Gannett has hired Carol Hunter as the Des Moines Register’s new executive editor, the newspaper announced yesterday.

The Des Moines Register ran a lead editorial two weeks ago about “Blurring the lines between news and public relations” in Iowa’s third-largest city:

But rather than create a website to issue press releases or connect directly to the public, the city of Davenport went a step further, creating a site called Davenport Today and packaging the information as if it was independently produced journalism rather than information crafted and disseminated by the same public entity that was being “covered.”

[…] From the outset, Davenport Today was criticized for being nothing more than a taxpayer-funded propaganda machine — which it was. That meant all of the information it shared with the public, no matter how solid, was tainted in the eyes of some readers. Even the articles that appeared to present an unvarnished look at city operations were viewed as self-serving since they emanated from City Hall itself.

At least the now-defunct Davenport Today site openly published material authored by official sources.

Over the weekend, the Des Moines Register and Cedar Rapids Gazette ran a barely-rewritten Iowa State University press release under reporters’ bylines.

This weekend the Quad-City Times shut off comments on its website. Executive editor Autumn Phillips had been “debating this for months” and discussed the change with some longtime readers as well as with the newspaper’s staff. The last straw was a stream of racist or otherwise offensive off-topic comments below a story about man who had died after being attacked in an area public park.

I’ve been watching this for years at newspapers across the country. It’s not unique to the Quad-City Times, though the prejudices vary by region. Every once in a while, I see a lively, on-topic debate. In a sea of ridiculousness, hate speech and online bullying, I occasionally read thoughtful perspectives I hadn’t considered. Unfortunately, that isn’t the norm and it’s been a very long time since I believed in the dream media companies once had about providing a town square for the community to meet and use our journalism as a launching pad to connect, debate and bring about change. […]

Today, if you want to comment on an article, you won’t be able to post anonymously on our website. You’ll need to use one of the other forums we provide. […]

It takes courage to share an opinion when your name is attached. Knowing that, it’s my hope that disabling comments on qctimes.com will contribute to a civil equilibrium, a return to thoughtful discourse and elevate the discussion around the important issues we are facing in the Quad-Cities and as a nation.

I support Phillips’ decision and wholeheartedly agree that for the most part, newspaper comments sections are a “sea of ridiculousness, hate speech and online bullying.”

But the key problem isn’t anonymous commenters. It’s the failure to moderate.

The Des Moines Register announced today that executive editor Amalie Nash will soon start a new job supervising the work of “about 50” Gannett news organizations “in the Midwest and the west side of the country.”

Nash, who has served as the Register’s executive editor since January 2014, has focused heavily on watchdog reporting and innovation.

She advocated for changes to Iowa’s public records laws and spearheaded a push for access to public records, including two lawsuits seeking records in high-profile cases. She also was one of the editors of the award-winning project “Harvest of Change,” the first virtual reality news project in the country to be designed for the Oculus Rift platform.

Nash oversaw the Register’s award-winning coverage of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, which broke digital traffic records and saw the organization launch new initiatives such as public forums and mock caucuses.

I enclose below background on those open records lawsuits.

Nash will be in charge of the search for her successor, while the newspaper’s news director Carol Hunter “will serve as interim editor until Nash’s replacement is hired.” I’ll update this post with the job listing when one becomes available.

My probably impossible dream is that the new executive editor will make the Register’s website more user-friendly, with as few auto-play videos as possible. Those videos are usually a waste of time for reporters and readers, especially when there is no extra content, just a writer summarizing an article out loud. Most online news consumers would rather read a story.

UPDATE: Added below comments from Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, for which Nash has served as first vice president.

SECOND UPDATE: Added the job description Gannett posted on August 9.

An advocacy group run by former Iowa House Speaker Chris Rants “is operating with the primary purpose of influencing political campaigns” in violation of federal tax code, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Last month CREW filed Internal Revenue Service complaints against ten 501(c)(4) groups, which claim non-profit status as “social welfare” organizations but spent a large share of their funds on political activity during the 2014 election cycle. One of them was the Iowa-based Legacy Foundation Action Fund, for which Rants serves as president and secretary. (The fund did not seek to influence any Iowa elections in 2014.) CREW also filed criminal complaints against six of the ten groups for “falsely representing the amount of money they spent on political activity in 2014”; the Legacy Foundation Action Fund was not among them.

Although Rants’s 501(c)(4) does not disclose its donors, CREW was able to determine that most of its 2014 funding came from American Encore, a “secretive” 501(c)(4) group “formerly known as the Center to Protect Patient Rights.” American Encore has been described as “the linchpin” of the Koch brothers dark money network. The Legacy Foundation Action Fund reported $980,000 in “contributions and grants” on its 2014 tax return; $880,000 of that amount came from American Encore.

More details on CREW’s IRS complaint are below. Rants responded via e-mail, “I am confident that Legation Foundation Action Fund is in compliance with the IRS rules. Legal counsel is reviewing the tax returns and we will file any amendment necessary to ensure the tax returns accurately reflected the organizations actives.”

Governor Terry Branstad’s son Eric Branstad will manage Donald Trump’s general election campaign in Iowa, Tim Alberta reported for the National Review today, citing unnamed GOP sources. The younger Branstad told Alberta, “There’s nothing formal yet” and said he offered to serve in that capacity at a “leadership meeting” with Trump campaign officials last week.

Branstad runs Matchpoint Strategies, a “Public Affairs and Fundraising Firm ‘making the impossible happen’ for a wide range of clients – corporations, trade associations, governments and non-profit advocacy groups.” He was state director for the pro-ethanol group America’s Renewable Future before this year’s Iowa caucuses, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct mail and advertising. A large portion of the money targeted Ted Cruz, at the time the front-runner with Iowa Republicans.

America’s Renewable Future did not endorse a presidential candidate, but Alberta quotes Republican sources who say Eric Branstad “spoke on Trump’s behalf” at his precinct caucus in Des Moines on February 1. In what some viewed as a “de facto” endorsement of Trump, Governor Branstad called on Iowans to defeat Cruz in mid-January. Since Trump locked up the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, Branstad has repeatedly said he is fully behind the presumptive nominee. He also downplayed Trump’s recent comments about so-called “Mexican” Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

Eric Branstad’s job will be more important than that of most state campaign managers for Trump. Daily Kos user ncec1948 gamed out various November outcomes here. Every winning scenario for Trump relies on Iowa’s six electoral votes. I enclose below excerpts from ncec1948’s analysis but recommend clicking through to read the whole post. Most electoral vote projections currently list Iowa as a tossup, though some forecasters see our state leaning Democratic. Iowans have favored the Republican only once in the last seven presidential elections, when President George W. Bush barely defeated John Kerry here in 2004.

