Groups opposing and supporting President Barack Obama’s re-election are making high gas prices the focal point of new television commercials in Iowa and other swing states. Videos and transcripts of the latest ads by the American Energy Alliance and Priorities USA are after the jump.

Last week Obama urged Congress to end tax breaks for oil companies, citing the industry’s high profits. U.S. Senate Republicans filibustered a bill that would have ended several deductions for five major oil companies and extended various renewable energy tax incentives. Senator Tom Harkin voted to move forward with that bill, but Senator Chuck Grassley voted to block it, as he did with similar legislation in May 2011.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? I’m catching up on two stories I didn’t have time to write about during the past week: President Barack Obama’s choice of Jim Yong Kim to be next president of the World Bank, and Vice President Joe Biden’s March 28 visits to Davenport and Sioux City. Kim was born in South Korea but grew up in Muscatine, where his family moved when he was five years old. More clips about Kim and Biden’s latest Iowa trip are after the jump.

Sad news from the south side of Des Moines: Cha Cha, the male lion at the Blank Park Zoo, was euthanized this week after being diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer. He was 16 years old.

This is an open thread; all topics welcome.  

Three-term Representative Dave Loebsack’s campaign moved quickly to define primary challenger Joe Seng after a panel confirmed that the state senator had qualified for the ballot in the Democratic primary to represent Iowa’s second Congressional district. A fundraising e-mail from Loebsack’s campaign manager Brian Fritsch on March 29 described Seng as the “Koch Brothers funded Democrat.” I enclose the full text of that e-mail after the jump. Fritsch declared in an e-mail blast last week, “Our primary opponent accepted sizable contributions from Koch Industries in the past, the corporation owed and operated by the Koch brothers. This makes my stomach turn.”

I didn’t find any Koch contributions listed on Seng’s two latest fundraising reports. During the 2010 campaign, he received two checks for $500 each from the Koch Industries PAC. That’s not a lot of money, but Seng doesn’t have many donors aside from political action committees that give to most Iowa legislators. Overall, he raises surprisingly little for an entrenched incumbent. I didn’t see any Koch contributions in Seng’s campaign finance reports from 2004 through 2009.

Any comments about the IA-02 race are welcome in this thread.

State Senator Joe Seng caught a lucky break yesterday when a three-member panel agreed that he qualified for the ballot in the Democratic primary to represent Iowa’s second Congressional district.

The nice thing about a large majority, like the 60 to 40 Republican advantage in the Iowa House, is not needing every vote in your caucus for every bill. Members can oppose the party line when local interests are threatened without derailing the legislative process. Retiring State Representative Steve Lukan showed how it’s done when he voted against the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund budget in the House Appropriations Committee last week, because that bill left out $5 million in funding for a major project in Lukan’s district.

This basic concept of representing your constituents is apparently lost on Walt Rogers. The first-term Republican from a district covering parts of Cedar Falls and Waterloo just voted for an education budget that slashes funding for the University of Northern Iowa.

UPDATE: Scroll down for Rogers’ weekly newsletter, which discusses his vote on the education budget.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? Hope you are enjoying the unseasonably warm spring weather.

Mitt Romney may be the least-liked presidential front-runner ever among the Republican base, but he seems to have a lock on the GOP nomination. Despite losing the Louisiana primary convincingly to Rick Santorum yesterday, Romney has nearly half of the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Santorum has fewer than half as many delegates, and only 21 states plus Washington, DC have yet to vote.

Someone has challenged the nominating petitions filed by State Senator Joe Seng, who is running against Representative Dave Loebsack in the second Congressional district primary.

Details are after the jump, along with the first e-mail blast from Loebsack’s campaign that discussed the primary challenge.

Republican rivals Rod Blum and Ben Lange continue to make very different cases for their candidacies in Iowa’s first Congressional district. Blum emphasizes his biography and experience, while Lange emphasizes the network of support he is building in his second attempt to defeat Representative Bruce Braley.

