For the third month in a row, registered Republicans in Iowa slightly outnumber registered Democrats. The latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office (pdf) show 663,969 active no-party voters statewide, 607,936 active Republicans, and 595,423 active Democrats. After the jump I’ve posted the latest active voter registration numbers in all 99 Iowa counties, grouped by Congressional district. The most evenly-split county is Decatur in south-central Iowa, with 1,749 registered Democrats, 1,783 Republicans, and 1,775 no-party voters as of June 1.

Any comments about the 2012 elections in Iowa are welcome in this thread. The deadline to enter Bleeding Heartland’s 2012 Iowa primary election prediction contest is Tuesday, June 5, at 7 am.

Iowa primary elections are coming up next Tuesday, so it’s time for another Bleeding Heartland election prediction contest. A dozen questions are after the jump. There are so many competitive Iowa House and Senate primaries that it was difficult for me to choose. I tried to achieve some geographical balance and cover different types of primaries (open-seat races vs. challenges to incumbents, safe seats for one party vs. swing districts).

To enter the contest, post your predictions as comments in this thread before 7 am 6 pm on June 5. Predictions submitted by e-mail will not be considered. It’s ok to change your mind, as long as you post your revised predictions as an additional comment in this thread before the deadline.

No money’s at stake here, just bragging rights. This isn’t like “The Price is Right”; the winning answers will be closest to the final results, whether or not they were a little high or low. Even if you have no idea, please try to take a guess on every question.

May 24 was the deadline for Iowa Congressional campaign committees to file “pre-primary” financial reports with the Federal Election Commission. Highlights from those reports are after the jump.

In a little-noticed vote last week, Democrats Leonard Boswell (IA-03) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) joined Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) in backing language to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline as part of a major transportation bill.

Catching up on news from last week, the U.S. House approved the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2013. Details on how Iowa’s five representatives vote on that bill and on important amendments are after the jump.

I also enclose the statements released by members of Iowa’s Congressional delegation. Not surprisingly, several self-styled deficit hawks bragged about supporting a bill that prohibits various cost-saving measures and mandates spending on some items the military doesn’t even want.

I don’t write many posts in the “wacky and mean-spirited things conservative say” genre, but I’m making an exception today.

What’s going on with Brad Zaun? This month he’s stuck his nose into two Republican primaries that should be of little concern to a state senator from the Des Moines suburbs.

Some bad public policy ideas take hold because decision-makers become convinced they will work. Other times, bad ideas gain momentum because politicians who should know better are too scared or lazy to make the case against them.

In what looks like a textbook example of the second scenario, all three Democrats representing Iowa in the U.S. House are now on record supporting some form of constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget.

Not put off by picking the wrong candidates in two Iowa Republican primaries in 2010, the National Republican Congressional Committee has elevated Ben Lange to “contender” status in Iowa’s first district, while taking a neutral posture in the second district primary.

In an interview with ABC News today, President Barack Obama confirmed that he thinks same-sex couples “should be able to get married.”

UPDATE: Added more Iowa political reaction below.

Republican Congressional candidate Ben Lange launched his campaign’s first radio commercial yesterday. In the 60-second ad, Lange makes a broad statement about “restoring the generational compact.”

For the second month in a row, registered Republicans in Iowa slightly outnumber registered Democrats. The latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office (pdf) show 669,966 active no-party voters statewide, 608,096 active Republicans, and 599,225 active Democrats. Follow me after the jump for the latest active voter registration numbers in all 99 Iowa counties, grouped by Congressional district.

Any comments about the 2012 elections in Iowa are welcome in this thread.

First district Congressional candidate Rod Blum rolled out endorsements today from two Republicans who ran in the 2010 primary to represent IA-01. Will Johnson and Mike LaCoste cited Blum’s business experience and record of accomplishments in a press release I’ve posted after the jump. Those are major themes in the case Blum has been making against primary rival Ben Lange. LaCoste also echoed Blum’s appeal to stop sending attorneys and career politicians to Congress.

Lange easily won the 2010 nomination with more than twice as many votes as Johnson, his nearest competitor (pdf). LaCoste dropped out of that race a few weeks before the primary.

Any comments about the IA-01 campaign are welcome in this thread. Bleeding Heartland covered Lange’s endorsers here and here. Lange leads Blum in fundraising, though Democratic incumbent Bruce Braley has a larger campaign war chest than either of his GOP opponents. A detailed post on Braley’s case for re-election is in progress.