With the governor’s son running Trump’s effort here, down-ticket Iowa Republicans who would prefer to distance themselves from the nominee have an even more difficult balancing act ahead.

UPDATE: The Trump campaign confirmed the hire when contacted by the Des Moines Register’s Jason Noble. Eric Branstad told Noble, “I want to work with the campaign and share with Iowans what I’ve gotten to know, and that is how great of a leader and person Mr. Trump is.” For his part, the governor said he was late to learn his son was under consideration for the job and “never really played a role” in helping him land the position.

Noble advanced the story while giving credit to the National Review for breaking the news about the Branstad hire. In contrast, Radio Iowa’s O.Kay Henderson reported the story without attribution or a link to Alberta’s post.

UPDATE: Oldson won this race by a 67 percent to 33 percent margin.

One of the most closely-watched state legislative results tonight will be the contest between seven-term State Representative Jo Oldson and Democratic challenger Eddie Mauro in Iowa House district 41. The district covering parts of the west and south sides of Des Moines contains more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans, so the winner of today’s primary will almost certainly be elected in November, even if the GOP nominates a candidate late here. (No one filed in time to run in the GOP primary.)

Both campaigns have been working the phones and knocking on doors for months. Iowa’s two largest labor unions, AFSCME and the Iowa Federation of Labor, as well as the National Abortion Rights Action League have been doing GOTV for Oldson, as have a number of her fellow Iowa House Democrats. As of May 24, the early voting numbers in House district 41 were higher than for any other state House race.

Bleeding Heartland posted background on Oldson and Mauro here. I’ve encouraged my friends in the district to stick with Oldson. She has been a reliable progressive vote on major legislation, and she was among only thirteen House Democrats to vote against the costly and ineffective 2013 commercial property tax cut. I have no problem with an entrenched incumbent facing a primary challenge. No one is entitled to hold a legislative seat for life. But even if women were not already underrepresented in the Iowa House–which they are and will continue to be–I would need a better reason to replace a capable incumbent than the reasons Mauro has offered in his literature and in an interview with me last month. Excerpts from that interview are below, along with examples of campaign literature Democrats in House district 41 have been receiving in the mailbox and at the doorstep.

Congratulations are in order for Jason Noble, whom the Des Moines Register hired as chief political reporter after conducting a national search. Noble joined the Register in 2011, having previously covered the Missouri statehouse for the Kansas City Star. He wrote most of the Register’s articles about Michele Bachmann before the 2012 Iowa caucuses and reported on Jeb Bush’s Iowa campaign last year. Since March 2015, Noble has been on the “Reality Check” beat, checking the accuracy of political or policy statements for the Register and occasionally for Politifact. He also produced the 10-part Three Tickets podcast series about the history of the Iowa caucuses.

I’m excited to see how Noble approaches what he called “the best job in journalism.” The Register has a massive agenda-setting role, not just for other Iowa media. The paper’s reporting on this year’s U.S. Senate race will be watched closely by the national press corps. As Noble puts his stamp on his new position, I hope he will:

The Des Moines Register announced in late March that Jennifer Jacobs was leaving the newspaper after twelve years, the last five as chief politics reporter. A national search is under way for her successor, who will handle “top-level political reporting, including breaking news, Iowa Poll results, analysis of the Iowa political scene and how it relates to the national conversation.”

As a heavy consumer of Iowa political journalism, I look forward to seeing someone new take on this important job. I wish Jacobs all the best covering the presidential campaign for Bloomberg News, but it’s no secret I wasn’t a fan of how she approached her beat, sometimes seeming to favor certain candidates, recycling comments reported by others as clickbait, and even occasionally allowing newsmakers to review a full story draft before publication.

While campaigns and elections will remain the primary focus for the Register’s chief politics reporter, I hope Jacobs’ successor will also dig in to the work of Iowa’s elected officials at the state and federal level. Though the Register’s editors seem to like the “8 things to watch for” genre, my preference would be for less speculation about what might happen and more scoops on what politicians have done or said, especially actions that were never intended to reach a wide audience (as opposed to news leaked with the goal of maximizing exposure in Iowa’s leading newspaper).

I enclose below excerpts from the job listing Gannett posted on April 11. Another must-read for any journalist thinking about applying: the memo Gannett circulated in early 2015 on “Minimal job requirements of a self-directed reporter” at the Des Moines Register.

Steve Roberts is a walking encyclopedia of Iowa GOP politics since the 1970s. The Des Moines-based attorney is a past state chair of the Republican Party of Iowa as well as a longtime Republican National Committeeman. In 2008, state lawmaker Sandy Greiner suggested Roberts should be declared “king of Des Moines” after he helped beat back an effort within the RNC to take away Iowa’s first in the nation spot for the 2012 election cycle. Someone needs to persuade Roberts to write his memoirs or let a video archivist capture his entertaining stories.

I called Roberts on March 3 to ask about events at the 1980 state Republican convention, which I plan to cover in a future Throwback Thursday post. Roberts was the top Iowa GOP official at that time. While answering one of my questions, he mentioned in passing,

[George H.W.] Bush won the Iowa caucuses, but I’ll tell you now, in looking back on it, our computers broke down. We didn’t get to count a number of rural counties, and very possibly [Ronald] Reagan won.

Wait, what?

Patty Judge’s decision to run for U.S. Senate was Iowa’s biggest political news last week. Taking their cue from Washington-based pols who recruited the former lieutenant governor, many national reporters who covered the story took for granted that Judge will be the Democratic challenger to six-term Senator Chuck Grassley, glossing over the fact that she will face serious competition in the June primary.

On the flip side, the Des Moines Register’s Kathie Obradovich and Howie Klein of the Down With Tyranny! blog recently made some odd assessments in their reviews of the Democratic race for Senate.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

A year ago this weekend, nine presidential candidates, both of Iowa’s U.S. senators, three of our U.S. House representatives, Governor Terry Branstad, and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds were among the speakers at Bruce Rastetter’s inaugural Iowa Ag Summit. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was the early front-runner in the presidential field and had just rolled out his first big batch of endorsements here. Although Donald Trump had recently hired heavyweight conservative organizer Chuck Laudner, few people expected him to be a strong contender for the Iowa caucuses. The billionaire didn’t make it to Rastetter’s event; like Marco Rubio, he initially accepted the Ag Summit invitation but developed schedule conflicts later.

Jeb Bush looked like a strong presidential contender in March 2015. He was raising money like no one else in the GOP field and had hired veteran Iowa political operative David Kochel earlier in the year. The day before the Ag Summit, the Des Moines Register ran a front-page feature on Bush that was so flattering to the former Florida governor, I felt compelled to write this post and begin work on a lengthier critique of the Register’s political coverage, which took nearly two months to complete.

