Catching up on news from the busy final weeks before the Iowa caucuses, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley has a rival for the GOP nomination. Robert Rees launched his campaign on January 18, pledging to support term limits for members of Congress and the 10th Amendment, which reserves for the states powers not delegated to the federal government. Rees most recently worked as a conservative talk radio host but fell victim to a format change in October, when 98.3 FM in Des Moines switched to classic hip hop. Rees has a campaign website and is on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. He frequently uploads “campaign diaries” and other videos to his YouTube channel.

After the jump I’ve posted background on Rees, some of his answers to frequently asked questions about his challenge to Grassley, and his introductory video, in which he notes that Grassley has been in Washington, DC since a year before Rees was born. I’ve also enclosed excerpts from two articles linked on the Rees campaign website. Among other things, those pieces criticize Grassley for approving too many judges nominated by President Barack Obama–which is comical, since during Grassley’s first year as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate confirmed only eleven federal judges, “the fewest in a single year since 1960.”

I can’t conceive of any scenario in which Grassley loses a Republican primary, but assuming Rees qualifies for the ballot, it will be interesting to see how many conservatives cast protest votes for him. For reference, Tom Hoefling got just under 17 percent of the vote in his 2014 GOP primary challenge to Governor Terry Branstad. Turnout is likely to be very low on June 7, since no other statewide offices are elected this year, and only one of Iowa’s four Congressional districts appears likely to have a competitive GOP primary (Representative David Young is expected to face at least one conservative challenger in IA-03).

Rees had nominating petitions out at some Republican precinct caucuses on February 1. To qualify for the primary ballot, he will need to submit to the Secretary of State’s office by March 18 at least 3,331 signatures (0.5% of the votes cast for Governor Terry Branstad in Iowa’s 2014 general election). In addition, those signatures must be collected in at least ten counties, and for each of those counties, the number of signatures on nominating petitions must equal at least 1 percent of the votes cast for Branstad in the 2014 general election.

A few conservatives made noise about a primary challenge to Grassley in 2009, when it appeared he might support some version of health care reform, but they never followed through. Iowa’s senior senator defused some anger on his right flank by warning that end-of-life counseling provisions in the proposed bill could let people “pull the plug on grandma,” though he had voted for a previous law including such counseling. He later voted against the Affordable Care Act in committee and on the Senate floor, while seeking credit for some of its provisions.

The Democratic Party’s “superdelegates” have been in the news lately as a potential base of support for Hillary Clinton in what may be a long battle with Bernie Sanders for the presidential nomination. I agree entirely with Pat Rynard that talking about superdelegates as Clinton’s “firewall” plays perfectly into the Sanders campaign narrative of anti-establishment warrior. Furthermore, I support eliminating superdelegates, which came into being before the 1984 presidential campaign as a way to give party insiders more leverage over the nominating process.

Since we’re stuck with superdelegates for this cycle, I’ve named Iowa’s likely representatives below. The Democratic National Committee has yet to confirm the list but is expected to do so next month.

This morning the Iowa Senate passed Senate File 2125, which would terminate contracts the state has signed with insurance companies picked to manage care for Iowans on Medicaid. Governor Terry Branstad announced his administration’s “modernization” plans early last year and selected four managed care providers in August, with a view to fully privatizing Medicaid by January 1, 2016. The state later terminated a contract with one of those four companies, and the federal government refused to grant the necessary waivers, saying Iowa would not be ready to shift to managed care until March 1 at the earliest.

Iowa Senate leaders made clear on day one of this year’s legislative session that Medicaid privatization would be a pressing concern. Senate President Pam Jochum has been sounding the alarm since last year, worried about how privatization would affect her developmentally disabled adult daughter and other Iowans with special needs. Jochum gave the opening and closing remarks in support of Senate File 2125 today. She repeatedly warned that the Branstad administration has tried to do too much, too fast, without input from state lawmakers or other stakeholders with expertise in the area. Fellow Democrats Chris Brase, Liz Mathis, Mary Jo Wilhelm, Rich Taylor, and Amanda Ragan echoed many of those concerns in their speeches.

During the floor debate, Republican State Senator David Johnson explained why he would vote for the bill. He read e-mails from numerous constituents expressing concern about access to health services for their loved ones on Medicaid. He pointed out that Minnesota took 20 years to transition to managed care, while Iowa is trying to implement the same changes over just one year. “It’s moving too fast. That’s the issue here. We need to put a dagger in this.”