UPDATE: On April 30 the Liberty Iowa political action committee endorsed Blum. I’ve added the press release below. The Liberty Iowa PAC’s executive director, Adil Khan, worked for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in Iowa and North Dakota.

The U.S. House approved a bill yesterday to cut taxes by 20 percent for one year for companies with fewer than 500 employees. All the Iowans present voted for the legislation: Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) and Democrats Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03). Bruce Braley (IA-01) was absent. His staff have not responded to my request for comment on how he would have voted.

The roll call shows that only 18 House Democrats supported this bill. Once again, Progressive Caucus member Loebsack joined Republicans and a small group of primarily Blue Dog Democrats. Bleeding Heartland has discussed this pattern in the context of Loebsack’s votes for a balanced budget constitutional amendment, to block non-existent EPA regulations on farm dust, to make it more difficult for the federal government to regulate small business, and to extend a pay freeze for mostly middle-class federal workers.

After the jump I enclose a statement from King and more details on the Congressional debate over small business tax cuts.

While many Americans dread tax day, April 15 holds a silver lining for political junkies: the chance to read the latest federal campaign finance reports. Follow me after the jump for details on the money raised and spent by Iowa’s five U.S. House incumbents and five challengers between January 1 and March 31. Note: at this writing, Dave Loebsack’s primary challenger Joe Seng had not filed a quarterly report with the Federal Election Commission. I will update this post if one appears. He may not have raised enough money yet to trigger reporting requirements.

Click here for the latest voter registration numbers in Iowa’s four new Congressional districts.

Cedar Rapids city officials received good news on two fronts this week: the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved $13.8 million to cover flood damage to the city’s hydroelectric plant in 2008, and the Iowa legislature approved a bill to help local governments fund flood mitigation efforts.

Iowa Republican leaders were thrilled to learn this week that active registered Republicans outnumber active registered Democrats in this state for the first time since 2006. The Secretary of State’s office is working with county auditors on voter list maintenance. Voters whose addresses cannot be confirmed are being moved off the active lists, and in many counties, more Democrats than Republicans are being shifted to “inactive” status. Inactive voters are still eligible to vote in Iowa, but they must show ID at the polling station in order to vote on election day.

The Republican voter registration edge is likely to grow, because there are many more competitive GOP than Democratic primaries for the Iowa House and Senate. Republicans also have competitive primaries in two of the four Congressional districts, whereas Democrats have two candidates only in IA-02. On June 5, a significant number of Democrats and no-party voters will switch to the GOP in order to vote in a primary.

After the jump I’ve posted updated active voter registration numbers for Democrats, Republicans, and no-party voters in all 99 Iowa counties, grouped by Congressional district. The data come from this page on the Iowa Secretary of State website (pdf), except that I placed Wayne County in IA-02 where it belongs, rather than in IA-03. (UPDATE: That error has been corrected on the official site.) In some counties, the numbers are barely changed from last month’s figures. Other county auditors have taken many more people off the active voter rolls.  

Iowa politicians from both parties are speaking out today in defense of finely textured beef product, now commonly known as “pink slime.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced earlier this month that it will give schools the option of buying ground beef that does not contain the product. Several grocery store chains have recently announced that they will stop carrying ground beef containing the product, prompting Beef Products Inc. to suspend production of finely textured beef product at three plants for 60 days. One of the closed plants is in Waterloo. BPI is leaving its plant in South Sioux City, Nebraska running for now.

Iowa political reaction to the controversy is after the jump.

Democrats Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) joined Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) in voting yesterday for the Senate version of a bill designed to help small business start-ups. The five representatives all supported the original version of the bill earlier this month. Republican Chuck Grassley also voted for the bill when it came before the Senate last week, but Democrat Tom Harkin opposed it over concerns it would further deregulate Wall Street and undermine investor protections. After yesterday’s vote, Braley hailed the bipartisan action to “reduce small business restrictions,” while Loebsack highlighted provisions he advocated to promote small businesses owned by womens, veterans, and minorities. I enclose those statements at the end of this post.

Also on March 27, the U.S. House approved a bill designed to weaken the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to regulate. Iowans split on party lines. Follow me after the jump for details on that bill and various amendments debated on the House floor yesterday.

Friday marked the second anniversary of President Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as health care reform or “Obamacare.” After the jump I enclose lots of news related to the milestone, including comments from Iowa elected officials and statistics on how certain provisions affect Iowans.

