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.

Pete D’Alessandro would be a first-time candidate if he joins the large group of Democrats challenging Representative David Young in Iowa’s third Congressional district. But no one in the field has more Iowa campaign experience than this longtime political operative.

D’Alessandro has been thinking seriously about this race for months. In a recent telephone interview, he told me he has set Saturday, August 26–the date of the Iowa Democratic Party’s third district workshop in Atlantic–as “the day to fish or cut bait.”

He also discussed the points he would raise as a candidate and how Democrats can accomplish “real change,” capitalizing on the activism that fueled Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

Democrat Phil Miller won today’s special election in Iowa House district 82 by 4,021 votes to 3,324 for Republican Travis Harris (53.8 percent to 44.5 percent). It was a larger margin of victory than Miller’s good friend Curt Hanson managed in his 2009 special election, the first state legislative race after the Iowa Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling in Varnum v Brien. The results will be a morale boost for Democrats, since Donald Trump won nearly 57.8 percent of the vote in the House district 82 precincts last year, compared to just 36.4 percent for Hillary Clinton.

The 7,476 votes cast in House district 82, according to the unofficial tally, is roughly three times higher than the turnout for the special elections earlier this year in heavily Republican House district 22 and heavily Democratic House district 89. The major parties spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television commercials and direct mail to mobilize supporters of Miller and Harris (more on that spending below). On the other hand, turnout for this race was a bit lower than voter participation in Hanson’s special election win eight years ago.

Miller’s home base of Jefferson County, containing the population centers of Fairfield and Vedic City, carried him to victory.

Registered Democrats have returned 1,153 more ballots than Republicans in Iowa House district 82, as of today. The news will encourage supporters of Democratic nominee Phil Miller, though a strong election-day turnout by Republicans could still win the race for the GOP’s Travis Harris. In the high-profile 2009 special Iowa House election covering some of the same territory, Democrat Curt Hanson led by about 1,000 early votes and ended up winning by 107.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Judging by the unofficial results from Davis County, posted after polls closed, the person who read me those numbers over the phone appears to have transposed the Democratic and Republican totals. I have switched the numbers in the table, which decreased the overall Democratic absentee ballot lead in the district to 1,025.

Click here for the rest of the election results and my take on Miller’s big win.

Michael Fitzgerald has seen tight budgets come and go in his 35 years as state treasurer. He is increasingly concerned that Iowa may have trouble making ends meet next spring.

Only a few months into her new job, Governor Kim Reynolds plans to reject Fitzgerald’s considered opinion. The political gamble allows her to downplay the severity of Iowa’s fiscal situation for now. However, her strategy could backfire if a cash-flow problem blows up just before the final stretch of next year’s primary campaign.

Vowing to fight for every vote to be counted and to “say no to making it harder and more expensive to vote,” Jim Mowrer launched his campaign for secretary of state on August 3. He is well-known to many Democrats as Representative Steve King’s 2014 opponent in the fourth Congressional district and Representative David Young’s challenger in the third district last year. Follow me after the jump for more on Mowrer’s case for his candidacy and against Secretary of State Paul Pate, including highlights from an interview with Bleeding Heartland.

Mowrer will have at least one competitor in the Democratic primary. Deidre DeJear launched her campaign on August 6. She’s on the web, Facebook, and Twitter. I recently spoke to DeJear about her background and goals and have a post in progress on her secretary of state campaign. Iowa Starting Line profiled her here.

State Representative Chris Hall of Sioux City has not ruled out the secretary of state race either, he told me in late July.

I’ve reached out to several county auditors who had floated the idea of challenging Pate in 2018. Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald told me he is no longer considering a run for higher office. Johnson County Auditor Travis Weipert announced on Facebook on August 3 that Mowrer “has my full backing.” UPDATE: Two more county auditors endorsed Mowrer on August 7. Scroll to the end of this post for details.

Nathan Blake, who had been thinking about this race, confirmed two weeks ago that he has decided against it.