Chris Christie was among the Ag Summit speakers. More than six months later, he picked up endorsements from Rastetter and several other prominent Iowa business Republicans. Christie’s poor performance on caucus night showed the limits of the would-be kingmaker’s influence, and that of others in Branstad’s orbit who had actively supported Christie’s presidential campaign.

Rastetter invited more than a half-dozen prominent Democrats to his Ag Summit. Wisely, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and all of the potential presidential candidates blew off the event. Only one Democrat spoke to the gathering: former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge, in her capacity as co-chair of America’s Renewable Future. That group was formed and funded by biofuels companies and related interest groups to advocate for the Renewable Fuel Standard. (Later in 2015, America’s Renewable Future spent more than $100,000 on radio ads and direct mail attacking Ted Cruz over his stand on the ethanol mandate.)

I enclose below a video of Judge’s remarks a year ago this weekend. Near the beginning of her speech, she commented, “Let me say from the outset, I truly believe that I disagree with just almost everyone that you will see on this stage today, on almost every issue. However, I certainly hope that we do agree on the importance of maintaining the Renewable Fuel Standard and keeping Iowa leading our nation forward in the development of renewable fuel.”

I doubt anyone would have predicted a year ago that Walker wouldn’t even make it to the Iowa caucuses, that Trump and Cruz would be leading in the GOP delegate count, or that Judge would enter the race against U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley.

P.S.- The Greeley (Colorado) Tribune published a good backgrounder on where all the remaining presidential candidates stand on agricultural issues.

Attribution such as “first reported by” is an appropriate way for journalists to acknowledge another media outlet’s role in breaking news. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Ethics Guide states,

Any information taken from other published or broadcast sources should receive credit within the body of the story. Reporters and editors also should be aware of previously published/broadcast work on the same subject and give those news organizations credit if they have broken new ground or published exclusive material before any others.

One of Iowa’s leading newspapers doesn’t hold its reporters to the same standard.

When politicians lie, opponents often echo longtime Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous words: You’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.

Politicians can get away with deception, however, when journalists present conflicting facts as opposing viewpoints in a “he said/she said” frame. So it was when Governor Terry Branstad recently touted phony job creation numbers, and reputable Iowa journalists hid behind “critics say” rather than acknowledging reality: no serious economist would recognize those statistics.

And so it was when the Des Moines Register again covered the Iowa Department of Revenue’s unprecedented attempt to rewrite tax code through the rule-making process. Statehouse reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel’s attention to the topic is welcome. The rule change has been an under-reported Iowa politics story this fall, even though it could have a huge impact on the state budget in coming years. Unfortunately, as was the case in earlier articles for the Register on the same controversy, Pfannenstiel avoided stating some important truths about the Branstad administration’s efforts, attributing such observations to “others” including “Democratic lawmakers.”

The journalist’s reflex to appear impartial by presenting factual statements as partisan opinions is part of what media critic Jay Rosen has called the View from Nowhere.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, writing is a labor of love for me. Some posts are much more labor-intensive than others.

All of the pieces linked below took at least a couple of days to put together. Some were in progress for weeks before I was ready to hit the publish button. (No editor, deadlines, or word limits can be a dangerous combination.) A few of the particularly time-consuming posts required additional research or interviews. More often, the challenge was figuring out the best way to present the material.

Several pieces that would have qualified for this list are not included, because they are still unfinished. Assuming I can get those posts where they need to be, I plan to publish them during the first quarter of 2016.

While working on another piece about Iowa politics highlights from the year, I decided to start a new Bleeding Heartland tradition. Writing is a labor of love for me, as for many bloggers, but let’s face it: not all posts are equally lovable.

The most important political events can be frustrating or maddening to write up, especially when there is so much ground to cover.

Any blogger will confirm that posts attracting the most readers are not necessarily the author’s favorites. The highest-traffic Bleeding Heartland post of 2015–in fact, the highest-traffic post in this blog’s history–was just another detailed account of a message-testing opinion poll, like many that came before. Word to the wise: if you want a link from the Drudge Report, it helps to type up a bunch of negative statements about Hillary Clinton.

Sometimes, committing to a topic leads to a long, hard slog. I spent more time on this critique of political coverage at the Des Moines Register than on any other piece of writing I’ve done in the last decade. But honestly, the task was more depressing than enjoyable.

Other pieces were pure pleasure. Follow me after the jump for my top fifteen from 2015.

Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders as the first choice of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers by 48 percent to 41 percent, with all other candidates far behind, according to a new poll by Selzer & Co. for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics. Jennifer Jacobs reported the main findings in today’s Des Moines Register. Since the poll was in the field before Vice President Joe Biden ruled out running for president again, the Register reallocated Biden’s supporters to their named second-choice candidate. Selzer’s previous Iowa poll showed Clinton ahead of Sanders by 37 percent to 30 percent with Biden in the field and by 43 percent to 35 percent without Biden as an option.

After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from Jacobs’ report, focusing on weak points for Clinton and Sanders.

Just 2 percent of respondents named Martin O’Malley as their first choice in the Register’s latest poll, behind “not sure” at 4 percent and “uncommitted” at 3 percent. Bleeding Heartland has a post in progress with my hypothesis on why O’Malley is getting no traction in Iowa, despite doing all the right things in terms of organizing and retail politics. Every time I’ve seen the former Maryland governor campaign here this year, audiences have responded favorably to his stump speech. I usually hear good feedback from other Democrats who have attended his events too, but it’s not translating into enough people signing supporter cards. Unfortunately for O’Malley, both Clinton and Sanders performed very well in last week’s debate, which drew record viewership for a debate featuring Democratic presidential candidates.

Jim Webb made the right choice to drop out of the race; the Register’s new poll showed him tied with Lincoln Chafee at 1 percent. Yesterday, Webb tweeted that it’s time for this country to “fix” the criminal justice system. I hope he will become heavily engaged in criminal justice reform efforts at the federal and state levels, instead of pouring his energy into an independent presidential bid.

The most shocking finding in the the Register’s latest poll: Iowa Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is “good for Iowa.” Among likely Democratic caucus-goers, 39 percent said the TPP deal is good for Iowa, 27 percent said bad for Iowa, and 34 percent were unsure. Among likely Republican caucus-goers, just 27 percent said TPP was good for Iowa, 30 percent said bad for Iowa, and 42 percent were unsure. For decades, the Iowa business community and in particular representatives of Big Ag have spun “free trade” agreements as good for this state, so I would have expected much stronger support for TPP among Republicans.

