Chris Jones is a research engineer (IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering) at the University of Iowa. An earlier version of this piece was first published on the author’s blog. -promoted by Laura Belin

The Landscape of Capitalism by former University of Iowa professor Robert F. Sayre (1933-2014) is an excellent short history of Iowa agriculture. I read Sayre’s essay many years ago and had all but forgotten it, but it was restored to my memory recently by a conversation I had with an ag drainage engineer.

Jeani Murray managed Leonard Boswell’s 1998 campaign and served on his Congressional staff. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Leonard Boswell was mortally wounded from Agent Orange poisoning in February of 1969 while serving as an assault helicopter pilot in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

Retired Colonel Charles Teague, a longtime colleague and dear friend of Leonard, shared that revelation with us while giving an impressive eulogy last Saturday.

It took 50 years and six months to take his life, but that flight sealed his fate. And the astonishing thing is he didn’t have to go on that mission. He was the commander; he could have sent any one of his airmen to do the job. But as a leader, Leonard Boswell would never ask his pilots to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

So many times Leonard said the same thing to me when I worked for him. Never ask your team to do something you are unwilling to do yourself. That lesson on leadership has remained with me to this day.

Johnson County Supervisor Kurt Friese reflects on Workers’ Memorial Day and the troubling trend of “criticism and bad-mouthing of pro-labor candidates and their supporters BY their respective supporters and even by unions themselves.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

Each year at the end of April, labor organizers across the country hold a vigil of remembrance called “Workers’ Memorial Day.” Here in Johnson County, it was just this past Friday. We gathered to remember and to hear speeches, but more importantly to hear the names and stories of the 36 workers who lost their lives on the job in Iowa in 2017.

Many in attendance lined up to read from a notecard about such a story. As each is read, the gathered crowd chants together, “Gone, but not forgotten.” It is indeed quite moving as those words repeat, like a solemn drumbeat, another echo for each story read, another worker dead, each name mentioned, each face shown on the screen, and again: “Gone, but not forgotten.” And again. 36 people who went to work one day but never came home to their families.

Across the United States, trans health care is an unstable patchwork of “islands.” Nowhere is this more evident than in Midwest states like Iowa and Indiana. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Jessica Chrystal shines a light on a widespread problem in a state that is supposed to be the bread basket of the world. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I spent part of last week attending events at the World Food Prize in Des Moines. When we think of hunger, we think of homeless people on benches in California. The Salvation Army bell ringer standing outside of Target during Christmas, or the glowing images from our tvs of starving children to donate to various charities overseas.

Rarely do we think of our neighbor next door.

Hunger is everywhere. She’s part of the fabric of every map dot town and big city across Iowa.

Thanks to Kurt Friese for this perspective on a controversy that brings together concerns over land use, local foods, and affordable housing. Fellow Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan explained his vote on the proposal here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

It what might be called the most contentious vote of my time so far on the Board of Supervisors, on June 23 we chose one of three potential concepts for “phase 2” of the planning for the historic Johnson County Poor Farm. The concept, titled “New Century Farm,” is the most ambitious of the three, and is the only one of the three that keeps all our options open.

What it does not do is sell off public land to private developers, nor “pave the poor farm,” nor create urban sprawl. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, a little background.

A fourth Iowa Democrat joins the race to un-seat republican US Senator Chuck Grassley. Her name is Patty Judge. US Senate candidate Tom Fiegen — a Sanders Democrat — issued a warning to progressive Iowa democrats this week about the Big Money influence pulling the strings of this latest candidate to enter the race.

“I welcome Lt. Governor Judge to the race because of the contrast between us. Her political base is big money industrial agriculture interests where poisoning Iowa’s waters is part of the deal. The majority of Iowans want clean drinking water and small family farmers growing more fresh healthy local food. A majority of Iowans want Citizens United overturned. Make no mistake, this election is a choice between status-quo politics where everything is for sale to the high bidder and the politics of putting the needs of working people ahead of Super PACs.”

The House of Representatives is currently considering a bill that would drastically cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and severely limit the agency’s ability to protect human health and the environment.

Known as the 2012 Interior-EPA Appropriations bill (H.R. 2584), it would delay critical clean air rules by more than a year and prevent the EPA from regulating toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Our congressional delegation is generally pretty divided along party lines when it comes to major public health issues such as this – generally, Braley/Loebsack support the independence of the EPA and King/Latham oppose. Boswell is typically a swing vote. More below the fold if you are interested in taking action!

