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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’ve likely read about some of the Broadlawns candidates, so please allow me to introduce myself.

I’m a trilingual CPA who has worked in a dozen countries and lived in Brazil. I experienced what it is to be a minority in a different country, with or without a language barrier. My languages and multi-cultural experiences enhance reaching out to help Polk County residents achieve better health outcomes and lower the long-term cost of care.

I often see health disparities while serving clients in my private CPA practice. I’ve helped some clients qualify for Obamacare or expanded Medicaid programs to improve access to care and reduce their out-of-pocket costs for that care.

State Representative John Wills bragged in a recent Facebook post that he had reassured an elderly housebound voter, who was worried about getting an absentee ballot. The third-ranking Iowa House Republican told the story to show the “mantra that Republicans are trying to prevent people who don’t think like us from voting is false.”

More than a dozen Iowa Republican lawmakers and legislative candidates liked Wills’ self-congratulatory post.

There was just one problem: thanks to changes Wills and his colleagues enacted in 2021, the deadline for that woman to request an absentee ballot had already passed.

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

“It could be worse.”

At the start of 2022, friends may have uttered those four words to console or comfort us.

As the midterm elections approach, those four words may be prophetic.

Every election in a democracy —from township to presidency — is threatened by voters who are ill-informed, misinformed, and/or uninformed.

What’s going on with early voting in Iowa after new Republican-backed laws restricted the practice in many ways?

Overall numbers are way down compared to the same point in the previous two midterm election cycles, and Iowa Republicans are further below their early voting benchmark than are Democrats.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

Hang in there, it won’t last much longer. This election cycle is winding down, although a new season will begin even before we fully understand what took place this go-‘round. With politics top of mind, I drove to Charles City last week to meet with someone about whom I’d heard positive reports.

This someone is Dené Lundberg, her first name rhyming with “Renee.” Dené seeks to represent House District 58 in the Iowa legislature.

“Strong Island Hawk” is an Iowa Democrat and political researcher based in Des Moines. Prior to moving to Iowa, he lived in Washington, DC where he worked for one of the nation’s top public interest groups. In Iowa, has worked and volunteered on U.S. Representative Cindy Axne’s 2018 campaign and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 caucus team. 

Agents from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division took the rare step in May of raiding Alliantgroup, a Houston-based firm specializing in energy tax credits Senator Chuck Grassley helped enact. Alliantgroup and its executives are frequent donors to Grassley; its National Managing Director, Dean Zerbe, is a former high-ranking Grassley staffer.

Months later, little is known about the raid, which followed IRS subpoenas and requests for documents. Some have speculated that the investigation is focused on Alliantgroup’s use of tax credits, including one provision Grassley and Zerbe had a big role in adding to the tax code.

Penny Vossler is the Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 48.

A letter to the Republican Party of Iowa:

What were you thinking? I received a mailer last week calling me “too liberal” (which is not quite the insult you think it is) and containing ridiculous lies – the same lies being told about many Democrat candidates across the nation – and vague statements with no details.

Zach Elias grew up in Bettendorf and is a graduate student in philosophy who studied at the University of Dubuque.

I consider myself a curious person. Sometimes that quality has been to my benefit. Sometimes it has been to my detriment.

My curiosity particularly emerges during any election season. Every time, my political voice is reenergized when I see signs in the yards of my neighbors, political ads, and announcements of candidates coming into town.

The first cold winds of the winter season call an end to a fun, untethered summer. The beautiful fall leaves in the frame of the big combines put me in a reflective mood. Who wouldn’t stop to admire all the change? It’s as if nature knows a big decision looms, and is doing its best to sober you up from the summer sun.

Senator Joe Bolkcom has represented Iowa City in the legislature since 1999.

Governor Kim Reynolds continues to take victory laps for how she has managed the COVID-19 pandemic. She touts her efforts to be the first state to command kids back to school and to keep Iowa “open for business,” as Iowans were filling hospital beds and clinging to life on ventilators.  