Because I believe the most dangerous thing about the Trump Republican Party is its disdain for democracy and its corresponding voter suppression efforts, I had been planning to run for Secretary of State in 2018. However, in May Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller asked me to take on a new role as a Deputy Attorney General. I believe I can do the most good over the next few years working for AG Miller to stand up for the rule of law, keep Iowans safe, and protect consumers. While I won’t be running for anything this cycle, I’ll continue to fight for voting rights and other progressive policies and I’ll evaluate opportunities to serve in elected office in the future.

Bill Brauch likewise considered running for secretary of state but will not be a candidate for any office next year. Instead, he told me, he will continue volunteering as the Iowa Democratic Party’s Third District Chair.

Many posts about Iowa’s 2018 campaigns for state and federal offices are in progress, but for this weekend, I want to focus on elections happening in 2017. The weather looks almost perfect for the last few days of GOTV in Jefferson, Davis, and Van Buren counties, where voters will choose a successor to State Representative Curt Hanson this Tuesday. The House district 82 special election may not foreshadow what happens in next year’s legislative races, but the outcome could shape the media narrative about whether Democrats or Republicans have momentum in small-town and rural Iowa, which in turn could influence people thinking about running for the state House or Senate in 2018. If you’ve been knocking on doors or phone banking in House district 82, please share your stories in the comments.

August 3 was the filing deadline for the September 12 school board elections across Iowa. In future years, school board and local elections will be held on the same day of November in odd-numbered years. Proponents say the shift will increase turnout. John Deeth isn’t a fan of the change.

Candidates for city council or mayor will need to submit nominating papers between August 28 and September 21 in most Iowa towns, which don’t hold primaries before the November local election. (The filing period for local candidates runs from August 14 to 31 in cities that sometimes hold primary as well as general elections for local offices; this document explains more.)

Anyone thinking about running for school board or city office should read Lauren Whitehead’s advice on waging a successful local campaign.

Iowa’s most closely-watched city elections include the Cedar Rapids mayoral race, where Monica Vernon is one of several well-known local figures hoping to succeed Ron Corbett, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor. (Former State Representative Tyler Olson considered that race but decided against it.)

Four candidates have announced in Des Moines City Council Ward 3, where longtime incumbent Christine Hensley opted to retire: Josh Mandelbaum, Michael Kiernan, Chris Draper, and Abshir Omar. Mandelbaum has the most backing from local political leaders and organized labor. CORRECTION: Draper recently dropped out of the city council race.

Quite a few central Iowa incumbents don’t yet have challengers, as far as I know, including the mayors of West Des Moines and Urbandale.

I expect an intense city council campaign in Windsor Heights, where some residents are outraged that sidewalks are finally being installed on three streets near two elementary schools. You probably don’t understand why hundreds of people in this small suburb fiercely oppose making the neighborhood more walkable. I can’t explain it either, even after living through several of these battles during the past fifteen years. Most residents of the Des Moines metro area find sidewalks convenient but otherwise unremarkable. For whatever reason, multiple city council races in Windsor Heights have turned into a referendum on the sidewalks question. Even though the city is paying the full cost of the installations this summer, I expect a strong backlash from the anti-sidewalk contingent in November.

When Iowa Republicans destroyed all meaningful collective bargaining rights for public employees earlier this year, they also enacted major union-busting provisions, such as frequent re-certification elections for public-sector labor unions, under rules making it difficult and costly for a union to remain certified. Those elections will begin in September Brianne Pfannenstiel reported this week in the Des Moines Register. Excerpts from that story are after the jump.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Iowa Republicans apparently could not find anything of substance to criticize in Dr. Phil Miller, the Democratic candidate for House district 82. With less than a week to go before the August 8 special election, the GOP has replaced their first attack ad–a misleading spot seeking to stir up fear of transgender students–with a new hit piece tying Miller to “liberal special interests in Washington” including U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Declaring that “economic concentration is the fundamental issue of our time,” Austin Frerick launched his candidacy for Congress in Iowa’s third Congressional district today.

In a news release, he said, “For too long, agricultural monopolies like Monsanto have been milking Iowa’s farmers with high seed costs. I’m tired of watching career politicians stand aside while huge corporations push around average Iowans.”

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett fleshed out his case against Governor Kim Reynolds as a manager of state finances this week, saying she is behaving like former Democratic Governor Chet Culver. During the 2010 campaign, then-candidates Terry Branstad and Reynolds derided Culver as “Big Debt Chet.” Now, Corbett asserts, “instead of learning from Governor Culver, she’s mirroring from Governor Culver.”