Follow me after the jump for a closer look at Blum’s pitch to Republican audiences and Lange’s new endorsements from nine GOP state legislators, complementing the steering committee he announced earlier this month.  

Polk County has long been dominated by safe Democratic Iowa House seats in the city of Des Moines and safe Republican seats in the suburbs. One of the few truly competitive recent Iowa House races in this county took place in 2008, when Republican Chris Hagenow defeated Windsor Heights Mayor Jerry Sullivan by fewer than 100 votes in what was then House district 59.

Hagenow was easily re-elected in 2010. For a long time I heard nothing about anyone stepping up to challenge him in the new House district 43, where I live. Earlier this month, Susan Judkins declared her candidacy here. Background on both candidates is after the jump, along with a map and details on the district’s political makeup.

When Iowa House Appropriations Committee Chair Scott Raecker announced plans to retire from the legislature after this year’s session, he created an opening for Democrats in what would have otherwise been a hopeless district. Follow me after the jump for background on the new House district 40 and the two men who will compete to succeed Raecker.

The redistricting process and several Republican retirements have created many pickup opportunities for Iowa House Democrats. The devastating 2010 election left them nowhere to go but up in the lower chamber, where Republicans currently enjoy a 60 to 40 majority. Relatively few sitting House Democrats represent vulnerable districts.

Speaking to activists at the Polk County Democratic convention on March 10, I heard lots of optimism about the House races. After the jump I’ve posted some early thoughts on the seats up for grabs.

I’m posting the weekend thread early, because the filing period for primary election candidates in Iowa closed this afternoon. The Secretary of State’s Office posted the full list of candidates here (pdf). John Deeth has been covering the filing on a daily basis all month at his blog. Some highlights from races I’m watching are after the jump.

This is an open thread; all topics welcome.

UPDATE: Gotta agree with Senator Chuck Grassley: the History Channel is useless.

All the expected Congressional candidates in Iowa have filed nominating papers with the Secretary of State’s Office: Bruce Braley, Ben Lange, and Rod Blum in the first district; Dave Loebsack, Dan Dolan, and John Archer in the second district; Leonard Boswell and Tom Latham in the third district; and Steve King and Christie Vilsack in the fourth district.

No one I talked to last weekend saw petitions for State Senator Joe Seng at various county conventions in IA-02. Therefore, I assume Seng will not file to challenge Loebsack in the primary. Either Iowa’s worst Democratic lawmaker was just looking for a little free publicity earlier this month, or he didn’t realize how many signatures he would need to qualify for the ballot as a Congressional candidate. FRIDAY UPDATE: I was dead wrong–don’t know how Seng got the signatures, but he’s on the candidate list from the Secretary of State’s Office.

To mark the field being set in all four districts, I’m posting updated active voter registration numbers for Democrats, Republicans, and no-party voters in all 99 Iowa counties, grouped by Congressional district. The numbers in the tables after the jump come from this page at the Iowa Secretary of State’s website (pdf).

Any comments about the Congressional races are welcome in this thread. I love this story about Dolan accidentally addressing the wrong convention in Monroe County last Saturday. The Democratic delegates politely listened to his stump speech, after which someone raised his hand to suggest Dolan might want the Republican convention instead. Now that’s what I call Iowa nice!

UPDATE: Here’s a change of pace: King has never debated a Congressional challenger before, but he is proposing to debate Vilsack six times. No word yet on the details of the offer.

A third Democratic candidate has filed nominating papers in the new Iowa Senate district 38. Nick Volk, a bank vice president from Walford (Benton County), will face LaForest Sherman and Shelley Parbs in the June primary. The winner will take on first-term Republican State Senator Tim Kapucian in a swing district. A map is after the jump, along with more background on Volk.

Competition for the “not Romney” niche may allow Mitt Romney to emerge from today’s Deep South primaries as a close second or third, rather than as a front-runner hated by the conservative base. With about a third of the votes counted in Alabama as of 9 pm, Rick Santorum has 35 percent of the vote, Newt Gingrich has 30 percent, Romney has 28 percent, and Ron Paul has 5 percent. Nearly 80 percent of the votes have been counted in Mississippi, where Santorum has 33 percent, Gingrich 32 percent, Romney 30 percent, and Paul 4 percent. Polls are still open in Hawaii, where I assume Romney will win easily. None of the candidates spent much time campaigning there.