From time to time I run across editorials, letters to the editor, and other random environmental news that I find interesting.  This piece I found particularly compelling and I wanted to share. It comes from a community activist in Muscatine, IA who is really fighting to improve air quality in Muscatine – and throughout the state. Her name is Michelle Marine and you can read her blog at: Simplify, Live, Love

By: Michelle Marine 

In 2006, my husband and I and our four children moved to his hometown of Wilton in Muscatine County. We've lived in lots of large cities, both in the US and abroad. We chose rural living for a variety of issues, one being for an overall healthier lifestyle. I was saddened to learn that the air quality here in rural Iowa is sometimes worse than in the big cities we lived in the past. I started a blog at Simplify, Live, Love.

The blog focuses on frugal living, homeschooling, grammar, and living green. I became interested in the air quality issue after realizing how badly the air smells at our house in Wilton some days. I researched the issue more in depth when Healthy Child, Healthy World asked for bloggers to blog on air quality.

I was shocked at what I learned about the air quality in Muscatine County. Muscatine County has the highest levels of particulate matter, a hazardous air pollutant. Our residents are exposed to the lowest air quality levels in the state of Iowa. And as we know, many of our friends and neighbors suffer from air-pollution related illnesses, including an unclassifiable upper-respiratory disease physicians have come to call the “Muscatine Crud.”

With floodwaters along the Mississippi River in the southern U.S reaching historic levels it’s time for Iowa to take a leadership role in helping prevent future flooding by investing in watershed improvement programs and conservation in Iowa.

Many people might not know what a watershed is. A watershed is basically a basin defined by highpoints and ridges that descend into lower elevations and stream valleys. A watershed carries water from the land after rain falls and snow melts. Drop by drop, water is channeled into soils, groundwaters, creeks, and streams, making its way to larger rivers and eventually the sea.

According to the EPA:

A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place. John Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is:

“that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community.”

Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. They cross county, state, and national boundaries. In the continental US, there are 2,110 watersheds; including Hawaii Alaska, and Puerto Rico, there are 2,267 watersheds.

This is the connection between watershed and land management practices in Iowa and recent flooding on the Mississippi River. …more after the jump…

On Friday, Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party wrote an article in the Union Leader which basically said what we've all been thinking: Iowa Republicans are currently driving their party off a cliff and are hurting our entire state by marginializing our caucus system.

This article, "So long Iowa, it was nice knowing ya," is a must read for everyone who has been watching with dred as social conservatives pushed out fiscal conservatives, and presidential candidates began to "reevaluate" their early state strategy.

Here are some of the important excerpts:

Two conditions make the early states in the presidential nominating process work. First, all candidates must believe they have an equal opportunity to succeed. They might not be happy with the outcome — most of them lose, after all — but they all have to feel like they had their shot and were given a fair hearing by voters. Second, the electorates have to be broadly representative of the party as a whole. This gives a win meaning and legitimacy.

The Iowa caucus may once have met those conditions for Republicans, but today it does not. Iowa Republicans have marginalized themselves to the point where competing in Iowa has become optional.

… This week came another troubling sign that Iowa Republicans are outside the party mainstream: a birther epidemic. A Public Policy Polling survey found that 48 percent of Iowa Republicans don’t believe President Obama was born in the United States, and another 26 percent said they weren’t sure if he was or if he wasn’t. It’s hard to talk about real issues when three quarters of the audience wears tin foil hats.

…Iowa Republicans didn’t set out to marginalize themselves, but it’s happened — to New Hampshire’s benefit. With several major candidates likely to bypass Iowa, and the odds rising that Iowa’s skewed caucus electorate could support candidates with limited general election appeal, the likelihood of New Hampshire being called upon to make a correction grow.

Currently, reporters in Iowa continue to ignore the harm that far-right Republicans are doing to our state with their social litmus tests. We’ve seen a few bold Republicans like Doug Gross and Kevin Hall speak out publicly, but they are few and far between.

Under The Golden Dome has the story as well, but Americans United For Change has a new ad up going after some of the more conservative fiscal hawks in Congress including our very own 4th CD Rep. Steve King.

This also comes at a bad time for Congressman King as Public Policy Polling has new numbers from statewide Iowa polling – showing him having weak favorables statewide, and particularly weak favorables when compared to Christie Vilsack.

