I don’t see State Senator Brad Zaun winning the GOP nomination in Iowa’s third Congressional district. From the numbers I’ve seen, Republican donors and voters are looking elsewhere. But give credit where credit is due: Zaun made the most of his interview with Des Moines Register editors this week. GOP activists will eat up news that Zaun “sometimes carries a 9 mm handgun while working in the Senate chamber” or appearing at public events. Never mind that the rules are clear, and legislators are not exempt from the ban on carrying firearms or other dangerous weapons in the capitol complex. The GOP base will love Zaun’s explanation of why the rules shouldn’t apply to him: “I went through all the lawful procedures that were required of me [to carry a concealed weapon]. I am going to defend myself if someone attacks me, and I have a right to do that.”

Click here for other highlights from Zaun’s sit-down with Register staff. Explaining why he is “smarter and wiser” than during his 2010 Congressional bid, Zaun explained that he now supports government subsidies for the biofuels industry. I took issue with this whining, though:

On another note, Zaun said he doesn’t think it’s fair for news organizations to keep bringing up a 2001 West Des Moines police report that surfaced during the 2010 campaign. The police report detailed his conflict with a former girlfriend at a time when he was divorced. No charges were filed. Zaun has since remarried.

Zaun pointed out that the woman provided a statement to The Des Moines Register just days before the 2010 election in which she said she remained friends with Zaun and she planned to vote for him. “It is something that we have just both moved on from, and I think it is unfortunate that this keeps getting brought up,” he said.

No, what’s unfair is that the mayor of Urbandale was able to keep this incident covered up for so long, including during his first campaign for the Iowa Senate in 2004. When a person’s harassment of someone else becomes intense enough for police to be involved, that’s a red flag voters should know about. I’m glad Zaun and his onetime girlfriend have reconciled, but that “unfortunate” part of his record was newsworthy and should have been public knowledge way before he ran for Congress in 2010.

Be careful what you brag about in politics. Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz highlighted alleged cost savings to the state in his Congressional campaign’s first television commercial. As journalists looked more closely at staff reorganization in the Secretary of State’s Office, they discovered details that will likely derail Schultz’s aspirations in IA-03.

Ryan Foley of the Associated Press was the first to report that Schultz kept his political appointee Jim Gibbons on the payroll for seven months after deciding to eliminate Gibbons’ position. It’s not clear what work, if any, Gibbons was doing during his final months as a state employee.

Yesterday Foley reported for the Associated Press and Jason Clayworth reported for the Des Moines Register on more political appointees whom Schultz allowed to work from home after requesting their resignations in 2011 and 2012. I’ve posted excerpts from both stories after the jump, but you should click through to read them in full. In a statement to the Des Moines Register, Schultz defended his actions:

“What the liberals in the media are ignoring as they level their attacks against me, is that the Department of Administrative Services, the state’s personnel experts, advised my office that instead of severance an agency could keep an employee on payroll longer than they are required to come to the office, so long as the employee was available for phone calls and questions from home. […] If the media had real integrity they would be thanking me for protecting Iowa’s election integrity and finding ways to save Iowa taxpayers more than $200,000.”

I doubt that excuse will fly in a GOP primary where voters have several other credible candidates to choose from. Schultz has some powerful backers and donors, but so do a few rivals with less baggage. Even if Schultz surprises me by winning the Republican nomination in IA-03, the latest revelations provide plenty of ammunition for Staci Appel in the general election–not that we needed more proof that Schultz has been ineffective in his current position. He pursued the wrong priorities and spent federal funds on his own crusade rather than how they were intended to be used.  

Former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker was the first Republican to jump into the race for Tom Harkin’s Senate seat last year and has been campaigning around the state for nearly a year. However, he launched his campaign’s first television commercial just last week, a little more than a month before the June 3 primary. (I’m not counting a tv ad for Whitaker’s law firm, which ran in heavy rotation during the Winter Olympics, although I suspect that spot was designed to raise Whitaker’s profile.)

After the jump I’ve posted the video and script for Whitaker’s campaign ad, along with highlights from the candidate’s first-quarter financial report and his most prominent endorsement so far, from Texas Governor Rick Perry. A separate Bleeding Heartland post will focus on several recent Senate candidate debates. I’m not sure whether Whitaker’s forceful debating style will strike Republican voters as strong and principled or overly aggressive.

As the six Republican candidates in Iowa’s third Congressional district made their pitches to the GOP district convention on Saturday, the central Iowa twitterverse focused on this memorable line from Robert Cramer’s stump speech: “Liberals want to give out condoms; I want to give out Constitutions.” It’s part of Cramer’s larger ambition to make IA-03 “the most constitutionally literate district in the nation.”

Fact is, Cramer is just about the last person I would want giving out constitution tutorials. We’re talking about a guy who gave $30,000 to Bob Vander Plaats’ 2010 gubernatorial bid. Vander Plaats famously opposed the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling invalidating part of the state’s Defense of Marriage Act. Over time, the wisdom of that ruling has become increasingly accepted. More and more state courts and federal judges, including a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, have rejected same-sex marriage bans on equal protection grounds.

