“Footprint” of Jordan Creek Town Center development in West Des Moines, overlaid on the “East Village” neighborhood of downtown Des Moines, courtesy of Jim Thompson

Four of the oldest buildings in downtown Waterloo “have been renovated with their historic features revived,” John Molseed reported for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier on May 13. A block that had been vacant since 2007 will now hold “four commercial spaces and six loft-style apartments.” The city of Waterloo and the state historic tax credit program helped secure private investment for the project.

Renovating older buildings is much better for the environment than razing them. The economic benefits of historic preservation are not always easy to measure, but converting vacant buildings to commercial or residential use generates revenue.

Downtown property is the most valuable per acre, according to data compiled by Jim Thompson, a business specialist for the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Main Street Program. For that reason, Thompson advises anyone who will listen, “If you want to help your school districts, invest in your downtown buildings.”

His message should resonate with local officials after yet another state legislative session produced a disappointing budget for K-12 schools. With Thompson’s permission, I enclose below some materials he has created to show the impact of repurposing downtown buildings.

The three candidates seeking to unseat first-term Republican Representative David Young have been working the phones and attending Democratic events all over Iowa’s third Congressional district as Iowa’s June 7 primary approaches.

The campaigns are also finding other ways to convey their messages to voters they can’t reach in person. A post in progress will cover an eight-page newspaper-style handout featuring Desmund Adams. Bleeding Heartland discussed Mike Sherzan’s first direct mail and television commercials here.

Jim Mowrer has introduced himself to Democrats with a tv ad and at least six mailings, starting shortly before early voting began on April 28. A recurring theme in Mowrer’s outreach is the Iraq War veteran’s commitment to fight for Democratic values and priorities, especially Social Security. Like U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack, Iowa’s only Democrat left in Congress, Mowrer grew up with relatives who depended on Social Security benefits after a family tragedy.

Governor Terry Branstad appointed Michael Richards to the Iowa Board of Regents last Friday. Subject to confirmation by the Iowa Senate, Richards will serve the last five years of Mary Andringa’s term on the nine-member board, which oversees Iowa’s state universities. Andringa announced her resignation in late April, saying she had “underestimated the time required to fully serve in this role.” (It soon emerged that she is a paid director for the Herman Miller furniture company, which received a multimillion-dollar no-bid contract from the University of Iowa last year.)

An alumnus of the University of Iowa undergraduate college and medical school, Richards has held management positions in various corporations, inside and outside the health care field. The official announcement of his appointment mentions several of those jobs as well as Richards’ philanthropy.

Richards continues a long tradition of major political donors securing spots on the prestigious Board of Regents. He made contributions totaling more than $40,000 to Branstad’s 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial campaigns. (Details on that giving are after the jump, along with the May 6 press release.) Last year, Richards gave $10,000 to Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds, who is almost certain to run for governor in 2018, as well as $2,500 to Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer. He has given nearly $100,000 to other Republican candidates around the country.

Richards has been a close political ally of Iowa Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter. In 2011, he joined a small group of business Republicans led by Rastetter, who encouraged New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to run for president. Last year, he joined Rastetter and most of that group to endorse Christie’s presidential campaign.

The Iowa Senate has confirmed hundreds of Branstad’s nominees unanimously or nearly so. During the legislature’s 2017 session, I don’t expect Richards to have any trouble winning confirmation to serve out Andringa’s term on the Board of Regents. The two appointees to that board whom senators rejected in 2013 had political baggage that Richards lacks.

UPDATE: Added below excerpts from Vanessa Miller’s latest report for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Democratic lawmakers see the Senate confirming Richards next year.

LATE UPDATE: News emerged in early June that Branstad was considering Richards for the vacancy before Andringa had announced her resignation, so I’ve added more details below. Branstad has known Richards for far longer than Rastetter has been one of the governor’s most influential advisers.

Jack Hatch isn’t happy with the work of his former colleagues in the Iowa Senate. Writing in the Sunday Des Moines Register, he declared the 2016 legislative session to be a “disaster for Democrats,” who made no progress on improving water quality, protecting public employees, raising the minimum wage, or funding education adequately. In Hatch’s view, Governor Terry Branstad has “bullied” Senate Democrats “into siding with him in serving only the top 10 percent.” In particular, he cited the “historic levels of tax relief for corporations” senators approved three years ago, part of a trend toward providing generous tax breaks for business while Iowa schools lack essential resources.

I couldn’t agree more that the commercial property tax cut lawmakers approved at the end of the 2013 legislative session was too expensive and mostly oriented toward businesses that didn’t need help, with foreseeable consequences for public services. Undoubtedly, that legislation and other corporate tax breaks are largely responsible for budget constraints that drove Democrats toward lousy deals on funding for K-12 school districts as well as higher education.

Just one question: why didn’t Hatch listen to the experts who warned at the time that the tax cut amounted to “Christmas for Walmart and McDonald’s”?

Saying she had “underestimated the time required to fully serve in this role,” Mary Andringa announced today she will step down from the Iowa Board of Regents, just one year into her six-year term. I enclose the official statement below, along with more background on Andringa, who has had a long and distinguished career in business and industry advocacy work. As a regent, she is best known for participating in a secret Ames meeting with Bruce Harreld and three other board members, then sending Harreld an effusive e-mail encouraging him to apply for the University of Iowa’s presidency.

Governor Terry Branstad will select Andringa’s successor on the nine-member Board of Regents, almost certainly after the state legislature has adjourned for this year. Consequently, the Iowa Senate will consider that nominee during the 2017 session.

Since 2011, state senators have confirmed the overwhelming majority of Branstad appointees unanimously or nearly so. However, Senate Democrats rejected two of Branstad’s picks for the Board of Regents in 2013. Craig Lang faced criticism for allegedly interfering with state university policies during his first term as a regent, while Robert Cramer drew fire for his record of social conservative activism, including as a member of the Johnston school board.

Branstad thinks highly of Andringa, naming her to a newly-created state economic development board a few years before appointing her to the even more prestigious board that oversees Iowa’s state universities. In fact, Branstad and his onetime chief of staff Doug Gross were said to have recruited Andringa to run for governor in 2009, a few months before GOP heavyweights persuaded Branstad to come out of political retirement. A poll commissioned by an organization linked to Gross had tested voters’ interest in female business leaders as potential gubernatorial candidates. Some news coverage in the spring of 2009 named Andringa among the possible GOP challengers to Governor Chet Culver.

UPDATE: Casting Andringa’s resignation in a new light, Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press on April 28 that the outgoing regent “has long been a director for a national furniture company but failed to publicly disclose that relationship before its local distributor signed a major no-bid contract with the University of Iowa last year.” Excerpts from that story and from Jeff Charis-Carlson’s report on that no-bid contract are after the jump.

When the filing deadline passed for major-party candidates to run in Iowa’s June 7 primary, seven Republican state senators up for re-election this year had no challengers: Randy Feenstra (Senate district 2), Dennis Guth (Senate district 4), Mark Segebart (Senate district 6), Mark Costello (Senate district 12), Amy Sinclair (Senate district 14), Tim Kapucian (Senate district 38), and Ken Rozenboom (Senate district 40). Recruitment continued, as special district conventions may nominate candidates for seats where no one filed in time to be on the primary ballot.