This evening, Chris Kirkham with The Huffington Post wrote a scathing article about Ashford University, which is a for-profit college located in Clinton, Iowa that has 76,000 students, 99% of them take classes online.

This online college has been basically robbing students blind, 60% to 70% of people who enroll there drop out and are stuck with huge debts.  What’s worse, the public corporation running the school has been robbing the federal government blind too.  Huffpost reports that nearly 85% of their revenues, nearly $600 million last year, came from the federal government.

Now, you may ask, how is this happening in our backyard without more of an uproar? One reason might be the campaign contributions and political glad handing that the parent company for Ashford University, Bridgepoint Education, has undertaken this past year.

Bridgepoint Education PAC contributed at least $7,250 to Iowa politicians in 2010.  The contributions have been mixed between D’s and R’s, but the Clinton County Republican Central Committee was able to squeeze $350 from their PAC.   Click here to see the Bridgepoint Education PAC campaign finance records.  Bridgepoint Education also invested over $40,000 on lobbyists in 2010.

On February 16, 2011, Congressman Tom Latham stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and made a complete fool of himself while simultaneously attacking the Iowa ethanol industry.  It’s not clear if Latham just didn’t read the amendment he was attacking, if his staff gave him bad analysis, or if he is so desperate to attack Congressman Bruce Braley, who sponsored the amendment, that he ignored all of the facts and the numerous ethanol and renewable fuels organizations who were aggressively encouraging lawmakers to support it.

Check out the video and see how Latham breathlessly goes on and on about the common sense amendment, it’s pretty astonishing:

I drew this map upon release of the new Census data for Iowa.  I paid no attention to partisanship and tried to correlate each district with a geographical area of the state.  Starting with Des Moines, I drew a district around it, then drew a district for the southeast, northeast and western Iowa.  My goal was to have each district within 1,000 persons of the ideal district population.  Amazingly, my configuration worked out on my very first try (which means there’s probably many possible combinations to how the state can be drawn).  Nevertheless, I kind of like the map here because I think it does a good job in keeping the different regions of the state together (in that respect, I think it’s better than, for example, the 1990’s Iowa map which had one district run from Des Moines to  the western border).

Proud to be an Iowan. Period. Thanks Zach.

As many of you know, I work for Iowa's Water & Land Legacy Coalition in addition to my lucrative high paying career as a blogger under the tutelage of desmoinesdem.

Details are below, but we will be holding a public rally at the Iowa State Capitol on the morning of February 9th, 2011 to publicize Iowans support for fully funding the Natural Resources & Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund that was created through a vote of 63% of Iowans on November 2nd.

In addition to supporting the funding of the Trust Fund, we are also pushing back against efforts to ban public land acquisition by the Iowa DNR and cuts in REAP (Resource Enhancement & Protection).  These are important programs with water quality, soil conservation, and wildlife habitat benefits.  

You can visit www.iowaswaterandlandlegacy.org to learn more, but information about the rally is below. 

Interested in many political issues, this is my first diary here. I publish previously this bid for redistricting Iowa in SwingStateProject, and desmoinesdem tell me for publish it here. Then, I'm here. I hope the people find it interesting.

Sorry if you see some mistake writing, but I'm not a native speaker.

The best luck for the democrats from Iowa 🙂

Share any reactions to today’s debate between Democratic Governor Chet Culver and Republican Terry Branstad in this thread. My thoughts are after the jump.

Note: some Bleeding Heartland readers have had trouble commenting lately using Internet Explorer. The problem seems to disappear when they try a different web browser (such as Firefox, Safari, or Chrome).

UPDATE: Watched the whole debate on Iowa Public television, which has posted the video on the web. To my mind, this was Culver’s strongest performance, and he probably helped himself with people who once supported him but weren’t sold on a second term yet. Branstad didn’t make any huge mistakes, but he evaded several questions and came across as hesitant at times. I doubt any Branstad supporters would change their minds based on the debate, though. More specific comments about each candidate’s strong and weak moments are at the bottom of this post.

Governor Chet Culver and Republican Terry Branstad debate for the third and last time today at noon in the Iowa Public Television studios. You can watch live at the Des Moines Register website, IPTV.org or on Mediacom Channel 119. Tonight Iowa Public TV will rebroadcast the debate statewide at 8 pm.

After the jump I’ll cover recent news from the gubernatorial campaign and the main points Culver and Branstad are likely to emphasize today.  