Last week Johnson became the first GOP lawmaker to come out in favor of terminating the privatization program; I enclose below excerpts from Jason Clayworth’s report for the Des Moines Register. Johnson’s fears about “children at risk of losing services” stem from the failure of the managed care companies to sign contracts with thousands of providers who have been treating Iowans on Medicaid, including children on HAWK-I (Iowa’s version of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program). Scroll to the end of this post for more details on that access problem, based on data from the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Republicans who spoke against the bill today included Senators Jason Schultz and Mark Chelgren. Schultz claimed Democrats took “ownership” of managed care by putting assumptions about Medicaid savings into the health and human services budget for the current fiscal year. During her concluding remarks, Jochum pushed back hard against the idea that a vote for last year’s health and human services budget was a vote for managed care. Rarely do I ever agree with Schultz, but I think Senate Democrats walked into a trap there. The Branstad administration’s estimates on reduced Medicaid costs after privatization were never grounded in reality, but Democrats accepted those assumptions in the budget they passed–not because they supported the Branstad effort, but likely because doing so gave them an extra $51 million to spend on other health-related priorities.

Chelgren argued that lawmakers should keep their word after voting for a budget that assumed Medicaid would shift to managed care. He likened the situation to Congressional Republicans voting to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act without having a plan ready to replace “Obamacare.” The analogy fails because terminating Medicaid privatization that hasn’t been fully implemented would not be like repealing Obamacare after several years of operation. The status quo is an available and less disruptive alternative to serving the 560,000 Iowans on Medicaid. Chelgren claimed that halting Medicaid privatization and starting the process over would “betray” those who signed up as providers under the new system. That argument made no sense; public comments from Iowans on Medicaid and health care stakeholders have overwhelmingly opposed the Branstad policy.

During her concluding remarks, Jochum refuted claims that 39 other states have put Medicaid in managed care. In reality, only four states have fully privatized the system, as the governor is doing.

Shortly after the floor debate, senators voted 29 to 19 to approve SF 2125. Republicans Jake Chapman and Tom Shipley joined Johnson and all 26 Senate Democrats. Notably, those three Republicans all represent strongly GOP districts, not marginal seats.

The bill now goes to the Iowa House, where Speaker Linda Upmeyer has indicated she does not plan to bring the measure up for debate. For a nurse practitioner by training, Upmeyer is remarkably insensitive to ordinary people’s health care needs–not only those on Medicaid, but also chronically ill Iowans who could benefit from medical cannabis. A post in progress will catch up on the state of play for medical marijuana in the Iowa legislature.

UPDATE: Added more links and comments on the Medicaid debate below. According to Erin Murphy, Upmeyer confirmed today that the House will not take up SF 2125, because the governor would certainly veto it. Given how unpopular Medicaid privatization is, the public would likely support a legislative override of that veto. But at least five more Republican senators would have to change their stands to override a veto in the upper chamber. In the House, at least 24 GOP state representatives would need to support an override, assuming all 43 House Democrats voted in favor.

A Bleeding Heartland post from January 2015, Three pros and three cons of Andy McGuire as Iowa Democratic Party chair, has been getting a lot of attention lately on websites written by Bernie Sanders supporters. Some have accurately cited the piece to demonstrate that McGuire was a high-profile supporter of Hillary Clinton before the 2008 Iowa caucuses.

Others have used the post to insinuate that some evidence supports their suspicions about the Iowa Democratic Party skewing county delegate totals to boost Clinton. In reality, I have argued that systematic fraud would be impossible, because “Too many witnesses observe what happens in each precinct and would notice if the party got the numbers wrong.”

Even worse, some pro-Sanders websites have paraphrased me as endorsing their conspiracy theory: “The blog BleedingHeartland has been raising concerns that McGuire, who has been involved in Iowa politics for more than 20 years, is manipulating the state’s Democratic Party to favor Clinton over her challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).” In the same vein: “Blog BleedingHeartland has been all over McGuire’s possible favoritism for Clinton, sounding alarms regarding a possible manipulation of Iowa’s Democratic Party in favor of the former Secretary of State […].”

In that year-old post, written the day the Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee selected McGuire over three other contenders for the position, I commented, “Everyone knows that [McGuire] is a strong Clinton ally,” which has its advantages but also a big drawback (emphasis added):

No one will be fooled by today’s neutrality pledge. The perception will be that the Iowa Democratic Party leadership favors Hillary Clinton for president. There’s a risk that will discourage other potential candidates from competing in Iowa. On the plus side, there aren’t many options for long-shot candidates other than competing in Iowa and New Hampshire. I believe McGuire will not attempt to manipulate the party machinery to benefit Clinton.

Although I’ve criticized the Iowa caucus system generally and the Iowa Democratic Party’s handling of this year’s incredibly close results, I said explicitly last week that I “do not believe [McGuire] tried to fix the caucuses for Clinton.”

Bloggers who “feel the Bern” have linked liberally to Ben Jacobs’ story on one precinct where the Iowa Democratic Party shorted Sanders a county delegate in the first reported results. Yet the same posts have ignored two precincts where the state party’s reporting errors gave Sanders an extra county delegate.

In the past, I have joked that being an Iowa Democrat who criticizes the caucus system is “how to not win friends and not influence people.” Though some insiders may view me as a “rogue” activist “trying to make a statement,” I will keep advocating reforms to make the Iowa caucuses more inclusive and representative, respecting principles including ballot secrecy and every person’s voice carrying the same weight. To my fellow Democrats fighting their own battles against “the establishment”: don’t put words in my mouth. My problem is with some of the Iowa caucus rules. I have never alleged, nor do I believe, that party leaders applied those rules unfairly to hurt Sanders.