But even if you didn’t agree with the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling, it takes a person truly ignorant about our Constitution to get on board with Vander Plaats’ campaign agenda. He promised that if elected, he would “immediately issue an executive order putting same sex marriages on hold until the Legislature and, ultimately the voters, pass judgment on it.” That’s not how the system works. A governor doesn’t get to nullify an Iowa Supreme Court decision. He doesn’t get to force the state legislature to approve a constitutional amendment of his choice either.

After losing the 2010 gubernatorial primary, Vander Plaats became head of the FAMiLY Leader umbrella organization. Cramer agreed to serve as that group’s board president, while Vander Plaats made it his top priority to oust Iowa Supreme Court justices through the statewide retention elections.

This being a Republican primary, I doubt many GOP voters in IA-03 would be put off by Cramer’s lack of constitutional literacy and support of the anti-retention campaign. The fact that his construction firm took federal stimulus money for road bridge projects will probably be a bigger minus. Not that I think there was anything wrong with bidding on contracts that allowed Cramer’s firm to hire 30 or 40 additional people in 2009 alone.

Democracy for America announced this morning that it has endorsed Jim Mowrer, Representative Steve King’s Democratic challenger in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. I’ve posted the official statement after the jump. The progressive advocacy group Howard Dean created after his 2004 presidential campaign has 1 million members across the country, including 9,589 members in Iowa. Some of them may be more likely to volunteer for Mowrer knowing he has DFA’a backing.

The group’s endorsement should also help Mowrer raise more money from inside and outside Iowa–although he’s done quite well in that department already, raising more money than King the last three quarters. Recognizing the strong campaign Mowrer is building, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee already flagged IA-04 as an “emerging race” despite the uphill climb for any Democrat in this district.

Democracy for America has previously endorsed five other Democratic U.S. House candidates, including Staci Appel in Iowa’s open third district.

UPDATE: I missed this last week; Mowrer informed supporters that his three-year-old son suffers from a rare degenerative neurological disease. Healing thoughts to the whole family.

Loras College in Dubuque released its first-ever set of polls on Iowa Congressional primaries this week. Click here for the polling memo and here (pdf) for further details, including the full questionnaires.

After the jump I’ve posted my thoughts on what these polls tell us about the front-runners (or lack thereof) in each primary. Unfortunately, a big methodological flaw makes it more difficult to interpret the results.

Since the last quarterly fundraising reports came in, the Republican primary race in Iowa’s open first Congressional district has settled into a predictable win for Rod Blum. The Democratic primary is still highly competitive, though, with all five candidates in a position to run a district-wide race before June 3.  

Three candidates qualified for the Republican primary ballot in Iowa’s second Congressional district, but the latest fundraising reports suggest that Mariannette Miller-Meeks will get a third chance at beating Representative Dave Loebsack.

Follow me after the jump for details on the first-quarter reports each candidate in IA-02 filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Yesterday was the deadline for Congressional candidates to file quarterly reports with the Federal Election Commission. Because so many candidates are running for Congress this year in Iowa, I’m breaking up these posts by district rather than doing a statewide roundup.

After the jump I’ve enclosed highlights from the first-quarter fundraising and spending reports of Democratic candidate Staci Appel and the six Republicans seeking the GOP nomination in the third district. Spoiler alert: one of the GOP candidates is still carrying debt from a previous campaign.

I also added details below on what retiring ten-term Representative Tom Latham is doing with his substantial war chest.

If this has ever happened before in an Iowa Congressional race, I’m not aware of the precedent: Democratic challenger Jim Mowrer has raised more money than incumbent Representative Steve King for the third straight quarter in Iowa’s fourth district. Not only that, during the first three months of 2014, Mowrer’s fundraising eclipsed King’s by even more than we saw during the third and fourth quarters of 2013.

Details from the reports both candidates filed yesterday with the Federal Election Commission are after the jump.

UPDATE: The Iowa .Gif-t Shop weighs in. I really did laugh out loud.

I’ve lived in Cedar Rapids since high school (I attended the same high school at the same time of Monica’s daughters). Anyone who knows Cedar Rapids is fully aware that there are parts of town that have been depressed for many years. We know the neighborhoods on the southeast side of town that have been plagued with high crime rates and poverty. The folks in these neighborhoods who are working hard jobs for low wages are in the throes of an epic and unfortunate struggle.

I recently saw an ad released by Monica Vernon’s campaign that began with the narrator claiming Monica Vernon “understands the struggle.”  From what I know about Monica, she comes from a wealthy home, was the previous owner of a successful business, is married to a well-to-do attorney, and lives a stone’s throw from the country club.

My question to Monica Vernon is simple: what exactly do you know about the struggle? I came from extraordinarily humble beginnings, where you’d be hard pressed to find anyone with a country club membership let alone a home right next to one. I’d like to know where Monica Vernon’s struggle experience originated.

Monica’s ad is everything that is wrong with politics because it is willfully dishonest and leads people to believe that she has experience with real struggles, and had to work doubly hard just to get by, and raise her daughters largely on her own. This is the sort of thing that cheapens our politics and Iowans deserve better.

In my opinion, Monica’s largest struggle will come after she loses this Primary and must decide whether or not to remain in the Democratic Party, or revert back to the Republican Party, where she undoubtedly is more comfortable. 

With six candidates seeking the Republican nomination in Iowa’s open third Congressional district, I’ve decided to focus on individual campaigns rather than news roundups on the whole field at once. Robert Cramer’s up first, since he is already running his introductory ad on television.