Based on 2012 election results and incumbent weirdness, the most potentially competitive of the uncontested GOP-held Iowa Senate seats was arguably Guth’s. Democrats announced on April 25 that Susan Bangert will run in Senate district 4. I enclose below a map of this district and details about its recent voting history, along with background on Guth and Bangert.

Also on Monday, Dennis Mathahs confirmed plans to drop out of the Democratic primary in Iowa House district 75 in order to run against Kapucian in Senate district 38. A future post will preview that race.

Five states along the east coast held primaries today. Donald Trump had a clean sweep on the Republican side of the so-called Acela primary, named for the Amtrak express train that connects Boston to Washington, DC. As of 8 pm central time, Trump had won more than 50 percent of the votes counted in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Dark days lie ahead for the #NeverTrump crowd. Even if Ted Cruz manages to win the Indiana primary next week and John Kasich wins Oregon and New Mexico, stopping Trump from reaching 1,237 delegates before the Republican National Convention will be a tall order. Dave Wasserman published a good analysis of Trump’s success at FiveThirtyEight.com. I’ve posted excerpts after the jump.

Networks called Maryland for Hillary Clinton immediately after polls closed. At this writing, she has also been projected to win Pennsylvania and Delaware, while Bernie Sanders is set to win Rhode Island, and Connecticut is still too close to call. Clinton’s remarks to her supporters in Philadelphia tonight sounded very much like a general-election stump speech.

Dave Weigel noted Clinton has won eleven states she lost to Barack Obama in 2008: Iowa, Maryland, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Even more striking, Weigel pointed out, “After tonight, Donald Trump will have won 12 of the 13 original colonies. He’s also favored to win in the 13th, New Jersey.”

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. Today the admin for U.S. Senate candidate Tom Fiegen’s social media blocked me on Twitter after I challenged one of Fiegen’s many tweets suggesting the Democratic superdelegates should switch from Clinton to Sanders. So touchy! Fiegen proceeded to block several people who had re-tweeted me or commented negatively about the blocking.

UPDATE: Added below the full text of Clinton’s speech tonight and a statement released by Sanders. Although he did not concede the nomination, he appears to be shifting to a fight about the Democratic Party platform, rather than trying to beat Clinton.

SECOND UPDATE: Clinton ended up winning Connecticut by about 5 points. Trump’s margins of victory were enormous in all five states: 29 points ahead of Kasich in Connecticut, 35 points in Pennsylvania, 31 points in Maryland, 39 points in Rhode Island, and 40 points in Delaware.

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

The Pulitzer Prizes announced this week recognized some powerful reporting on the misuse of power. The Associated Press won the public service award for “an investigation of severe labor abuses tied to the supply of seafood to American supermarkets and restaurants, reporting that freed 2,000 slaves, brought perpetrators to justice and inspired reforms.” Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Martha Mendoza, and Esther Htusan contributed to this incredible investigative work; the whole series is available here.

The Washington Post won the Pulitzer’s national reporting category for its “revelatory initiative in creating and using a national database to illustrate how often and why the police shoot to kill and who the victims are most likely to be.” The database is available here; reporters who contributed to this work include Kimberly Kindy, Wesley Lowery, Keith L. Alexander, Kimbriell Kelly, Sandhya Somashekhar, Julie Tate, Amy Brittain, Marc Fisher, Scott Higham, Derek Hawkins, and Jennifer Jenkins. In one of the articles for this series, Kindy and Tate explored the common practice of police departments withholding video footage of fatal shootings, using the January 2015 death of Autumn Steele in Burlington, Iowa as the touchpoint.

The Pulitzer for explanatory reporting went to T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project “for a startling examination and exposé of law enforcement’s enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims.” An Unbelievable Story of Rape was a stunning and depressing piece.

Speaking of stunning and depressing, previously unreported abuses of teenagers at the now-closed Midwest Academy boarding school came to light earlier this year. Several former students spoke to Ryan Foley of the Associated Press about being kept in isolation boxes for days or weeks at a time. (Isolation is particularly harmful to developing adolescent brains.) The Des Moines Register’s Lee Rood reported on approximately 80 law enforcement calls to the facility in Keokuk during the last three years the school was open. Abusive practices by staff went back more than a decade, though.

No state agency had ever inspected the Midwest Academy, prompting calls for the Iowa legislature to prevent future problems at unregulated schools. The Iowa Senate unanimously approved a bill setting out certification and inspection standards for boarding schools. House Republicans amended Senate File 2304 before approving it in the lower chamber, making “some exemptions for religious facilities.” The Senate refused to concur in the House amendment, and on a mostly party-line vote, the House rejected the Senate version. The school oversight bill now goes to a conference committee. I hope lawmakers will work out a deal before adjourning, but this legislation is not a must-pass bill like the health and human services budget (currently hung up over disagreements on Medicaid oversight and Planned Parenthood funding).

Alleged verbal abuse by Iowa State University women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly was among the actions that inspired a discrimination lawsuit by former star player Nikki Moody. The AP’s Luke Meredith and Ryan Foley broke news about that lawsuit on April 18. After the jump I’ve enclosed excerpts from their report and some reaction, but I highly recommend reading the plaintiff’s jaw-dropping twelve-page court filing. Looking through some Cyclone fan board threads about the lawsuit, I was struck by two contradictory lines of argument from the coach’s defenders: Moody is lying, because this or that former player says Fen was always supportive and would never behave that way; or alternatively, Moody is lying, because Fen is tough on all his players, not just the black ones. Cheyenne Shepherd, an unheralded player for ISU during the 1990s, provided strong support for Moody in a guest column for the Des Moines Register about her experience as one of Fennelly’s “non-favorites.” Retired ISU journalism professor Dick Haws discussed the “not-very-well-hidden secret” of how Fennelly berates and humiliates some of his players. Gavin Aronsen asked at Iowa Informer whether the lawsuit is “A Symptom of Broader Diversity Problems at ISU.”

Since Thursday, I’ve been reading reflections on the life and work of Prince. I remembered his exceptional creativity, charisma, and talent as a songwriter (for many other artists as well as for himself), but I didn’t realize how highly regarded he was as a guitarist. His solo during this performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was mesmerizing. Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top described Prince’s “sensational” guitar playing in an interview with the Washington Post: “Even today, I’m struggling to try and emulate that guitar introduction to ‘When Doves Cry.’ It’s just a testament to his extraordinary technique.” The whole “Purple Rain” album brings back strong high school memories for me, especially “When Doves Cry.” Prince’s biggest fan in the Iowa blogosphere was John Deeth, easily recognized at political events by his raspberry beret. Deeth reflected on what the music meant to him here.

Many thanks to Austin Frerick for this close look at the hidden costs of choices by elected officials. Frerick is an Iowa native and economist who has worked at the Institute for Research on Poverty and the Congressional Research Service. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In the coming weeks, thousands of Iowa families will sit down for painstaking hours to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). They do so in order to see if they qualify for college financial assistance. What makes it painstaking? After completing countless online forms detailing a family’s financial circumstances, a family is told what its costs for college will be with very little explanation for how this number is determined.