As the leading GOP rival to Reynolds, Corbett will make fiscal policy a central issue in his gubernatorial campaign. But is Reynolds really on track to borrow more money for the state than Iowa’s last Democratic governor did?

Late summer wildflowers are coming on strong across Iowa. During the past three weeks, I’ve seen the first flowers of 2017 on brown-eyed Susan, common evening primrose, goldenrod, ironweed, cutleaf coneflower, common sneezeweed, white snakeroot, yellow jewelweed, and even New England aster, which usually appears later and continues to produce flowers until the first frost.

Today’s featured plant is nearing the end of its blooming period for the year. Winged loosestrife (Lythrum alatum) can be found in a variety of wet habitats, such as “moist black soil prairies, marshes, fens, borders of lakes and ponds, areas along rivers and drainage ditches, and low-lying ground along railroads.” Sometimes called winged lythrum, this species is native to most of North America from the Rocky Mountains to the east coast.

I took all of the enclosed photos between late June and late July on lower ground in the prairie restoration area along the Windsor Heights trail, behind the Iowa Department of Natural Resources building on Hickman Road.

Note: winged loosestrife can be confused with purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), which is “now ranked among the most highly problematic invasive species in North America.” At the end of this post I’ve included two pictures of purple loosestrife. If this attractive plant is growing on your property, I recommend pulling it up.

Ruth Thompson shares her remarks from the Our Lives on the Line health care rally in Des Moines on July 29. She has previously described how the Affordable Care Act saved her daughter from potentially severe medical complications and crushing debt. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I’m a person with lived experience with disability and I’m the vice-chair pro-tem of the Disability Caucus of the Iowa Democratic Party, I serve on the board of the Central Iowa Center for Independent Living and a very active member of the Polk County Democrats.

I’m speaking as a representative of those groups and as an individual who cares about health care.

On August 8, Iowans in three counties will elect either Democrat Phil Miller or Republican Travis Harris to succeed the late State Representative Curt Hanson. Both major parties are spending more on the House district 82 race than on any other special state legislative campaign in years.

Voter interest is relatively high. The number of early ballots requested here already exceeds the total number of votes cast in each of the last two races to fill Iowa House vacancies (House district 22 in June and House district 89 in January).

Follow me after the jump for the absentee ballot numbers as of a week before election day, and the latest television commercials for and against Miller and Harris. Spoiler alert: if you guessed that Republicans would run a misleading ad about transgender bathrooms, you were right.

Iowa Senate Republicans voted last Friday to make no changes in the caucus’s staff or leadership, following a sexual harassment lawsuit that led to a $2.2 million verdict against the state. Instead, Secretary of the Senate Charlie Smithson will internally review allegations that came to light through Kirsten Anderson’s lawsuit, with the chamber’s number two Republican, Senate President Jack Whitver, “overseeing the investigation.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix has claimed repeatedly that any problems relating to a hostile work environment were resolved soon after he took charge of the Senate GOP caucus in late 2012. But court testimony indicated that neither senators nor top Republican staffers ever asked others employed by the caucus whether they had observed sexual harassment or other offensive workplace conduct. Although Dix admitted hearing about matters “I was not aware of” during the trial, he still insists Anderson was fired in May 2013 solely because of her work product. Meanwhile, the current Iowa Senate Republican communications staffers occupy themselves with who-knows-what, as opposed to keeping the website and social media feeds current.

Dix confirmed that Republicans will not cover the costs of any payout to Anderson, opting to let taxpayers foot the bill for the lack of professionalism that persisted for years.

Republicans’ failure to hold anyone accountable for this debacle underscores the need for independent consultants to take a hard look at what happened in the Senate GOP caucus and how to fix the work environment. Anderson has asked a Polk County District Court to make that happen.

Matt Chapman’s advice to activists engaging with potential allies on the left: “If your conversation starts out by denigrating someone they worked hard for, you can’t expect them to listen.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

I have read quite a bit and have noted a few workshops on how to talk across the aisle. A lot of folks who canvass or have political conversations to influence voting habits focus on talking to others on the political left, since trying to convince hard-right voters seems like a waste of time.