UPDATE: A reader tipped me off to Arnold Steinberg’s “humorous” column published in late January in the American Spectator and the Huffington Post. Although he did not link to this site, his satirical piece included the line, “BleedingHeartland.com has been concerned that McGuire, who chaired Hillary’s 2008 campaign in the state, is manipulating the party against Sanders.” That may have influenced some of the conspiracy mongerers who have misrepresented my work since the caucuses.

Two-term State Representative Sally Stutsman will not seek re-election to Iowa House district 77, the Iowa House Democrats announced this morning. A separate press release sent less than two hours later announced that North Liberty Mayor Amy Nielsen will seek the Democratic nomination in the district Stutsman is vacating. I enclose both statements below, along with a map of the district covering a large area in Johnson County (but not Iowa City or Coralville).

To her credit, Stutsman announced her retirement more than a month before the filing deadline for statehouse candidates (on March 18 this year). Too often, Iowa legislative incumbents in both parties have kept their plans secret from all but a few insiders until a day or two before nominating petitions must be submitted to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. Fairness calls for giving everyone in the district a chance to weigh the pros and cons of running for the legislature. Lots of people who would not challenge an incumbent would seriously consider competing for an open seat.

Nielsen’s quick announcement indicates some insider support, and her base in the rapidly-growing North Liberty area should boost her candidacy. Nevertheless, I would not be surprised to see another Democrat or two seek the nomination. Both Stutsman and Nielsen endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, while Johnson County was among the strongest for Bernie Sanders on February 1.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, many Iowa Democrats have an allergic reaction to primaries. I see no harm in a good, clean competition between two or more people who are focused on the issues. Johnson County has seen some bitterly contested Democratic primaries, though; I hope that dynamic doesn’t develop here.

Incidentally, Zach Wahls told me today that he has no plans to run for Stutsman’s seat. He lives in Johnson County but not in House district 77.

I am not aware of a declared Republican candidate in the district. Stutsman easily defeated a GOP opponent in 2012. Republicans did not field a candidate here in 2014 but will surely compete for the open seat. According to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, House district 77 contains 7,043 active registered Democrats, 5,213 Republicans, and 7,727 no-party voters. President Barack Obama won more than 58 percent of the vote in the district in 2012, and Bruce Braley outpolled Joni Ernst by 9 points here in the 2014 U.S. Senate race. The winner of the Democratic primary will be favored to replace Stutsman in the legislature.

Polls have closed in most of New Hampshire, though people waiting in long lines to vote will still be able to cast ballots. Turnout appears to be record-breaking in some parts of the state.

All recent polling has indicated Donald Trump will win the Republican primary and Bernie Sanders the Democratic primary. The only question is by how much. Although Hillary Clinton did well in last week’s televised town-hall meeting and debate, the last few days of media coverage have been brutal for her. Controversial remarks by Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright have been spun as attempts to “shame” women into voting for Clinton, and I suspect they will drive many late deciders to Sanders. I would not be surprised to see him win tonight by 20 points or more.

On the Republican side, the big question is whether Marco Rubio can hang on to second place after his disastrous debate performance over the weekend. (Speaking of which, David Frum’s comments on that malfunction were particularly insightful.) John Kasich or Jeb Bush could contend for second place–and while we’re on the subject, why did Bush’s super-PAC not go up on New Hampshire television in the summer, when the pro-Kasich super-PAC started running ads?

Although social conservative candidates have typically done poorly in New Hampshire, Ted Cruz may pick up enough support from Rand Paul’s former supporters to finish second or a close third. Chris Christie has faded in the polls but may not drop out if he ends up in the top five and not too far behind the second-place candidate.

Any comments about the primary or the presidential race generally are welcome in this thread. I don’t believe in the convention scenario for Republicans; unless Rubio comes out of New Hampshire strong, Trump still looks like the favorite to wrap up the nomination by May. Clinton should still be favored to win the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary, because the electorates in those states are far more racially diverse than in Iowa and New Hampshire. On the other hand, public opinion in many states swung against her quickly during the 2008 primaries.

UPDATE: As I suspected, Sanders is crushing Clinton by more than 20 points. (Her share of the vote so far is almost exactly what it was in 2008, but with a more fractured field that year, 39 percent was enough to win.) I think we have just experienced our last cycle with Iowa and New Hampshire going first in the process, regardless of who wins the nomination. Sanders should get a big bump out of this win, but it may not be enough to win states that are not overwhelmingly white and don’t allow independents to vote in primaries.

Kasich finishing second to Trump is a terrible outcome for the establishment, which was just about ready to unite behind Rubio until the debate disaster. Bush barely making it to double digits after at least $35 million was spent on his behalf in New Hampshire is unimpressive but will keep him in the race. It will be very interesting to see whether Cruz can knock Rubio out in South Carolina.

