Ira Lacher reflects on a dispiriting week in U.S. politics. -promoted by Laura Belin
We have a racist president. He heads a racist party. So what do we do about it?
I didn’t see this coming: former U.S. Representative David Young has in effect cleared the Republican field in Iowa’s third Congressional district.
But current U.S. Representative Cindy Axne, who defeated Young last November, is positioning herself well for the rematch.
One of Iowa’s most prominent social conservatives has compounded U.S. Representative Steve King’s political problems.
Bob Vander Plaats worked closely with King during the 2010 campaign to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices, and the two were among Senator Ted Cruz’s top Iowa supporters before the 2016 caucuses.
But Vander Plaats just endorsed King’s leading GOP primary rival.
A third candidate is seeking the Democratic nomination in Senate district 22, which is likely to be among Iowa’s most competitive state legislative races in 2020.
The U.S. House voted on July 17 to kill a new resolution seeking to impeach President Donald Trump for “racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color […].”
Iowa’s Representatives Abby Finkenauer (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Cindy Axne (IA-03) were among 137 Democrats who voted to table the resolution (roll call). So did all 194 Republicans present, including Steve King (IA-04), and independent Justin Amash, even though Amash has previously said Trump engaged in impeachable “conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice.”
Republicans may have a competitive primary in Iowa’s second Congressional district, where former U.S. Representative Bobby Schilling announced his candidacy last week. State Senator Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who was Representative Dave Loebsack’s GOP challenger in 2008, 2010, and 2014, is exploring another Congressional race.
Iowa’s first Congressional district will be among the country’s top-targeted U.S. House races next year. Both the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate this district a toss-up, for good reason. Although voter registration numbers slightly favor Democrats, voters in northwest Iowa swung heavily to Donald Trump and to Republicans for down-ballot offices in 2016.
Three Republican candidates have announced plans to challenge first-term U.S. Representative Abby Finkenauer, but at this writing, only State Representative Ashley Hinson appears relevant to the conversation. Thomas Hansen announced his candidacy on May 1, but his first Federal Election Commission filing shows just one donation from the candidate and one expenditure for gas, leaving $18.36 cash on hand. (FEC staff have already dinged Hansen for not filing his campaign’s statement of organization on time.) The third GOP candidate, Darren White, filed a statement of candidacy with the FEC last month but has not filed a July quarterly, indicating that he has not raised or spent any significant sum.
Former U.S. Representative Rod Blum, who lost to Finkenauer in 2018, raised nothing during the second quarter and spent only a token amount to keep campaign e-mail accounts working. Blum paid for some polling during the first quarter and has not ruled out running for Congress again. Republican insiders appear to prefer Hinson, for reasons Bleeding Heartland discussed in detail here.
Most long-serving members of Congress raise lots of money. Most vulnerable Congressional incumbents raise lots of money.
Then there’s U.S. Representative Steve King.
ISU economist Dave Swenson: Iowa’s rural needs are more complicated, persistent, and acute than the current fortunes of the farm sector. -promoted by Laura Belin
Iowa currently hosts a horde of Democratic presidential candidates, but from what I can tell thus far, few have any meaningful experiences or insights dealing with rural areas or rural issues.
Historically, visiting candidates paid obligatory lip service to farm sector concerns – ethanol, commodity prices, and regulatory restrictions as examples — and assumed or pretended that took care of most rural issues.
But rural economies are more diverse than most suppose.
The U.S. House on July 12 approved a draft National Defense Authorization Act, setting military policy for the coming fiscal year. The final vote on passage split mostly along party lines, 220 to 197 (roll call).
Along the way, House members considered dozens of amendments, and the controversial ones received separate roll call votes. On most of those votes, Iowa’s delegation divided as one would expect: Democratic Representatives Abby Finkenauer (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Cindy Axne (IA-03) voted with most of the Democratic caucus, while Republican Steve King (IA-04) was on the other side.
But one or more Iowa Democrats voted with the majority of House Republicans on quite a few proposals. Axne did so most often, siding with most GOP colleagues rather than with her own caucus on fourteen amendments.