The strategy for trying to break through to Republicans was to take the facts out of the conversation and focus on the morality of positions. The idea was that people who hold Christian values as their moral compass should be persuadable on issues such as poverty, bigotry, and a host of other issues.

I want to focus on how we communicate on the left from moderate Democrats to progressives and other allied parties, including the Green and Socialist parties as well as independents all across the spectrum.

Scott Thompson, a rural sociologist focusing on social capital and community development as well as an active volunteer for the Democratic Party, was inspired to research the condition of our party’s “social capital.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

I am engaged in a research project stemming from my personal observations and social interactions. Full disclosure: I am a Democrat and I possess partisan views. I’m also concerned for the long-term health of the party for which I am a part. I felt compelled to write this, not to point fingers, place blame, ridicule, or complain. In this brief, you will not find the names of candidates, past or present.

Rev. Dr. Bill Ekhardt delivered this speech as a representative of Indivisible Iowa at the Our Lives on the Line rally at the State Capitol on Saturday, July 29.

Can We Make a Difference?

Thank you coalition leaders for the opportunity to come and speak today. It is a privilege to represent Indivisible Iowa. Today I come with the question:

Can we make a difference?

We are here today to stand up for health care for all Iowans and citizens across our country and for health care as a right. We are standing against the efforts of a Republican Party that for seven years has been promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When President Obama invited them to join them and build a bipartisan health care plan that the whole country could get behind did the Republican leaders accept? No, they refused! They stood against health care reform from the beginning. They cynically decided it was in their best interest to oppose any change rather than join in the process to make the reforms our country needed. Instead of offering up solutions, they conjured up images of death panels pulling the plug on grandma.

Keeping track of this administration’s scandals would be a full-time job. President Donald Trump has already spent 58 days of his presidency at Trump properties, including 43 days at golf courses. He’s been venting about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who in his view, should have killed the investigation into possible Russian collusion with Trump campaign officials.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke warned Alaska’s senators that Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote against GOP health care proposals “had put Alaska’s future with the administration in jeopardy.” Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said Zinke should be fired for “threatening to abuse his agency’s statutory mandate to hurt Alaska,” adding that the “Interior Department controls vast parts of our Country and cannot be allowed to use federal lands for an extortion racket.”

Trump’s new communications director Anthony Scaramucci conducted an interview that was beyond parody, trying to lean on New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza to reveal a source. Reince Priebus finally got dumped as Trump’s chief of staff. Alexandra Petri noted in her excellent commentary, “Priebus was one of the last Adults In The Room, not that it mattered because everyone in the room was doing exactly as they pleased regardless. His function was largely decorative. What is the point of adult supervision if all you do is sit back and watch as the children set everything on fire?”

The president politicized a Boy Scouts event, upending eight decades of tradition and prompting the national Boy Scouts leader to apologize. Days later, police chiefs around the country condemned the president’s remarks encouraging officers to be rougher with suspects during arrests.

But of all Trump’s outrages this week, none were more disgraceful than his unprovoked attack on transgender people serving our country in the military. After the jump I’ve compiled some of the best and worst reactions from Iowa political figures.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

If you haven’t had a chance to hear directly from the Democrats running for governor, Bleeding Heartland has you covered with audio and highlights from the speeches at Thursday night’s big Hall of Fame event in Des Moines.

Republican efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act suffered a major setback this week, as the U.S. Senate rejected three repeal bills. It may not be the last “near-death experience” for Obamacare, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could bring one of the bills up again. But the Democratic caucus is unmovable on the issue, and it’s not clear what could bring GOP Senators John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, or Susan Collins on board.

Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst voted for all three Republican bills, of course, as everyone following this debate had expected. Grassley told reporters earlier this week that he would support any legislation that could get 51 votes in the Senate, leading to conference negotiations with House Republicans. Though Ernst never expressed it in such terms, she too demonstrated that she was willing to vote for anything her leader brought to the floor, regardless of its costs and impact on Iowans.

Let’s take a quick look at what Iowa’s senators promised to stand for on health care policy, compared to what they voted for when the chips were down.