New laws enacted by Republican legislators and Governor Kim Reynolds succeeded in limiting third-party competition for Iowa’s state and federal offices.

According to the general election candidate list published by the Iowa Secretary of State’s office on March 21, only one minor-party candidate qualified for a federal office this year: Bryan Jack Holder, who is running in the fourth Congressional district. Libertarians are fielding candidates for governor and lieutenant governor: Rick Stewart and Marco Battaglia. In 2018, Libertarian candidates were on the ballot for all of Iowa’s statewide and federal offices.

No independent candidate filed for any federal or statewide office in Iowa this year. For most of the last decade’s elections, independent candidates were on the ballot for several of those offices.

Only two candidates not representing a major party filed for any of the the 34 Iowa Senate seats on the ballot in 2022; both are running in Senate district 17. Across the 100 Iowa House races, only three Libertarian candidates and four independents will appear on the November ballot.

Before Republicans passed new restrictions in 2019 and 2021, Iowa voters were able to choose candidates not representing either major party in more elections.

J. Ann Selzer has earned a reputation as “the best pollster in politics” through “old-school rigor” and not adjusting her data to fit guesses about the structure of the electorate. Des Moines-based Selzer & Co. is one of only five polling firms in the country currently rated A+ by FiveThirtyEight. Like many media pollsters, the firm uses a random digit dial method to find respondents for surveys about a primary or Iowa caucus. Most internal polls commissioned by campaigns draw the sample from a registered voter list, with an emphasis on past participants in either a Democratic or Republican nominating contest.

I sought comment from Selzer on her methodology because of Fred Hubbell’s and Cindy Axne’s unexpectedly large margins of victory in this year’s Iowa Democratic primary. In a telephone interview with Bleeding Heartland last week, Selzer explained why she will stick with her sampling method for future primary elections.

Probably older than you think.

The median age of Iowa residents is 38 years old, as of 2016. But the median Iowa voter this year will be much older than that. The preponderance of voters over age 50 could influence the outcome of the Democratic race for governor as well as the general election.

Remember how awful you felt on November 9, 2016, as you started to grasp what we were up against following the most devastating Iowa election in decades?

Would you believe the results could have been even worse?

Imagine Governor Terry Branstad appointing three right-wingers to the Iowa Supreme Court. It could have happened if conservative groups had targeted Chief Justice Mark Cady, Justice Brent Appel, and Justice Daryl Hecht with the resources and fervor they had applied against three justices in 2010.

Joy Corning was independent. As a state senator and lieutenant governor, she didn’t cater to social conservatives who were gaining strength in the Republican Party of Iowa during the 1980s and 1990s. She paid a price for her principles when she ran for governor in 1998 and got no support from Terry Branstad, along whose side she had served for eight years. She would have been a great governor.

Joy was empathetic. Long before she ran for office, she was a young stay-at-home mom when her husband came home from work with awful news: a woman in their community had died of complications from a back-alley abortion, leaving a husband to raise three children alone. Joy couldn’t stop thinking about that mother. The tragedy fueled her dedication to protecting reproductive rights. “Whatever the circumstances of the unintended pregnancy, we cannot experience the hardship and struggle faced by some women who make this decision. We are simply not in their shoes,” Joy wrote in a guest column for the Des Moines Register this year.

Joy was fair-minded. She was among the first prominent members of her party to support marriage equality in Iowa. During the 2010 campaign, she and former Democratic Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson co-chaired the Justice Not Politics coalition, supporting the retention of Iowa Supreme Court justices who were under attack after striking down our state’s Defense of Marriage Act.

Joy was fact-oriented. While watching the Republican presidential debates, she was repelled by Donald Trump’s “know-it-all demeanor when he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” She came out publicly as #NeverTrump last September and shortly before the election co-authored an editorial endorsing Hillary Clinton, in part because of Trump’s “demagoguery,” “racism, nationalism, misogyny and discrimination against people with disabilities.”