SECOND UPDATE: Christie is heading to New Jersey rather than to South Carolina, as planned. He spent tons of time campaigning in New Hampshire and had the endorsement of the state’s largest newspaper, but couldn’t manage better than sixth place. Like their Iowa counterparts, Granite state Republicans just weren’t buying what Christie was selling.

Fox News analyst Howard Kurtz accused Iowa Democratic Party leaders of hypocrisy and “stonewalling” today:

After the ridiculously close squeaker in the Iowa caucuses, the state’s Democratic Party said it couldn’t release the raw vote totals for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

That simply isn’t how they do business, party officials insisted. […]

But it turns out that hasn’t been the practice in past elections.

Kurtz then posted what he claimed are “raw vote totals” for Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden from the 2008 Iowa caucuses. He took the numbers from CNN’s website.

Those numbers do not reflect the number of Iowans who caucused for each Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. They are just the state delegate equivalents calculated for each candidate, multiplied by 100.

Last week, the Associated Press used the same method when reporting state delegate equivalents for each candidate by county.

In the Democratic caucuses, AP will tabulate State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs), which are the estimated number of state convention delegates that the candidates would receive based on precinct caucus results. AP will input into its election night reporting system 1406 SDEs (1,401 statewide, plus 3 satellite SDEs, plus 2 tele-caucus SDEs, equaling 1,406 total SDEs). AP then will report the total SDEs for each candidate statewide. However, on the county level, the SDE numbers for some candidates are often very small fractions. In order to process these numbers by county without losing precision, the AP will inflate the county numbers by 100.

Various news organizations including the New York Times reposted the AP’s “state delegate equivalents times 100” figures for each Democratic candidate by county. Many people misunderstood what those numbers represented. I saw numerous social media posts linking to the AP numbers as proof of how many Iowans in each county had caucused for each candidate, even though adding those totals didn’t produce a number anywhere near the overall Democratic turnout, which exceeded 171,000.

David Redlawsk, author of a book about the Iowa caucuses, tweeted at Kurtz hours ago explaining the mistake. At this writing (1 pm central), Kurtz has not corrected his post on the Fox News website. A host of television shows critiquing political news coverage should value accuracy in his own work.

I have long called for reforms to make the reported Democratic caucus results more representative of Iowans’ preferences, and I support releasing whatever raw vote numbers the party has now (in many precincts, those numbers were not preserved). But as long as the Iowa Democratic Party insists on releasing only delegate totals for each candidate, news media like CNN and AP should not add to the confusion by reporting state delegate equivalents in a way that resembles raw vote numbers.

FEBRUARY 10 UPDATE: More than 24 hours after multiple people pointed out Kurtz’s error, the Fox News post still has not been corrected, nor has Kurtz acknowledged the mistake on his Twitter feed. His lack of professionalism is disappointing.

FEBRUARY 12 UPDATE: Three days later, Kurtz’s uncorrected piece remains up on the Fox News website. I continue to see it shared on social media and linked by other authors, who accept the false premise that those numbers reflect the “popular vote” from the 2008 caucuses.

When Nate Boulton announced his Iowa Senate campaign in September, he subtly indicated he would be a different kind of legislator than State Senator Dick Dearden, the longtime Democratic incumbent who is retiring this year. Boulton promised to “be an active and engaged representative of district interests” and to “bring bold progressive ideas and a fresh, energetic style of leadership to the Iowa Senate.”

Just a few months into his primary race against Pam Dearden Conner, the retiring senator’s daughter, Boulton sent a strong signal that he will be a more “active and engaged” candidate as well. Campaign finance disclosure forms show that Boulton raised $75,383 during the last four months of the year, a phenomenal total for a non-incumbent, first-time state legislative candidate in Iowa. Not only did Boulton out-raise his primary rival, he raised more than Dearden (a 22-year incumbent) has brought in cumulatively since 2008.

Broken Kettle Grasslands near Sioux City, Iowa–photo by Matt Hauge, used with permission

David Hurd passed away in Des Moines this weekend at the age of 86. Police have ruled out foul play in his deadly fall from his condominium building but have not announced whether he took his own life or fell accidentally. He had been suffering from Lewy body disease, a progressive condition.

Hurd was a legendary figure in local business circles, a past CEO of Principal Financial and member of the Iowa Business Hall of Fame since 1994. He left a bigger mark on the capital city than most people of comparable wealth have done. The Des Moines Register’s Lissandra Villa wrote about some of his philanthropic contributions here.

Many progressive organizations benefited from Hurd’s generosity, but it would be particularly hard to overstate how much he did for Iowa’s environmental community. Morgan Gstalter reported for the Register on Hurd’s gift that allowed the Nature Conservancy to acquire the first portion of the Broken Kettle Grasslands in the Loess Hills area: “Now at 3,217 acres, Broken Kettle is Iowa’s largest remaining native prairie and is home to bison and rattlesnakes.” The photo at the top of this post shows a tiny part of the stunning landscape. That gift alone would have secured Hurd’s legacy in the environmental world, but he was just getting started.

