’m excited to watch so many strong candidates make their case to be elected governor, secretary of state, or to Congress in all three Republican-held U.S. House districts.

Contested primaries are mostly good for political parties, I believe. For too many election cycles, Iowa Democrats tended to coalesce around one candidate early on. A battle for the nomination forces contenders to work harder and sharpen the message. With more campaigns trying to identify supporters and get them to the polls, I expect a record-setting turnout for Iowa Democrats in June 2018.

The process will also drive more activists to attend next year’s precinct caucuses and county conventions, since conventions may be needed to select Democratic nominees for governor and in the third Congressional district, if no candidate receives 35 percent of the vote in the primary.

The only downside to a competitive primary is the risk that the campaign could become intensely negative, leaving some of the most engaged activists feeling angry and alienated from one another. Case in point: some people are still arguing about Hillary v. Bernie more than a year later.

Fortunately, Democrats can prevent that destructive dynamic from playing out.

Vowing to “put people over politics” and work for policies to help northwest Iowa families, business owner and Spencer City Council member Leann Jacobsen became the second Democratic candidate in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district today.

Leann said her priorities if elected would be to create jobs and improve rural communities in the state so young people are more inclined to stay. Building on her record of creating economic opportunity and improving the quality of life in Spencer, Leann pledged to put people first by focusing on job growth, improving education, fighting for healthcare, saving natural resources, helping the middle class, and supporting small businesses.

Leann was integral in starting the Riverfront Farmers Market and StartupCity Spencer, a business incubator that helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses. After nearly 20 years with AT&T, Leann launched Capitol Gains, an advocacy firm focused on business, economic development, arts and culture, and child welfare. She then went on to serve as the President of the Technology Association Iowa, which helps grow and develop small businesses and advance Iowa’s reputation as a technology state. She currently serves on the advisory board of Spencer Municipal Hospital.

The common name for today’s featured wildflowers comes from a doctor who “prescribed the plant as an effective laxative.” Some American Indian tribes used the plant medicinally long before Dr. Culver was on the scene in the 18th century, but in a time-honored tradition, our culture didn’t give them the credit for discovering its properties.

Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. I’ve never heard anyone call this plant by any other name, but apparently it is sometimes known as Black root or Bowman’s root.

It “tolerates most soils” and “full sun to partial shade,” so “can make an excellent back border specimen in the home garden.” Culver’s root flowers attract many kinds of pollinators, including bees, wasps, butterflies, and moths.

I took all of the enclosed photographs on a restored prairie in Dallas County.