Joy was committed. Some politicians leave the state after their ambitions don’t pan out, but Joy stayed in Iowa and volunteered countless hours for many causes over the last eighteen years. In her obituary, she wrote that she was “most passionate about issues related to children and families, women’s health & rights, equality and justice, education and the arts.” For friends who are inspired to make contributions in her memory, she suggested the Planned Parenthood of the Heartland Foundation, Plymouth Church Foundation, UNI Foundation, or the Des Moines Symphony Foundation. Joy was also a founding board member of 50/50 in 2020, a non-profit seeking to elect more women in Iowa, as well as a founding member of an advisory board for the University of Iowa’s center for gifted education, named in part after my mother. (Joy and my mother became friends when both served on school boards during the 1970s–Joy in Cedar Falls, my mother in West Des Moines. I didn’t get to know Joy until many years later, when I served on a fundraising committee she chaired for what was then called Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa.)

Joy was kind. Former Planned Parenthood leader Jill June recalled her motto: “If you can’t say something nice, be vague.” That approach to life wouldn’t produce good blog content, but it did make Joy a wonderful human being.

After the jump I’ve posted many other reflections on Joy Corning’s legacy. Please share your own memories in this thread.

Three of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices who concurred in the historic Varnum v Brien ruling on marriage equality lost their jobs in the 2010 judicial retention elections. A fourth survived a similar campaign against retaining him in 2012.

The last three Varnum justices, including the author of the unanimous opinion striking down our state’s Defense of Marriage Act, will appear on Iowa ballots this November. At this writing, no one seems to be organizing any effort to vote them off the bench. Iowa’s anti-retention campaigns in 2010 and 2012 were well under way by the end of August, but the social conservatives who spearheaded those efforts have shown no interest in repeating the experience.

National Organization for Money graphic created by Rights Equal Rights and used with permission.

Donald Trump targeted Bob Vander Plaats on Twitter this week. He speculated that Ted Cruz, who landed Vander Plaats’ personal endorsement last month, may not know about past “dealings” by one of Iowa’s leading social conservatives. The billionaire called Vander Plaats a “bad guy” and a “phony,” claiming the FAMiLY Leader‘s front man had asked to stay in Trump hotels for free and tried to secure a $100,000 payment for himself after “begging” Trump to do an Iowa event. Jennifer Jacobs confirmed that Trump received a $100,000 fee for speaking to a real estate conference in West Des Moines last year, but Vander Plaats told the Des Moines Register “he was paid nothing” for introducing Trump to the head of the company that organized the event, and “no donation was made to the Family Leader.”

The spat reminded me of big news from the final two weeks of the 2012 Iowa caucus campaign, when Rick Santorum confirmed that Vander Plaats had asked for money to promote his endorsement.

State Senator Brad Zaun endorsed Donald Trump for president last week.

What will he think of next?

If past experience is any guide, nothing that reflects a coherent political philosophy, and nothing that will help him attain the higher office he covets.

Today is State Representative Curt Hanson’s birthday. Six years ago at this time, he was in the thick of the first state legislative campaign following the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling on marriage equality. Hanson’s win in a highly competitive House district was probably the second most important special election in recent Iowa history (after Liz Mathis’s victory in November 2011, which protected the Democratic Iowa Senate majority).

Kicking off an occasional “throwback Thursday” series, Bleeding Heartland takes a look at Hanson’s first campaign for the Iowa House.

Bleeding Heartland’s “Where are they now?” posts usually focus on new jobs for former elected officials, candidates for high office, or other prominent individuals in Iowa politics.

Todd Dorman’s latest commentary for the Cedar Rapids Gazette prompted me to follow up on a smear from the 2010 state legislative elections.

Hot off the press: the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand’s appeal of a Iowa Supreme Court ruling rejecting his defamation case. Bertrand’s lawsuit stemmed from a negative ad the Iowa Democratic Party ran against him during his 2010 campaign against Rick Mullin. To my surprise, Bertrand won significant damages in a jury trial, and a partial victory at the Iowa District Court level. The district court judge reduced the damages awarded to Bertrand but determined that the controversial television spot constituted “implied libel.”

Both Bertrand and the defendants in the defamation case (Mullin and the Iowa Democratic Party) appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, which heard the case in January. In May, justices unanimously dismissed the case. Bleeding Heartland posted key excerpts from that unanimous ruling here. You can read the full decision here (pdf).