UPDATE: Quinnipiac released a new Iowa poll on October 23 showing Clinton leading Sanders by 51 percent to 40 percent, with O’Malley at 4 percent. I enclosed below excerpts from the polling memo. Last month’s Quinnipiac poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers showed Sanders at 41 percent and Clinton at 40 percent.

The Des Moines Register launched Jason Noble’s ten-part podcast about the Iowa caucuses last week. You can listen to the “Three Tickets” at the Register’s website or download the episodes through iTunes or Stitcher. After telling his own Iowa caucus “origin story” (hearing Howard Dean sing part of an Outkast song on a campaign bus in 2003), Noble devoted most of the first episode (“Peak Caucus”) to the 2008 Democratic contest. Roughly 240,000 Iowans showed up for Democratic precinct caucuses on January 3, mostly to support Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Hillary Clinton. Their numbers more than doubled the roughly 119,000 Iowans who caucused for Republican candidates the same night and nearly doubled the previous record-high Democratic Iowa caucus turnout, set in 2004.

Bleeding Heartland covered the 2008 caucuses extensively. Even so, “Peak Caucus” recalled some moments I had mostly forgotten and got me thinking about other aspects of the campaign I remembered well. So Noble succeeded in motivating this political junkie to listen to the rest of the “Three Tickets” series.

A few reactions to the first episode are after the jump.

From a liberal’s perspective, Bruce Rastetter is the closest thing Iowa has to a James Bond villain. After making his fortune off a polluting industry (large-scale hog confinements), Rastetter provided the “seed money” for the 501(c)4 group American Future Fund, which quickly became one of the most influential conservative dark money groups, a “prolific funder” of negative ads often “deemed false.” In 2009, Rastetter played a key role in coaxing Terry Branstad out of political retirement. He then parlayed his status as the top donor to Branstad’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign into an appointment to the prestigious Iowa Board of Regents. Thanks to a little intervention from the governor, Rastetter moved quickly into a leadership position on that board, where he “blurred the line” between business and board work, hoping to expand one of his corporations’ land holdings on another continent. Last month, Rastetter made news as the apparent mastermind behind hiring business executive Bruce Harreld as president of the University of Iowa, over strong objections by stakeholders on campus.

A certain type of Republican is as attracted to Rastetter’s power as many Democrats are repelled by it. The “quiet but fierce” Rastetter is a top donor to GOP establishment candidates and committees in Iowa. He dislikes the “kingmaker” label often attached to him, but who else could get the governor, lieutenant governor, both U.S. senators, three U.S. House members, and nine presidential candidates to show up for an event in its first year, the way Rastetter did for his Iowa Ag Summit in March?

Rastetter says he donates to candidates to “make a difference,” not to “get access.” Whatever his motives, he has tremendous influence. Governor Branstad said earlier this year that he keeps in touch with Rastetter “at least once a week” and “greatly” values the businessman’s opinions. So do some other high-dollar Republican donors, who flew with Rastetter to New Jersey in 2011, hoping to recruit Governor Chris Christie to run for president. Last week, most of those business leaders stood with Rastetter again to endorse Christie’s presidential bid. The event in Des Moines capped a good couple of months for Christie here in recruiting backers from the Iowa GOP establishment.

How much will those endorsements help the New Jersey governor win over rank and file Iowa Republicans who show up at precinct caucuses?  

Scrutinizing the work of government at all levels is one of the media’s most important functions. Access to public records is essential for journalists to do that job. The Des Moines Register was right to pursue and review e-mails from former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Nancy Sebring’s school district account.

What’s not right: the Register’s editors acting like their most reprehensible call in recent memory was some kind of muckraking triumph.  

An important Congressional vote went unreported in the Des Moines Register this week, despite two lead editorials in the paper within the past month urging Congress to act on that very issue.

The disconnect provides a good example of a problem I flagged in this post about the Des Moines Register’s political coverage. Ever since the Register closed its Washington bureau, Iowans are less likely to know what our representatives in Congress are doing on our behalf.  

David Chivers started work yesterday as the Des Moines Register’s president and publisher. The Des Moines native comes from a strong background in digital marketing. Speaking to Register employees on the day Gannett announced his hiring, Chivers acknowledged he has a lot to learn about the newspaper and said he welcomed “candid discussions” on how to “push the brand and the business forward.”

In that spirit, I offer my thoughts on ways the Register could better serve readers who rely on the paper for political news. Balanced, fact-based reporting is central to the Register’s brand as “the newspaper Iowa depends upon.” Unfortunately, last year’s election coverage hurt the Register’s reputation among many politically-engaged Iowans. Acknowledging the problem is essential to avoid compounding the damage during the upcoming Iowa caucus campaign.

Happy Passover or Happy Easter to all who are celebrating this weekend. In past years Bleeding Heartland has posted links about those religious holidays. For today’s open thread, I’m reflecting on the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling, announced on April 3, 2009.

Lambda Legal, which represented the Varnum plaintiffs, published a timeline of the case. The LGBT advocacy group filed the lawsuit in December 2005, banking on the Iowa Supreme Court’s “extraordinary history” of independence and “civil rights leadership.”

If Iowa lawmakers had approved a state constitutional amendment on marriage, the Varnum case might never have been filed (in anticipation of Iowans approving a ban on same-sex marriage, as voters had done in many other states). But during the 2004 legislative session, the marriage amendment failed by one vote in the upper chamber, thanks to the united Senate Democratic caucus, joined by GOP senators Maggie Tinsman, Don Redfern, Mary Lundby, and Doug Shull. All four Republican moderates had left the legislature by the time the Iowa Supreme Court ruled on Varnum. Redfern retired in 2004. Tinsman lost her 2006 primary to a social conservative challenger. Shull retired from the Senate in 2006 and unsuccessfully sought a seat in the state House that year. Lundby retired from the legislature in 2008 and passed away the following year.  

Reading through the early Democratic and Republican reaction to the Varnum decision should make all Iowa Democrats proud. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal and former House Speaker Pat Murphy deserve credit for their leadership at a time when some Democrats would have run for cover on an issue perceived to be unpopular. Minority civil rights should never be conditional on majority approval.

As for the Republicans in the Bleeding Heartland community, you can be proud that your party’s state legislators seem less and less interested in fighting the losing battle to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples.

Three of the seven justices who concurred in Varnum v Brien (Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, Justice David Baker, and Justice Michael Streit) lost their jobs in Iowa’s 2010 retention elections. Justice David Wiggins survived a campaign against his retention in 2012. The remaining three justices who concurred in the decision are up for retention in 2016: Chief Justice Mark Cady (author of the ruling), Justice Daryl Hecht, and Justice Brent Appel. It’s not yet clear whether Bob Vander Plaats and his fellow-travellers will make a serious effort to remove them, or whether they will give up in the face of Iowans’ growing acceptance of marriage equality.