Over the past 15 years, Iowa has radically altered its higher education system from one that invests in its citizens to one which forces students to take on excessive debts while recruiting wealthy students from out of state. FAFSA has been the key instrument in creating this current predicament. The process was never meant to be this way. The story of the privatization of higher education and reliance on FAFSA is a story of neglect and bureaucratic inertia.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome. The Des Moines Register ran an extraordinary lead editorial on Saturday about a Des Moines police officer’s “pattern of misconduct” and “poor judgment.” Click through to read the most strongly-worded warning about a law enforcement official I’ve seen in an Iowa newspaper.

An emerging compromise on higher education funding was one of the biggest state-level news stories of the week. The Iowa legislature’s joint Education Appropriations Subcommittee, co-chaired by Democratic State Senator Brian Schoenjahn and Republican State Representative Cecil Dolecheck, agreed on April 13 that the fiscal year 2017 budget for higher education will include an additional $6.3 million for public universities: $2.8 million for the University of Northern Iowa, $2.2 million for Iowa State University, and $1.3 million for the University of Iowa. Iowa Public Radio’s Joyce Russell noted that the increases work out to a little less than 3 percent more state funding for UNI, 1.2 percent for ISU, and less than 1 percent for UI.

The Iowa Board of Regents had requested an extra $20 million in state funding for the coming fiscal year: $4.5 million for UI, $8.2 million for ISU, and $7.65 million for UNI. Governor Terry Branstad’s draft budget had included a combined $8 million in additional state funding for the public universities. Last month, Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter said at least $8 million would be needed to avoid raising tuition. In a statement released April 14, Rastetter said the board would “immediately start discussions regarding tuition increases at our universities for Fall 2016.”

More background and details on the higher education funding compromise are after the jump, but I want to highlight a couple of misconceptions. Russell quoted Dolecheck as saying “we did the best we can with the resources that we have,” and quoted Schoenjahn as saying lawmakers tried to stretch “the precious resources we had” but couldn’t do more without raising taxes.

No. Just last month, the Iowa House and Senate approved a tax bill that will reduce fiscal year 2017 revenues by nearly $120 million: $97.6 million by harmonizing Iowa tax code with federal statutes, and around $21 million by reducing state sales taxes for manufacturing companies. Another $280 million was taken off the table long before this year’s budget negotiations began, when most lawmakers in both chambers approved an expensive commercial property tax cut in 2013. Leaders of both parties bragged about that tax cut at the time but did not acknowledge how the windfall for commercial property owners would affect the state’s ability to pay for other priorities down the road.

Speaking on behalf of the union that represents UNI faculty, Professor Joe Gorton said this week, “It seems clear to me that the regent universities are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate welfare.” An Iowa Fiscal Partnership analysis from January shows Gorton was closer to the truth than were Schoenjahn or Dolecheck. Business tax credits are expected to cost the state around $272 million during fiscal year 2017.

Writing at Blog for Iowa this weekend, Dave Bradley argued, “Had Branstad’s administration not given tax cuts to businesses without consulting the legislature we would probably [be] OK. […] while the special interests that the Republicans have given breaks to are no longer paying what they once did, Iowa’s parents will see higher tuition fees on their kids university bills.” Fact-check: mostly false. Over many years, the legislature approved and failed to revise Iowa’s generous business tax breaks. Most Democrats in both chamber joined their GOP colleagues to pass the costly property tax cut three years ago. Just six state senators and thirteen representatives voted no; I’ve listed them after the jump. The Branstad administration did try to enact the manufacturing sales tax break without legislative approval last year, and was on track to succeed. However, the tax bill lawmakers negotiated and approved last month included a scaled-back sales tax break, superseding the Department of Revenue’s proposed administrative rule.

Speaking of money for state universities not living up to expectations, Ryan Foley of the Associated Press revealed on April 15 that Rastetter has paid only $1.5 million toward his 2008 pledge of $5 million to the University of Iowa’s football program. Before 2015, Rastetter had donated just $500,000 toward that pledge, raising “questions about whether the delay was part of the pressure he put on former university President Sally Mason.” Excerpts from Foley’s article are at the end of this post.

For six years running, the Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate has confirmed almost all of Republican Governor Terry Branstad’s nominees unanimously or nearly so. But every year, one or two Branstad nominees don’t get through. On Thursday Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks became the first (and probably the only) nominee to fail an Iowa Senate confirmation vote this year.

image from Monica Vernon’s debut television commercial

Today Cedar Rapids City Council member Monica Vernon launched the first television commercial of this year’s campaign in Iowa’s first Congressional district. I enclose below the video and transcript from “The Schumachers,” which features three generations of a Iowa family that owns the Cobble Hill restaurant in Cedar Rapids.

Vernon faces former Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy in the June 7 Democratic primary. Compared to the introductory spot for Vernon, Murphy’s four television commercials before the 2014 primary focused more on his own biography and political record. Those ads are still available on YouTube: “Story” (which began running the second week of April 2014), “Joint Effort” (starting in late April), “Voice” (starting in mid-May), and “Right Choice” (starting in late May).

Murphy’s budget for television commercials is likely to be more limited for this year’s race, judging by his year-end financial report. We’ll know more once Congressional candidates have disclosed their fundraising and expenditures for the first quarter of 2016. Those reports are due on April 15; Bleeding Heartland will cover them shortly thereafter.

UPDATE: Added below the Murphy campaign’s statement on this ad, which touched on his main argument against Vernon’s candidacy: she was a registered Republican until 2009.

Note from desmoinesdem: The major-party candidates in House district 38 are four-term Republican incumbent Kevin Koester and Democrat Heather Matson. Brett Nelson is challenging Koester in the GOP primary. Click here to view a district map. The latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office show that House district 38 contains 6,555 active registered Democrats, 7,083 Republicans, and 6.282 no-party voters.

Jeff Meyers was nominated for State House District 38 at the Libertarian Party convention held on Saturday, March 19th. Jeff is from Ankeny and works as a fraud analyst. He is running for Iowa House to help lead the charge in the legalization of medical marijuana and cannabis/hemp production in Iowa. He wants to help Iowa students by returning to common sense education, not common core, higher budget for schools and more support for teachers. He supports the repeal of the lifetime ban on voting for past criminals. He wants to be accountable to the taxpayers by fighting for a smaller, more efficient state government and the return of the liberties that our country was founded on.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Leaders in the Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate agreed early in the 2015 legislative session to pass two major tax bills backed by top Iowa House Republicans. The moves left Democrats no leverage to obtain concessions from Republicans on state spending for vital services, especially education. After months of negotiations, the final deal struck after Memorial Day gave House Republicans what they wanted on global budget targets and acceded to their demand for “allowable growth” of only 1.25 percent for K-12 education budgets.

As a gesture toward compromise, Republicans agreed last year to a supplemental spending bill, which included one-time funding for K-12 school districts, community colleges, and state universities. But once lawmakers had adjourned, Governor Terry Branstad item-vetoed some $56 million for education from that bill. The governor pleaded fiscal responsibility in his veto message, though such concerns hadn’t stopped him from signing $99 million in tax cuts into law months earlier.

I had high hopes for a better outcome this year when I saw Senate Democrats balk at passing a $97.6 million “tax coupling” bill much like the one that sailed through the upper chamber in 2015.

But during the past two weeks, Democrats approved harmonizing the state and federal tax codes as part of compromise legislation that was not linked to education spending. Then they agreed to school funding levels very close to the House Republicans’ initial offer for fiscal year 2017, which begins on July 1 and runs through next June. Lower projected state revenues forced Democrats to accept insufficient allowable growth for K-12 school budgets, lawmakers told disappointed students and educators. As usual, budget constraints never seem to be a reason for the Iowa legislature to say no to constituencies seeking expensive tax breaks.