Bertrand’s only option left was a U.S. Supreme Court appeal. I never thought he would get far with this lawsuit, because of extensive case law supporting strong protections for political campaign speech, as well as a high bar for any public figure claiming defamation (libel or slander).

Today, Bertrand v. Mullin et al appeared on a long list of cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.

UPDATE: Bertrand reacted to today’s news on his twitter feed. I’ve added those comments below. He still doesn’t have a grasp of the First Amendment issues.

Today the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a defamation case filed by Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand over a 2010 negative television ad. You can read the full ruling here (pdf). I’ve posted a few excerpts below.

The Iowa Democratic Party ran the ad on behalf of Democratic candidate Rick Mullin shortly before the 2010 general election. Bertrand immediately filed a defamation lawsuit, in what I assumed was a stunt to change the media narrative. However, he pursued the case after winning the Iowa Senate race. In 2012, a jury decided in favor of Bertrand and awarded him $231,000 in damages. Later, a district court judge reduced the damages to $50,000 but determined that the tv ad constituted “implied libel.” The judge concluded that several statements in the commercial, though technically accurate, created a misleading impression about Bertrand. Both sides appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court. Mullin and the Iowa Democratic Party asked the justices to overturn the original verdict, while Bertrand defended his libel claim and objected to the damages being reduced.

I always expected the verdict to be overturned on appeal, because of extensive case law supporting strong protections for political campaign speech, as well as a high bar for any public figure claiming defamation (libel or slander).

Chief Justice Mark Cady cited many judicial opinions in his ruling, joined by Justices Thomas Waterman, Daryl Hecht, Bruce Zager, and David Wiggins. Justices Edward Mansfield and Brent Appel recused themselves from this case for reasons Bleeding Heartland discussed here. During the oral arguments in January, some observers thought Waterman sounded sympathetic to Bertrand’s attorney–which goes to show comments made during oral arguments don’t necessarily reflect the way a judge will decide a case.

This morning, Bertrand told the Des Moines Register, “The Iowa Supreme Court failed the people of Iowa and they failed the nation today. They did not show the courage to really say no to lies and corruption in politics.” Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal released the following statement: “We are pleased with the decision by the Iowa Supreme Court. The decision affirms our original position: the communication in question was factually accurate and protected free speech.”

The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in an appeal of Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand’s defamation lawsuit against his 2010 opponent, Rick Mullin, and the Iowa Democratic Party. Des Moines attorney and law blogger Ryan Koopmans live-tweeted the hearing, and Mike Wiser and Grant Rodgers published summaries.

We’ll know the verdict within a few months, but I’ve posted some thoughts and predictions below.

I was skeptical about these rumors, but according to Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican, Governor Terry Branstad’s legal counsel Brenna Findley “has been meeting people about a congressional run in the Third District.” Findley told the Des Moines Register “that she appreciates the encouragement, but she’s focused on her job” in the Branstad administration. That phrasing falls short of ruling out a Congressional bid.

Follow me after the jump for first thoughts on strengths and weaknesses Findley might bring to a GOP primary campaign. At the end of this post, I’ve enclosed background on the potential candidate from her 2010 campaign bio and the news release announcing her appointment as legal counsel.  

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board voted unanimously on August 8 to investigate the National Organization for Marriage’s spending in Iowa during the 2010 and 2012 judicial retention elections. Details are after the jump.

UPDATE: Added details below on the National Organization for Marriage demanding that the ethics board’s executive director recuse herself from any investigation.

What’s going on with Brad Zaun? This month he’s stuck his nose into two Republican primaries that should be of little concern to a state senator from the Des Moines suburbs.

A Sioux City jury awarded Republican State Senator Rick Bertrand $231,000 over a television commercial that attacked him shortly before the 2010 general election. It is rare for a defamation case based on political advertising to succeed, for reasons explained below.

UPDATE: Governor Terry Branstad suggested on April 9 that this verdict has got him thinking about suing the Democratic Governors Association over their 2010 campaign materials. Details are at the end of this post.

LATER UPDATE: Incredibly, Bertrand is appealing this verdict in order to seek punitive damages as well as the compensatory damages the jury awarded. More comments below.