When Governor Kim Reynolds made news in May by pleading with supporters to help her get her “own” attorney general and a state auditor who wouldn’t scrutinize her actions, Republican Party of Iowa state chair Jeff Kaufmann defended the appeal. In a written statement, Kaufmann said the governor “should be promoting Republican candidates up and down the ticket,” because “Iowans know how worthless our current state auditor, state treasurer and attorney general have been.”

But since Mary Ann Hanusa (the insiders’ pick for state auditor) unexpectedly lost the GOP primary in June, top Iowa Republicans have done virtually nothing to support the party’s nominee Todd Halbur. He goes into the home stretch of the campaign with little money or media exposure. Meanwhile, the incumbent Rob Sand is on track to spend more than a million dollars on various forms of advertising.

Halbur did not respond to phone or email messages seeking comment on the lack of support from his party, and whether it’s related to the whistleblower lawsuit he filed, naming one of Reynolds’ appointees.

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

Polling is fundamentally broken, and political forecasting is broken as a result. As a result reporting on politics is broken and focuses on minor differences in polling, rather than discussing what the candidates believe and want to accomplish in office.

Some of the biggest misses in 2016 and 2020 came from what were once thought to be gold-standard pollsters. The most accurate pollsters turned out to be firms with right-wing associations like Trafalgar. The 2020 polling misses were not uniform—they were not as large in Nevada or Georgia—and no one is really sure why. There are various theories.

Let’s start with the data.

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

I try to stay atop the day’s news. But I must have dozed off last week — because I missed the response from Iowa Republican leaders to the Biden administration’s announcement of $1.3 billion in debt relief to 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on their farm loan payments.

In making the announcement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Through no fault of their own, our nation’s farmers and ranchers have faced incredibly tough circumstances over the last few years. The funding included in today’s announcement helps keep our farmers farming and provides a fresh start for producers in challenging positions.”

I am not here to question the wisdom of the federal assistance. But the silence from Governor Kim Reynolds and U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst is markedly different from their criticism after President Joe Biden announced in August that the government would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans for most borrowers.

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm focused on making Iowa a better place for all. Contact: terriandjohnhale@gmail.com.

It was October 1973. A recent college graduate took the oath of office as an employee of the federal government in Ottumwa, Iowa. He swore to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic….”

He would spend the next 25 years as a public servant focused on Social Security and Medicare, working with colleagues across the nation to make complex laws understandable and to ensure that people were treated fairly and served well.

That young man was one of this column’s authors.

Anne Schechinger is Senior Analyst of Economics for the Environmental Working Group. This report first appeared on the EWG’s website.

A new EWG analysis has found that the overwhelming majority of Midwestern counties with increased precipitation between 2001 and 2020 also had growing crop insurance costs during that period due to wetter weather linked to the climate crisis. 

In all, 661 counties got a crop insurance indemnity payment for excess moisture at some point during that period, adding up to $12.9 billion – one-third of the $38.9 billion in total crop insurance payments for all causes of loss in these counties.

This is the first analysis of the link between recent wetter Midwestern weather caused by climate change and rapidly ballooning crop insurance payments in the region for crops that have failed or been harmed by rain, snow, sleet and other wet weather – issues lumped together by the federal Crop Insurance Program under the term “excess moisture.”

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has built her political brand by highlighting her expertise as a doctor and former director of the Iowa Department of Public Health. Her official communications and campaign advertising routinely play up her medical background.

So it’s disheartening to see Miller-Meeks join the ranks of Republican politicians who spread falsehoods about COVID-19.

She just did it again in Davenport.

Shaimaa Aly explains why she is running for the board of Broadlawns Medical Center, Polk County’s public hospital.

My name is Shaimaa (shy-ma) Aly. I was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt to an upper middle-class family of three kids, two boys and a girl.

My mom is a dermatologist specializing in facial cosmetic surgery. My dad was an economics professor and a government official who believed that quality education is the key to success, so my siblings and I were sent to private Catholic schools growing up.

As a Muslim who attended a Catholic school, I learned to embrace different religions, points of view and peoples.

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a freelance writer who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party.        

Never in my wildest dreams did I think America would be on the verge of backsliding from democracy to authoritarian rule. But, overwhelming evidence abounds that some voters and one political party are moving in that direction.

John Norwood is the Democratic nominee for secretary of agriculture.