Cramer is defining himself as the business mind in the field, not a bad place to be in a GOP primary. Although he is emphasizing his connection to “conservative principles and enduring values,” he is downplaying his social conservative activism. If you need any proof that Bob Vander Plaats’ ship has sailed, even in Iowa Republican circles, look no further than Cramer’s case to primary voters.

Members of Congress sometimes go to astonishing lengths to avoid doing their jobs. Rarely working a full five-day week is old news; I’m talking about the procedural gimmicks that let members avoid tough votes on the record. House leaders occasionally move bills through the controversial “deem and pass” method when the majority know something needs to pass but would prefer not to be seen voting for it. In contrast, today Republican and Democratic leaders pulled a fast one on their own back benchers.

Politics ain’t beanbag. As a talk radio host with a sizable conservative audience in northwest Iowa, Sam Clovis must have been a valuable ally for former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum during the 2012 Iowa caucus campaign. Clovis has explicitly modeled his U.S. Senate campaign on Santorum’s grassroots effort. But speaking to Iowa reporters yesterday, Santorum indicated that for now, he is staying out of the GOP primary for U.S. Senate.

“I have a very, very good friend who’s in the race – Sam Clovis who’s a terrific guy, is a good friend and someone who was a great support of mine, you know, Sam’s a #1, top-flight kind of guy,” Santorum says. “Right now I have sort of not gotten engaged in that race. I may.”

But Santorum said he is being selective about his endorsements because, he said, “the more you do, the less effective you are.”

You mean, less effective like endorsing State Representative Walt Rogers for Congress, only to see Rogers bail out of the IA-01 primary?

Santorum was in town yesterday to raise money for Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s Congressional campaign in IA-03. I wasn’t surprised when Santorum backed Schultz, but arguably, Clovis did a lot more to promote Santorum’s presidential aspirations than Schultz with his 11th hour endorsement. For sure Clovis was more influential than Rogers during the Iowa caucus campaign.

Unfortunately for Clovis, money talks, and he hasn’t raised enough of it to run an effective statewide Senate campaign. How tough to be blown off by Santorum, though. As a consolation prize, Clovis got the endorsement of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum yesterday. I wonder how many rank and file Iowa Republicans remember Schlafly, a conservative icon of the 1970s and 1980s.

UPDATE: David Bossie’s group Citizens United just endorsed Clovis as “the only full-spectrum conservative” in the IA-Sen race.

The National Republican Congressional Committee announced its latest batch of candidates for the “Young Guns” program today. Dubuque-based business owner Rod Blum, one of three GOP candidates in Iowa’s open first Congressional district, is among 50 Republicans on the bottom rung, called “on the radar.” Candidates who meet certain benchmarks for fundraising and campaign organization have a chance to move up to “contender” status and perhaps eventually to “young gun” level, which entails more direct support from the NRCC.

During the 2012 primary in IA-01, the NRCC favored establishment candidate Ben Lange over Blum. At this point, Blum is the obvious favorite to win the GOP nomination, with State Representative Walt Rogers out of the race and the other contenders way behind Blum financially.

Last year, the NRCC put IA-02 on its long list of targets and indicated that it was ready to defend Tom Latham in IA-03. None of the three registered GOP candidates in IA-02 or the six registered candidates in the open IA-03 are on the NRCC’s radar yet. Depending on fundraising, the winner of the IA-03 primary has a strong chance to become a “contender” or a “young gun” by this fall. The NRCC will almost surely spend money to defend that seat. I am skeptical that IA-02 will become a serious target for Republicans, though.

Any comments about Iowa’s Congressional races are welcome in this thread.

Yet another good idea has fallen victim to the U.S. Senate’s rules requiring a super-majority to advance legislation. Although 44 Democratic senators and eleven Republicans supported a bill that would have taken sexual assault cases outside the military chain of command, backers fell five votes short of the 60 needed to pass a cloture motion yesterday. Iowa Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley both voted for cloture (roll call) on the bill sponsored by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Pentagon leaders and Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Claire McCaskill lobbied against the measure. A weaker sexual assault prevention bill proposed by McCaskill advanced after senators rejected cloture on Gillibrand’s bill.

After the jump I’ve posted the key arguments for both sides in the debate, as well as comments from Grassley and Representative Bruce Braley (D, IA-01). In the floor statement I’ve enclosed below, Grassley urged colleagues, “We need a clean break from the system where sexual assault isn’t reported because of a perception that justice won’t be done.” Braley has long supported reforms along the lines of Gillibrand’s bill, and yesterday he promised to keep pushing on the issue, saying opponents are “on the wrong side of history.” Braley is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat Harkin will vacate at the end of this year.

P.S. – Of the Republican senators considered most likely to run for president in 2016, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul voted for cloture on Gillibrand’s bill. Marco Rubio voted against it.  

Since Democrats changed U.S. Senate rules in November to remove the 60-vote threshold for cloture motions on most presidential nominees, senators have confirmed dozens of President Barack Obama’s appointees as federal judges, ambassadors, and to various executive branch positions. In fact, fifteen presidential nominees sailed through the process during the past month alone.

Yesterday, for the first time under new Senate rules, Democrats could not muster even a simple majority of votes in favor of cloture on a presidential nominee. Alexander Bolton and Ramsey Cox reported on the controversy that torpedoed Debo Adegbile’s nomintaion to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Critics said Adegbile was unfit for the job because as director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he had supported efforts commute the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, “who was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.”