Iowa Senate Democrats received unwelcome news from Marshalltown yesterday when former Republican State Senator Larry McKibben announced that he will run in the new Iowa Senate district 36 this year. McKibben’s decision makes this seat a tougher hold for first-term Democratic incumbent Steve Sodders.

Iowa House Assistant Majority Leader Steve Lukan announced yesterday that he will not seek a sixth term in the state legislature. His retirement improves Democrats’ prospects of picking up the new Iowa House district 57.

UPDATE: Democrat Nancy Dunkel is running in this House district. Background from her January 6 press release is below.

Democrat David Dawson will make a second bid for the Iowa House in 2012. Follow me after the jump for background on his campaign in the new Iowa House district 14.

The House of Representatives passed a bill this week that would allow some Americans to carry concealed weapons in almost any U.S. state. Democrat Leonard Boswell (IA-03) joined Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) in voting for this bill.

Former State Representative Tom Schueller is running as a Democrat in the new Iowa House district 58, setting up a likely rematch against first-term Republican Brian Moore.

The State Judicial Nominating Commission sent Governor Terry Branstad three nominees for the Iowa Court of Appeals yesterday. The governor has 30 days to select one of those three to replace Chief Judge Rosemary Sackett, a Branstad appointee from 1983 who became “the longest serving judge in the history of the Iowa Court of Appeals.”

Governor Terry Branstad promised during last year’s campaign to transform the Iowa Department of Economic Development into a public-private partnership. Yesterday he named 18 leaders of Iowa companies to two new state economic development boards.

The list of appointed board members are after the jump, along with background and the full text of Branstad’s executive order creating the Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress board.

October 15 was the deadline for Congressional candidates to file reports on their third-quarter fundraising with the Federal Election Commission. Follow me after the jump for highlights from the filings for incumbents and challengers in Iowa’s four new Congressional districts.

I’m covering the districts in reverse order today, because based on second-quarter filings, political junkies are most closely watching the money race in IA-04 and IA-03.

Former State Representative Geri Huser, one of Iowa’s surprise losers in November 2010, has landed a senior position in state government with the Iowa Finance Authority.

One of the most surprising Iowa House Republican winners from 2010 now has a Democratic challenger. Altoona City Council member Joe Riding announced yesterday that he will run against State Representative Kim Pearson in the new House district 30, a swing seat covering much of eastern Polk County.  

Last week, a group of conservative Iowa House Republicans finally made good on their promise to introduce articles of impeachment against the four remaining Iowa Supreme Court justices who concurred in the 2009 Varnum v Brien decision on marriage. The impeachment bills won’t make it out of committee, let alone the Iowa House, but there may be some political fallout from the effort.

After the jump I examine the articles of impeachment, future prospects for their backers and recent news related to the 2012 judicial retention elections.

Kevin McNellis of the National Institute on Money in State Politics published a report yesterday on Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller’s 2010 campaign fundraising. The report connects Miller’s contributions from out-of-state law firms and people in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector with the nationwide foreclosure investigation Miller has been leading since October. Miller objects that the report “is false or misleading from the start to the finish.” More details and context are after the jump.

President Barack Obama presented his $3.73 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2012 yesterday. I had a post in progress highlighting some good ideas from the proposal, like more investments in high-speed rail and clean energy programs, and reducing taxpayer subsidies for the oil and gas industries. There are bad ideas too, such as a pathetically small “cut” of $78 billion for defense spending over 10 years. The word “cut” misleads here because we’re talking about a slightly smaller rate of growth for the defense budget. Our military spending skyrocketed during the last decade and should be reduced substantially if Washington officials are serious about reducing the deficit.

The moral failure of Obama’s budget becomes clear when you look at the $400 billion in cuts he proposes for non-defense discretionary spending (which is half as large a portion of the budget pie as the military). Many of those cuts will hurt the vulnerable: less money for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and some student aid programs, to name a couple of egregious examples. Obama also wants a “bipartisan” conversation about “strengthening” Social Security, and Washington bipartisanship on Social Security is sure to harm working people and future retirees.

Since the Republican-controlled House of Representatives won’t enact the president’s spending plans, the budget document is important mainly as a sign of Obama’s priorities and political calculations going into this year’s negotiations with Congress.