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: The streak continues: Romney has not won any Republican primary or caucus “where the evangelical portion of the vote has been over 50 percent.” Final unofficial results from Mississippi: Santorum 33 percent, Gingrich 31 percent, Romney 30 percent, Paul 4 percent. From Alabama: Santorum 35 percent, Gingrich 29 percent, Romney 29 percent, Paul 5 percent.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: 45 percent of Hawaii primary voters went for Romney; Santorum had 25 percent, Paul 18 percent, Gingrich 11 percent.

NOTE: A third Democrat, Nick Volk, filed nominating papers in this district on March 15.

Shelley Parbs announced today that she will run for Iowa Senate district 38. She is the second declared Democratic candidate in this district; the winner of the June primary will face first-term Republican Tim Kapucian, a Senate minority leader and ranking member of the Transportation Committee. Background on Parbs is after the jump, along with election-related developments in the two Iowa House seats that make up Senate district 38.

The Iowa Democratic Party and Republican Party of Iowa held county conventions today. After the jump I’ve posted some notes on where Iowa politicians and candidates spent the day, and which Democrats addressed the Polk County Democratic convention. I left the convention during the lunch break, because delegates had finished most of the day’s business, including all work on the platform. However, the Polk County Republican convention was still going strong at this writing (around 5 pm).

This is an open thread; all topics welcome, especially county convention stories from today or years past.

Rick Santorum destroyed the competition in today’s Kansas caucuses, winning 52 percent of the vote to 21 percent for Mitt Romney, 14 percent for Newt Gingrich and 13 percent for Ron Paul. Romney swept the delegates at stake yesterday and today in the Guam and Northern Marianas Islands caucuses. Romney also won the Wyoming caucuses and most of the delegates from the Virgin Islands.

BONUS POTENTIAL FLAMEWAR TOPIC: Kevin Drum makes a counter-intuitive case: Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars movie, especially if you take out the 10 minutes of horrific Ewok sequences. Thoughts?

High gasoline prices are the focus of the first radio ad for John Archer, one of the Republicans running against Representative Dave Loebsack in Iowa’s second Congressional district. Follow me after the jump for the ad script and some fact-checking.

The U.S. House approved the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act today by an overwhelming majority. All five Iowans were among the 390 votes for passage (roll call). Details on the legislation are below.

UPDATE: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is hammering House Republicans for keeping certain amendments out of the otherwise bipartisan JOBS Act. I’ve enclosed DCCC press releases naming Tom Latham and Steve King below.

This morning Ben Lange announced a “steering committee” of 57 Republicans supporting his campaign in Iowa’s first Congressional district. Lange’s endorsers include nine local or county elected officials, three former state legislators, six current or former chairs of county Republican parties, five former candidates for state or federal offices, and seven “tea party” or “9/12 group” activists. About half of the steering committee members live in either Linn, Black Hawk or Dubuque counties, which are home to roughly half of the registered Republicans in the new IA-01.

I’ve posted the full list of Lange endorsers below, along with background on some of the politicians named. The Lange campaign didn’t respond to my request for comment on rival candidate Rod Blum’s suggestion that Lange lacks the experience or record of accomplishments to be a strong Congressional candidate. I haven’t seen any rebuttals to Blum on Lange’s campaign website or Facebook page either. In a sense, rolling this steering committee is an indirect answer to Blum: dozens of committed Republican activists see something in Lange worth supporting.

Yesterday Linn County voters narrowly rejected a proposal to extend a one-cent sales tax in the county for 10 years in order to finance flood prevention projects in the Cedar Rapids area.