Seven Democrats joined all the Republicans present to defeat the cloture motion on Adegbile’s nomination by 52 votes to 47 (roll call). The Iowans split along party lines, with Senator Tom Harkin supporting cloture on Adegbile’s nomination and Senator Chuck Grassley voting against the motion. Harkin sharply criticized his colleagues, saying Adegbile would have been confirmed if he were white.

Bolton and Cox saw yesterday’s vote as “a stinging defeat for Obama.” I see it as a more stinging defeat to basic concepts underlying the American justice system: everyone has a right to a defense, and defense attorneys should not be held accountable for their clients’ conduct. Going back to the colonial period, this country has a tradition of attorneys providing a vigorous defense at trial to even odious criminals. President John Adams remained proud of his work defending the British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre of 1770 and opposing the death penalty for them, even though they had shot and killed patriots.

UPDATE: Added comments from Harkin after the jump.

Iowa elected officials from both parties have embraced policies to support veterans. But last week Republicans in the U.S. Senate used a procedural move to block a bill that would have supported veterans’ access to health care and higher education. Ramsey Cox reported for The Hill,

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) bill, S. 1982, would have expanded veterans’ healthcare programs, given veterans in-state tuition rates at all schools across the country and provided advanced appropriations for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

It also sought to permanently fix a cut to the growth rate of veterans’ pensions. Earlier this year, Congress passed a bill to avoid a cut in the growth rate for current service members and veterans, but anyone enlisting after 2013 would still see a cut. Sanders’s bill would have eliminated that cut as well.

Cox explains that this bill got caught up in a longstanding dispute over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s efforts to limit floor votes on minority amendments, especially those that are “non-germane” or unrelated to the subject of the bill. Republicans wanted to vote on a substitute amendment that would have included sanctions against Iran. They also didn’t agree with the “pay-for” section of Sanders’ bill, which offset expected costs of about $20 billion “by limiting overseas contingency funds from 2018-2021.”

As a result, after Senate Democrats defeated a Republican effort to refer the bill back to the Veterans Affairs Committee, Republicans rejected a “motion to waive all applicable budgetary discipline” with respect to the bill. Democrats could muster only 56 votes in favor of that motion; under Senate rules at least 60 votes were needed to advance the bill. Iowa’s Republican Senator Chuck Grassley voted against the motion, while Senator Tom Harkin voted for it, along with all the Democrats present and two Republicans.

I did not see any statement from Grassley explaining his vote on this bill. He has repeatedly criticized Reid in recent months for not allowing more votes on minority amendments.  

Jim Mowrer, the Democratic challenger to Representative Steve King in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district, is one of twelve candidates the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee considers to be “emerging races” in 2014. According to the statement from the DCCC, enclosed below, this category “highlights candidates and districts that are making themselves competitive by running smart campaigns which are becoming increasingly competitive.” Mowrer’s campaign out-raised the six-term Republican incumbent in both the third quarter and the fourth quarter of 2013. He is running as a “common-sense” candidate more in touch with the values of Iowans than King, who gets bogged down in “reckless partisan politics.” Mowrer’s official comment on today’s news is after the jump.

Candidates in “emerging races” do not receive as much financial or logistical support from the DCCC as the top-tier “Red to Blue” candidates, but in past years a fair number of these races were bumped up to “Red to Blue” status during the general election period. IA-04 is an uphill climb for any Democrat, with 123,932 registered Democrats, 174,879 Republicans, and 174,235 no-party voters as of March 2014.

Speaking of King, he has long been one of the House Republicans progressives most “love to hate,” and he is commonly quoted in fundraising appeals by a wide range of Democratic Party committees and Democratic-aligned organizations. But he does have limits. I noticed last week that someone came up with an anti-gay bill that was too stupid and bigoted even for King to co-sponsor. Some idiot lobbyist claims five House Republicans and one senator are interested in co-sponsoring a bill to stop gay athletes from playing in the National Football League. King commented,

“I don’t support the idea that we advertise our sexuality, whatever it might be,” said King. “So, therefore I don’t support the idea of legislation addressing anyone’s unidentified, unadvertised sexuality.”

King presumably doesn’t have a problem with heterosexuals “advertising” their sexuality by appearing in public with their spouses.  

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey shows Mark Jacobs with a small lead over the rest of the Republican field in the U.S. Senate race. Democrat Bruce Braley leads all the major Republican contenders, but by a smaller margin than he did last July. Click here for complete results, including question wordings and cross-tabs. PPP surveyed surveyed 869 Iowa voters, including 283 Republican primary voters, between February 20th to 23rd, producing a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percent for the statewide poll and 5.8 percent for the Republican primary findings.

The GOP Senate candidates are still largely unknown, even to Republican voters, but Jacobs has the highest name recognition, thanks to radio and television commercials his campaign has been running since early December. Among PPP’s Republican respondents, 42 percent were undecided, followed by 20 percent for Jacobs, 13 percent for State Senator Joni Ernst, 11 percent for former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker, 8 percent for Sam Clovis, and 3 percent each for Paul Lunde and Scott Schaben.