Jim Hightower is an outspoken advocate for the Powers That Ought To Be, not The Powers That Be.  He is a populist progressive, and a funny, irreverent thorn in the side of the powerful.  He says that the real political spectrum isn't right to left; it's top to bottom.  A former Agriculture Commissioner who served two terms in Texas, he knows how important this job is for safe food, clean air and water, and a future in which farmers can afford to farm.

“In Iowa’s election for Secretary of Agriculture, the choice couldn’t be clearer. On one hand you’ve got Francis Thicke, who has worked as a dairy farmer for 27 years, selling his products locally and actually building the economy. On the other hand, you’ve got Bill Northey who has led a team that invested nearly $1 million in Brazil’s ethanol production. In a world where money talks, maybe Bill Northey should be running for Secretary of Agriculture in Brazil.”

Thank you, Mr. Hightower.  Well said.

That assessment of Francis Thicke’s incredible grassroots campaign for Iowa Agriculture Secretary came from food writer Michael Pollan via Twitter. Another assessment, via a pollster, is that it’s winnable, but more about that below.  

For people who care about what they eat and how much they pay for it, Pollan’s tweet is not hyperbole.  It is a tribute to an organic dairy farmer with no prior political experience who has put together a professional statewide campaign, and is now within three percentage points of a well-financed Republican.  Francis Thicke (pronounced Tickee) does have experience in government.  He worked for the USDA after getting his PhD in Agronomy, and he has been advocating policies like reducing the concentration of market power in agriculture for years.  But with this campaign, he is trying to get his hands on the government machinery and change what it does.
(con't)

A longer update on the governor’s race is in progress, but Terry Branstad’s comments on the budget during yesterday’s Des Moines Register interview are a must-read. Since the day he declared his candidacy, Branstad has said “the cost of government must be reduced by at least 15 percent.” He put that promise in his stump speech and in his television and radio commercials. But anyone who has paid attention to his campaign rhetoric could see that the program cuts he has mentioned so far wouldn’t put Iowa on track to reduce spending by 15 percent over five years. Moreover, Branstad’s property tax relief proposal depends on the state taking over some county government functions, which would increase the state budget.

As Jason Clayworth writes,

The Register has for weeks requested Branstad outline how he would reduce Iowa’s $5.3 billion budget, of which more than 80 percent is spent on education and human services that assist the state’s economically- or physically-disadvantaged families.

Branstad’s been good at evading such questions, but his time ran out yesterday when he sat down face to face with the Register’s reporters and editorial writers. I encourage you to read Clayworth’s whole piece as well as Kathie Obradovich’s take. Some excerpts are after the jump.

Monday was role reversal day in the Iowa governor’s race, with the National Rifle Association endorsing Democratic incumbent Chet Culver as a union group backed Republican challenger Terry Branstad.

The candidates’ rival job creation proposals also made news during the past week. Branstad’s plan looks like a cover for letting business interests gut almost any regulation they dislike.

More on those stories, along with Culver’s latest television commercial, are after the jump.

UPDATE: The Culver campaign announced the Teamsters Union endorsement on September 28. Details are below.

The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa poll shows Republican Terry Branstad leading Governor Chet Culver by 52 percent to 33 percent among likely voters. Selzer and Co surveyed 803 Iowa adults, of whom 550 were classified as likely Iowa voters, between September 19 and 22. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.2 percent.

I expected Branstad’s numbers to drop somewhat following the Republican primary, but his margin over Culver is almost exactly the same as the Register found the last time it polled this matchup in February. At that time Branstad led Culver 53-33, and Culver’s approval rating was 36 percent.

The new Selzer poll has no good news for Culver. His approval rating is 35 percent. Not only is Branstad polling above 50 percent, he leads “with voters from communities of all sizes, in all congressional districts and from all age groups and income levels.” No-party voters support Branstad by a 46 percent to 27 percent margin.

Culver’s campaign issued this statement on September 25:

“We believe that this poll serves as wake up call to Iowa voters,” said Governor Culver’s campaign manager, Donn Stanley. “When all is said and done, we believe that Iowans will ultimately choose Chet Culver, a leader who stands for Iowa values.