The following video provides a brief 2.5-minute overview of Iowa’s water quality crisis and the lack of leadership by our current secretary of agriculture. It’s painfully obvious he lacks a basic understanding of the problems or how to address them at scale.

Disclosure: I am a plaintiff in an open records lawsuit that is pending before the Iowa Supreme Court on interlocutory appeal. (The governor’s office appealed a lower court ruling against the state’s motion to dismiss our case.) That litigation has nothing to do with this post.

On the back side of Iowa’s general election ballot, voters have a chance to vote yes or no on allowing two Iowa Supreme Court justices, two Iowa Court of Appeals judges, and dozens of lower court judges to remain on the bench.

No organizations are campaigning or spending money against retaining Justices Dana Oxley and Matthew McDermott, whom Governor Kim Reynolds appointed in 2020.

Nevertheless, I expect the justices to receive a lower share of the retention vote than most of their predecessors. Shortly after the newest justices were part of a controversial ruling on abortion in June, the Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom found a partisan split in attitudes toward the Iowa Supreme Court, with a significant share of Democrats and independents disapproving of the court’s work.

This post seeks to provide context on how the justices up for retention have approached Iowa Supreme Court decisions that may particularly interest Bleeding Heartland readers.

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

“You can’t handle the truth!”

Many Bleeding Heartland readers will recall those words of contempt that U.S. Marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessup—played by Jack Nicholson— shouted from the witness stand in the 1992 movie, A Few Good Men.

Col. Jessup was alluding to the death of a young Marine, a killing that “saved lives,” he claimed. Those outside the U.S. Marine Corps supposedly couldn’t handle his distorted view of “the truth.”

That contempt called to mind the political commercials that contaminate our television viewing these days. Judging by the smears and deception in so many ads, the phrase “Iowa nice” (like many of the targeted candidates or policies) would now be considered “too liberal for Iowa.”

You have to hand it to Deidre DeJear.

Governor Kim Reynolds has all the advantages of incumbency. She has spent most of the year avoiding unscripted questions and taking credit for projects that President Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress made possible. While the challenger has struggled to get her message in front of voters, Reynolds enjoys free media coverage almost daily and has blanketed the state with (sometimes racist) television commercials for the past six weeks.

The day before the only scheduled debate between the candidates for governor—Reynolds would not agree to the traditional three—the Des Moines Register published a new Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co showing the incumbent ahead by 52 percent to 35 percent among likely voters.

In other words, the odds facing DeJear could hardly be longer.

Nevertheless, the challenger spoke with clarity and confidence throughout the hour-long “Iowa Press” appearance, using facts and personal stories to great effect. She refused to take the bait when Reynolds fell back on divisive talking points about what “they” (Democrats) supposedly want to do.

I hope voters will take the time to watch the whole program, or read the transcript on the Iowa PBS site. Eight exchanges struck me as particularly revealing.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to public schools for 38 years. He taught for elevent years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association Regional Director for 27 years until retiring.  He grew up in Shellsburg, Iowa.  He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com. 

Dear Iowa educators:

Some things are obviously not in our best interest. We don’t follow the GPS when the path leads into a river. We don’t tell our spouse he or she looks fat in those jeans, and we don’t wear a University of Iowa shirt in an Iowa State bar, or vice versa.  

It’s common sense. 

On November 8, Iowa’s educators will face big choices. To avoid trouble later, we need to make decisions rooted in our best interest, because public education is on the ballot.

Melissa Halverson, DNP ARNP is a Des Moines area nurse practitioner specializing in gastroenterology.

This November, Polk County voters will fill three seats on the Broadlawns Board of Trustees.

When I heard my friend and former colleague Kacey Davis was running for Broadlawns Board of Trustees, I must admit I was a little surprised. After all, she had a toddler, and a demanding job. That seemed to be a lot to handle even without a campaign in the mix.

But I should not have been so surprised. As a family nurse practitioner in community health, Kacey knows firsthand the barriers to finding medical care and mental health services for our most vulnerable residents. Helping to break down those barriers motivates her to serve on the Broadlawns Board of Trustees.

