An earlier version of this commentary appeared in The Prairie Progressive‘s fall 2021 issue.

In a media release earlier this year and a commentary published in some Iowa newspapers, Senator Chuck Grassley asserted, “it appears that the standard of care and quality controls at many state veterans homes falls well short of those required by other government supported nursing homes.” He was referencing the number of COVID-19 deaths and infections in veterans homes across the country.

How many is many? The senator’s letter to U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis R. McDonough cited a handful of media reports in footnotes. Although some of those articles cited statistics provided by the government, the numbers Grassley used are flawed.

Since State Auditor Rob Sand ruled out running for governor earlier this month, I’ve been meaning to catch up on the Democratic candidates who have been actively campaigning against Kim Reynolds: State Representative Ras Smith and Deidre DeJear, the 2018 nominee for secretary of state.

The field may not be set; many Democrats believe at least one other candidate will join the governor’s race early next year. Recent speculation has centered around State Representative Chris Hall. The six-term Iowa House Democrat from Sioux City, who is ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, has not announced whether he will seek re-election or run for higher office in 2022. Hall declined to comment for the record when I reached out to him shortly after Sand confirmed he’ll run for state auditor again.

This post will focus on bases of support for Smith and DeJear. We’ll know more about their capacity to run a strong statewide campaign after candidates disclose how much they’ve raised and spent this year. Those reports must be filed with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board by January 19.

Bleeding Heartland is unlikely to endorse any candidate before the primary, but I welcome guest commentaries advocating for any Democratic contenders. Those wanting to learn more about the options should tune in to the Iowa Unity Coalition’s gubernatorial candidate forum on January 22 in Des Moines; both Smith and DeJear have agreed to participate.

The Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) is appealing a Polk County District Court ruling that found the state law and policy designed to deny Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery are unconstitutional. The state filed notice of its intent to appeal on December 17, near the end of its 30-day window to do so following the District Court’s decision in November.

The Iowa Attorney General’s office had no comment on the appeal. Governor Kim Reynolds’ office also had no comment on why the governor is determined to prevent transgender Iowans on Medicaid from receiving medically necessary care approved by their doctors.

Plaintiffs Aiden Vasquez and Mika Covington have been waiting for years to obtain surgery and first challenged the state law in court within weeks of Reynolds signing the provision into law in May 2019.

A rematch is coming in one of the last cycle’s closest Iowa House races.

Heather Matson announced on December 17 that she will run in the new House district 42, covering part of Ankeny. The Democrat represented the current House district 38 for two years before losing to GOP challenger Garrett Gobble in 2020.

While Gobble has not formally launched his re-election campaign, he posted on Facebook in October, “I look forward to getting to know the constituents of my new district!”

Both parties will likely spend heavily on this race.

Herb Strentz: For those acquainted with Orwell, reading some of the essays is like meeting a close friend whom you have not seen for decades. And yet the two of you converse as though you had just spent some time together yesterday or the day before.

Here’s the irony: To appreciate and consider the gifts of Orwell’s Roses, you must reflect on what the author does not deal with. Like a lot of good literature, the book comes with some assembly required — by the writer and by the reader. Happily, while it may be difficult to summarize what Orwell’s Roses is about, the author does that for us.

She says her book is not an addition to biographies of George Orwell (1903-1950), but is “instead a series of forays” or essays and insights into Orwell and his essays, books and gardening. Those “forays” resulted in 27 essays in the book’s seven chapters.

State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad will seek a ninth term in the Iowa House, he announced on Facebook on December 19. He said he decided to run for re-election in House district 34 following “deep thought” and conversations with many constituents of all ages.

Abdul-Samad will be heavily favored in next year’s election. If he wins in 2022, he will become the longest-serving of the nineteen Black Iowans who have served in the state legislature since 1965. Former State Representative Helen Miller represented the Fort Dodge area for sixteen years before retiring in 2018.

Bruce Lear: In order to protect democracy, it’s important to study the words of the past, the present, and the future.

They say, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” This child’s rhyme is cute, but wrong.  

Words wound personally, and words were a catalyst for a political lie that morphed into a January 6 storm threatening all future democratic elections.