Speaking of political calculations, I was struck by Representative Bruce Braley’s statement on the president’s draft budget document–so much that I shifted gears on this post. Braley’s comments were another sign of a noticeable change in tone since he won a third term in Iowa’s first Congressional district. During the last Congress, Braley’s policy statements often emphasized the importance of public investments. In the past two months, he has he put deficit hawkishness front and center. Several examples are after the jump, along with background putting Braley’s new rhetorical style in political context.

Governor Terry Branstad defeated Chet Culver by more than 100,000 votes in November, but Public Policy Polling found no signs of a honeymoon in their survey of 1,077 Iowa voters between January 7 and 9:

Despite defeating Chet Culver and returning to office by a 53-43 margin in November, Terry Branstad is no more popular than his predecessor. Iowans disapprove of Culver’s four-year record, 41-46, but they are also down on Branstad, 40-44. The two post almost identical numbers with independents, and are equally polarizing across party lines.

PPP’s Tom Jensen comments,

Only 64% of Republicans like [Branstad], a lower number than you would expect and perhaps an indicator of some residual animosity toward him from his closer than expected primary contest. He unsurprisingly has little support from Democrats, only 18% of whom have a favorable opinion of him, and independents split 45/35 against him as well. […]

So if voters don’t like Branstad that much, you might ask, how did he still win by such a healthy margin? Well they certainly don’t think much of outgoing Democrat Chet Culver either. Only 41% of voters approve of the work he did as Governor to 46% who disapprove. Voters who didn’t like either Branstad or Culver likely went overwhelmingly for the challenger on the premise that he would at least take things in a different and possibly better direction.

I would add that PPP was polling all Iowa voters this month, but the group of voters who turned out in November skewed Republican. The statewide statistical report (pdf file) shows that the total number of Iowans who cast ballots in the midterm (1,121,175) was just under 53 percent of all registered Iowa voters. However, GOP turnout was nearly 69 percent (of 646,396 registered Republicans, 445,829 voted), while Democratic turnout was only 56.5 percent (of 698,227 registered Democrats, 394,252 voted). Republicans may not all like Branstad, but they at least viewed him as the lesser evil.

The PPP poll suggests that Branstad does not return to the governor’s post with a popular mandate for his ideas. That should stiffen the spines of Iowa Senate Democrats during this year’s legislative session.

Three attorneys who are challenging last month’s judicial retention elections today withdrew their request for an injunction to allow Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit to continue serving after December 31. The attorneys filed their lawsuit last week, saying the retention vote was illegal because the Iowa Constitution stipulates that judges “shall at such judicial election stand for retention in office on a separate ballot which shall submit to the question of whether such judge shall be retained in office […].” Lynda Waddington reports today that the lawsuit will go forward, but plaintiffs dropped their request to let Ternus, Baker and Streit continue to serve after learning that “the Iowa Judicial Branch and the justices removed from service were not in favor of it.”

A court will consider this lawsuit sometime next year. I believe it will go nowhere for reasons I discussed here. Iowa has been holding judicial retention elections in conjunction with general elections for nearly five decades. No one has ever demanded that voters be provided special ballots for the retention vote. IowaVoter points out that when Iowans approved the constitutional amendment on replacing judicial elections in 1962, lever machines rather than paper ballots were widely used. I share IowaVoter’s reading of the relevant passage in the constitution: it means that there must be a separate ballot line for each judge, so voters aren’t asked to retain or not retain the judges as a group.

Which do you think will get shot down first, Bleeding Heartland readers? This lawsuit challenging the legality of the retention vote, or statehouse Republicans’ efforts to impeach the remaining four Supreme Court justices?

Any comments about Iowa’s judicial system are welcome in this thread. I believe an impeachment spectacle during the 2011 legislative session will only make it harder for Governor-elect Terry Branstad to get lawmakers to pass the modest reform he favors (requiring partisan balance for judicial nominating commissions).

Matt Strawn announced yesterday that he will seek another two-year term as chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa. The party’s State Central Committee will formally elect a chair in January, but no serious opposition to Strawn will emerge. He has the support of Governor-elect Terry Branstad, incoming Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, and Senator Chuck Grassley.