The LGBT advocacy group One Iowa holds an annual gala around the anniversary of the Varnum ruling. Last night the group honored Iowa Senate President Pam Jochum and Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu, among others. I enclose below a statement from the group marking six years since gay and lesbian couples won the freedom to marry in Iowa.

Are Iowans “government-dependent” types who should lose our first-in-the-nation status because we embarrass ourselves and the Republican Party?

No, but the way some people reacted to comments by a political strategist should embarrass Iowans and can only hurt the Iowa caucuses.

Ten potential Republican presidential candidates will speak at Bruce Rastetter’s Iowa Agriculture Summit today, and a few more may send videotaped remarks. But only one GOP contender was the focus of a long and flattering feature by the Des Moines Register’s chief political correspondent the day before the event.

When Jeb Bush hired longtime Iowa GOP consultant David Kochel, I figured friendly coverage in the Register would be coming to the former Florida governor. During last year’s U.S. Senate campaign, just about every line Joni Ernst’s backers wanted out there ended up in some Des Moines Register piece by Jennifer Jacobs. Still, Jacobs’ spread on Bush in Friday’s Des Moines Register shocked me. The message could hardly have been more perfectly tailored for Iowa Republicans if Bush’s spin doctors had written it themselves.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center have uncovered damning evidence that fossil fuels companies paid a scholar to produce research casting doubt on whether human activity is causing climate change. Justin Gillis and John Schwartz report for the New York Times that Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,

has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.

The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.

Now that NBC News has suspended anchor Brian Williams for six months over untruthful accounts of his experience as an embedded reporter in Iraq, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is under a new level of scrutiny. He has falsely claimed to have reported on the Falklands War from a “war zone” and now won’t answer questions about the matter. Journalist Eric Jon Engberg remembers things differently from O’Reilly. Excerpts from his account are after the jump. I will be shocked if Fox News disciplines one of its stars. UPDATE: Multiple former CBS correspondents have spoken out to “challenge O’Reilly’s depiction of Buenos Aires as a ‘war zone’ and a ‘combat situation.’ They also doubt his description of a CBS cameraman being injured in the chaos.”

The Des Moines Register’s chief politics correspondent Jennifer Jacobs published a story on Friday headlined, “Joni Ernst targeted by hoax ‘news’ reports.” Her primary example was this post on the National Report website, titled “Joni Ernst: Vaccines Should Be Outlawed As They ‘Manipulate Brains,’ Make People More Liberal.” Many people circulated the vaccine story on social media, unaware that it came from a satirical website. But satire is not the same thing as a hoax. A “hoax ‘news’ report” is more like when Jacobs used her position at the Des Moines Register to suggest that Bruce Braley had claimed to be a farmer–a charge that played into Republican campaign narratives but made no sense to anyone who had ever heard Braley’s stump speeches or read his official bio.  

UPDATE: The day after this post appeared, Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen yanked Highfill from the Ways and Means Committee.

Did anyone read Josh Hafner’s feature on Republican State Representative Jake Highfill in Sunday’s Des Moines Register? The gist was that Highfill, the youngest current Iowa House member at age 24, has grown into his job as state legislator. He now feels “mature, more confident, he said, like he has a handle on the issues,” and his constituents aren’t bothered by his youth.

A few salient facts were missing from the profile.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

A few days ago, the Romenesko blog delivered a depressing inside view of life for Des Moines Register reporters. I encourage you to click through and read the whole memo on “Minimal job requirements of a self-directed reporter.” Bleeding Heartland has long lamented the relentless series of cuts to the Register’s news division through buyouts and layoffs. The flip side to that story is the growing list of jobs journalists are expected to do now. Judging by this memo, Gannett expects news staff not only to report well-researched “watchdog” pieces and breaking news, but also to edit their own work, closely monitor how stories are performing on the website (changing headlines if necessary), and do marketing and branding tasks that I wouldn’t consider a reporter’s job. On top of all that, the bosses expect journalists to have time to engage with readers on various social media, promote their colleagues’ stories as well as their own, and set up “get-to-know-you coffee meetings” with “key people on your beat.” Who has time for all this?

But wait! I buried the lede. The bombshell comes in the first passage under the first subheading (GROW YOUR AUDIENCE):

Define your audience: Work with your coach or strategist to define in detail the audience you are trying to reach for specific pieces of content. Also keep in mind our overall focus on the 25-45 age demographic.

Keep in mind the interests of your core audience as you decide what stories to write.

I will shortly exit the Register’s desired age cohort, joining what must be a very large share of the newspaper’s subscribers.

Presumably the “focus on the 25-45 age demographic” is why the Register’s “coaches” and “strategists” don’t mind when reporters waste time on stories such as what Mila Kunis said on Reddit about Casey’s breakfast pizza. Though in fairness, that “news” brings a collateral benefit: free publicity for a retail chain that’s a potential major advertiser in Iowa newspapers.

The Register’s memo expanded my vocabulary with one new word: “listicle,” suggested as a way for a self-directed reporter to “feed your audience’s interest” in a hot topic. “Listicle” refers to “a short-form of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure, but is fleshed out with sufficient copy to be published as an article.” Like many bloggers, I enjoy writing that kind of post (Three silver linings from Iowa’s 2014 elections, 15 Iowa politics predictions for 2015, Five political realities that should worry Democrats, Three political realities that should worry Republicans). I just didn’t know the format had a special name.

Speaking of engaging with your readers, I have a request for Bleeding Heartland’s core audience of anyone interested in Iowa politics. As the Iowa caucus campaign heats up, please keep your eyes and ears open for telephone surveys, push-polls, or direct mail promoting or attacking any specific candidate. Feel free to post a guest diary containing notes on the poll or screen-shots of the direct mail, or send me a private and confidential heads up by e-mail. This also means you, Republicans in the Bleeding Heartland community: I know you’re out there, and I appreciate your taking the time to read a left-leaning website. With a more lively competition on the GOP side, Iowa’s registered Republicans are more likely to receive newsworthy message-testing calls or hit pieces as the year goes on.  

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Today’s Des Moines Register featured a front-page article by Kathy Bolten about the massive racial disparity in arrest rates across Iowa. The piece contained new analysis and statistics on a longstanding problem in our state. I’ve posted some excerpts after the jump. This database includes detailed from 41 Iowa law enforcement jurisdictions that “arrest blacks at a higher rate than people of other races.” Iowa-Nebraska NAACP President Betty Andrews noted that when blacks and whites are detained for the same alleged offenses, police are more likely to charge blacks. The American Civil Liberties Union found last year, “Iowa has the largest racial disparity in the country of arrests in marijuana possession, with blacks being more than eight times as likely to be arrested than whites, even though whites use marijuana at about the same rate […].”