Among the full sample, Braley has the highest name recognition but is still unknown to nearly half the respondents. He leads Whitaker by 40 percent to 34 percent, Ernst and Jacobs by 41-35, and Clovis by 42-34. In PPP’s July 2013 survey, Braley’s lead averaged 11 points. The polling firm’s Tom Jensen argued that the “pretty clear reason” for the tightening in the Senate race is that “Barack Obama’s approval rating in the state has dropped a net 10 points compared to the summer.”

Earlier this month, Jacobs’ campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing Jacobs leading the Republican field for the primary, with 22 percent support compared to 11 percent for Ernst, 8 percent for Whitaker and 6 percent for Clovis. Jacobs’ poll, conducted by Hill Research Consultants, found Jacobs and Braley essentially tied (Jacobs 42 percent, Braley 41 percent), with more upside than for Jacobs because of the Democrat’s higher name recognition.

I agree with the Republicans who claimed that Jacobs’ higher name recognition and GOP support is merely a function of his heavy spending on paid advertising. He should be polling better after two months of radio and television while his opponents’ campaigns are dark. On the other hand, who’s going to stop him if his GOP rivals lack the resources to get their message out before June?

Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks finally made it official: she is running for Congress a third time in Iowa’s second district. Her campaign is on Facebook here and on Twitter here. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from her announcement and details on the campaign launch tour Miller-Meeks has planned for February 26 and 27. She will hit twelve of the 24 counties in IA-02, as well as attending a West Des Moines meeting of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She plans to focus on her “real world experience” as a doctor, as well as her work with Governor Terry Branstad over the past three years.

Although Miller-Meeks just filed papers with the Federal Election Commission within the last two weeks, she has been unofficially campaigning for some time. She has been meeting with GOP county officials around the district since at least the middle of last year, and she stepped down from her job in state government last month.

I think Miller-Meeks has a good chance to win the GOP primary. Although it may be challenging to convince some Republicans to give her a third chance at this seat, her competition looks weak. The only other announced candidate, State Representative Mark Lofgren, has raised very little money and doesn’t have a reputation as a great communicator on the stump. Beating four-term Democratic Representative Dave Loebsack will be a taller order. Besides aligning herself with Branstad, Miller-Meeks will hope that the new Iowa map improves her prospects. During the 2010 midterm election, she lost to Loebsack by about 11,500 votes in a district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 48,000 on election day. The current district contained 166,022 registered Democrats, 135,770 Republicans, and 181,463 no-party voters as of February 2014.

Small but important victory: White House officials revealed yesterday that President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for the 2015 fiscal year will not include Social Security cuts he proposed last year. The president had hoped Congressional Republicans would agree to small tax increases in exchange for using the “chained Consumer Price Index” to calculate annual cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients. It’s a terrible idea that never should have emerged from a Democratic administration.

Maybe Obama recognized that in an election year, he was never going to get any real Republican concession in exchange for cuts that would inflict real pain on seniors who rely on Social Security. Democrats may need to fight this battle again before the end of Obama’s presidency, though.

[White House] Spokesman Josh Earnest said the decision to move away from chained CPI was motivated partially by the “substantial progress in reducing the deficit.” […]

Earnest repeatedly insisted that Obama would still consider chained CPI as part of a grand bargain on the debt, and that the move “does not reflect any reduction in the president’s willingness to try to meet Republicans in the middle.”

For now, Congressional Democrats are celebrating. Senators including Iowa’s Tom Harkin had strongly urged the president to abandon the “chained CPI” proposal. More than 100 House Democrats, including Iowa’s Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02), sent a similar letter to Obama this week. After the jump I’ve posted press releases from Harkin and Braley about the issue. UPDATE: Added a comment from Loebsack below.

It’s been nearly ten months since former State Representative Rod Roberts confirmed that he was considering a campaign for U.S. Senate. I’ve long been a skeptic that Roberts has any niche or large constituency in a statewide Republican primary. In fact, I’d forgotten he was still thinking about the race. This week Carroll-based journalist Douglas Burns got the scoop in an interview: Roberts will not run for Senate, or Congress in the open third district, or for Iowa secretary of state in 2014. He cited family reasons and said he plans to continue his work as director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. In late 2010, then Governor-elect Terry Branstad offered Roberts that position without considering any other candidates, even though Roberts had not applied for the job.

Burns has long been high on Roberts as a possible Senate candidate, but for once I agree with Steve Deace: “Rod didn’t offer a reason other than, ‘I’m Rod Roberts and I’m a nice guy.’ What’s your plan? […] Offer people something.” In his latest column, Burns floats the scenario of Roberts emerging as a compromise Senate nominee at a statewide convention if none of the current candidates receives 35 percent of the vote in the June primary.

Not bloody likely.

I do largely agree with Burns’ assessment of Mark Jacobs, though. Many Iowa Republicans will be skeptical of a candidate who only recently moved back to the state. Nor will they cut Jacobs slack for giving money to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Corzine in 2000, on the grounds that Corzine was CEO of Goldman Sachs, where Jacobs worked at the time.

I have a post in progress with more news on the Jacobs campaign. Meanwhile, any comments about the U.S. Senate race are welcome in this thread.

Sam Clovis dodged what could have been a fatal blow to his U.S. Senate campaign when Bob Vander Plaats decided not to run. But to have any hope of winning the GOP primary, the Sioux City-based college professor and former radio host needs to raise real money and consolidate social conservative support quickly.  