This morning the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to start hearing oral arguments regarding the constitutionality of the health care reform law. Governor Terry Branstad signed Iowa on to one of the lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act last year. Near the end of this post I’ve included some speculation about how the justices may rule (or punt).

Republican rivals Rod Blum and Ben Lange continue to make very different cases for their candidacies in Iowa’s first Congressional district. Blum emphasizes his biography and experience, while Lange emphasizes the network of support he is building in his second attempt to defeat Representative Bruce Braley.

Follow me after the jump for a closer look at Blum’s pitch to Republican audiences and Lange’s new endorsements from nine GOP state legislators, complementing the steering committee he announced earlier this month.  

I’m posting the weekend thread early, because the filing period for primary election candidates in Iowa closed this afternoon. The Secretary of State’s Office posted the full list of candidates here (pdf). John Deeth has been covering the filing on a daily basis all month at his blog. Some highlights from races I’m watching are after the jump.

This is an open thread; all topics welcome.

UPDATE: Gotta agree with Senator Chuck Grassley: the History Channel is useless.

All the expected Congressional candidates in Iowa have filed nominating papers with the Secretary of State’s Office: Bruce Braley, Ben Lange, and Rod Blum in the first district; Dave Loebsack, Dan Dolan, and John Archer in the second district; Leonard Boswell and Tom Latham in the third district; and Steve King and Christie Vilsack in the fourth district.

No one I talked to last weekend saw petitions for State Senator Joe Seng at various county conventions in IA-02. Therefore, I assume Seng will not file to challenge Loebsack in the primary. Either Iowa’s worst Democratic lawmaker was just looking for a little free publicity earlier this month, or he didn’t realize how many signatures he would need to qualify for the ballot as a Congressional candidate. FRIDAY UPDATE: I was dead wrong–don’t know how Seng got the signatures, but he’s on the candidate list from the Secretary of State’s Office.

To mark the field being set in all four districts, I’m posting updated active voter registration numbers for Democrats, Republicans, and no-party voters in all 99 Iowa counties, grouped by Congressional district. The numbers in the tables after the jump come from this page at the Iowa Secretary of State’s website (pdf).

Any comments about the Congressional races are welcome in this thread. I love this story about Dolan accidentally addressing the wrong convention in Monroe County last Saturday. The Democratic delegates politely listened to his stump speech, after which someone raised his hand to suggest Dolan might want the Republican convention instead. Now that’s what I call Iowa nice!

UPDATE: Here’s a change of pace: King has never debated a Congressional challenger before, but he is proposing to debate Vilsack six times. No word yet on the details of the offer.

NOTE: A third Democrat, Nick Volk, filed nominating papers in this district on March 15.

Shelley Parbs announced today that she will run for Iowa Senate district 38. She is the second declared Democratic candidate in this district; the winner of the June primary will face first-term Republican Tim Kapucian, a Senate minority leader and ranking member of the Transportation Committee. Background on Parbs is after the jump, along with election-related developments in the two Iowa House seats that make up Senate district 38.

The Iowa Democratic Party and Republican Party of Iowa held county conventions today. After the jump I’ve posted some notes on where Iowa politicians and candidates spent the day, and which Democrats addressed the Polk County Democratic convention. I left the convention during the lunch break, because delegates had finished most of the day’s business, including all work on the platform. However, the Polk County Republican convention was still going strong at this writing (around 5 pm).

This is an open thread; all topics welcome, especially county convention stories from today or years past.

Rick Santorum destroyed the competition in today’s Kansas caucuses, winning 52 percent of the vote to 21 percent for Mitt Romney, 14 percent for Newt Gingrich and 13 percent for Ron Paul. Romney swept the delegates at stake yesterday and today in the Guam and Northern Marianas Islands caucuses. Romney also won the Wyoming caucuses and most of the delegates from the Virgin Islands.

BONUS POTENTIAL FLAMEWAR TOPIC: Kevin Drum makes a counter-intuitive case: Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars movie, especially if you take out the 10 minutes of horrific Ewok sequences. Thoughts?

This morning Ben Lange announced a “steering committee” of 57 Republicans supporting his campaign in Iowa’s first Congressional district. Lange’s endorsers include nine local or county elected officials, three former state legislators, six current or former chairs of county Republican parties, five former candidates for state or federal offices, and seven “tea party” or “9/12 group” activists. About half of the steering committee members live in either Linn, Black Hawk or Dubuque counties, which are home to roughly half of the registered Republicans in the new IA-01.