Strawn earned another term by guiding Iowa Republicans to major gains in the state. The political climate was generally favorable to the GOP, of course, especially in the Midwest, and the huge campaign war chests of Branstad and Senator Chuck Grassley gave Republicans a financial advantage. Still, Strawn helped lay the groundwork. Iowa Republicans had never focused on GOTV outside of their famed 72-hour operation just before election day. This year early voting among Republicans in the state was up 83 percent compared to 2006. According to Strawn, that success made it possible for the Republicans’ election-day GOTV to focus on state legislative races. Republicans exceeded expectations by winning six Democratic-held state Senate seats and racking up a net gain of 16 in the Iowa House.

Another reason for Republicans to stick with Strawn is that he can be a neutral figure in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. To my knowledge, Strawn didn’t publicly support any of the 2008 presidential candidates who might run again next year. He and his wife Erin have donated to various Republican candidates, including members of Congress outside Iowa during the last few cycles, but I couldn’t find any record of contributions from them to presidential candidates. CLARIFICATION: Strawn was previously Iowa caucus director for John McCain, but he wasn’t associated with any Republicans who might challenge Barack Obama in the upcoming election cycle.

The state GOP can’t afford to have many candidates copy McCain’s strategy of mostly skipping Iowa, because the “straw poll” event set for August before each presidential caucus year is a major fundraiser for the party.

Speaking of which, I was intrigued to see Bob Vander Plaats say this recently:

Advisers differ on how late [Mike Huckabee] could jump in, but Vander Plaats said he’d advise Huckabee to wait until extremely late – after the August Iowa GOP straw poll – to survey the lay of the land and make up his mind.

“He could come in as an energized, fire in the belly, Fred Thompson,” he said, referring to the former Tennessee senator’s much-anticipated run in 2008 – a late entry that fizzled when Thompson seemed to have little stomach for the rigors of the trail.

Strange advice, since the 2007 Iowa GOP straw poll was Huckabee’s breakout event, thanks in large part to a helping hand from Americans for Fair Taxation. I’m struggling to think of any example of a presidential candidate doing well in the Iowa caucuses thanks to a late start on organizing. It sounds like Vander Plaats is trying to undermine the state party’s premiere fundraising event. Perhaps he thinks downgrading the straw poll will help elevate the significance of whatever his new organization (The Family Leader) has planned. Or, maybe he believes state party leaders were involved in helping recruit Terry Branstad back into politics at a time when Vander Plaats seemed to have the GOP gubernatorial nomination locked up. I’ve always wondered how much Strawn encouraged the business leaders who lobbied Branstad to run for governor in the summer of 2009.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Iowa Democrats will compete in 2012 with the same leaders who ran this year’s election program. On Saturday, the Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee re-elected all five officers for the next two-year cycle: party chair Sue Dvorsky, first vice chair Michael Kiernan, second vice chair Chris Petersen, treasurer Ken Sagar and secretary Dori Rammelsberg-Dvorak. Last month, the Iowa Senate Democratic caucus re-elected Mike Gronstal as majority leader, and Iowa House Democrats chose Kevin McCarthy as minority leader. McCarthy has been majority leader and right-hand man to outgoing House Speaker Pat Murphy for the previous two election cycles.

Some might expect a few changes at the top after Iowa Democrats suffered their worst election defeats since 1994. In a December 4 statement, Dvorsky promised to “build on the lessons learned in the last election to grow the Iowa Democratic Party and advance Democratic values across the state.”

John Deeth mentions that the IDP’s field program won “national praise” (in the form of one line by Marc Ambinder). I find it hard to see how anyone can view this year’s coordinated campaign as a success. Granted, it was a tough year for Democrats in most parts of the country. Yes, a million dollars from out-of-state turned out the vote against the Iowa Supreme Court justices, which surely helped Republican candidates. Yes, Democrats were unlucky GOP power-brokers talked Terry Branstad out of retirement. If not for that, Bob Vander Plaats would have been the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Chet Culver might be gearing up for his second term, and Democrats might have held more legislative districts.

