Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

A program for the Sunday before election day offered “Songs of Gratitude” at an Interfaith Thanksgiving Celebration. Perhaps the subtle theme suggested giving thanks instead of lying about the other candidate.

Regardless of intent, I thought the program could provide some “Pre-Traumatic Stress Relief” to offset the “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” that loomed in the aftermath of the midterm elections.

RJ Miller was an independent candidate in Iowa House district 34.

The two-party system is not working for Iowans, who deserve a better alternative—be it a third party or running more independent candidates.

The problem is the corporate parties do not speak to the needs of all people. They care only about protecting their own interest, which is money and power.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

The windowless Office Lounge bar on Grand Avenue nestled across a narrow alleyway from the Register and Tribune Building in downtown Des Moines was a hopping place in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 6, 1974.

Longtime Office Lounge owner Dorothy Gabriel continued her election-night tradition of keeping the Register’s semi-official bar open after hours (to the apparent indifference of the Des Moines police) so that the newspaper’s staff could blow off the heat and tension of election night.

Second in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2022 state and federal elections.

For the third straight election cycle, Iowans have sent a record number of women to the state Senate. But the number of women in the Iowa House, which reached a high water mark in 2019, will dip again when lawmakers reconvene in January.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, a Substack newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

When the first people walked on the tall grass prairie of North America, they found Baldwin’s Ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii). It can grow almost anywhere the sun shines, including on dry, rocky soil. It’s important for feeding butterflies, moths and especially native bees.

The blooming top looks like a natural bouquet of about a dozen flowers plus some buds that haven’t opened yet. Each one of what looks like individual flowers is actually a smaller bouquet, made up of 20-or-so tiny florets. (Floret = little flower.)

First in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2022 state and federal elections.

The red wave many pundits expected on November 8 didn’t materialize in most of the country. But it certainly crashed over Iowa.

Governor Kim Reynolds was re-elected by a massive 225,000 vote, 19-point margin, according to unofficial results, and she carried Republican candidates along with her.

The Iowa Secretary of State’s office has released the final unofficial absentee ballot totals for the 2022 general election. These figures reflect all in-person early voting, which wrapped up on November 7, as well as all ballots that arrived in the mail or through drop boxes at the close of business on November 7. A later report will include all absentee ballots that arrive at county auditors’ offices by 8:00 pm today.

Some quick thoughts on what we know about this year’s numbers:

Editor’s note: This analysis has been updated with unofficial results from all the races. Original post follows.

The major parties have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the most competitive 2022 Iowa House and Senate races.

This post highlights seven state Senate districts where one or both parties have spent large sums, and another seven where even without a big investment by Democrats or Republicans, the results could shed light on political trends.

All voter registration totals listed below come from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, as reported on November 1. All absentee ballot figures come from the Secretary of State’s office, as reported on November 7. All past election results come from the map Josh Hughes created in Dave’s Redistricting App.

All figures for in-kind spending by the Iowa Democratic Party or Republican Party of Iowa come from filings with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. I focus on in-kind spending, because candidates in battleground Iowa legislative races typically give most of their funds to the state party. The party then covers the bulk of the large expenditures for direct mail and/or television, radio, and digital advertising.

Matt Hardin is an attorney who lives in Des Moines. He has volunteered for, worked on, and donated to Democratic campaigns since 2004, and also worked in the Iowa legislature. He is interested in reforming political institutions so that voting is easy, convenient, and protected.

Maybe you’re on the couch with the TV on, checking Twitter on your phone and refreshing a county auditor page on your laptop. It’s getting late. You think, “why don’t they call these races?”

On Wednesday morning, you may ask yourself, “Dear God, why did I stay up so late?” The next day comes and goes, and some elections still haven’t been called. You think to yourself again, “Why? Why is this taking so long?” For the impatient among us (like myself), here are the big reasons why.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

If Governor Kim Reynolds is re-elected and Republicans keep control of the Iowa legislature, Reynolds will push for a school voucher plan that would please the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Religious fundamentalists strive for a state-funded Bible school flourishing in every Christian church basement in Iowa. Since the June primary, Reynolds has been relatively quiet about “school choice,” relying instead on wedge issues to leverage her re-election.

One exception was a speech she gave to the Faith and Freedom Coalition in September.

Fake newspapers designed to drive Illinois voters away from Democratic candidates are being printed at the Des Moines Register’s plant, Gannett staff confirmed to Bleeding Heartland.

At least eleven printed publications, which are part of the conservative network Local Government Information Services (LGIS), have been distributed to Illinois residents since August. Sometimes known as “pink slime” journalism, such publications combine political advocacy with stories resembling neutral coverage of local news or sports. The material has the look and feel of a newspaper, but the content is more like political advertising.

Jem Bartholomew of the Columbia Journalism Review was first to report in early October that Gannett had taken over printing of the LGIS products. The previous publisher, which also owns the suburban Chicago newspaper Daily Herald, canceled its commercial printing contract with LGIS in late September, saying “Many critics cannot or refuse to differentiate between a commercial printing operation” and the Herald’s “editorial mission to be unbiased and fair.”