The ACLU of Iowa filed suit on December 16 on behalf of three reporters and three media organizations over Governor Kim Reynolds’ long-standing failure to comply with Iowa’s open records law. The lawsuit cites five unfulfilled requests submitted by me, two submitted by Clark Kauffman of Iowa Capital Dispatch, and one submitted by Randy Evans of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.

I’ve been seeking some of those records for more than a year. My oldest outstanding request, for video messages the governor may have recorded for meatpacking plant employees during the early weeks of the pandemic, dates to April 2020. Although Reynolds told members of the Iowa Capitol Press Association in January 2021 that she would commit to having her staff respond to open records requests “in a timely manner,” her office continues to stonewall.

An unusual race is shaping up in a solid blue Iowa Senate district with no incumbent.

Normally, the Democratic nominee in a district covering parts of Des Moines would be a lock to win in November. But community organizer Alejandro Murguia-Ortiz will run in the new Senate district 17 as an independent candidate on a progressive platform.

The Democratic field is nowhere near set; the first candidate likely to make a formal announcement is Grace Van Cleave.

One of the leading Democratic-aligned political action committees endorsed three Iowa candidates this week. EMILY’s List, which backs pro-choice Democratic women seeking federal, state, or local offices, endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Abby Finkenauer on December 15 and U.S. House candidates Christina Bohannan and Liz Mathis in the new first and second Congressional districts on December 16.

The PAC endorsed U.S. Representative Cindy Axne for re-election in the third district in March.

This week’s announcements were no surprise, since EMILY’s List supported Axne and Finkenauer in their 2018 and 2020 U.S. House campaigns, and said in April that Senator Chuck Grassley was one of three Republicans the group planned to target in 2022 Senate races.

Backing from EMILY’s List helps candidates raise money through the organization’s large network of donors. Perhaps more important, it indicates the group is prepared to pay for advertising on behalf of endorsed candidates or against their opponents.

The big question is whether EMILY’s List will keep its messages positive before the June 2022 Senate primary, or also target Democratic rivals. I couldn’t get an answer from the group yesterday.

Iowa’s former State Medical Director Dr. Caitlin Pedati began working last week as Virginia Beach Health District Director, the city of Virginia Beach announced on December 10.

Jason Clayworth reported on December 14, “Pedati’s new gig is a recently created position that pays $190,000 a year, according to records obtained by Axios Monday.” He noted that was substantially less than Pedati’s annual salary in Iowa. The state employee salary book lists Pedati’s annual gross pay at $229,545.41 for fiscal year 2020 and $282,131.62 for the 2021 fiscal year.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ disaster emergency proclamations allowed state employees who normally would not be eligible for overtime pay to receive it for work related to the COVID-19 response. Bleeding Heartland reported last year that Pedati received more than $55,000 in overtime pay from March through early July 2020. Documents I received through a subsequent public records request showed that Pedati collected a total of $67,653.29 in overtime pay during the first six months of the pandemic.

Pedati grew up in the Virginia suburbs and attended college and medical school in the Washington, DC area. So it’s not surprising she would want to return to her home state—even for a lower salary—after four and a half years in the Midwest.

Republican Dave Rowley will represent Iowa Senate district 1 through the end of next year. He won a special election on December 14 by 2,690 votes to 864 for Democrat Mark Allen Lemke (75.6 percent to 24.3 percent), according to unofficial results. That’s in line with the 3:1 GOP voter registration advantage in this district, covering five northwest Iowa counties.

The candidate’s wife Kris Rowley posted on Facebook early this month that Dave Rowley “was asked to run on the Republican ticket” after former State Senator Zach Whiting resigned from the legislature in order to take a new job in Texas.

Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen is forming a task force to undertake a “holistic and comprehensive” review of the juvenile justice system, Iowa’s Director of Juvenile Court Services Chad Jensen announced on December 14.

Speaking at the annual Summit on Justice and Disparities in Ankeny, Jensen explained that Iowa’s juvenile justice system is decentralized among multiple entities and governmental agencies. Some stakeholders have introduced “courageous initiatives” to improve the system in recent years. “While good intentioned,” he added, those programs and services “do have ramifications throughout the entire system.”

The task force will “review the alignment, governance structure, and the funding of Iowa’s juvenile justice system.” Members will also attempt to identify “decision points” that fuel racial, ethnic, or gender disparities for Iowa youth, and develop proposals to improve those outcomes.