I became acquainted with Hurd during several years when we served together on the Iowa Environmental Council board. He was a co-founder of the organization. A few qualities stick out in my mind. First, he was attentive but generally quiet during meetings–the opposite of some business types who tend to dominate group conversations. Possibly reading my mind, Principal’s current CEO Dan Houston told the Register that Hurd was “one of the smartest guys you’d ever meet” but also “a very humble man, very capable, diverse, global, international and kind. He listened so, so very well.” Yes. Hurd was frequently the smartest guy in the room, but he never made a big deal about being the smartest guy in the room.

Hurd didn’t throw his weight around. He never pulled rank on any other board member, despite having given more money to the council than anyone else. I never heard of him trying to interfere with staff work, which large benefactors of many organizations have been known to do. When new ideas or programs were floated, he wanted to know about real-world impact: how would doing this thing potentially make Iowa’s water cleaner, or reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Even more unusual for a prominent person in the business community, Hurd did not restrict his giving to environmental organizations I consider “politically correct,” such as the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation or the Nature Conservancy. He supported non-profits that opposed powerful corporate interests in our state. I’m thinking not only of the Iowa Environmental Council, which pushed for water quality rules that Big Ag groups fought all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court. He was a consistent donor to 1000 Friends of Iowa (on whose board I also serve), and our sustainable land use agenda is not popular with developers.

During his retirement, Hurd helped create the local Scrabble club. When people who had played against him would talk about how competitive he was at the game, I was always amused. In other contexts, he came across as laid back and didn’t give off a competitive vibe at all–which also struck me as atypical for a major corporation’s onetime CEO.

At the CNN Democratic candidates’ town hall a few days before the Iowa caucuses, I spotted David and his wife Trudy in the audience and went over to say a quick hello. I wish I had known that was my chance to say goodbye.

After reviewing results in fourteen disputed precincts, the Iowa Democratic Party announced today that new calculations show Hillary Clinton received 700.47 state delegate equivalents (49.84 percent), Bernie Sanders received 696.92 state delegate equivalents (49.59 percent), and Martin O’Malley 7.63 state delegate equivalents (0.54 percent). I enclose below the full statement from the party, with details on the five precincts where county delegate totals had been misreported the night of February 1. In three of those precincts, the Iowa Democratic Party initially reported one too many county delegates for Clinton instead of Sanders. In one precinct, Sanders was allocated a county delegate that should have gone to Clinton. In the last precinct where results were corrected, Sanders was allocated a county delegate that should have gone to O’Malley.

Across 1,681 precincts assigning 11,065 county delegates, a few tabulation or reporting errors are to be expected. That’s why I supported a full review, to dispel any concerns about the accuracy of the results. Contrary to some conspiracy theories I have seen floating around social media, the Iowa Democratic Party could not systematically misreport county delegate totals to give Clinton the victory. Too many witnesses observe what happens in each precinct and would notice if the party got the numbers wrong.

In nine of the precincts the state party reviewed, reported results were found to be correct. The Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs explained one supposed example of “fishy” math today. In an Ankeny precinct, 148 people caucused for Sanders and 128 for Clinton. The precinct’s eight county delegates split four to each candidate. Sanders supporter Tucker Melssen thought it was a mistake, and Sanders should have gotten more. Welcome to my world in 1988, Tucker. My candidate had a plurality of caucus-goers in the precinct, but our county delegates split evenly.

Party officials correctly applied the formula used to convert supporters to county delegates in Ankeny 12. Drew Miller’s caucus calculator reveals that if 276 people in a precinct allocating eight county delegates split 148 to 128, each candidate should indeed receive four delegates. Playing around with the calculator, you can see that if Ankeny 12 had allocated nine delegates, Sanders would have gotten five of them. Or, if you leave the delegate total at eight, Sanders would need 156 of the 276 caucus-goers to stand in his corner in order to get five of the precinct’s delegates.

Long before I knew there would be such a close result in an Iowa Democratic caucus, I objected to the sometimes distorting effects of caucus math. Since I published this post on Thursday, many naysayers have told me we can’t ever report raw supporter numbers for each candidate, the way Iowa Republicans caucus. In what other context do Democrats support a system where some voters have more influence over the results than others? Where your voice counts for less if you caucus in a high-turnout precinct or county? Where voters are not able to cast a secret ballot and are excluded from participating because of disability, work or family obligations?