Catching up on news from last week, Mariannette Miller-Meeks filed a formal statement of candidacy in Iowa’s second district with the Federal Election Commission (hat tip to Greg Hauenstein). An ophthalmologist based in Ottumwa, Miller-Meeks was the Republican nominee against Representative Dave Loebsack in both 2008 and 2010. She served as director of the Iowa Department of Public Health from early 2011 until resigning last month.

I have not seen any formal campaign announcement yet from Miller-Meeks, but she has been attending central committee meetings and other Republican events around the 24 counties in IA-02 for some time. During the past month, she has met with GOP central committee members in Johnson County, Marion County, and Mahaska County. She attended an off-year caucus in the Quad Cities (Scott County). Last week Miller-Meeks tweeted a photo of her campaign co-chairs in Muscatine County–the home base for State Representative Mark Lofgren, who announced his campaign in IA-02 last summer. Lofgren has a lot of support in the GOP establishment but has not raised much money for his Congressional bid.

Jennifer Jacobs has the exclusive for today’s Des Moines Register: three-time Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats has decided not to run for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat. He had previously appeared to be leaning toward running and had promised to make a decision by February 15. While some observers may be surprised he opted out, given polls showing him leading the GOP field, no one can be surprised by his reason:

Instead, his priority is his new book, “If 7:14.” It’s based on a Bible passage that says if people pray and turn from their wicked ways, God will hear and heal their land.

Vander Plaats said he has been booked for speaking engagements across the country, including at the Billy Graham Evangelical Association in North Carolina a few weeks ago, the New Canaan Society in Florida, a conference in Texas next week with pastors from large churches, and the National Council of Religious Broadcasters the following week.

“When God seems to be blessing an initiative, and there’s a lot of opportunity with that initiative, it’s hard to walk away,” he said.

That’s the BVP Iowans know and love (or at least love to hate): always happy to promote himself.

I think Vander Plaats recognizes that his ship has sailed in Iowa politics. He would have zero chance of beating Bruce Braley in a statewide election and might not even win a Republican primary. All he could accomplish in a Senate campaign is mess things up for Matt Whitaker and Sam Clovis. They are fighting over the “principled conservative” niche against establishment-friendly GOP candidates Joni Ernst and Mark Jacobs. I would call Clovis the big winner from today’s news, since he is the most natural fit for social conservative voters who might have been drawn to BVP. Clovis is trying to repeat the grassroots strategy Rick Santorum used in his 2012 Iowa caucus campaign.

UPDATE: Added the press release from the FAMiLY Leader below. Vander Plaats is such a shameless showboater.

SECOND UPDATE: Added more details below from Steve Deace, a big supporter of Vander Plaats’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

Last week I never got around to posting highlights from the year-end Federal Election Commission reports for candidates in Iowa’s open first Congressional district. Better late than never.

On the Democratic side, the money race remains highly competitive; all five candidates entered the election year with more than $100,000 to spend before the primary. The Republican race in IA-01 provided another reminder that establishment support does not necessarily translate into strong fundraising.  

By a voice vote on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Kevin Techau as U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Iowa, based in Cedar Rapids. Senator Tom Harkin recommended Techau for the position, and President Barack Obama nominated him in November. The Senate Judiciary Committee, where Iowa’s Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican, approved Techau’s nomination by voice vote last month.

For more background on Techau’s career, click here or read Grassley’s Senate floor statement in support of the nomination, which I’ve posted below.

Techau will replace Stephanie Rose, who left the position as U.S. Attorney for Iowa’s Northern District to become a federal judge in Iowa’s Southern District, based in Des Moines.

This afternoon the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation to reverse a planned change in cost of living adjustments for some military pensions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to bring up the bill that passed the U.S. House yesterday, rather than a Democratic alternative that fixed the military pension policy without any spending cuts to offset the $6 billion cost over ten years. Senators approved the House bill by 95 votes to 3, with Iowa’s Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley both supporting the measure.

Also today, senators approved a bill “to temporarily extend the public debt limit” with no strings attached. That bill also cleared the House yesterday. A dozen Republicans including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell crossed party lines to approve the cloture motion on the debt ceiling hike, but the procedural vote was a nail-biter that took more than an hour. Grassley was one of the 31 Republicans who opposed cloture. The debt ceiling increase then passed on a a straight party-line vote of 55 to 43, with Harkin voting yes and Grassley voting no.

Possible 2016 presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio all voted against cloture on the debt ceiling increase as well as against the bill on final passage.

UPDATE: Erik Wasson, Ramsey Cox and Peter Schroeder wrote a fascinating piece on the battle to advance the debt ceiling bill: “McConnell and top lieutenant Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) reluctantly backed ending debate after it became clear that no one in their conference wanted to cast the deciding 60th vote.”

This post covers reaction to the debt ceiling vote from Republican candidates for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat.

I didn’t see this coming: House Republican leaders brought a bill to the floor that raised the debt ceiling without attaching strings such as domestic discretionary spending cuts or entitlement reforms. Speaker John Boehner broke the news to fellow House Republicans yesterday morning; later he explained to reporters that whip counts showed leaders could not get 218 GOP votes behind plans to tie a debt ceiling hike to a bill on reversing a military pension cut by extending the “sequester” to certain Medicare payments.