Hope some Democrats will step up to run in these districts, especially against first-term Republican Dennis Guth in Senate district 4. He didn’t win by a huge margin in 2012. If Donald Trump at the top of the ticket causes a meltdown, Democrats could win some unexpected Iowa House and Senate races–but only where a candidate is on the ballot. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The general election is coming up in November. But before we get carried away with the 2016 presidential race, we need to examine our state politics. On March 18, a press release by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pates noted that 7 of the 25 Iowa Senate races in the June primary have no Democratic candidate. Among these races is Iowa Senate District 4, made up of Emmet, Hancock, Kossuth, Winnebago, and Wright counties.

Polls just closed in South Carolina, where Hillary Clinton is favored to defeat Bernie Sanders easily, possibly by as large a margin as Sanders’ big win in New Hampshire. Any comments about the Democratic race for the presidency are welcome in this thread. Here are a few links to get the conversation started.

African-American voters are critically important for Clinton and will make a large share of the electorate not only in South Carolina but also in at least six of the states that vote on “Super Tuesday” (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia). This chart shows data from the 2008 primaries on the non-white percentages of electorates in the states that will vote on March 1.

Toni Monkovic argued recently, “We’re living in an era when blacks have essentially played kingmaker in the most important elections in the nation.” Sanders did extremely well among white working-class voters in the first three states, but “he does not really have a path to victory unless he can significantly narrow or even erase Mrs. Clinton’s edge among nonwhite voters,” Nate Cohn argued earlier this month. The prevalence of moderate Democratic voters in several of the Super Tuesday states should also work to Clinton’s advantage.

Tim Murphy wrote an interesting piece for Mother Jones on “Clinton’s Most Valuable Allies in South Carolina: the Moms of Black Lives Matter.”

Terrell Jermaine Staff profiled Marcus Ferrell in Fusion. Ferrell’s job with the Sanders campaign is “convincing black folks to ‘feel the Bern.’”

David Sirota took a close look at what economists say about whether Sanders’ plans on single-payer health care and free education at public universities “add up.”

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com laid out which states Sanders needs to win on Super Tuesday and beyond to win the Democratic nomination.

Excerpts from all of those articles are after the jump.

For comic relief, I recommend Steve Deace’s latest column for the Conservative Review on how 2016 is shaping up to be “the devil’s favorite presidential election.” He takes some ridiculous shots at Clinton and Sanders but the real venom comes out when he writes about Donald Trump. Deace is furious the strong anti-establishment sentiment in the Republican electorate is working mostly in Trump’s favor, rather than pushing Ted Cruz ahead.

UPDATE: Clinton is on track to outperform her lead in South Carolina polling. She gave her victory speech less than an hour after polls closed, and sounded like she was running against Donald Trump, not Sanders. I’ve added excerpts from her speech below. She recognized by name all of the “Black Lives Matter” moms, as well as their children who were killed.

SECOND UPDATE: Wow. A crushing victory for Clinton by nearly a 3 to 1 margin. I don’t remember seeing anyone predict she would even win 2 to 1. Harry Enten speculates that South Carolina “may be the beginning of the end for Sanders.” Added excerpts at the end of this post.

Many thanks to jpascoe for the first-person account of a February 23 meeting that the University of Iowa neither live-streamed nor recorded, for reasons unknown. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Well that was ugly and unsettling. J. Bruce Harreld’s “town hall meeting” dramatized what happens when you carry out a sham presidential search, install a puppet president, promise an open forum, replace it with a “town hall meeting,” and release a fusillade of PowerPoint slides documenting the UI’s skid down the rankings. Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that J. Bruce Harreld is a leadership expert. As I looked around the auditorium full of University of Iowans cleft in two by the sordid events of the last six months, some of them happy to move on, some of them hell-bent on unseating Harreld, none of them looked happy to be going where Harreld led. I long ago pitched my tent with the resisters, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for all of us.

Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts on state legislative races. Great to see a candidate stepping up in this district. Democrats failed to field a challenger against Heaton in 2012 or 2014. By the way, some Iowa politics junkies have Heaton on retirement watch. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Carrie Duncan is running for State Representative in House District 84 against eleven-term incumbent Dave Heaton (R-Mount Pleasant), as a Democrat. With the controversy surrounding the potential closure of a mental health facility in Mount Pleasant. Carrie felt the need to run against Representative Heaton, feeling that he was not a strong enough of a voice against the Branstad Administration’s plans to close the facility.

Carrie’s support for organized labor is fierce and deep. She is a proud member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), Chief Steward, Local 1010 She works at the American Ordinance LLC in Middletown. Carrie’s son, Zach also works at American Ordinance LLC. Zach lives with his wife Randee, in Mount Pleasant. Carrie has also worked at Pioneer Corn and Pinnacle Foods. She resides in New London.

Carrie got into this race as a voice for the middle class and the poor in the state of Iowa. She believes that the state government is simply giving too much away, using tax breaks to procure agreements with big corporations while not doing enough to educate our children. The unemployment rate is too high in District 84; this means that we need leaders in Des Moines that are regularly communicating with small businesses instead of constantly trying to lure extremely large companies, many times hiring out of state labor to fill the positions.

Carrie has worked in the New London School District as well; she has gained knowledge about the issues that our educators face daily. She has worked in some different industries, always fighting for fair wages and equal treatment for all in the workplace. She currently serves as the Vice President of the North Lee County Labor Council.

She is also hoping to see an end to the Governor’s plan to privatize Medicaid, and wants to see a more transparent process when large economic development agreements come to the area.

District 84 encompasses portions of Northern Lee County, Henry County, and Jefferson/Washington townships. [note from desmoinesdem: A map is after the jump, along with the latest voter registration numbers.]

Carrie is originally from Chillicothe, Illinois and she grew up on a family farm. She has a lifetime appreciation for our state’s local ag producers. Carrie is involved in a number of terrific charitable organizations in Southeast Iowa, as well.

For more information go here:

http://kilj.com/2016/01/news/carrie-duncan-announces-run-for-state-representative-in-washington-henry-jefferson-and-lee-counties/

Iowa House district 92, covering part of Davenport and other areas in Scott County, has changed hands more times in the last decade than any other seat in the Iowa legislature. Democrat Elesha Gayman defeated Republican incumbent Jim Van Fossen in 2006, when the district was number 84. She held that seat against Republican Ross Paustian in 2008, then retired rather than seeking a third term in 2010. Paustian won the open-seat race by a comfortable margin, with a GOP landslide putting the wind at his back. However, he lost his first re-election bid in the slightly reconfigured House district 92 to former State Senator Frank Wood. Undeterred, Paustian sought a rematch and defeated Wood with some help from another Republican wave in 2014.

Four party switches in the last five elections guarantees that both parties will target this district in the fall.

Paustian is a relatively obscure back-bencher. The vice chair of the House committees on agriculture and environmental protection rarely makes news, except for that time the Des Moines Register’s Brianne Pfannenstiel snapped a photo of him reading the book Sex After Sixty during a long debate over a collective bargaining bill. That story went viral nationally and even made it into a British newspaper.