Still, we lost every competitive Iowa Senate seat plus one few people had their eyes on. We saved a few targeted Iowa House seats but suffered a net loss of 16 in the chamber, worse than almost every Democrat’s worst-case scenario before the election. We lost state House and Senate seats in every Congressional district. Even in a bad year, we should have been able to contain the losses at a lower level. Democrats have almost no margin of error for holding the Iowa Senate in 2012, and it will take at least a few cycles to get the Iowa House back.  

I don’t have the data to know whether the field program was targeting the wrong voters, not enough voters, using the wrong methods to reach voters, or just suffered from a lack of funds to execute the plan. Many of our candidates lost despite working hard and exceeding their early vote targets. The direct mail for Iowa House and Senate candidates seems to have been largely ineffective, and the television commercials (at least the ones I saw) didn’t make any case for re-electing our incumbents.

All Iowa Democrats in Congress won re-election, but can that be attributed to the IDP’s field program? Turnout compared to 2006 wasn’t up by much in the key Democratic counties in the first district, for instance. I think Democrats were lucky that the GOP’s best Congressional challenger was in the most Democratic-leaning seat. Otherwise, we could easily have lost IA-01 and/or IA-03.  

I’m not saying this is all Dvorsky’s fault, or that electing new party leaders would fix the problem. One way or another, the IDP needs to have a much better field operation in 2012. It’s dangerous to assume performance will automatically improve because more voters participate in presidential elections. The economy could (probably will) remain weak, and there’s no way Barack Obama’s campaign will generate as much excitement as it did in 2008.

Speaking of the Obama campaign, I assume his Iowa staff will take over the coordinated GOTV efforts, as they did in 2008. That didn’t work out too well for our statehouse candidates. Even Obama’s Iowa director Jackie Norris admitted that more could have been done for the down-ballot candidates. The president’s re-election team will work to maximize turnout in heavily Democratic precincts, which in most cases are not part of battleground Iowa House and Senate districts.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Vote-counting and recounting ended in Iowa last week, and although one U.S. House race remains unresolved, I’m going ahead with the results from this year’s Bleeding Heartland election prediction contest.

Winners for each of the 20 questions are after the jump.

The Iowa State Board of Canvassers certified the statewide results of this month’s general election today. From Secretary of State Michael Mauro’s press release:

In total, 1,133,434 Iowans voted in the 2010 General Election. This accounted for a turnout of 54-percent and was the highest number of total voters participating in a midterm election in state history.

The official canvass results, including the winner’s list, can be found by visiting www.IowaVotes.gov and clicking on the link under “Election Results” or by clicking on the direct link: www.sos.state.ia.us/elections/results/index.html#9

Statewide, 68,296 more voters cast ballots in this year’s general election than in 2006 (a 6.4 percent increase in the number of voters). The growth in participation varied widely by county. I spent some time today comparing the 2006 turnout report by county with the county numbers from this year (pdf files). Some numbers that caught my eye are after the jump.

Catching up on pre-Thanksgiving news, recounts concluded on November 24 in the two Iowa Senate districts decided by extremely narrow margins. Republican Andrew Naeve conceded to Tod Bowman, who won the open Senate district 13 by 70 votes out of nearly 20,000 cast. Naeve netted only one vote during the recount. Democrats have a almost a two to one voter registration edge in this Senate district (pdf file), so it shouldn’t have been close even in a Republican wave year. The GOP also managed to win House district 25, which makes up half of Senate district 13, after convincing one of Bowman’s unsuccessful Democratic primary rivals to run for the House as a Republican.

Democratic incumbent Keith Kreiman conceded to Mark Chelgren on November 24 after a recount in Senate district 47 failed to change Chelgren’s 12-vote lead out of just over 19,000 cast. Kreiman had served two terms in the Iowa Senate and five terms in the Iowa House before that. Democrats have a voter registration advantage in Kreiman’s district, though not as large as in Senate district 13. Kreiman underperformed House Democratic incumbents Mary Gaskill (district 93) and Kurt Swaim (district 94), whose each represent half of his Senate district.

Democrats will be hoping that the redistricting puts Chelgren on the ballot in 2012, rather than after a full four-year term. Most even-numbered years, half of the 50 seats in the chamber are up for grabs, but in the first election after a new map is adopted, some “extra” races take place in Senate districts containing zero or more than one incumbent.