The Des Moines Register’s executive editor, Carol Hunter, had no comment beyond confirming in a November 4 email that “these are commercial print clients.” She provided a statement from Gannett’s corporate communications staff: “We do not discuss our commercial print clients and have no further comment.”

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

This post will present the state of play in the U.S. Senate races as of November 4. The data includes all polling available at 7:00 am Eastern; polls are released so frequently that it is impossible to analyze the situation without stopping.

Before we get to the survey numbers, though, we need to consider the environment in which these elections are taking place.

UPDATE: In April 2023, the board vacated this fine but left a reprimand in place, citing Andrews’ failure to cooperate with the investigation. Original post follows.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board voted unanimously on November 3 to fine State Representative Eddie Andrews’ campaign $500 for failing to include attribution statements on several large signs promoting the Republican lawmaker’s re-election in Iowa House district 43.

Karin Derry, the former Democratic legislator Andrews defeated in 2020, brought the matter to the board’s attention in June. Her complaint mentioned three large campaign signs that did not contain any attribution statement. Iowa law exempts small yard signs from the requirement, but not large signs (commonly known as “barn signs”).

Ethics board staff contacted Andrews about the complaint in June, and the board voted in September to accept the complaint. Staff again attempted to reach the Republican candidate via email in October. But Andrews’ campaign did not provide photographic evidence of correct attribution statements on the disputed signs until November 1.

Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley wrote to the Iowa Utilities Board this week to object to a waiver request from one of the companies seeking to build a carbon dioxide pipeline in Iowa.

The unusual move reflects strong opposition to the projects in rural Iowa.

When Iowa Republicans enacted new restrictions on absentee voting in 2021, they increased the risk of voting by mail. At least 150 ballots (and probably more) that Iowans mailed before the June primary election were not counted because they arrived too late.

The latest figures released by the Iowa Secretary of State’s office suggest that more than 35,000 absentee ballots requested for this general election had not reached county auditors by the close of business on November 2. In Polk County alone, 7,636 ballots mailed to voters are still outstanding.

If you have not yet returned your absentee ballot for the November 8 election, do not put it in the mail now. All ballots must arrive at the county auditor’s office by 8:00 pm on election day. Late-arriving ballots will not be counted, regardless of any postmark or barcode on the envelope. Many of the ballots not counted in the June primary were mailed several days before that election.

Here are four options:

Below are the edited remarks Nick Covington made in Des Moines at the Public Funds for Public Schools press conference, organized by Progress Iowa on November 2.

My name is Nick Covington. I taught social studies at Ankeny High School from 2012 to June of this year. As a teacher, I saw first-hand that most Iowans, including teachers and parents, want the same thing: strong, quality public schools that give every student the freedom to reach their full potential. All students, no matter what they look like or their zip code, deserve the freedom to learn and succeed. 

Governor Kim Reynolds’ website currently reads: “School choice allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that meet their needs—and allows parents to choose what’s best for their children, whether that’s a different public school, a private or charter school, home school or other learning environment.”

Emma Schmit is senior Iowa organizer with Food & Water Action.

The hazardous carbon pipeline proposals rocking Iowa are on the ballot this year. Next year’s legislative session will be key to stopping these dangerous pipelines. Iowans need to elect leaders who will stand up for their constituents, not scheming carbon pipeline corporations. 

“Here in this field of dreams that we call home, anything is possible,” Governor Kim Reynolds declares near the end of her last television commercial before the November election.

Although the ad is superficially upbeat, its script and carefully chosen images convey an exclusionary message. To Reynolds, the place “we call home” is for people like herself: straight, white Christians from rural areas.

It’s another divisive move for a candidate who already spent heavily to bring racist tropes to Iowans’ tv screens.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

It is safe to assume Kirk Ferentz has not enjoyed the glorious autumn in Iowa the way he would prefer.

He has feverishly worked his Bubble Yum during the Hawkeyes’ games this season. He has been worked over during his post-game press conferences and again at his weekly meetings with the media on Tuesdays.

Being a college football coach is never a picnic. But this year, life for the longest-tenured football coach in big-time college athletics has been more stressful than most years.

We saw that last week when the normally measured coach referred to the media session with journalists following the Hawkeyes’ 54-10 loss to Ohio State University as an “interrogation.” 

But I come today to sing Kirk Ferentz’s praises, not to dog-pile on him.

Bruce Lear: Voters must stop reacting to red meat appeals and start voting like compromise isn’t a dirty word.

A few times during my career, a problem-solving meeting morphed into a scene from the Walking Dead. 

Adrenaline surged and the sides shifted into attack mode. Anger trumped reason. Both sides worked to score a knockout. By the end, no one remembered why we met. Everyone was hungover from anger and worn out from attacks. Nothing was solved.

What happened in those meetings reminds me of what our elections have become. Based on recent polling, it’s not a surprise. 

According to a recent NBC News nationwide poll, 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans “believe the political opposition poses a threat that, if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.”