Chris Jones is a research engineer (IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering) at the University of Iowa. An earlier version of this piece was first published on the author’s blog. -promoted by Laura Belin
I have written some things about manure lately (link, link, link, link). If you were able to make it to the end of those essays, you learned:
· We have a lot of livestock animals in Iowa
· These animals produce a lot of waste
· This waste is used to fertilize crops
· Manure is a good fertilizer
· Sales of commercial fertilizer are not affected very much by the availability of manure
Democrat Ross Wilburn will be unopposed in the August 6 special election to represent Iowa House district 46. The deadline to file nominating papers was on July 12 at 5:00 pm, and Wilburn is the only name on the Iowa Secretary of State’s candidate list.
A spokesperson for the Republican Party of Iowa told the Des Moines Register’s Stephen Gruber-Miller that the GOP would not field a candidate for the special election, but did not indicate why. The Libertarian Party of Iowa also declined to compete for this district; Libertarians have occasionally nominated candidates in House district 45, covering other Ames neighborhoods.
In all likelihood, Wilburn would have won this election regardless of the timing or the competition, given the political layout of House district 46. The strongest potential GOP candidate, Ames City Council member Tim Gartin, took himself out of the running early, and several Democratic presidential candidates have either headlined events for Wilburn or had their staff help knock doors for him.
If Republicans weren’t planning to play for this seat, it was exceptionally foolish for Governor Kim Reynolds to set the election on the first Tuesday allowed under state law. She could have scheduled the vote for late August or September, when most Iowa State University students would be back in Ames.
All Reynolds accomplished by picking August 6 was reinforcing the narrative that she doesn’t care about constituents who don’t politically align with her. She could have shown her commitment to fair play by picking a day that would give more House district 46 residents a voice. Instead, she used the levers of power to depress Democratic turnout–for nothing.
Republicans claimed collective bargaining changes would level the playing field in contract talks. Randy Richardson, retired associate executive director of the Iowa State Education Association, examines the impact on teachers. -promoted by Laura Belin
In February 2017, Republican lawmakers rammed through a bill that quickly changed the dynamic of collective bargaining for public employees in Iowa. The bill eliminated virtually all of the mandatory items that unions and their employers were required to bargain, with the exception of base salary. It left in place a short list of “permissive” items that public employees and employers could bargain by mutual consent, and prohibited bargaining on some other topics. The bill sparked outrage among all public employees and their supporters.
Shortly before the bill became law, House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow published an article on the Iowa House Republican website called “Collective Bargaining: Fact vs. Fiction.” One passage from that article became a major Republican talking point in defense of their actions. Hagenow wrote,
Governor Terry Branstad and then Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds promised endlessly that privatizing Medicaid would make the system more “sustainable.” The talking point became a crutch for Governor Reynolds whenever she faced questions about problems privatization has created for patients, caregivers, and health care providers.
The old state-run Medicaid system wasn’t sustainable, Reynolds told reporters again and again. The new system was becoming more sustainable, she claimed during all three debates against her 2018 opponent Fred Hubbell.
The latest reality check arrived on July 10. For the second year in a row, for-profit companies that manage care for hundreds of thousands of Iowans on Medicaid will receive more than an 8 percent increase in government payments.
The Adams County Sheriff’s office must stop charging critics with crimes, under a U.S. District Court injunction issued this week. The injunction is part of an agreement to settle a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Red Oak resident Jon Goldsmith, the ACLU of Iowa announced on July 8. Goldsmith faced a third-degree harassment charge last year after putting up a profanity-laden Facebook post about a sheriff’s deputy.
After seven-term Democratic U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack announced plans to retire after his current term, I argued that the open-seat race in Iowa’s second Congressional district looked like a toss-up.
Bobby Schilling made his campaign official on July 8, setting up a likely general election match-up against Rita Hart. Although Democrats should take nothing for granted here, and the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball still rate IA-02 as a toss-up, I’m now considering this a lean Democratic seat for the following reasons.
Des Moines freelance writer John Morrissey digs into how a well-connected company landed a lucrative state contract. Laura Belin contributed reporting to this story.
Four months after being awarded a contract to administer Iowa’s worker’s compensation program for state employees, a politically connected West Des Moines company has apparently not come to terms with the state to continue its work.
Sedgwick Claims Management Services LLC was selected in early March to keep handling the program, even though a competitor achieved a better score on three cost proposal items. The state will pay Sedgwick $7.9 million in administrative costs over six years. Runner-up bidder TRISTAR Risk Enterprise Management LLC offered to do the work for a little more than $6 million, a potential savings of nearly $1.9 million over the contract period.
The Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS) provided copies of all submitted bids for the current and previous bid cycles upon receiving John Morrissey’s public records request. But the department has declined further comment about the award and refused to clarify the scoring system or other matters related to this bid process. The new DAS director Jim Kurtenbach did not respond to a request for an interview about this matter.
Sedgwick’s bid contact officer referred questions to several state officials and the company’s public relations office. That office also did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiry.
“Leaders vow to keep Iowa’s redistricting system,” declared the headline above Rod Boshart’s latest article for the Cedar Rapids Gazette and other large newspapers.
But did Governor Kim Reynolds and top Republican lawmakers really make that promise? And could they gerrymander our state in 2021 without altering the current process?
Months have passed since Special Counsel Robert Mueller released hundreds of pages of findings from a two-year investigation. About 1,000 former federal prosecutors signed a statement saying “the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
Various Trump administration officials have flouted Congressional subpoenas to produce documents or testify. President Richard Nixon’s failure to comply with the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoenas in 1974 were the basis for one of the three articles of impeachment against him.
Yet only about 80 of the 235 U.S. House Democrats are now on record supporting formal impeachment hearings.
None of Iowa’s three Democrats in Congress are among them.
President Donald Trump has ordered a military parade and flyover in Washington, DC to celebrate Independence Day. He’s been wanting to stage this kind of display since his first year in office.
The production will cost millions of additional dollars and shut down air traffic to and from Reagan National Airport for hours. Republican donors and VIPs will get special passes to watch the festivities in a restricted area. Traditionally, all July 4 events in the nation’s capital have been free and open to the public.
The National Park Service is diverting $2.5 million “primarily intended to improve parks across the country” to cover a “fraction of the extra costs,” the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey, and Dan Lamothe reported on July 2. The “entire Fourth of July celebration on the Mall typically costs the agency about $2 million,” a former Park Service deputy director told the newspaper. Costs could escalate if the heavy military equipment damages streets.
Dan Guild puts the latest Democratic primary poll numbers in context. -promoted by Laura Belin
The above image and the accompanying story were national news within minutes of the end of the first debates. Kamala Harris attacking Joe Biden for his statements about busing and his praise for two old segregationist senators was the story of the June 27 event.
Less than a week later, the race in Iowa is remade.
Chris Jones is a research engineer (IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering) at the University of Iowa. An earlier version of this piece was first published on the author’s blog. -promoted by Laura Belin
The Landscape of Capitalism by former University of Iowa professor Robert F. Sayre (1933-2014) is an excellent short history of Iowa agriculture. I read Sayre’s essay many years ago and had all but forgotten it, but it was restored to my memory recently by a conversation I had with an ag drainage engineer.
Continuing Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of the Iowa legislature’s work during the 2019 session.
Scandals in the Waukee Community School District inspired new protections for whistleblowers in state and local government bodies, which took effect at the start of the 2020 fiscal year on July 1.
Continuing Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of the Iowa legislature’s work during the 2019 session.
Iowa’s environmental community had something to celebrate when state lawmakers adjourned for the year without passing legislation that would crush small-scale solar development. An unusual coalition including solar installers, environmental groups, and livestock farmers helped keep the bill bottled up in the Iowa House despite intense lobbying by MidAmerican Energy and its allies, along with massive spending by undisclosed donors.
Unfortunately, lawmakers approved and Governor Kim Reynolds signed several other measures that will be detrimental for Iowa’s natural resources and take our state’s energy policy in the wrong direction. The new laws take effect today, as the 2020 fiscal year begins.
A second Democrat announced her candidacy this week in an Iowa Senate district that will be a top target next year.
Ross Wilburn will be the Democratic candidate in the August 6 election to represent Iowa House district 46. Delegates to a special nominating convention in Ames on June 29 chose Wilburn on the second ballot.
The former Iowa City mayor, who has worked for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach since 2014, recently told Bleeding Heartland that if elected to the state House, he wants to address problems with privatized Medicaid, climate change, and gun violence. Other priorities for Wilburn are strengthening public school districts, restoring collective bargaining rights for public workers, and making Iowa more welcoming and inclusive for marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ community, people of color, veterans, and people with disabilities.