As of last week, Paustian has a Democratic challenger in Ken Krumwiede. Like Wood, Krumwiede is a career educator, and his campaign announcement signals that school funding will be a central issue in this race. Every Democratic candidate for the legislature should do the same. Last July, Governor Terry Branstad vetoed supplemental spending for K-12 schools and higher education, blowing up a bipartisan budget compromise and blowing a hole in school district budgets. Paustian and most of his fellow statehouse Republicans failed to take up the call to override those vetoes.

I enclose below a district map and background on Paustian and Krumwiede. House district 92 is relatively balanced politically, with 5,686 active registered Democrats, 5,799 Republicans, and 8,820 no-party voters according to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. (Those numbers do not include voters who changed party affiliation on February 1 to participate in the Iowa caucuses.) President Barack Obama outpolled Mitt Romney among voters in this district by 53.94 percent to 45.0 percent in 2012. But Joni Ernst prevailed over Bruce Braley here in the 2014 U.S. Senate race by a similar margin of 53.26 percent to 43.45 percent.

Any comments related to the House district 92 campaign or candidates are welcome in this thread. The presidential-year electorate may favor Krumwiede, although incumbents have a natural advantage, and Scott County Republicans have been better-organized lately than local Democrats. The Iowa Farm Bureau will surely get involved on Paustian’s behalf, while organized labor including the Iowa State Education Association will likely assist Krumwiede.

They say that converts are often more zealous than people who have grown up with a belief system. So it fell to Republican State Senator Mark Chelgren, who was raised and educated in California before settling in Iowa as an adult, to push for economic sanctions over the Stanford band’s halftime performance at the Rose Bowl.

I enjoy learning how thoughtful Iowa Democrats have approached this decision. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Relevant experience IS very important. I want to be clear on that point. But I think the discussion could use a little historical perspective (skip down a few paragraphs if you want to skip the preliminaries). But when looking at the leading Democratic presidential candidates I see two people who meet and exceed any reasonable resume requirements, and therefore I didn’t find experience as a terribly useful metric for deciding between Sanders and Clinton. More important to me is how a candidate stands on issues which are important to me, how consistent they have been in those stances, what they have done about them historically, and what I can infer about the way they approach and solve problems based on what they’ve said and done.

Just to be up front, I’ve decided to caucus for Senator Bernie Sanders on February first.

Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts on issues or candidates. -promoted by desmoinesdem

For the past several months, both online and out in the real world, I have advocated for the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders. I believed then as I believe now that he is an honest, principled advocate for the concerns of working people who are seeing their livelihoods imperiled on a daily basis by political process that is rigged against them and an economic system that favors massive, inherited wealth and fosters inequality. I believed then as I believe now that the vast and growing gap between the wealthy elite and the struggling masses threatens the very foundation of our collective society and that the only way to prevent a new-fangled aristocracy from permanently seizing the reins of power would be for immediate and drastic actions to not only stop but reverse this devastating growth of inequality. I believed then as I believe now that, even though Secretary Hillary Clinton is an eminently qualified candidate to lead our nation, it was necessary for someone like Senator Sanders to challenge her to confront these issues and speak to and up for the losers of our economic system.

Bleeding Heartland welcomes guest posts on topics of statewide, local, or national importance. -promoted by desmoinesdem

My name is Aaron Camp. I’m not an Iowan, in fact, I’m a lifelong resident of Vermilion County, Illinois who has never been to Iowa. I’m a staunch supporter of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, although I am not officially affiliated with the Sanders campaign in any way. With the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses just days away, I’ll take this opportunity to encourage Iowans to participate in the Democratic caucus and caucus for Bernie Sanders.

Bleeding Heartland would welcome guest posts encouraging readers to caucus for Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Since Sunday’s debate, I’ve felt little tremors of uncertainty among my friends who are genuinely conflicted over who to support in the caucuses. Now seems like a good time to make my personal case for supporting Hillary Clinton, to hopefully contribute to the kind of thoughtful reflection that these folks are going through.

I’ll say that I admire both Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, and that I will support whoever wins the Democratic nomination with the same energy and enthusiasm I’ve given Hillary during the caucus season. That said, here are some reasons why I believe that Hillary is the best choice for the Democratic nomination in 2016, and why I hope you (whoever you are) will support her. Sorry if this is a wall of text. Bear with me, I tried to keep it all in one place. A short summary of points I make below:

– Hillary will help my family and families like mine in the next 4-8 years.
– Hillary’s attention to local concerns and presidential responses.
– Hillary’s foreign policy expertise and international reputation.
– Hillary’s coalition building within the democratic party and related orgs.
– Hillary’s tenacity will bring about change–incremental change, but change–which is the proper job of the President.

Governor Terry Branstad delivered his annual Condition of the State address to members of the Iowa House and Senate and the Iowa Supreme Court justices yesterday. If you missed the speech, the full prepared text is here. Iowa Public Television posted the video and transcript here. The early part of the 30-minute address included one false or misleading assertion after another.

· “Sound budgeting practices and fiscal discipline now have us ranked as the 3rd best managed state in the nation.” Contrary to the idea that Branstad markedly improved Iowa’s operation, a major investors group also ranked Iowa the third best-managed state in 2010 under Governor Chet Culver, recognizing Iowa’s good fiscal position, high credit ratings from leading agencies, and low debt per capita compared to most other states.

· “The Iowa Economy has created 214,000 new jobs; surpassing our 2010 goal.” Sorry, no. That’s a fake statistic no economist would accept. It’s a shame the governor has instructed Iowa Workforce Development to keep cooking the books on employment.

· “If the state fails to implement managed care, the growth of Medicaid spending will consume virtually all of our revenue growth.” The Branstad administration has not been able to demonstrate that managed care will save the state money. Florida’s Medicaid privatization turned out to be more costly without improving patient care.

I was also disappointed not to hear more specifics about how Branstad envisions spending funds he would like to divert from school infrastructure to water programs. What kind of water quality programs would be prioritized, and who would administer them? Then again, details about this plan may be irrelevant, because Iowa House and Senate leaders don’t sound open to the idea.

For now, I want to focus on a much more promising part of Branstad’s address. To my surprise, the governor devoted a major section–roughly eight minutes of speaking time–to advocating for criminal justice reforms proposed by a working group he appointed in August. The group was charged with developing ideas to increase fairness and reduce racial disparities in Iowa’s criminal justice system. Click here to read the full recommendations released in November. Bleeding Heartland will discuss some of the proposals in more detail in future posts. Advocates for defendants’ rights and racial justice have generally welcomed the proposals.

Although some policies do not go far enough, and other important reforms are missing from the document, I’m encouraged to see the governor apply some political capital toward reducing systemic racism and inequities in the justice system. I enclose below the relevant portion of Branstad’s speech, with some annotations.

UPDATE: I can’t believe I forgot to mention one thing Branstad could do immediately to address a massive racial disparity in Iowa. His executive order making it extremely difficult for felons to regain their voting rights disenfranchises Iowans of all ethnic backgrounds but disproportionately affects racial minorities.

Governor Terry Branstad wore a pink tie and many colleagues remarked on history made yesterday at the Capitol, as Linda Upmeyer became the first woman to preside over the Iowa House as speaker, as well as the first child of an Iowa legislative leader to rise to the same position. Erin Murphy’s take on the milestone is worth a read.