I’ve posted the full list of Lange endorsers below, along with background on some of the politicians named. The Lange campaign didn’t respond to my request for comment on rival candidate Rod Blum’s suggestion that Lange lacks the experience or record of accomplishments to be a strong Congressional candidate. I haven’t seen any rebuttals to Blum on Lange’s campaign website or Facebook page either. In a sense, rolling this steering committee is an indirect answer to Blum: dozens of committed Republican activists see something in Lange worth supporting.

Two Republicans are running against Representative Bruce Braley in Iowa’s first Congressional district. Up to now, both have focused on criticizing the incumbent, President Barack Obama, and Washington political culture.

In recent weeks, Rod Blum has started making the case against his primary rival, 2010 GOP nominee Ben Lange.

The U.S. House voted yesterday to repeal two regulations enacted by the Obama administration’s Department of Education. Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) were among 69 House Democrats who joined a united House GOP caucus in supporting this bill.  

The U.S. Postal Service announced yesterday that it will keep mail processing facilities in Waterloo and Cedar Rapids open, saving hundreds of jobs.

Northeast Iowa contains a large number of potentially competitive Iowa House and Senate seats. The field is now set in the new House district 56, where a first-term Republican will face a Democratic challenger with a similar background.

Both houses of Congress approved a deal today to extend a payroll tax cut through the end of this year. It was only the second time I can remember that Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Steve King (IA-05) voted against a bill that the rest of Iowa’s Congressional delegation supported.

Last night in Cedar Rapids, Republican Ben Lange formally announced his 2012 campaign to represent Iowa’s first Congressional district. The candidate who narrowly lost IA-01 in 2010 is not a lock for the GOP nomination. Unlike two years ago, Lange faces a primary rival with extensive business experience and a decent amount of money in the bank. For now, he is ignoring the Republican competition in IA-01 and taking aim at three-term incumbent Bruce Braley. Lange’s talking points merit a closer look.

President Barack Obama released his draft budget for the 2013 fiscal year yesterday. Details on the president’s proposed spending and tax rates are after the jump, along with reaction from the Iowans in Congress and some of their challengers.  

MARCH 16 UPDATE: Republican Elliott Henderson of Independence qualified for the ballot on the last day of the filing period. Bleeding Heartland will discuss his campaign in a future post.

State Senator Brian Schoenjahn confirmed today that he is running for re-election in the new Senate district 32. This politically balanced seat is a must-win for Democrats hoping to retain their majority in the upper chamber. With barely a month to go before the filing deadline for state legislative candidates, Republicans do not yet have a challenger in this district.

Most governors have the power to veto specific line items in appropriations bills, and many deficit hawks believe bills passed by Congress should be subject to the same kind of scrutiny. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that it is unconstitutional to give the president line-item veto power over appropriations bills. Seeking a way around that problem, the House approved a bill yesterday that would allow the president to recommend budget rescissions for Congress to consider. The legislation attracted an unusually bipartisan group of supporters and opponents.

From now through November, Bleeding Heartland will post a monthly update on voter registration figures for all 99 Iowa counties and for all four new Congressional districts. I’m kicking off this series in February because the Iowa caucuses were bound to produce a noticeable shift in Republican voter registrations across the state.  

Candidates love to empathize with struggling middle-class Americans, but middle-income government employees are an easy target for politicians trying to earn their deficit warrior stripes. Today more than a third of U.S. House Democrats voted with nearly all the House Republicans to keep most civilian federal employees’ salaries frozen through 2013. All five Iowans voted for the legislation, even though Democrats Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) have repeatedly said they oppose balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class.

Yesterday was the deadline for Congressional candidates to file financial reports on the fourth quarter of 2011. Details on fundraising by all the incumbents and challengers in Iowa are after the jump.

As I did last quarter, I’m covering the districts in reverse order, because the most interesting money stories came out of the new fourth and third Congressional districts.  

After a few months of exploring a second run for Congress in Iowa’s first district, Republican Ben Lange has confirmed that he will soon make his candidacy official.

Yesterday U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed some proposed cuts to the military budget, part of a plan to save $487 billion over the next decade. Click here or here for details on the reductions, which will slow the rate of growth in defense spending but are far from the “massive cuts” opponents decry.

Representatives Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) responded to yesterday’s news by promising to fight for defense-related jobs at the Rock Island Arsenal, a major employer in the Quad Cities area.