Speaking of double standards, MacKenzie Elmer reported for the Des Moines Register last week that on October 3, an Urbandale police officer let Joni Ernst’s spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel get away with driving drunk. Knowing that an arrest would get her fired, he let Hamel off with a warning. I’ve posted excerpts from that piece after the jump too. Raise your hand if you think a non-white drunk driver who initially lied to the police would have received the same sympathetic hearing from an Urbandale cop. Less than a month later, Hamel was arrested in West Des Moines for OWI. Fortunately, she didn’t kill or seriously injure anyone in the meantime.

Hamel’s arrest occurred on October 29, and she resigned from the Ernst campaign the following day. Surely reporters covering the IA-Sen race would have noticed that Ernst’s primary press contact was gone. Yet the Register’s first report on the incident appeared on the newspaper’s website on November 6 and in print the following day. Republican blogger Craig Robinson breathed a sign of relief: “Can you imagine the mess this would have created for Ernst if it had gotten out before Election Day?”

The delay fueled some suspicions that the Register held back the Hamel story until after the election. Given Ernst’s margin of victory, this news could not have affected the outcome, but getting knocked off message in the final days could have been significant in a close campaign. On November 7, I asked the Register’s political reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Jason Noble when they noticed Hamel was gone and when they found out why.

After getting no response for two days, I took the same questions to the Des Moines Register’s Editor and Vice President Amalie Nash. She responded promptly,

Thanks for asking the question. We published the story on Gretchen Hamel’s arrest as soon as we were able to confirm it. We were aware she had exited the campaign and inquired with Joni Ernst’s staff as soon as we found out she was gone. We were told she submitted her resignation due to a “drinking incident,” but the campaign declined to release additional details. We continued asking questions of other sources until we were able to find out where the incident occurred and get details from the police department. As soon as we got confirmation of her arrest, we published a story.

I was confused about why it took the Des Moines Register so long to confirm Hamel’s arrest. Details about the case were posted on the Iowa Courts Online website on October 30 and 31. Searching for Hamel’s name would have allowed any Register employee to confirm the arrest in seconds. Furthermore, a major newspaper presumably has a staffer checking arrest logs on a daily basis. When two WHO-TV reporters were arrested for drunk driving in Des Moines this past summer, the Register had a story up with their mugshots less than three days after the incidents.

Nash responded to my follow-up question by saying, “We have staff checking [arrest logs] daily in Des Moines, but not all surrounding communities on a daily basis.” Hamel was arrested in West Des Moines and booked at the Dallas County jail. Nash later elaborated,

We received the tip that she may have been arrested on an OWI last Wednesday [November 5] and were able to confirm and publish with details by Thursday [November 6].

As I noted, we don’t do daily stops at the West Des Moines Police Department to check arrest logs. We get over there as much as we can, but do not have the staffing to make a daily visit.

It seems unlikely that political reporters who talk frequently with Republican sources would not have heard anything about Hamel’s arrest until seven days after the fact. And if that’s true, I wonder why Jennifer Jacobs and Jason Noble didn’t just say so when I first asked them about it. In any event, that’s the official explanation from the Des Moines Register.

UPDATE: Some Iowa politics-watchers have asked me why it matters when the Register covered Hamel’s arrest. Although Ernst was winning the IA-Sen race regardless, it matters if anyone at any level in the Register’s newsroom held back a story to preserve good relations with and access to people around the senator to be.

The Des Moines rumor mill says other area reporters had the story about Hamel’s OWI but decided against running it, period. We can debate whether it’s newsworthy that a campaign staffer was driving drunk. But Register Editor Amalie Nash takes a different position: the incident “was newsworthy, which is why we published a story as soon as we learned of her arrest.” It is frankly hard to believe that no one in the newsroom knew about that event before November 5.

P.S. I forgot to mention that Annah Backstrom, the Register’s “content strategist for politics,” also declined to answer my straightforward question about when staff at the newspaper found out why Hamel was no longer working for Ernst.  

I’m making good on my promise to declare Ann Selzer a polling genius. Selzer & Co’s last survey of the Iowa Senate race looked like an outlier. No one else’s final poll showed Joni Ernst above 50 percent or leading Bruce Braley by more than 3 points. I was also skeptical because of the big swing toward Braley in Selzer’s mid-October poll, followed by a big swing against Braley in her late-October poll. But in the final analysis, Selzer’s last Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register called the race 51 percent to 44 percent for Ernst. At this writing, unofficial returns put her ahead by roughly 52 percent to 44 percent.

I still think it was irresponsible for the Sunday Des Moines Register to put Selzer on the front page saying the IA-Sen race was over, knowing that several other polls in the field at the same time had found the race to be a dead heat. However, Selzer called her shot and stood behind her data and methodology. I respect her for that.

I don’t have the same respect for everyone on the Des Moines Register’s politics team, but that’s a topic for another day and another post.

Iowa Republicans are up in arms today on social media, outraged that retiring Senator Tom Harkin said this about Joni Ernst’s campaign commercials (via Andrew Kaczynski):

“And there’s sort of this sense that, ‘Well, I hear so much about Joni Ernst. She is really attractive, and she sounds nice.’”

“Well I gotta to thinking about that. I don’t care if she’s as good looking as Taylor Swift or as nice as Mr. Rogers, but if she votes like Michele Bachmann, she’s wrong for the state of Iowa.”

To hear Republicans tell it, that is the most offensive comment ever.

People who oppose equal pay and longer paid parental leave for working women, who would force women to continue unwanted pregnancies, who think women’s employers should be able to veto insurance coverage of birth control, are in no position to play “PC police.”

Harkin’s meaning was clear: Ernst’s advertising has promoted her as appealing, while mostly avoiding substantive issues. But no matter how nice she may be or may appear in her own marketing, she supports policies that are wrong for Iowa.

By the way, Harkin has a perfect voting record on women’s rights issues and has always supported equal pay for women as well as reproductive rights and access to family planning. Republican hero Senator Chuck Grassley has opposed all of those policies at virtually every turn.

UPDATE: Inadvertently confirming that she wants this election to be about anything but substantive issues, Ernst went on Fox News Monday to distort what Harkin said:

“I was very offended that Senator Harkin would say that. I think it’s unfortunate that he and many of their party believe that you can’t be a real woman if you’re conservative and you’re female,” she told Fox News. “Again, I am greatly offended about that.”