Donald Trump’s MAGA cult reminds Herb Strentz of Stephen Sondheim’s haunting lyrics: “Quick, send in the clowns/ Don’t bothеr, they’re herе.”

Given the political madness of the day and the “book burners” and others set loose upon us, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics to “Send in the Clowns” are haunting —particularly the last two lines: “Quick, send in the clowns/ Don’t bothеr, they’re herе.”

That assessment leads to other thoughts:

Glenn Hurst is a family physician in southwest Iowa and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

In my very first days of private practice, I met a patient with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She was young, in her 30s. She and her husband had two children under the age of 5 and were doing the same struggling most young middle-class Americans do at that point in life. They worried about bills, insurance, saving for big purchases. They were not likely thinking about retirement, and they had no plans for a medical emergency. Now their family was faced with a medical crisis that no one could have predicted.

I could tell her hands were full as her husband tried to wrangle the kids who were up and down the walls of the exam room as she explained her situation to me.

Julie Stauch became invested and motivated about water issues after the 1993 floods. In 2017, she joined others across the metro area to speak out against the regionalization bill in the Iowa legislature, focusing on West Des Moines. She previously wrote about the West Des Moines Water Works regionalization plan here.

Below is the statement I delivered at the WDM Water Works Board of Trustees meeting on December 6. The next meeting will be a workshop at city hall on Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 5:30 PM.

All of you have the title of Trustee, because you are entrusted with the governance responsibilities of the West Des Moines water works. It is rooted in trust between the people who use the utility and those who serve on the Board. The goal today is to take steps to focus on how vital trust is in your role for all WDM residents and rate payers.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley was not among the Republican senators who were reportedly shown a PowerPoint presentation on January 4 that laid out options for subverting a peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden, the senator’s staff told Bleeding Heartland on December 13.

Mark Meadows, who served as chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, turned over the document to the U.S. House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Hugo Lowell reported for The Guardian on December 10,

Larry Anderson is a retired civil engineer and former general manager of the West Des Moines Water Works. He prepared these comments to submit to the West Des Moines Water Works trustees on December 13.

I’m a civil engineering graduate of Iowa State University, was a Registered Professional Civil Engineer in Iowa and the first general manager of West Des Moines Water Works, having been privileged to serve the utility for 27 years, between 1977 and 2004. However, my concern about regionalization of water production isn’t about any of those things.

The proposed change to regional, politicized governance of water production gives away a substantial part of West Des Moines destiny to others. Yes, West Des Moines would receive a voice in the decision-making of wholesale water rates. Whether it is a strong voice or simply a voice in the wilderness, due to the newly added politics, is a definite concern of mine and it should be to all West Des Moines residents. 

More important, the proposal gives an added political body the ability to simply say, “No, we cannot provide additional water right now to West Des Moines. We might be able to do that later, but not now.” So, an economic development proposal offered to West Des Moines will occur elsewhere. That is very concerning to me as a resident of West Des Moines since 1955. 

Ira Lacher: Mike Franken has deliberately avoided labeling himself a “centrist” or “moderate.” But Saturday, there was no doubt where he stood.

On December 11, I attended a meet-and-greet, intending to be introduced to retired Vice Admiral Michael Franken, one of the Democrats running against Senator Chuck Grassley. Instead, I was introduced to Jean-Luc Picard.

It’s not hard to imagine Franken — a 64-year-old rural Sioux County native, who emerged from a working-class family of nine kids in a landlocked state to attain the rank of three-star admiral without attending the Naval Academy — on the bridge of the starship USS Enterprise.

State Representative Jo Oldson will not seek re-election in 2022, she informed constituents in an email newsletter on December 9. “With re-apportionment now settled,” she wrote, “I believe it’s the right time for me to step aside and provide an opportunity for new leaders to step forward. While this decision wasn’t easy for me, it’s time to retire and enjoy more time with my husband Brice and our family.”

First elected to the Iowa House in 2002, Oldson served as minority whip in 2019 and 2020 and was the ranking member of the Commerce Committee during this year’s legislative session.

Her decision opens up a third strongly Democratic Iowa House district in Des Moines.