Iowans who qualify for federal food assistance received $141 million less in benefits from April through August, due to Governor Kim Reynolds’ action earlier in the year, according to data the Iowa Hunger Coalition released on October 12.

After Reynolds ended the state’s public health emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Iowans lost access to the emergency allotments in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. The Iowa Hunger Coalition calculated that the total amount Iowans received through SNAP dropped by 43 percent from March to April.

Without the emergency allotments, the coalition reported, “On average, households have been receiving $200 less in benefits every month. The average SNAP benefit per meal for individuals in Iowa was $1.56 in August 2022.”

The federal government entirely funds the SNAP program, so the state of Iowa saved no money by depriving food-insecure Iowans of extra benefits.

On the contrary: the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service has calculated that each $1 issued in SNAP benefits generates $1.54 in economic impact. (When people in need receive more food assistance, they can spend more of their limited resources on other goods and services in their community.) So the $141 million Iowans did not receive from April through August could have increased Iowa’s gross domestic product by $217 million.

“If elected, will you commit to weekly press conferences?” a moderator asked during the first debate between Iowa’s candidates for governor in October 2018. “I do it all the time,” Governor Kim Reynolds replied.

Asked again during that campaign’s third debate whether she would hold weekly press conferences, Reynolds claimed to have already made that commitment, adding, “If there’s any ambiguity, I will.”

Bleeding Heartland’s review of the governor’s public schedule reveals she has not come close to keeping that promise for most of the past four years. After a period of greater accessibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, Reynolds held just four formal news conferences during the second half of 2021. More than 40 weeks into this year, she has held only ten news conferences, the last occurring on July 12.

Reporters with access have sometimes been able to ask the governor a few questions at a “gaggle” after a bill signing or another public event. But most weeks, Reynolds has not scheduled even an informal media availability.

Avoiding unscripted questions on camera gives Reynolds greater control over news coverage of her administration, and keeps awkward moments mostly out of public view.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to public schools for 38 years. He taught for four years in Alden and seven years in Cherokee, then represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association Regional Director for 27 years until retiring.

Anyone who watches television has seen the Progressive Insurance commercial where Dr. Rick helps young homeowners becoming their parents. He gives advice like, “We don’t need a line monitor.” “You don’t need to clap after a movie because no one in the theater made the movie.” “Don’t leave a long message on an answering machine, just text.”

I had three thoughts when I first saw this commercial. First, I was amused. Second, the old guy in me thought, young people would benefit quite a bit from becoming their parents. But the rational guy in me questioned, in a fast-changing world, do we really want young people becoming their parents? The answer was an emphatic no.

My third thought was that Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds might benefit from a little advice on how not to become Donald Trump.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

In August, I spoke to the Broadlawns Board of Trustees for the third time in the past four years.

You can read my comments from my first time speaking during their citizen comment period in July 2018 when I was five months pregnant and looking for VBAC supportive care for the birth of my second child. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this experience launched my maternal health advocacy.

Republicans seeking Iowa’s federal offices take some important advantages into the November election. Most are incumbents with more money to spend than their challengers. Recent history suggests midterms favor the party out of power in Washington, and President Joe Biden has low approval numbers in Iowa.

One wild card complicates the equation for GOP candidates here, as in many other states. Republicans are on record supporting near-total abortion bans, while a majority of voters favor keeping abortion mostly legal.

Republican campaign messaging has emphasized other topics, such as inflation, taxes, or unpopular Washington politicians. When they can’t avoid talking about abortion, Republicans have claimed their Democratic opponents are the real extremists on the issue.

Several races may hinge on whether moderate voters buy into that distortion of the facts.

Katie Jones lives in Des Moines with her family. She is passionate about gun violence prevention.

Gun safety is on the ballot in Iowa this year. Voters will consider a state constitutional amendment called Public Measure 1, which states, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

The last sentence makes this amendment very different from the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, and more extreme. What is strict scrutiny and how would it change the legal landscape?

Governor Kim Reynolds’ re-election campaign continues to air a television commercial that plays on racist tropes in order to boost the governor among the largely white Iowa electorate.