Republicans wrangled big concessions out of the 2011 showdown over raising the debt ceiling. That deal led to the “sequester” spending cuts that went into effect in early 2013; some of them will stay in place for years. However, the foot-dragging over raising the debt ceiling during last October’s partial shutdown of the federal government didn’t advance the GOP policy agenda and hurt the party in Congressional polling, at least temporarily. President Barack Obama had vowed not to negotiate over future debt ceiling increases.

Yesterday afternoon, House leaders attached language raising the country’s debt ceiling to an unrelated bill, which passed by 221 votes to 201. Iowans Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) were among the 193 Democrats who joined just 28 Republicans to pass the bill. Steve King (IA-04) was among the 199 GOP House members who opposed it. His official comment is after the jump.

The roll call shows that Iowa Republican Tom Latham (IA-03) was not present for the debt ceiling vote. He also missed earlier votes yesterday. I have not seen any explanation for his absence but will update this post with details, as available. UPDATE: Latham’s Congressional office sent out a press release on February 11 about a Medicare bill he supports. I’ve posted it after the jump. The statement was datelined “Des Moines,” but it’s not clear whether Latham himself was in Iowa rather than Washington.

Conservative groups are already calling for Boehner to be replaced. It will be interesting to see whether he can remain speaker throughout this election year.  

Catching up on news from last week, Representative Dave Loebsack (D, IA-02) continued his pattern of voting for certain Republican bills aimed at undercutting federal regulations, especially in the environmental area (see also here). The latest example came when the U.S. House approved a bill “aimed at reducing the federal government’s restrictions on hunting, fishing and sport shooting on federal land.”  

On Thursday Republicans in the U.S. Senate again successfully filibustered efforts to extend unemployment benefits for an estimated 1.7 million people whose benefits ran out at the end of 2013. Senate rules still require 60 yes votes to approve most motions and bills, with the exception of budget legislation and most confirmation votes. As Ramsey Cox reported for The Hill, Democrats fell one vote short of the 60 needed to end debate on extending unemployment benefits. The roll call shows that four Republicans and all Democrats present voted yes, except for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who switched to “no” to preserve his right to bring the bill up again later. Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley was among the 40 Republicans who filibustered the effort to end debate.

A little later, Senators rejected a separate procedural motion to end debate on the bill to extend unemployment benefits by a mostly party-line vote. Again, Senator Tom Harkin voted to end debate, while Grassley was part of the Republican filibuster.

A similar story played out last month when Senate leaders attempted to move a bill extending unemployment benefits. Grassley and most Senate Republicans failed to block a motion to proceed to debating the bill and failed to table the measure by sending it back to the Finance Committee, but successfully kept Senate Democrats from getting the 60 votes needed to end debate on that bill. Harkin repeatedly voted to advance legislation on extending the benefits.

In a statement enclosed below, Harkin vowed that the latest vote “is not the end of the line” and said he will keep fighting to extend unemployment coverage workers “have earned and so rightly deserve.”

I have not seen any statement from Grassley directly explaining his refusal to extend unemployment benefits, but after the jump I’ve posted relevant excerpts from a floor speech he gave last month, objecting to limits on the Senate minority’s ability to offer amendments during floor debate.

Also on Thursday, senators confirmed longtime Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus of Montana to be the next U.S. ambassador to China. The vote was unanimous, except that Baucus himself voted “present.”

I thought Representative Steve King’s faction of the House Republican caucus had decisively won the war against comprehensive immigration reform in this Congress. But House leaders are trying to nudge Republicans toward moving on the issue before the midterm elections.

Just like last year, King is ready to stand and fight. In recent days, he’s been working conservative public opinion on several fronts.  

The U.S. Senate approved a compromise five-year farm bill this afternoon by 68 votes to 32 (roll call). As occurred in the House of Representatives last week, the farm bill drew substantial support from both caucuses. At the same time, a sizable number of conservative Republicans opposed the bill because of the costs, while some liberal Democrats voted no because of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. Iowa’s Democratic Senator Tom Harkin voted for ending debate on the farm bill yesterday and for the conference report today. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley voted no on cloture and on final passage.

After the jump I’ve posted statements from Harkin and Grassley explaining their stance on the farm bill. Click here for details on the contentious provisions of the farm bill. For once I am inclined to agree more with Grassley than with Harkin. In many respects the conference report was a missed opportunity and won’t serve the interests of Iowans or Americans generally.

I also sympathize with Grassley’s outrage at “a select few members dismantling a provision that was passed by wide, bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate.” Congressional rules should be changed so that the conference committee can alter only provisions that differed in the House and Senate bills, not consensus language from both versions.  

On the other hand, I suspect Grassley cast this protest vote because he knew his support wasn’t required to get the farm bill to President Barack Obama’s desk. As disappointing as this legislation is, Iowa’s economy truly needs stability and predictability in federal agricultural programs.

UPDATE: Added Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey’s comments below.  

Governor Terry Branstad’s legal counsel Brenna Findley told the Des Moines Register yesterday that she has decided not to run for Congress in the open third district. She indicated that she plans to continue her work in the governor’s office and teach a course at the University of Iowa law school.