Stop telling me what the Democratic National Committee and the New Hampshire secretary of state won’t “let” us do to improve the caucuses. Start thinking creatively about how we can make the system more representative and inclusive while preserving Iowa’s place in the nominating calendar. The first step is Iowa Democratic Party leaders being willing to fight for positive change, rather than digging in to defend a flawed status quo. I’m not the only one who sees the need for reform: Clinton supporter Brad Anderson and Sanders supporter Phil Roeder both have extensive Iowa Democratic campaign experience and called for change in recent days.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Many politically active Iowans have been decompressing from the build up to the Iowa caucuses and their aftermath. A few posts on the presidential race are still in my head, waiting to be written soon, and I am not done advocating for reforms to make the caucuses more inclusive and representative. But whereas fellow blogger Pat Rynard will continue to focus substantial energy on national politics in the coming months, I am eager to bring this site back to the state-level news I am most passionate about covering. So much has happened that I didn’t manage to write during the last couple of months, and new stories are breaking all the time. My writing plans include:

• Iowa campaigns and elections. Thanks to our non-partisan redistricting process, our state is blessed with an unusual number of potentially competitive state legislative districts. Many more close looks at Iowa House and Iowa Senate races are in the works, as well as posts about the Congressional races.

• Legislative and state government news. GOP State Senator David Johnson has just become the first statehouse Republican on record for lawmakers reversing the Branstad administration’s Medicaid privatization. (Johnson knows the policy put “children at risk of losing services” because so few providers have signed contracts with the private insurance companies picked to manage Medicaid.) Criminal justice reform, education funding, and water quality programs are other areas I’ll be following as the legislature continues its work.

• Iowa Congressional voting. Unfortunately, very few votes in the U.S. House or Senate receive any attention in the mainstream media. As I’ve said before, if a member of Congress didn’t brag about it in a press release, conference call, or social media post, Iowans are not likely ever to learn that it happened. Catching up on important votes by our four U.S. representatives and two senators is on my to-do list.

• Significant Iowa court rulings. A post in progress will highly key points from a federal court ruling David Pitt covered for the Associated Press, which determined “Iowa State University administrators violated the constitutional free speech rights of student members of a pro-marijuana group by barring them from using the university logos on T-shirts.”

• Throwback Thursday. These looks back at Iowa political history have been so much fun, I wish I’d started writing them years ago. Several more are in the works, including one relating to a 2010 law on access to firearms by people subject to protective orders. Ryan Foley reported yesterday for the Associated Press, “More than a dozen states have strengthened laws over the past two years to keep firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers, a rare area of consensus in the nation’s highly polarized debate over guns.” Iowa lawmakers adopted and Governor Chet Culver signed our state’s version of this legislation in 2010–but getting it through the state House and Senate took some heavy lifting.

• Iowa political journalism. Media issues are close to my heart, having been one of my main beats as during my decade as an analyst of Russian politics. How the Iowa media are covering (or not covering) important political news will continue to be an occasional focus at Bleeding Heartland. Some posts will be short, others long.

As always, guest pieces about any subject related to Iowa politics are welcome here. There is no need to clear ideas or content with me ahead of time. Anyone can register for an account, and I approve all non-spam, substantive posts. Bleeding Heartland has no minimum or maximum word length or restrictions on format. Looking through the posts by all guest authors in 2015, you will find a wide variety of topics and writing styles.

I also appreciate tips and story ideas. Readers can contact me at the e-mail address near the lower right corner of this page or through Twitter.

Since November, the University of Iowa has refused to release documents related to annual statewide polls measuring Iowans’ attitudes about the university over the last three years. Officials have cited a provision in Iowa Code allowing “Reports to governmental agencies” to remain confidential if their release “would give advantage to competitors and serve no public purpose.” But Iowa Freedom of Information Council Executive Director Randy Evans has referenced decisions by the Iowa Supreme Court and lower courts, which indicate that the exemption “was not designed to cover documents produced for the government at public expense.”

I have assumed the university was concealing documents related to the polling because the work was among several projects awarded through no-bid contracts to a company controlled by former Republican Party of Iowa Chair Matt Strawn. Peter Matthes, the university vice president who supervised those contracts, had prior connections to Strawn through Iowa Republican circles. Matthes also was involved in hiring new University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld, both as a member of the presidential search committee and as a participant in one of Harreld’s secret meetings with key decision-makers.

An exclusive report by Ryan Foley for the Associated Press yesterday pointed to a more straightforward reason to keep the poll findings secret: Iowa’s image as a “party school” had hurt its reputation “as a serious academic institution.”

Guest author fladem lives in another state. He observed a precinct caucus in Urbandale (Polk County) in 2008 and saw some troubling things while volunteering for Bernie Sanders in three West Des Moines (Dallas County) precincts on Monday night. Note: people who are not eligible to participate in the Iowa caucuses are allowed to attend and help at a caucus, as long as they are not counted as part of any preference group. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I was a precinct captain for Bernie working in West Des Moines precincts 224 through 226.

Representative Steve King is among the leading Iowa Republicans basking in reflected glory from Ted Cruz’s big win in the caucuses. His endorsement in mid-November was a catalyst for Cruz’s rise in the Iowa polls. He ran interference when Cruz came under attack for his stands on the ethanol mandate and an amendment to a 2013 immigration bill. In the final hour before the Iowa caucuses convened, King tweeted, “[Dr. Ben] Carson looks like he is out. Iowans need to know before they vote. Most will go to Cruz, I hope.” (Today King expressed regret for “any miscommunications” but pointed to a CNN story asserting that Carson was planning “a break from campaigning.”)