Tonight may be the last chance for Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich to stop Mitt Romney from becoming the Republican presidential nominee. Senator Chuck Grassley hinted to The Hill today that he may endorse Romney if Romney wins the Ohio primary. I’m guessing that Newt will pull enough votes in Ohio to keep Santorum from beating Romney. I also suspect that Santorum will lose the Catholic vote in Ohio, like he did in Michigan. He and Gingrich have to hope that convincing victories in southern states give them an excuse to stay in the race.

I’ll post results from all the Super Tuesday states after the jump. Any comments about the presidential campaign are welcome in this thread.

Two-term Democratic State Senator Tom Rielly announced today that he will not seek re-election in the new Iowa Senate district 40. That seat was arguably the Senate Republicans’ best pickup opportunity even before Rielly confirmed his retirement plans.  

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee officials have not commented publicly on State Senator Joe Seng’s possible challenge to Representative Dave Loebsack in Iowa’s second district. However, the DCCC has commissioned a robo-poll on the potential IA-02 primary.

NOTE: On March 12, Democrat Shelley Parbs announced her candidacy in this district, and a third Democrat, Nick Volk, filed nominating papers on March 15.

Iowa Senate Democrats finally announced their challenger to first-term Republican Tim Kapucian last week, setting up a potentially competitive race in the new Iowa Senate district 38.

Competitive primaries can be healthy. I believe Democratic Party leaders made a mistake in discouraging Christie Vilsack from running for Congress in Iowa’s new second district. I don’t have any grudge against Representative Dave Loebsack–I just felt Vilsack could be a good fit for the district and had every right to run where she had the best chance of winning.

The idiocy of the incumbency protection racket doesn’t make every primary challenge logical. Ed Tibbetts reported yesterday on one of the most ludicrous ideas I’ve heard lately: a Congressional bid by Democratic State Senator Joe Seng of Davenport.

Two Republicans are running against Representative Bruce Braley in Iowa’s first Congressional district. Up to now, both have focused on criticizing the incumbent, President Barack Obama, and Washington political culture.

In recent weeks, Rod Blum has started making the case against his primary rival, 2010 GOP nominee Ben Lange.

One of Representative Dave Loebsack’s three Republican challengers just announced that starting today, he will be campaigning full-time in Iowa’s new second Congressional district.

The U.S. House voted yesterday to repeal two regulations enacted by the Obama administration’s Department of Education. Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) were among 69 House Democrats who joined a united House GOP caucus in supporting this bill.  

Polls just closed in Michigan and will close in an hour in Arizona. Mitt Romney’s fighting for his political life in the state where his father used to be governor. I cannot believe that someone who’s been in politics as long as Romney says things like my wife “drives a couple of Cadillacs” and “I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”

I love how Rick Santorum’s campaign robocalled Michigan Democrats seeking their votes in the primary because Romney opposed the bailout of U.S. automakers. The call didn’t mention that Santorum also has spoken out against that bailout.

I’ll update this post later with results. Meanwhile, any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Romney is easily winning Arizona with 49 percent of the votes to 25 percent for Santorum, 16 percent for Newt Gingrich, and 9 percent for Ron Paul. LATER UPDATE: Final Arizona results: Romney 47, Santorum 27, Gingrich 16, Paul 8. Romney gets all 29 delegates from the state.

With about three-quarters of the Michigan votes counted, Romney’s the projected winner with 41 percent to 37 percent for Santorum, 12 percent for Paul, and 7 percent for Gingrich. LATER UPDATE: With almost all the votes in, Romney’s at 41, Santorum 38, Paul 12, Gingrich 7. It’s not clear yet whether Romney or Santorum will win more delegates, which are assigned by Congressional district in Michigan. Exit polls suggest that Romney carried the Catholic vote in Michigan, which means it wasn’t too smart for Santorum to attack JFK during the final week of the campaign.

In a CNN interview, Paul denied that he is “in cahoots” with Romney.  

Republicans have recruited a strong candidate for the open Iowa House district 14, which covers most of Sioux City’s west side, part of the north side and some of the downtown neighborhood.