I would guess that the early conservative endorsements for Matt Schultz were in part intended to deter Findley from entering the GOP primary in IA-03. Not only was she seriously considering the race, the National Republican Congressional Committee had reserved the domain name BrennaFindleyforCongress.com. Findley has strong conservative credentials as a product of homeschooling and a longtime staffer for Representative Steve King before running for Iowa attorney general in 2010. She has repeatedly spoken out against illegal immigration and the mandate to purchase individual health insurance. She has arguably helped steer the Branstad administration’s policies to the right on abortion and gun-related issues.

Although Findley won’t run for Congress or statewide office this year, I expect Iowans will see her name on a ballot again sometime before the end of this decade. We may have an open race for attorney general in 2018 if Tom Miller decides to call it quits after nine terms.  

Can someone please explain Mark Lofgren to me? If you’re going to the trouble of getting in a Congressional race early and lining up a bunch of endorsements (presumably to deter would-be rivals in your own party), why wouldn’t you work hard on fundraising? Lofgren’s year-end financial report was even weaker than his third-quarter Federal Election Commission filing, which is saying something.

Lofgren isn’t giving four-term Democratic incumbent Dave Loebsack a thing to worry about, and he’s leaving the door wide open for Mariannette Miller-Meeks to come in and take the Republican primary to represent IA-02. Follow me after the jump for details from the FEC reports.  

In the past, I’ve pulled together highlights from Congressional candidates’ quarterly financial reports in a single post, but with so many candidates running for Congress in Iowa, I’ve decided to separate the races. Year-end reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission show that for the second quarter in a row, Democratic challenger Jim Mowrer raised more money than six-term incumbent Representative Steve King (IA-04).

Follow me after the jump for details.

UPDATE: The Hill’s Cameron Joseph and Alexandra Jaffe named King one of five Congressional incumbent “fourth quarter fundraising losers.”

Ever since David Young first revealed his plans to run for the U.S. Senate, I’ve had trouble understanding how a professional Congressional staffer could win a Republican primary in Iowa. By all accounts Young is a bright, capable, hard-working Iowa native, but who is supposed to be his constituency? Candidates who have spent years building networks among conservative activists here will have a natural advantage over Young, who worked in Washington for 17 years before moving back to Iowa in 2013.

After Representative Tom Latham announced his retirement, Young switched from the U.S. Senate to the third district Congressional race, but that doesn’t change the fundamental weakness of his candidacy. He may be the contender best-prepared to work in Congress, but I doubt that’s what primary voters are looking for. When Young joined the Senate field, Robert Cramer praised him as “a ‘man of integrity,’ trustworthy and an ‘across-the-board conservative.'” But even though Cramer has known Young for decades and thinks highly of him, he’s not backing him in IA-03. On the contrary, Cramer himself is seeking the GOP nomination for Latham’s seat.

This week Young’s campaign announced its most prominent endorsements so far: former U.S. Representatives Tom Tauke and Jim Ross Lightfoot. I’ve posted the press release after the jump. Tauke represented northeast Iowa and hasn’t served in Congress since losing the 1990 U.S. Senate race to Tom Harkin. Lightfoot represented parts of southwest Iowa that are in the current IA-03, but he hasn’t been in Congress since losing to Harkin in 1996. He was last seen in this state blowing a big lead over Tom Vilsack in the 1998 gubernatorial race. Following that debacle, Lightfoot “became a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., [and] is now owner of Texas-based Lightfoot Strategies, a government relations consulting company.” Hard to see him having any pull with the Iowa Republican base today.

The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to delay for four years “most flood insurance premium hikes resulting from a 2012 law.” Ramsey Cox reported for The Hill,

The Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, S. 1926, delays a required increase in flood insurance premiums for some homes and would allow homeowners to maintain existing flood insurance subsidies even after they are sold. Supporters of the bill say these changes are needed while the government studies whether homeowners can afford these higher costs.

In 2012, Congress passed flood insurance reform, the Biggert-Waters Act, to ensure the bankrupt program regained stability, but some lawmakers have complained that the law was ill-conceived because the new rates are too high for some people to stay in their homes.

S. 1926 would delay language that would immediately eliminate flood insurance subsidies for homes built before 1975 upon the sale of those homes. The bill would delay this trigger until the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does an affordability study. FEMA would also have to certify that its flood maps are accurate, a process the agency has said could take three years.

Fourteen Republicans joined all of the Democrats present, including Senator Tom Harkin, to pass the bill by 67 votes to 32 (roll call). Senator Chuck Grassley was one of the no votes. Before the vote on final passage, the Senate rejected three amendments to the flood insurance bill (click through for details). Harkin opposed all three amendments, while Grassley voted for two of the GOP amendments and against a third. I have not seen any public comment from Iowa’s senators on this bill but will update this post as needed.

To no one’s surprise, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum endorsed Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s campaign in Iowa’s third Congressional district today. The official statement, enclosed below, mentions that Santorum supported Schultz’s campaign for secretary of state in 2010, and that the following year, Schultz became the only statewide elected official to endorse a candidate before the Iowa caucuses, picking Santorum with less than a month to go.

I had to laugh at Santorum praising Schultz for “insuring each vote counts” only a day after news broke that at least three eligible Iowa voters had their ballots wrongly tossed out in 2012. (A separate post is in progress on that story.)

For now, let’s briefly consider how much Santorum and his Patriot Voices PAC can help Schultz in a primary against five other declared candidates, and possibly more before the filing deadline in March.

UPDATE: The Freedom Works PAC also endorsed Schultz this week. Added more details at the end of this post.