As in recent years, social issues were almost entirely absent from the leaders’ opening remarks to their Iowa House and Senate colleagues. State budget priorities dominated the comments relating to public policy, with Republicans emphasizing the importance of not spending too much and Democrats emphasizing the need to spend enough on education and other vital services. No one mentioned Branstad’s call to extend the penny sales tax for school infrastructure and divert part of the revenue stream to water programs.

One of the best pickup opportunities for Democrats in the Iowa House got better on Thursday, as three-term Republican State Representative Brian Moore told KMAQ Radio in Maquoketa that he will not run for re-election in House district 58. After an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in an Iowa Senate district, Moore switched parties, filed in a House seat where there was no Republican challenger, and pulled off one of the most shocking Iowa state legislative upsets in 2010. He won a re-match against Tom Schueller in the next election cycle and defeated challenger Kim Huckstadt by a comfortable margin in 2014.

House district 58 is among the most Democratic-leaning legislative seats currently held by a Republican. In 2012, Barack Obama received 55.6 percent of the vote here; only residents of House district 91 in the Muscatine area gave a higher percentage of their votes to the president while electing a Republican to the Iowa House. According to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, House district 58 contains 6,968 active registered Democrats, 4,726 Republicans, and 9,151 no-party voters.

Moore has not always fallen in line with House Republican leaders. In late December, he told William Garbe of the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald that he may break with his caucus during this year’s session to support a larger funding increase for K-12 schools. Fellow GOP State Representatives Quentin Stanerson and Ron Jorgensen are also retiring this year and are known to have been dissatisfied with the final compromise on education funding last year. Moore’s announcement will increase speculation that State Representative Josh Byrnes may not seek a fourth term in House district 51. He challenged Linda Upmeyer for the speaker’s chair last summer. After losing that contest, Byrnes criticized excessive partisanship and the failure to meet deadlines for approving school funding. In 2013, Byrnes and Moore were the only two House Republicans to vote with Democrats to expand Medicaid as foreseen under the Affordable Care Act.

Democrat Peter Hird launched his campaign in House district 58 in October. I enclose below some background on Hird and a map of the district, which covers all of Jackson County, a large area in Jones County and two rural Dubuque County townships. Pat Rynard profiled Hird at Iowa Starting Line last month. I would not be surprised to see another Democrat file to run for this seat, since the winner of the primary will have a good chance of being elected in November.

Governor Branstad deserves credit for his proposal to provide significant resources to address water quality in Iowa. The proposal is an acknowledgment that water pollution is a serious, immediate problem that will take a major investment of resources to solve. It’s an acknowledgment that the drinking water in communities from Boone to Des Moines is at risk of being unsafe to drink because of high nitrate levels. It’s an acknowledgment that Iowans deserve better than a record number of public beach warnings caused by toxic algae and nutrient pollution. It’s an acknowledgment that while the voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy may provide a framework for solving our water quality problems, without the resources and urgency to implement it, the voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy won’t get us there.

Proposing a significant investment in water quality acknowledges the seriousness of our water quality problem and opens the door for serious discussions about how to find the resources to solve the problem. The Governor demonstrated leadership in starting the conversation, and it will take continued leadership to be open to input to improve the proposal and get buy in from legislators and the diverse constituencies that care about solving our water quality problem.

The leadership of an open mind is critical, because Governor Branstad’s proposal is not without its flaws.

graph of nitrates in the Des Moines River exceeding safe levels, taken by Steven Witmer using data from the U.S. Geological Survey

The Des Moines Water Works announced yesterday that it spent some $1.5 million during 2015 to operate its nitrate removal system “for a record 177 days, eclipsing the previous record of 106 days set in 1999.” The utility provides drinking water to about 500,000 residents of central Iowa, roughly one-sixth of the state’s population. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers 10 mg/l the maximum safe level for nitrates in drinking water. The Des Moines Water Works switches the nitrate removal system on when nitrates exceed 9 mg/l in both of its sources, the Raccoon River and the Des Moines River. I enclose below the full press release from the Water Works, as well as charts from the U.S. Geological Survey’s website showing recent nitrate levels in the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers.

Runoff from agricultural land is the primary source of nitrates in Iowa waterways. As David Osterberg wrote yesterday, “so little land in Iowa is devoted to urban uses (lawns or golf courses) that even if urban application rates of Nitrogen and Phosphorous fertilizer were much higher than that on farms, only 2 percent of the pollution from land application of fertilizer comes from lawns and golf courses.” This “nutrient pollution” not only incurs extra costs for providing safe drinking water but also creates toxic algae blooms, which caused a record number of beach advisory warnings during the summer of 2015.

Last January, the Des Moines Water Works filed a lawsuit against drainage districts in northwest Iowa’s Sac, Calhoun and Buena Vista Counties. Drake University Law Professor Neil Hamilton wrote an excellent backgrounder on this unprecedented litigation: Sixteen Things to Know About the Des Moines Water Works Proposed Lawsuit. In a guest column for the Des Moines Register last May, Hamilton debunked the “strenuous effort” to convince Iowans that “the lawsuit is unfair and unhelpful.”

Governor Terry Branstad has depicted the lawsuit as a sign that “Des Moines has declared war on rural Iowa” and repeatedly criticized the Water Works last year. Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey claims the water utility “has attempted to stand in the way of these collaborative efforts” to reduce nutrient pollution. A front group funded by the Iowa Farm Bureau and other agribusiness interests and led by Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett, among others, has also tried to turn public opinion against the lawsuit. In recent weeks, that group with the Orwellian name of Iowa Partnership for Clean Water has been running television commercials seeking to demonize Water Works CEO Bill Stowe.

Northey, Corbett, and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds may soon become bitter rivals for the 2018 GOP nomination for governor. But those three will stand together opposing any mandatory regulations to reduce agricultural runoff. All support Iowa’s voluntary nutrient reduction strategy, shaped substantially by Big Ag and lacking numeric criteria strongly recommended by the U.S. EPA.

William Petroski and Brianne Pfannenstiel report in today’s Des Moines Register that Branstad “is exploring a legislative proposal that would provide money for water quality projects by using projected revenue growth from an existing statewide sales tax for schools.” Apparently “superintendents have been getting called to the state Capitol to discuss the proposal” with Branstad and Reynolds. Fortunately, that cynical attempt to pit clean water against school funding appears to have zero chance of becoming law. Of the ten state lawmakers or representatives of education or environmental advocacy groups quoted by Petroski and Pfannenstiel, none endorsed the half-baked idea. Their reactions ranged from noncommittal to negative. Speaking to Rod Boshart of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal said of a possible Branstad proposal on water quality funding, “We certainly would be willing to look at that but we’re not going to cannibalize education or the basic social safety net so that he can put a fig leaf on his record on the environment.”

UPDATE: Erin Murphy reported more details about Branstad’s proposal: extend the 1 percent sales tax for school infrastructure, dedicate the first $10 million in annual growth to schools and allocate the rest to water programs.

SECOND UPDATE: Added below excerpts from Murphy’s report for the Cedar Rapids Gazette on Branstad’s plan. I’m disappointed to see U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack endorse this ill-conceived proposal. Of course we “need to work on [water quality] now,” but why does the money have to come out of school funds? Remember, the Branstad administration is already pushing a corporate tax break that will cost public school districts millions of dollars a year for infrastructure on top of tens of millions of dollars in lost state revenue.