Ira Lacher: “For many Americans who only experience candidates through email appeals or in prepackaged videos, the debates provided an opportunity to see them as people.” -promoted by Laura Belin
Now that the first Democratic presidential debates have come and gone, what have we learned?
Forgetting and ignoring what the national media have said, here’s what I learned from my own and others’ observations from two nights of debate-watching parties.
Like many Democrats around the country, I tuned in to both MSNBC debates, featuring 20 of the presidential candidates. If you missed them, you can find the transcripts on the Washington Posts’s site (first night and and second night). My thoughts:
State Auditor Rob Sand warned the Iowa Department of Human Services on June 26 that service cuts to two quadriplegic Iowans indicate that Amerigroup and UnitedHealthcare “have failed to comply” with their state contracts. Sand said the managed-care organizations (MCOs) have pushed both Medicaid recipients to move into assisted living, rather than meeting their contractual obligations to ensure members have access to covered benefits and adequate health care services.
Governor Kim Reynolds announced last week that Jim Kurtenbach will be the new director of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS), effective July 1. Paul Trombino has held that position on an interim basis for about a month, after the Iowa Senate did not confirm previous DAS Director Janet Phipps.
Tapping Kurtenbach for this job was a strange choice. The agency has broad responsibility for human resources, procurement, and accounting on behalf of the state. Sexual harassment or discrimination by senior officials has led to several lawsuits against the state and millions of dollars in settlements in recent years. Yet not only does Kurtenbach lack relevant experience in the HR field, his hiring and managerial decisions as Iowa State University’s vice president and chief information officer were far from a model for best practices.
Editor’s note: Hy-Vee’s PAC provided a comment on June 24, which is enclosed in full at the end of this post.
Great catch and great digging by Gwen Hope. -promoted by Laura Belin
Hy-Vee is one of those companies we often associate with small-town, everyone-knows-everyone “Iowa Nice” culture. Yet it’s important to remember that while some major Iowa businesses started small, many are no longer those small-town startups of yesteryear. Hy-Vee is no exception, having just made a conveniently-timed donation that was its largest single political contribution in a decade.
Like many livestock farmers, state businesses fill their animal troughs with corn and silage, but the resulting pork is of the political persuasion variety. In this vein, I looked into the fundraiser1 for the Republican Party of Iowa (RPI), held at Hy-Vee’s Ron Pearson Center in West Des Moines. President Donald Trump headlined the June 11 event.
Osceola Mayor Thomas Kedley announced on June 22 that he will no longer seek the Republican nomination in Iowa’s second Congressional district. In a statement enclosed in full below, Kedley said after traveling the district in recent weeks, “I realized I wasn’t done yet in Osceola,” and “I feel like I can make the biggest impact at the local and state level.”
Though he was the only declared GOP candidate, Kedley was never likely to become the nominee in IA-02. He lacked name recognition, a base of support in a large county, or a track record with fundraising.
For the second time this year, voters in a college town will elect a new Iowa lawmaker when most students are not on campus. Governor Kim Reynolds announced today that the special election in House district 46, covering part of Ames, will take place on Tuesday, August 6.
The College and Young Democrats of Iowa quickly denounced the decision: “Anyone else having some déjà vu with the timing of this special election? @KimReynoldsIA is once again denying students – many who will not be on campus until late Aug. – the chance to vote in the IA House district they heavily occupy.”
Whereas Reynolds clearly tried to suppress student and faculty voting by scheduling the Senate district 30 special election during the University of Northern Iowa’s spring break, the timing of the coming vote in Ames is arguably consistent with standard Iowa practice.
However, the governor could have and should have set the date a few weeks later, allowing greater participation by Iowa State University stakeholders.
Elizabeth Matney, who has led the Iowa Medicaid Bureau of Managed Care since the state began privatizing nearly the whole program in 2015, is leaving the Department of Human Services to become Governor Kim Reynolds’ health policy advisor, Matney’s LinkedIn profile shows. Her starting date is unclear; the governor’s office has not announced Matney’s hiring or responded to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries on the subject. A DHS organizational chart dated June 17 still shows Matney as bureau chief for MCO Oversight & Supports, the state’s leading official for overseeing the private companies picked to manage care for more than 600,000 Iowans on Medicaid.