Reynolds’ campaign spokesperson Pat Garrett has not replied to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries about the commercial. But after Iowa Democratic Party chair Ross Wilburn denounced the ad as “a cheap, racist and dangerous stunt using harmful stereotypes to score political points,” Garrett told some other reporters that the spot “contrasts the failed policies supported by liberal Democrats across the country with the common sense leadership of Gov. Reynolds.”

Visual evidence shows the ad-makers were determined to create negative associations with Black women. The tactic would undermine the governor’s Democratic challenger Deidre DeJear.

Broadlawns Trustees Dave Miglin and Emily Webb co-authored this endorsement.

Elections are about the future: identifying issues that still need to be addressed and deciding who or what is the best path forward. While there are several high-profile issues and races on the ballot this November, one of the most important decisions Polk County voters will have is determining who should fill three open seats on the seven-member Board of Trustees at Broadlawns Medical Center.

Whether you are a patient of Broadlawns, a Polk County taxpayer, or simply an interested voter, the people who sit on the Board of Trustee of Polk County’s only public hospital should matter to you.

That is why we are encouraging you to vote for Kathleen Kacey Davis, Shaimaa Aly, and Marc Ward for Broadlawns Trustee (labeled on the back side of the ballot as County Hospital Trustee).

Charles Bruner served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990 and was founding director of the Child and Family Policy Center from 1989 through 2016. For the last six years, he headed a Health Equity and Young Children initiative focusing on primary child health care for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is working with other child policy advocacy leaders and experts in the field to raise these issues in Congressional midterm election campaigns. Find more information about their fund: www.votekids2022.com.

The Iowa Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus adopted a resolution that calls for Democrats and the state party to “reclaim” the label “pro-family.”

That resolution (enclosed in full below) is in direct response to Governor Kim Reynolds’ rhetoric implying that only the Republican Party believes “parents matter” and that Republicans are leading a “pro-family” agenda.

Janice Weiner is an Iowa City City Council member and the Democratic nominee in Iowa Senate district 45.

Every time we turn around, another article or report describes the child care crisis in Iowa. I’ve followed the statewide debate, participated in multiple local forums, and have been a child care consumer for the past four years.

When Governor Kim Reynolds convened her child care task force, I hoped that we would make progress, since this issue affects every zip code and county. Instead, we have continued to go around in circles, creating grants for centers and pushing “solutions” that fail to get to the heart of the issue.

Child care is an economic issue, a workforce issue, a childhood development issue, a child welfare issue, an equity issue, a women’s issue, an education issue, a state development issue – and more. It’s an “all of the above” issue. And since it’s foundational, it’s worth tackling.

Anne Schechinger is Senior Analyst of Economics for the Environmental Working Group. This report first appeared on the Environmental Working Group’s website.

Farmers received almost $7.4 billion in payments from two of the largest federal agricultural conservation programs between 2017 and 2020, but only a small proportion of these payments went to practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming. 

This finding comes from the Environmental Working Group’s newest update to its Conservation Database, which provides 2017–2020 payment data for five of the largest Agriculture Department farm conservation programs.

Tim Nelson is a Democratic activist based in Polk County.

Broadlawns Medical Center, the public hospital in Polk County, Iowa, doesn’t provide elective abortions. But the hospital’s staff do perform medically necessary, life saving abortions.

As a public hospital, Broadlawns has elected trustees, unlike private hospitals.

This means we choose the members of the Broadlawns Board of Trustees.

Nothing happens in a campaign commercial by accident. Strategists plan every word and image, with the candidate’s approval. Directors may film many takes to get the perfect cadence for every line.

So Iowans should understand: the racist tropes in Governor Kim Reynolds’ latest tv ad are deliberate.

Herb Strentz examines Chuck Grassley’s recent political messaging and low points from his record in the Senate.

The home stretch of this midterm election campaign is unfolding in in 3-D format — Dire, Divisive, and Despairing. That’s particularly true of the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley, seeking his eighth term at age 89, and Democrat Michael Franken, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, who will be 65 on election day, November 8.

That 3-D nature of our Iowa politics was illustrated well in one of the Grassley campaign’s recent television commercials.

In a backhanded way, Grassley acknowledged why it is time for Iowans to vote him out of office.