“The fact is,” Stanley continued, “all one has to do is look back as recently as Tom Vilsack’s race against Jim Ross Lightfoot in 1998 to see that this poll is not a harbinger of things to come. At this point in the race, Tom Vilsack was down a full 20 points in the Iowa Poll. I’m sure Governor Lightfoot would be happy to tell you the degree to which the Iowa Poll predicts the outcome of the race.”

That’s true, but Vilsack was not an incumbent with low approval ratings in a tough economy. Only 59 percent of likely voters said their minds were “firmly made up,” but I don’t know how Culver can convince the other 41 percent to give him another chance. It’s not as if no one ever heard of Branstad’s shortcomings:

Overall, 53 percent of likely voters say the candidate they are supporting is someone they can most easily tolerate, while only 36 percent say he is the best person for the job.

I hope the Culver campaign has budgeted well enough to stay up on television from now through election day. I doubt the Democratic Governors Association will spend any more money in Iowa this year.

UPDATE: More findings from the Register’s new poll are after the jump.

Originally posted on The MarkUp. This is the eleventh article in a continuing series by the NRDC Action Fund on the environmental stances of candidates in key races around the country.

Today, we examine Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, stretching from Des Moines to the Cedar Falls-Waterloo area.  The district’s economy is heavily agricultural, but also has a large financial and insurance sector component, with Des Moines referred to as “the Hartford of the West” for that reason.  Since 1997, Democrat Leonard Boswell has represented the 3rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.  This year, Boswell is being challenged by Republican State Senator Brad Zaun.

So far in this campaign, Boswell has strongly defended his record and has attacked Zaun for “his opposition to Iowa's biofuels industry, which employs thousands of farmers and factory workers in the state.” For his part, Zaun has attempted to tie Boswell to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama, while running a series entitled, “Fourteen Reasons Why We Need a New Congressman.”

On clean energy and environmental issues, Rep. Boswell has an excellent record.  In 2009, for instance, Boswell received a near-perfect 93% rating from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), as well as a 100% rating from Environment America. Boswell voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), an extraordinarily important piece of environmental legislation which the New York Times described as “the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change.” At the time of his vote for ACES, Boswell said that the legislation  “would harness the most innovative workforce in the world to create a clean energy future, creating millions of jobs in the process.”  Boswell added that “[e]nergy independence is vital to our national security and economic future, and this legislation advances this goal while confronting the serious challenge of climate change.”

For his part, Brad Zaun received a mediocre rating of 42% on the environment from the Iowa Sierra Club in 2009-2010.  In this video, Zaun declares, “I question global warming” and claims – incorrectly – that ACES will “cost businesses and all of us that have homes millions of dollars.”  In addition, Zaun claims that coal-fired power is far more economical than wind power (certainly not true if you count environmental and other “externalities”), brags that he’s being “compared to this one lady that says ‘drill, baby, drill,’” and argues that “we need to take advantage of our resources.”  On his website under “Energy and Natural Resources,” Zaun argues that America “must increase domestic oil and gas supply by exploring and utilizing more of the energy resources we have at home.” Message to Brad Zaun: we saw the results of that approach in the Gulf of Mexico this past summer!

On the other hand, Zaun has not joined most of his fellow Republican candidates this year and signed the Americans for Prosperity “No Climate Tax Pledge.”  Zaun also advocates “exploring alternative sources of energy…including nuclear, wind, solar and other alternative energies.” And, Zaun says, “We must be careful stewards of all of our precious natural resources by always avoiding strategies which unnecessarily damage our landscape or environment or pose health risks to our citizens.” That’s all well and good. But advocating for coal-fired power, “drill, baby, drill,” and global warming skepticism is a very funny way to accomplish those goals.

The NRDC Action Fund believes that it is important for the public in general, and the voters of specific Congressional districts, be aware of this information as they weigh their choices for November.

Coming off its worst week yet, Brad Zaun’s campaign is hyping a new poll showing him leading seven-term Representative Leonard Boswell by 51 percent to 41 percent in Iowa’s third district. The poll was commissioned by former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman’s American Action Forum, and taken by Republican pollster Ayres, McHenry & Associates. The poll was in the field from August 16 through 18, before a cascade of bad news for Zaun hit central Iowa newspapers, radio and television stations, and that’s not even the biggest problem with poll.

More details on the new Republican poll, as well as a preview of a Boswell campaign argument against Zaun, are after the jump.