When the new fiscal year begins on July 1, the governor’s office will receive additional funding for staff, so Matney’s work for Reynolds may formally begin at that time. The governor’s previous health policy advisor, Paige Thorson, appears to be staying on as deputy chief of staff, meaning that new funds would be needed to pay Matney (the governor’s staff have not clarified that point).
A third Democrat hopes to represent Iowa House district 46, where longtime State Representative Lisa Heddens stepped down this week to become a Story County supervisor.
Ross Wilburn confirmed in a June 20 telephone interview that he will seek the nomination at a special convention to be scheduled soon. UPDATE: on June 29.
The state broke Iowa law by refusing to negotiate in good faith when the Iowa Board of Regents delayed contract talks with unions representing University of Northern Iowa faculty and University of Iowa graduate students in late 2016 and early 2017, the Public Employment Relations Board determined in separate rulings last week.
Following the 2016 election, when it was clear Republicans would have total control of state government, United Faculty and the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS) attempted to negotiate new contracts for their members, following a bargaining schedule used in previous years.
But the governing body for Iowa’s state universities instructed its attorney not to engage in such talks until after GOP lawmakers and Governor Terry Branstad had eliminated most public employee bargaining rights under Iowa Code Chapter 20. Bruce Rastetter was the Regents president at the time. He didn’t seek reappointment by Branstad in 2017, as it was clear Iowa Senate Democrats would have blocked his confirmation.
With umpteen presidential campaigns to follow and competitive races shaping up in all four Iowa Congressional districts, as well as for many state House and Senate seats, I haven’t published anything this year about the 2019 local elections.
Campaigns for school board and city offices will never be the most glamorous topics for political reporters, but the outcomes can greatly affect the quality of life in communities. Iowans thinking about running for office should read the action plan Lauren Whitehead wrote after her successful bid for Solon City Council in 2017. They should also be aware of the following dates and legal requirements:
Ames School Board member Jamet Colton and Ames City Council member Amber Corrieri confirmed on June 17 that they will seek the Democratic nomination for Iowa House district 46, where longtime State Representative Lisa Heddens is stepping down to serve as a Story County supervisor. I enclose below statements with background on both candidates.
Delegates in the precincts that make up House district 46 will select the nominee at a district convention, to be scheduled soon after Governor Kim Reynolds sets a date for the special House election. Although I have not seen any formal announcement from Ames School Board member Lewis Rosser, many Story County sources expect him to compete for the nomination. Dr. Jay Brown, an allergist with the McFarland Clinic, is also considering the race, he told Bleeding Heartland over the weekend.
The Democratic nominee will almost certainly win the special election later this summer, given that the strongest potential Republican candidate, Ames City Council member Tim Gartin, says he is not running. Some locals had speculated that Gartin had a chance to flip the seat, with the election taking place before most Iowa State University students return for the fall semester. I haven’t heard of any announced GOP candidate for this race. Even without the large student population in town, winning this district would be a longshot for a Republican. Residents of House district 46 gave 57.2 percent of the 2016 presidential vote to Hillary Clinton and 65.3 percent of the vote for governor last year to Fred Hubbell.
Regardless of who serves out the remainder of Heddens’ term, which runs through 2020, Democrats may well have a contested primary in House district 46 next June. It’s easy to qualify for the primary ballot in Iowa by collecting 50 signatures on nominating petitions.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that if elected, Colton would be the first Latinx to serve in the Iowa legislature.
Jerry Foxhoven has resigned as Iowa Department of Human Services director, effective today, Governor Kim Reynolds’ office announced on June 17. The news release did not give a reason for Foxhoven’s departure. Staff for DHS and the governor did not immediately respond to questions including:
Republican State Senator Charles Schneider coasted to re-election in 2016. He defeated his Senate district 22 challenger Andrew Barnes by more than 4,000 votes after spending only a token amount on the race. In fact, Schneider gave most of his own campaign funds ($133,000) to the Iowa GOP for use in more competitive state Senate districts.
Schneider drew his first declared challenger for this cycle on June 11, when Tricia Gavin announced her candidacy. At least one other Democrat is seriously considering this race, so Schneider’s general election opponent will not be known until after the June 2020 primary.
Given recent political trends in the western suburbs of Des Moines, it’s already obvious that Senate district 22 will be a top Democratic target next year.