Christie Vilsack toured Iowa’s new fourth Congressional district late last week to roll out an energy plan “geared towards bringing a new prosperity to Iowa’s small cities and rural communities by creating layers of economic opportunity.”

The five-point plan is more of a political statement than a detailed policy document. Like some of Vilsack’s previous proposals, it embraces some Republican talking points.

Upon closer examination, the energy plan looks like two parts bipartisan no-brainers, two parts conservative buzzwords, and one part fairy dust.

Catching up on some news from last week, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign named Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller as one of 35 national co-chairs. The only other state attorney general on the list is Kamala Harris of California. After making a show of abandoning Miller’s working group on foreclosure fraud last year, she eventually signed on to the settlement reached with five major lenders earlier this month.

In a press release, Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina predicted that the national co-chairs “will be tremendous assets on the ground as we build the biggest grassroots campaign in history.” I wouldn’t count on much help from Miller there. His 2010 re-election campaign had no grassroots operation whatsoever. He didn’t even have a campaign website up until September of the election year, and his first advertising appeared a few weeks before the election.

The Obama campaign is hiring organizers for the spring, summer, and fall in Iowa and many other states. I am seeking comment about where the organizers will be assigned to work in Iowa. CORRECTION: Bleeding Heartland user albert point out in the comments that this listing is for unpaid internships. My understanding is that the Obama campaign is also hiring paid field organizers for Iowa,  and I will update this post with further details when available.

The U.S. Postal Service announced yesterday that it will keep mail processing facilities in Waterloo and Cedar Rapids open, saving hundreds of jobs.

Longtime Iowa Republican consultant Nick Ryan created the Red, White and Blue super-PAC a few months ago to support Rick Santorum’s presidential bid. This week news emerged that the super-PAC has been a huge gravy train for a brand-new company Ryan owns.

In related news, the Federal Election Commission is seeking further information on more than $300,000 Newt Gingrich has received from his own presidential campaign as reimbursements for unitemized expenses.

Northeast Iowa contains a large number of potentially competitive Iowa House and Senate seats. The field is now set in the new House district 56, where a first-term Republican will face a Democratic challenger with a similar background.

Tonight the four remaining Republican candidates for president take the stage in Mesa, Arizona, for the final debate before super Tuesday. CNN will broadcast the debate starting at 7 pm central time. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are under the most pressure to dent Rick Santorum’s momentum. Based on the last few debates, I expect Ron Paul to take more shots at Gingrich and Santorum than at Romney.

Any comments about the GOP presidential race are welcome in this thread. I’ll update the post later.

UPDATE: That debate wasn’t very interesting. Romney seemed to do a little better than Santorum, but I didn’t think anyone was on top form. Paul went after Santorum and mostly left Romney alone. Gingrich absurdly promised $2.50/gallon gasoline. I posted some excerpts from the CNN transcript after the jump.

The list of potentially competitive Iowa House districts without a Democratic candidate shrank yesterday when the chair of the Muscatine Community College Business Department, John Dabeet, announced that he’ll stand in the new Iowa House district 91.

Nine-term Republican Representative Tom Latham started running a new television commercial in Iowa’s new third Congressional district last week. The spot is a response to a negative commercial that the House Majority PAC is running against Latham. Within days, that Democratic super-PAC responded with yet another ad about Latham. Follow me after the jump for videos and transcripts.

Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum all lead President Barack Obama in the latest Iowa poll that Selzer & Co conducted for the Des Moines Register. The Register posted the toplines on its website Saturday evening. Paul leads Obama by 49 percent to 42 percent, Santorum leads by 48 percent to 44 percent, and Romney leads by 46 percent to 44 percent. Obama crushes Newt Gingrich by 51 percent to 37 percent.

I’ll update this post tomorrow with additional details, to be published in the Sunday Des Moines Register. If Selzer’s poll of 611 likely voters (drawn from a sample of 800 Iowa adults) is accurate, Obama’s campaign has a lot of work to do here. Reaching 270 electoral votes without winning Iowa would be difficult for the president.

UPDATE: The exact wording of the election questions and results are here (pdf).