With Senate districts 13 and 47 now resolved, Iowa Democrats are assured of holding at least 26 seats in the upper chamber. Republicans hold 23 seats and are favored to win the January 4 special election in Senate district 48.

Time with extended family means less time for blogging, so I’m posting the weekend open thread early. Here are some links to get the conversation going.

Rural voters were a crucial factor helping Republicans retake the U.S. House. Of the 125 most rural Congressional districts, Republicans held all 64 seats they had going into the election and flipped 39 Democratic districts (that alone would have been enough to give them a majority). Going into the election, Democrats held 61 of the 125 most rural Congressional districts. Now they hold only 22 of those districts, including IA-01 (Bruce Braley) and IA-02 (Dave Loebsack).

Smart Politics looked at what it calls “Iowa’s Schizophrenic 2010 Electorate” and observed, “Never before in the history of Iowa elections have Republicans won a majority of seats in the Iowa House while Democrats won a majority of the Hawkeye State’s U.S. House seats.”

I listed the Iowa House and Senate Democrats before and after the election, grouped by Congressional district. Bleeding Heartland user American007 created red and blue Iowa maps showing which parties held state House and Senate districts before the election and after.

Fred Karger, a Republican political strategist and gay activist who’s exploring a presidential bid, has been running this commercial on the Fox network this week in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Quad Cities, Mason City, Ames, Burlington and Fort Dodge. Have you seen it? Hard to imagine a strong base of support for Karger in Iowa, but I’m glad a moderate may be running for president on the Republican side.

If Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels runs for president in 2012, some Iowa Republicans will not forgive him for supporting merit-based judicial selection in his state.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said all the “right” things about Iowa judges during his recent Des Moines visit. But this week Huckabee described the controversial searches of airline passengers as a “humiliating and degrading, totally unconstitutional, intrusion of their privacy.” Uh oh! Social conservatives don’t typically acknowledge that there is a constitutional right to privacy. That dreaded “penumbra” underlies U.S. Supreme Court rulings affirming reproductive rights.

I learned this week that New Hampshire has some elected Republican officias who support marriage equality. It’s not clear whether there are enough of them to stop large GOP majorities from repealing same-sex marriage rights in that state. I wonder when (if ever) a current Republican office-holder in Iowa will defend equality.

Iowa First Lady Mari Culver says she accomplished what she set out to do during her husband’s term as governor, and her kids are excited to be moving back to their West Des Moines home full-time.

What’s on your mind this holiday weekend?  

Republicans made huge gains in the Iowa House on November 2, defeating 13 Democratic incumbents and winning four Democratic-held open seats. Republicans fell just short in several other House races, and one that puzzled me was in district 7, covering Emmet and Palo Alto Counties and part of Kossuth in north-central Iowa.

Democrat Marcella Frevert retired after representing the district for 14 years in the Iowa House. The district leans a bit Democratic in voter registration, but open seats tend to be harder for parties to hold than districts where they have established incumbents. Clearly district 7 was winnable for the GOP; the certified results put Democrat John Wittneben just 32 votes ahead of Republican Lannie Miller.

For some reason, the Iowa GOP and allied groups didn’t invest nearly as much in Miller’s campaign as in other House Republican candidates. But why?

Iowa was among only 12 states in which Democrats lost no seats in Congress on November 2. The others were mostly on the east or west coasts: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont. Seeking to explain the survival of Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack and Leonard Boswell despite Iowans’ rejection of Governor Chet Culver and three Supreme Court justices, Marc Ambinder credited “a stellar, caucus-honed Democratic ground game.” Des Moines-based political consultant Jeff Link suggested the early voting was crucial.

I agree that early voting helped Braley, Loebsack and Boswell, but if the Democratic ground game were as good as it was supposed to be, we should have lost fewer Iowa House and Senate seats. Assuming recounts don’t change the results, Democrats lost six state Senate seats and 17 state House seats, gaining only one Republican-held House district for a net loss of 16 in the lower chamber.

It will take a long time to sort out why the Democratic GOTV program didn’t contain the state legislative losses at a lower level. First, it’s worth looking closely at where our statehouse candidates succeeded and failed. A list of Iowa House and Senate seats Democrats held before and after the elections, divided by Congressional district, is after the jump.