Cruz’s win after trailing in the last ten polls before the caucuses cements King’s status as a hero to many Iowa Republicans. By the same token, King has disappointed some conservatives who supported him in the past.

In particular, King’s efforts on behalf of Cruz made an enemy out of Nick Ryan, who has led various super-PACs and dark money groups. Ryan is looking for a credible candidate to challenge King in a GOP primary to represent Iowa’s fourth Congressional district.

Since 2007, I have been trying to raise awareness about problems with the Iowa Democratic caucus system: barriers to participation for many who want to have a voice in choosing our president; the fact that not every Democrat’s “vote” counts the same toward the delegate numbers; the lack of secrecy and potential for intimidation in caucus rooms; and the distorting effects of caucus math, starting with but not limited to the 15 percent viability threshold.

Again and again and again, I have urged my fellow Democrats to make our caucuses more inclusive and the results more representative of each candidate’s actual supporter numbers. I might as well have been pounding on the walls of a sound-proofed chamber, for all the impact my blogging has had on the Iowa Democratic Party’s leadership.

The slimmest margin ever between the top two Democratic presidential candidates lends new urgency to the task of cleaning up the caucuses. Yet state party chair Dr. Andy McGuire and others are holding the line against even a full review of the calculations that put Hillary Clinton ahead of Bernie Sanders by 700.59 state delegate equivalents to 696.82. They insist that any minor glitches on Monday night were resolved by 2:30 am, when the party sent out its press release declaring Clinton the winner. The results are final. Nothing to see here, folks.

The longer party leaders drag their feet, the more they will stoke conspiracy theories about the caucuses being stolen for the establishment’s favorite.

They say that converts are often more zealous than people who have grown up with a belief system. So it fell to Republican State Senator Mark Chelgren, who was raised and educated in California before settling in Iowa as an adult, to push for economic sanctions over the Stanford band’s halftime performance at the Rose Bowl.

Three-term GOP State Representative Josh Byrnes announced today that he will not seek re-election to the Iowa House. I enclose below the full statement he posted on Facebook, which expressed his “hope that the voters of House District 51 will continue to elect moderate candidates to represent them in Des Moines. The constituents of a district lose when we elect those who are hard line party people.”

Byrnes was occasionally out of step with his caucus, having supported marriage equality and voted with Democrats for expanding Medicaid. Rumors of his impending retirement proved wrong during the last election cycle but flared up again in recent months, following his unsuccessful bid to be House speaker and subsequent criticism of excessive partisanship and failure to approve school funding levels on time.

House GOP leaders have resisted compromise on education funding during the past several years, which likely contributed to decisions by three other Republicans not to run for re-election in 2016. Like Byrnes, State Representatives Brian Moore, Quentin Stanerson, and Ron Jorgensen all have worked in the education field.

With Byrnes retiring, House district 51 immediately moves to the top tier of Democratic pickup opportunities in the lower chamber, which the GOP controls with a 57 to 43 majority. President Barack Obama received 55.19 percent of the vote among its residents in 2012. Only two Iowa House districts currently held by Republicans voted to re-elect the president by a larger margin; one of them was House district 58, which Moore is vacating. According to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, House district 51 contains 5,119 active registered Democrats, 6,074 Republicans, and 8,247 no-party voters. I enclose below a district map.

UPDATE: Tony Krebsbach announced on Facebook today that he will seek the GOP nomination in House district 51. He has served on the Republican Party of Iowa’s State Central Committee and chaired the Mitchell County GOP and is part of the “Liberty” faction, which supported Ron Paul for president.

The Des Moines Register’s longtime pollster Ann Selzer identified the surge of first-time Democratic caucus-goers who would carry Barack Obama to victory in 2008. Her final poll before the 2012 Republican caucuses caught the strong upward momentum for Rick Santorum. Her last snapshot before this year’s caucuses for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics correctly saw a close race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, with fewer first-time participants than eight years ago.

But Selzer’s view of the GOP campaign was unfortunately off the mark in several respects: putting Donald Trump ahead of Ted Cruz, underestimating turnout overall and particularly among evangelicals, and missing the late swing toward Marco Rubio that some political observers sensed by watching the campaign on the ground.

Yesterday Selzer commented to David Weigel of the Washington Post,

“In all the press I did in the last two days—and it was a LOT — I talked about the fluidity,” she wrote in an email. “Up to the last moment — including inside the caucus room — campaigns and supporters are working for change! Surprise! Big evangelical turnout — no doubt the biggest.” […]

“Trump was disliked by vast majority of caucus-goers who didn’t support him,” Selzer said. “Bernie’s extraordinary strength was with first-timers, who showed up in above-projected numbers. […]

“If I’m demoted to ‘silver standard,’ I’m fine with that,” she said. “I was never all that comfortable with the hype.”