THIRD UPDATE: Branstad told reporters today he does not believe there is support in the legislature to raise the sales tax. Under a constitutional amendment adopted in 2010, 3/8 of a cent of the next Iowa sales tax increase would flow into the natural resources trust fund. He also indicated that he would not support extending the penny sales tax for school infrastructure beyond 2029, when it is scheduled to expire, without lawmakers agreeing to divert some of the funding to water programs. According to incoming Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, “House Republicans have been divided on whether to extend the school infrastructure sales tax beyond 2029.”

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.

The Iowa legislature’s 2016 session opens two weeks from today. Last year’s session extended more than a month past the scheduled date for adjournment, largely because House Republican leaders refused to compromise on education spending. Lawmakers finally approved a budget deal in early June, only to watch Governor Terry Branstad strike out the key concessions to Democrats on funding for K-12 schools, state universities, and community colleges.

Legislators from both parties sound determined not to let history repeat itself.

Mike Sherzan announced today that he will seek the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s third Congressional district. He recently stepped down as leader of the financial services company he founded in order to focus his full attention on the Congressional race. I enclose below Sherzan’s press release and statements from his campaign website, which outline the candidate’s four priority issues: protecting retirement security by not privatizing Medicare or Social Security; promoting clean energy, with a focus on renewables and ag-based technologies; increasing the number of college graduates by reducing the cost of tuition and student loans; and rebuilding the middle-class by supporting equal pay for women and a minimum wage hike.

Sherzan has had a successful career in finance and may be able to largely self-fund his campaign, but he is distancing himself from stereotypes about corporate leaders who run for office. His “about” page and policy statements repeatedly refer to growing up in a family of modest means and working his way through college, with the help of Social Security benefits after his father’s sudden passing. Speaking to Bleeding Heartland last month, Sherzan emphasized that he “comes from a Democratic background” and urged people not to “judge my positions based on my business experience,” adding that “government was never meant to be a business.” His campaign is on Twitter and Facebook, though strangely, at this writing the campaign launch hasn’t been announced on either of those pages.

Sherzan briefly ran for Congress during the last election cycle but withdrew from that race in April 2013, citing unspecified health issues. He now joins Desmund Adams and Jim Mowrer in a Democratic field that may expand to include former Governor Chet Culver, who is in no hurry to make a decision. A few hours after Sherzan announced, Mowrer’s campaign rolled out a new batch of endorsements, which I’ve added at the end of this post. The 2014 challenger to Representative Steve King in IA-04 has lined up the most support from Iowa Democratic insiders, including Representative Dave Loebsack (IA-02), former Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson, and eight current state legislators.

The winner of next June’s Democratic primary will face first-term Representative David Young in what may become Iowa’s most competitive Congressional district. The sixteen counties in IA-03 contain 150,733 active registered Democrats, 163,699 Republicans, and 166,740 no-party voters, according to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. Polk County will be central to every candidate’s strategy for winning the nomination, because two-thirds of the registered Democrats in IA-03 live in the district’s most populous county.

University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld has been paying out of pocket this fall for coaching from a “top-notch” communications consultant, but his public speaking skills apparently need more work. Last week Harreld suggested to the university’s Staff Council that instructors who go to class unprepared for their teaching obligations “should be shot,” Ryan Foley reported today for the Associated Press.

It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last time Harreld has some trouble adapting to academic culture.

But I hope it will be the last time Harreld’s critics on campus discredit themselves by reacting to the president’s missteps in a ridiculous way.

December 14 marked 7,642 days that Terry Branstad has been governor of Iowa, making him the longest-serving governor in U.S. history, according to Eric Ostermeier of the Smart Politics website. Because most states have term limits for governors, “The odds of anyone passing [Branstad] in the 21st Century are next to none,” Ostermeier told Catherine Lucey of the Associated Press.

Speaking about his legacy, Branstad has emphasized the diversification of Iowa’s economy, even though a governor has far less influence over such trends than Branstad seems to believe. Some have cited “fiscal conservatism” as a hallmark of Branstad’s leadership. I strongly disagree. The man who has been governor for nearly half of my lifetime is stingy about spending money on education and some other critical public services. He opposes bonding initiatives commonly used in other states to fund infrastructure projects (“you don’t borrow your way to prosperity”). But he is happy to provide tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations that don’t need the help, without any regard for the future impact of those tax expenditures on the state budget. Many of Iowa’s “giveaways” in the name of economic development will never pay for themselves.

Branstad’s governing style has changed Iowa in important ways. He has altered Iowans’ expectations for their governor. He has expanded executive power at the expense of both the legislative branch and local governments. And particularly during the last five years, he has given corporate interests and business leaders more control over state policy. More thoughts on those points are after the jump, along with excerpts from some of the many profiles and interviews published as today’s landmark approached.

P.S.- Speaking of Branstad doing what business elites want him to do, Iowa Public Television’s “Governor Branstad: Behind the Scenes” program, which aired on December 11, included a telling snippet that I’ve transcribed below. During a brief chat at the Iowa State Fair, Iowa Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter asked Branstad to call Bruce Harreld, at that time one of the candidates to be president of the University of Iowa. That Rastetter asked Branstad to reassure Harreld was first reported right after the Board of Regents hired the new president, but I didn’t know they had the conversation in public near a television camera.

P.P.S.-Now that Branstad has made the history books, I remain convinced that he will not serve out his sixth term. Sometime between November 2016 and July 2017, he will resign in order to allow Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds to run for governor in 2018 as the incumbent. Although Branstad clearly loves his job, he is highly motivated to make Reynolds the next governor. She lacks a strong base of support in the Republican Party, because she was relatively inexperienced and largely unknown when tapped to be Branstad’s running mate in 2010. Even assuming she is the incumbent, Reynolds strikes me as more likely to lose than to win a statewide gubernatorial primary. Remaining in Branstad’s shadow would give Reynolds little chance of topping a field that will probably include Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey.

P.P.S.S.-I will always believe Branstad could have been beaten in 1990, if Democrats had nominated a stronger candidate than Don Avenson. Attorney General Tom Miller lost that three-way primary for one reason only: he was against abortion rights. Miller later changed that stance but never again ran for higher office.

The Iowa Board of Regents voted unanimously on Wednesday to rename the University of Iowa’s Children’s Hospital the “Stead Family University of Iowa Children’s Hospital,” to honor contributions made by alumni Jerre and Mary Joy Stead.

The regents sought no public comment on the proposal, which was unveiled with the bare minimum of advance notice required under Iowa’s open meeting law.

They also “had no discussion on the name change” before voting to approve it, Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press.

The Steads deserve recognition for supporting a children’s hospital where countless Iowans have received life-saving care. Many people with comparable wealth are far less generous. The university acknowledged the Steads’ $20 million commitment to the hospital by naming the Pediatrics Department after the donors and fundraising campaign co-chairs in 2013.

By rubber-stamping the university’s request to rename the hospital, the Board of Regents failed to consider the opportunity cost of giving up naming rights for a nearly century-old institution in exchange for an additional $5 million pledge from the Steads.