Of course, Harkin neither said nor implied anything about a “real woman” not being conservative. He said Ernst supports policies that are wrong for Iowa. And as @SusaninIowa pointed out, it’s telling that Ernst wasn’t offended to have her voting record compared to Bachmann’s.

There was no need for Harkin to apologize for his remarks on Monday.

The Des Moines Register dropped a hammer on Iowa Democrats this evening with the latest statewide poll by Selzer & Co. The Register’s new poll finds Joni Ernst ahead of Bruce Braley by 51 percent to 44 percent, leading Braley in all four Congressional districts, and winning independent voters by 12 points. The poll looks like an outlier to me, compared to most other surveys that were in the field these past two weeks. No other poll has found Ernst above 50 percent this fall, and no non-partisan poll has found her leading Braley by more than four points. Of the ten other polls in the field during the last two weeks, two found Braley ahead by one point, two found the race tied, two found Ernst ahead by one point, and four found her ahead by margins between two and four points.

On November 5, either Ann Selzer will look like a genius, or a bunch of other pollsters (whose surveys found a close race here) will laugh.

The problem for Democrats is that the Register’s Iowa poll always generates more media coverage than any other poll. Even if this poll turns out to be an outlier, it could depress volunteers during the final days. A good GOTV program can overcome a one-point deficit but not seven points.

The Register’s latest poll found Governor Terry Branstad ahead of Democratic challenger Jack Hatch by 59 percent to 35 percent, one of the biggest leads any poll has found for Branstad. Selzer only polled on two other statewide races. Democratic Attorney General leads challenger Adam Gregg by 50 percent to 39 percent. The secretary of state race looks too close to call, with Republican Paul Pate ahead of Democrat Brad Anderson by 44 percent to 41 percent.

P.S. – There’s still plenty of time to enter Bleeding Heartland’s election prediction contest.

UPDATE: Below I’ve added excerpts from the Register’s analysis of the Selzer poll, along with the Braley campaign’s reaction, calling the Register poll an “outlier.”

SECOND UPDATE: Added more commentary on Senate polling below.

Yesterday the Iowa Democratic Party published online several disturbing documents about James Butler, the Republican nominee in Iowa House district 26. Butler narrowly won a GOP primary and faces first-term Democratic State Representative Scott Ourth. The seat covers most of Warren County, including the cities of Indianola and Carlisle (a detailed map is after the jump). House district 26 is one of central Iowa’s most politically balanced state legislative districts. As of October 2014, it contained 6,421 active registered Democrats, 6,802 Republicans, and 7,046 no-party voters.

Before the primary, I didn’t hear much about Butler beyond the information in his official bio, which highlighted his career with the Des Moines Police Department. This summer, the Republican Butler defeated in the primary, Eric Durbin, flirted with running for House district 26 as an independent, and I saw some grumbling on social media about Butler’s past. I dismissed that chatter as likely to be sour grapes coming from Durbin’s supporters.

The official documents uploaded yesterday by the Iowa Democratic Party shocked me. First, a court order of protection that Butler’s ex-girlfriend received in 2005 details physical abuse and threats by the police officer. Second, a lawsuit filed by apparently the same woman against Butler, which details further abuse, harassment, and threats, including violation of the no-contact order. Butler allegedly told the woman there was no point in calling law enforcement because he was a police officer. Third, Civil Service Commission and Polk County District Court documents related to Butler’s brief suspension from the Des Moines police over an incident in 1997, when he was working as an off-duty police officer at a convenience store. The Civil Service Commission and later the district court judge validated Butler’s suspension over severe misconduct.

As far as I’m concerned, that kind of record should be disqualifying in a candidate for political office. How is it possible the public is only now hearing about Butler’s background, two weeks before the election and nearly a month after early voting began? The Des Moines Register ran a brief story about Butler’s candidacy in March, based on his press release. Just this week, the paper ran a short profile of Butler as part of its “meet the candidate” series, again using information supplied by the candidate. Maybe I’m naive, but I would have thought the Register would be checking court records and public documents for mentions of state legislative candidates. I also would have expected Butler’s GOP primary opponent to have brought some of this information to light.

UPDATE: I forgot to raise another question: why was Butler able to remain a police officer with this kind of record?

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

I’ve been reading about opinion polls, and specifically, the polling industry’s growing challenge of sampling a group that looks like the electorate. Almost every day, a new poll appears on Iowa’s U.S. Senate race. Since last weekend’s Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg News, which showed Ernst up by 1 point, three other polls have shown small leads for Ernst, while one showed Braley slightly ahead. How Iowa’s no-party voters are leaning is anyone’s guess; some polls have shown Ernst leading among independents, others have indicated that Braley is ahead.

All of these surveys are reporting results among “likely Iowa voters,” but which, if any, have correctly identified a representative sample? The statistical margin of error means little if the pollster is systematically oversampling certain voters while not reaching other groups. As Nate Silver discusses here, data since 1998 show that polls of U.S. Senate or gubernatorial races are less accurate than presidential polls.

Media orthodoxy says reporters and pollsters can never admit their own organization’s poll might have been an “outlier.” Rather, readers are told that all trends apparent from some group’s poll reflect real shifts of public opinion. So we get the Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs saying Braley “has begun to overcome some of the vulnerabilities detected in the Iowa Poll two weeks ago,” going from a double-digit deficit among independents to a slight lead, and going from 25 points down among male respondents to 16 points down. Really, is it likely Braley surged so much in two weeks, as opposed to the previous Des Moines Register/Selzer poll overstating Ernst’s advantage overall and among certain groups?

Similarly, Quinnipiac’s latest Iowa poll shows “independent voters backing Rep. Braley 48 – 43 percent, a shift from Ernst’s 50 – 43 percent lead among these key voters last month.” Did no-party voters really change their minds in large numbers over a few weeks, or did Quinnipiac’s findings change because of statistical noise?

After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from several articles about polling and some revealing comments by Ann Selzer, a guest on a recent edition of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program.  

Whose idea was it to hold so many Iowa candidate debates on Saturday nights this year? At 7 pm this evening, Bruce Braley and Joni Ernst face off in the second of three scheduled debates. (C-SPAN will televise nationwide, and KWQC TV will televise in the Quad Cities area.) Immediately after that, KWQC will broadcast the second and final debate between Representative Dave Loebsack and Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the second Congressional district race. (That debate will be taped earlier in the day.)

I won’t be able to watch either showdown live because of a family wedding, but I will catch up later with some links and recap, as well as highlights from the new Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. A bunch of links related to the IA-Sen race are after the jump. I still see the debate as equally risky for Braley and Ernst, for different reasons.