Selzer can take some comfort in knowing that the last ten Iowa polls released before the caucuses all put Trump ahead of Cruz. The most recent poll to show Cruz leading was the Iowa State University/WHO-TV survey, which uses an unconventional screen for likely caucus-goers. But Iowa State/WHO understated support for Trump and Rubio. Given the tremendous difficulties involved in polling the Iowa caucuses, especially on the Democratic side, we should expect some misses, even from the top professionals in the field. As the presidential campaign progresses, here’s hoping political journalists will focus less on poll-driven horse race coverage.

UPDATE: Selzer did some “Tuesday morning quarterbacking” of her final poll in today’s Des Moines Register. I enclose excerpts below.

Donald Trump was the obvious Republican loser last night. Despite leading in the last ten Iowa polls released before the caucuses, Trump finished more than 6,000 votes and three percentage points behind Ted Cruz, widely perceived before yesterday to have peaked too soon. Record-breaking turnout was supposed to be a winning scenario for Trump, yet a plurality of caucus-goers cast ballots for Cruz as attendance surpassed the previous high-water mark by more than 50 percent.

For Iowa politics watchers, another big takeaway jumped out from the caucus results: Governor Terry Branstad’s advice doesn’t carry much weight with rank and file Republicans.

I will update this post throughout the evening. As of 9 pm, 75 percent of Democratic precincts have reported, and Hillary Clinton narrowly leads Bernie Sanders by 50.4 percent to 48.9 percent of state delegate equivalents. Martin O’Malley won less than 1 percent of the state delegate equivalents and is reportedly dropping out of the race. UPDATE: with 81 percent of precincts reporting (but not including some Iowa City and Cedar Rapids precincts), Clinton is barely ahead by 50.2 percent to 49.1 percent. Turnout seems to be considerably higher than I expected, which explains how well Sanders is doing. He could pull ahead to Clinton if she doesn’t have good counties and precincts outstanding.

The Republican race is too close to call between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, with about 75 percent of the votes counted. Marco Rubio is in third place. I noticed that Bret Hayworth of the Sioux City Journal predicted a Cruz win, as did I. On the Republican side, only Cruz was running a traditional ground game. Supposedly the Trump campaign hired out its phone banking, and I never heard much about door-knocking on his behalf.

What happened in your precinct? Share your stories in the comments. I’ve posted what happened in Windsor Heights 2 below.

9:30 UPDATE: Television networks are calling the GOP race for Cruz. Mike Huckabee is dropping out of the race; he outperformed his polling numbers but is still way behind the leaders at around 7 percent.

9:45 UPDATE: With 88 percent of Democratic precincts reporting, Clinton is ahead by only 49.9 percent to 49.5 percent. Sanders could pull ahead.

10:30 UPDATE: Clinton is speaking now, which surprises me, because she’s only ahead by 50.1 percent to 49.4 percent with 93 percent of precincts reporting. For some reason, the Iowa Democratic Party’s website is showing my own precinct (Windsor Heights 2) as not yet reporting. We were done by around 8:30.

11:20 UPDATE: With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton’s lead is down to 49.8 percent to 49.6 percent. A bunch of Polk County precincts are still outstanding, including mine. At least six precincts around the state had one delegate awarded by a coin flip.

12:00 am UPDATE: Steve Kornacki and Rachel Maddow got the coin flip story badly wrong on MSNBC, claiming the coin flips (all won by Clinton in the various precincts) accounted for Clinton’s statewide lead over Sanders. No. The coin flips resolve who would get the last remaining county delegate from a precinct. Clinton is ahead by a handful of state delegate equivalents.

12:50 am UPDATE: With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton leads by 49.9 percent to 49.6 percent. Just twelve precincts have not reported.

2 am: Make that ten precincts outstanding. I want to hear from Democrats who caucused in Des Moines precinct 43 at Roosevelt High School. There seems to have been some confusion about the count, and Sanders supporters online are accusing the precinct chair and the Clinton precinct captain of “fraud,” based on this video. It’s not unusual for there to be some confusion or people missed during the count. We had to count our Clinton group twice last night.

2:30 am: The Iowa Democratic Party released a statement a few minutes ago, which I’ve enclosed below. According to the party, statewide turnout was 171,109, much higher than I expected but nearly 70,000 below the record turnout of 2008. The party says “Clinton has been awarded 699.57 state delegate equivalents, Bernie Sanders has been awarded 695.49 state delegate equivalents, Martin O’Malley has been awarded 7.68 state delegate equivalents and uncommitted has been awarded .46 state delegate equivalents. We still have outstanding results in one precinct (Des Moines—42), which is worth 2.28 state delegate equivalents.”

The outstanding precinct (Des Moines 42) is on the west side, bordering Windsor Heights. There is no clear trend in the six neighboring precincts, with Sanders and Clinton winning two each and the other two ending in a delegate tie.

With all the excitement on the Democratic side, I forgot to update the Republican results. They are after the jump. The GOP turnout of more than 180,000 was about 50 percent higher than their previous record turnout in 2012.