The optics of renaming the hospital without public input are also bad, coming so soon after the regents’ pick of Bruce Harreld as president of the university. Not only has Jerre Stead had longstanding business relationships with Harreld, he and university Vice President for Medical Affairs Jean Robillard and Regents President Bruce Rastetter strongly influenced Harreld’s hiring.

Television reporter and former KCRG morning show anchor Ashley Hinson emerged today as the likely Republican nominee in the Iowa House district that outgoing Speaker Kraig Paulsen is vacating. Paulsen announced in August that he would not seek another term in House district 67. Instead, he will take up a newly-created senior position at Iowa State University next year.

Hinson is on Twitter here and has a campaign website and Facebook page. At this writing, HinsonforHouse.com says little about political priorities; there’s no issues page or even a full bio of the candidate. The blurb on the front page offers a vague call to “stand up” against “politics as usual” and a promise to “make sure that everyone feels heard and is heard in Des Moines.” Hinson’s working campaign slogan appears to be “Trusted. Proven. Leader.”

Democrat Mark Seidl made his campaign in House district 67 official earlier this month. He unsuccessfully challenged Republican State Representative Renee Schulte in 2010 and ran against Paulsen in 2012. I am not aware of a Seidl campaign presence on Twitter or Facebook, but the candidate’s website is here. The issues page consists of bullet points on improving the business climate in Iowa, creating well-paid jobs, supporting education, balancing the budget, and maintaining “Iowa’s leadership in renewable energy.”

I enclose below a map of House district 67, details about the district’s political make-up and recent voting history, and background on Hinson and Seidl.

The Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) announced yesterday that it “has started the process to transfer funds earmarked for the Iowa Energy Center (IEC) at Iowa State University and the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) at the University of Iowa.” The retreat came less than a week after a spokesperson had insisted, “The board will disburse the funds when they are satisfied (the centers) have answered all the board’s questions.”

Restoring the flow of money means the centers charged with promoting alternative energy and efficiency and “interdisciplinary research on the many aspects of global environmental change” no longer face possible staff layoffs or program cuts. But yesterday’s climb-down won’t erase the damage done by IUB Chair Geri Huser’s unwise and unprecedented decision to withhold funding, in the absence of any legal authority to do so. She miscalculated in three ways.

A Republican challenger to three-term State Senator Jeff Danielson in Iowa Senate district 30 emerged last week. Bonnie Sadler is on Facebook here and on Twitter here. Danielson has a campaign website as well as a Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Danielson was the Iowa legislative incumbent re-elected by the narrowest margin in 2008, beating Walt Rogers by just 22 votes out of more than 32,000 cast. Although Danielson won his third term by a somewhat larger margin in 2012, Republicans are still likely to target this race as one of their top two or three pickup opportunities. The Republican State Leadership Committee has committed to play for the Iowa Senate majority in 2016. Democrats currently control the chamber by 26 votes to 24.

I enclose below a map of Senate district 30, a review of its voter registration numbers and recent voting history, background on both candidates, and first thoughts on what should be a central issue during next year’s campaign.

Incoming Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer says the majority House Republican caucus will handle education spending early during the 2016 legislative session, and will likely not approve funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa. I recommend reading Erin Murphy’s whole interview with Upmeyer, which appeared in the Quad-City Times on Sunday. Follow me after the jump for more thoughts on Upmeyer’s comments and how state support for public school districts and Planned Parenthood’s family planning programs may play out next year.

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

Arguments over the appropriate U.S. response to refugees from Syria were a hot topic this week in personal conversations as well as in the news media. I saw some longtime friendships strained over heated Facebook threads about the question. Governor Terry Branstad’s order “to halt any work on Syrian refugee resettlements immediately in order to ensure the security and safety of Iowans” provoked commentaries in several major newspapers and an unusually strong statement from Iowa’s four Catholic bishops.

The U.S. House vote to in effect stop the flow of refugees from Syria and Iraq generated passionate comments from supporters and opponents of the measure. Dozens of Iowans expressed their disappointment on the thread under Representative Dave Loebsack’s official statement explaining his vote. In an apparent response to negative feedback from progressives, Loebsack’s Congressional campaign sent an e-mail to supporters the following day, trying to distinguish his position on refugees from the Middle East from that of many Republicans, and assuring that “we will not turn our backs on those in need.” (Scroll to the end of this post to read that message.)

Calls by some politicians to admit only certifiably Christian refugees from the Middle East triggered strong emotions in many American Jews this week. I saw it on my social media feeds, where many people reminded their non-Jewish friends and acquaintances that the U.S. turned away a ship carrying hundreds of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a rare statement on a political matter (enclosed below), urging “public figures and citizens to avoid condemning today’s refugees [from Syria] as a group.”

I’ve seen many people object to that analogy, saying reluctance to admit Syrian refugees is grounded in legitimate fears for public safety, unlike the prejudice that influenced U.S. immigration policy during the 1930s. But as historian Peter Shulman explained in this commentary for Fortune magazine,

Opposition to Jewish refugees was not simply timeless bigotry. With today’s talk of “Judeo-Christian” values, it is easy to forget the genuine alienness and threat to national security these refugees represented. […]

Behind these [1939 poll] numbers [showing widespread hostility toward Jews] lay a toxic fear of Jewish subversion. For decades, Jews had been linked to various strains of un-American threats: socialism, communism, and anarchism, of course, but also (paradoxically) a kind of hyper-capitalism. Many believed that the real threat to the United States lay not from abroad, but within.

One author of a recent letter to the Des Moines Register called for vetting Syrian refugees at the U.S. facility for holding suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay: “My Irish ancestors went through a similar process at Ellis Island. The vetting procedure was very different for them. They were checked to be sure they weren’t carrying diseases into America. We need to be sure that the refugees coming into our country don’t come with a mind disease goal of killing us, instead of seeking a new life for themselves, like my Irish ancestors did.” Here’s some news for letter-writer Janet Boggs: when the first large waves of Irish ancestors entered this country during the 1840s and 1850s, many native-born Americans considered them and other Catholic immigrants an existential threat to this country, not harmless migrants seeking a better life. Read up on the Know-Nothing Party.

Today’s Sunday Des Moines Register includes a letter to the editor from Republican State Representative Steve Holt, who thanked Branstad for making “the safety of Iowans” his priority. Holt warned, “If we expect Western civilization to survive, we must abandon political correctness and educate ourselves on the realities of Islam, and the instrument of its implementation, Sharia law.” Holt represents half of GOP State Senator Jason Schultz’s constituents in western Iowa; Schultz has been beating the “Sharia law” drum for months while agitating against allowing any more refugees from the Middle East to settle in Iowa. UPDATE: I should have noted that today’s Register also ran a letter to the editor from Democratic State Representative Marti Anderson, who made the case for welcoming refugees. I’ve added it after the jump.

Speaking of security risks, yesterday Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press on questions surrounding the threat assessment teams many universities formed after the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech. I didn’t know that the University of Iowa sent “a detective with the campus threat assessment team” to a fake news conference communications Professor Kembrew McLeod organized in August to poke fun at efficiency measures outside consultants recommended for Iowa’s public universities. I had forgotten about the lawsuit stemming from false accusations that a whistleblower employee in the Iowa State College of Engineering’s marketing department might be a “potential terrorist or mass murderer.” Officials spreading such rumors about the employee included the former boss whose shady conduct he had exposed. Excerpts from Foley’s article are below, but click through to read the whole piece.