UPDATE: The new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll by Selzer & Co has Braley and Ernst nearly tied. Ernst is ahead by a statistically insignificant 47 percent to 46 percent. I do not believe Ernst lost a lot of ground during the last two weeks. I believe she was never as far ahead as the last Selzer poll indicated. Other polls in the field around the same time showed a much closer race. In particular, I do not believe that in two weeks, Braley went from a 25-point deficit among men to a 16-point deficit now.

SECOND UPDATE: The full debate video is on the KWQC website.

THIRD UPDATE: I wish every undecided voter in Iowa had seen this debate. Having finally watched the full video myself, I understand why shills for Ernst kept reaching for their security blankets on Saturday night. Talk about a disastrous performance. She repeatedly fell back on rote talking points that didn’t answer the question. On several occasions it was apparent that she did not understand the policy implications of her own words. I particularly loved how she insisted that the bipartisan Senate-passed immigration reform bill was “amnesty,” even though Braley had already explained why it was different from amnesty. She talked about securing the border, even though Braley had already explained that we would have 20,000 more border control agents if that immigration reform bill had become law. Toward the end of that exchange, though, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Ernst say she would not vote to repeal President Barack Obama’s DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). A lot of conservatives were presumably surprised too, but not in a pleasant way.

At the end of this post I’ve linked to several pieces summarizing the debate highlights.

In a few minutes Representative Bruce Braley and State Senator Joni Ernst will start their first debate at Simpson College in Indianola. You can watch the debate on KCCI-TV in the Des Moines viewing area and on C-SPAN across the country (in central Iowa that’s channel 95).

I previewed what I see as the biggest potential pitfalls for each candidate here. I’ll be liveblogging after the jump and will also update later with some reaction to the debate.

UPDATE: KCCI has posted the debate video online. I cleaned up some typos and filled in gaps in the liveblog below.

Representative Bruce Braley and State Senator Joni Ernst face off today for the first of three scheduled debates. You can watch at 5 pm on C-SPAN or on KCCI-TV if you live in the Des Moines viewing area. KCCI and the Des Moines Register will live-stream the debate as well.

Debates rarely change election outcomes, but they are high-stakes events because a mistake provides fodder for a wave of attack ads. Republicans have been bashing Staci Appel for two weeks already over one awkward response she gave during her Congressional candidate debate with David Young.

Follow me after the jump for a preview of the major risks for each candidate in the IA-Sen debate. Braley goes in under more pressure after the latest Des Moines Register Iowa poll showed him behind by 6 points. But the format creates some potential pitfalls for Ernst too.

By the way, in her ongoing quest to displace WHO-TV’s Dave Price as the favorite journalist of central Iowa Republicans, the Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs put her thumb on the scale in her debate preview. Jacobs attributes negative views of Braley to “voters” while dismissing criticism of Ernst as coming from “Democrats.” Memo to Register publisher Rick Green: we know you’re conservative, but it’s embarrassing for your chief political reporter to express such a clear preference ahead of a debate your newspaper is co-sponsoring. Maybe you should move Jacobs over to the opinion page during your upcoming job shuffle.

As one of the shrinking number of Iowans who still subscribe to the Des Moines Register, I’m used to being disappointed by management decisions. The redesign to incorporate more daily content from USA Today leaves me cold. The website looks more slick but is less user-friendly than it was a few years ago. The Sunday opinion section is only four pages long. The talented Lee Rood could be exposing real dirt, but too many of her “Reader’s Watchdog” columns focus on individual grievances with no public policy relevance.

As if that weren’t bad enough, yet another round of newsroom layoffs is coming soon. Since the “Great Recession” set in, the Register has been cutting news staff almost every year, either through buyouts or (more frequently) pink slips. It’s been nearly six years since the Register employed its own political cartoonist. Managers let a Pulitzer Prize winner go. Perhaps the biggest mistake, in terms of news value, was closing the Washington bureau and sending Philip Brasher away, along with his wealth of knowledge on agriculture and the federal government.

The Register put a good spin on changes to its political reporting by announcing this week a “new partnership” with Bloomberg politics “on polling, content and events heading into the midterm and 2016 elections.” After the jump I’ve posted an excerpt from the paper’s story on the move. I am skeptical the change will add any value for politically-minded Iowans. The emphasis seems to be on format. I don’t need “an updated caucuses app so readers can follow up-to-the-minute coverage on their mobile devices.” I would rather see a larger team of political reporters dig in with more background and analysis. If it’s true that “There will be just one ‘metro government’ reporter and just two state government reporters,” good luck figuring out what’s going on at the statehouse during the Iowa legislative session, or within state agencies at any time of year.

The Des Moines-based weekly Cityview reports regularly on the Register’s declining circulation and layoffs prompted by disappointing revenue numbers for Gannett’s newspaper division. I don’t share the feeling of Schadenfreude that comes through in Civic Skinny’s columns, but I share the sense of outrage that newspaper veterans are being forced to reapply for their positions, with the threat of losing severance payments if they turn down a new job offer. I’ve enclosed details on the process below. What a horrible way to treat employees. By the end of this year, the already lean Register newsroom will have lost 16 percent of its positions.

Please share any comments about changes at the Des Moines Register, or in the newspaper business generally.  

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey should end any speculation that the 2016 Iowa caucuses will be competitive if Hillary Clinton runs for president again.

On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton continues to be completely dominant. 67% want her to be the nominee, compared to 12% for Joe Biden, 5% for Elizabeth Warren, 3% for Mark Warner, 2% for Andrew Cuomo, and 1% for Cory Booker. Clinton’s dominance is near total- she has an 82/9 favorability rating and polls over 60% with liberals, moderates, men, women, young voters, and older voters alike.

Click here for full results and cross-tabs. The general election could be highly competitive in Iowa if Clinton is the nominee, but there is no sign of any vulnerability in the Democratic caucuses.

Time for bloggers and political analysts to stop claiming that Hillary has some lingering “Iowa problem” due to her allegedly “dismal” 2008 caucus showing. Fact is, Clinton didn’t do as badly here as many think. There is no evidence of any lingering fallout from her alleged failure to connect with Iowa Democrats.

It’s also time for the Des Moines Register to stop dancing around to avoid asking Iowa Democrats directly whom they would support in the 2016 caucuses. If you want to argue that the caucuses are a wide-open contest on the Democratic side, show us a poll to prove it.

P.S.–Public Policy Polling’s survey suggests that if Clinton doesn’t run, the caucuses will be much more competitive, with Vice President Joe Biden the early front-runner.  

If you want to know whether likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers prefer former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, or someone new as the next presidential nominee, it’s easy enough to ask that question.

Alternatively, if your goal is to show that the 2016 Iowa caucuses will be an exciting and unpredictable contest, you could play the game the Des Moines Register played in its latest Iowa poll.