Last week the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation endorsed 67 candidates it views as “Friends of Agriculture.” Only three Democrats, all incumbents, made this list: State Representative Geri Huser, State Senator Dennis Black, and State Senator Rich Olive. Huser is in the corporate-friendly “six-pack” of Iowa House Democrats, and her race in House district 42 isn’t expected to be competitive. Black isn’t a top Republican target either, and it’s not hard to see why the Farm Bureau would want to be on his good side. The four-term incumbent representing Senate district 41 chairs the Iowa Senate Natural Resources Committee and serves on the Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee.

The Farm Bureau’s support for Olive surprised me. On paper, this is one of the Republicans’ leading pickup opportunities in the Iowa Senate. Olive is a first-term incumbent in a conservative-leaning district. He won the open Senate district 5 by all of 62 votes in the Democratic wave election of 2006. Republican Stewart Iverson represented this turf in the Iowa Senate for many years, and as of August 2010, Senate district 5 has about three thousand more registered Republicans than Democrats, though no-party voters have a plurality. The district covers all of Wright and Hamilton Counties, part of Webster County and most of Story County outside Ames (map here).

I expected the Iowa GOP to put up a fight for this district, but if that were the case, I doubt interest groups that are mostly proxies for Republicans would give Olive their seal of approval. Last month the Association of Business and Industry’s PAC endorsed Olive as well. Perhaps conservative advocates don’t see Rob Bacon as a credible candidate in Senate district 5. Bacon has been AWOL on the fundraising front, bringing in zero dollars during the latest reporting period and only $1,250 in the previous one. As of July 19, Bacon had $3,476.94 cash on hand, while Olive had $40,107.28.

I lean toward John Deeth’s view; Republicans are giving Olive a “de facto bye” in the hope of gaining elsewhere. Democrats currently have a 32-18 Iowa Senate majority, and Republicans need to win back three or four districts this year to have a strong chance of taking the chamber in 2012.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Catching up on some news from last week, I see former First Lady Christie Vilsack not so subtly suggested that Leonard Boswell should be ready to step down from Congress in 2012:

Vilsack said during an interview at the Iowa State Fair that she is considering “other options” like running for congress.

“I just turned 60, so timing is important – political timing as well as personal timing,” she said.  “It’ll be a whole new ballgame after the election and after redistricting, where we see the districts line up.” […]

“Nobody will actually have a claim on any particular district, I think, because it’ll be a whole new set of voters and a whole new set of constituents,” she said.

The next day, Boswell indicated that he’s not going anywhere:

“Christie [Vilsack] is a smart person. I’m planning on doing this for a while, so I hope that she has got other things she likes to do for a while because I’m going to continue to do this,” Boswell said last week at the Iowa State Fair.

A reporter followed up with this question: “Does that mean you’re announcing for 2012?”

Boswell replied: “Well, it’s not far from it.”

I recognize that politicians can’t control the questions journalists ask them, but this isn’t a conversation Iowa Democrats should have now. Even if Boswell were planning to retire in the next cycle, no incumbent seeking re-election would declare himself a lame duck at this stage.

After Iowa redraws the lines for four Congressional districts, the new third district, including Polk County, is likely to be the state’s most competitive. I would prefer to see a new Democrat nominated in 2012, and Vilsack would be a strong candidate in many ways. But let’s focus on re-electing Boswell this November. I think he will defeat Republican Brad Zaun, who has nothing new to say and sounds out of his depth when explaining his about-face on biofuels subsidies. That said, the Cook Political Report and Swing State Project recently moved this race from “leans Democrat” to “tossup.” The Rothenberg Political Report still sees IA-03 as a “lean Democrat” contest.

Iowa’s Republican National Committeewoman Kim Lehman stood by her false assertion about President Barack Obama’s faith yesterday. As Bleeding Heartland discussed here, Lehman claimed last week that Obama “personally told the muslims that he IS a muslim. Read his lips.” Sam Stein of the Huffington Post asked Lehman to clarify and got this response:

“I was watching television when he was over there talking to the Muslim world and he made it, in my opinion, clear he was partially Muslim,” Lehman told the Huffington Post. “The way he was approaching that speech was, ‘Hey I’m one of you. I’m with you.’ He didn’t have to say that… but he did.” […]

“Again, going back to his speech… he would have said I’m a Christian and I’m from the Christian religion and we can work together. It didn’t appear to me he said Christianity was part of his religion.”

But oops! Stein looked up the transcript of Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo and found this:

Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.

The Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs also sought comment from Lehman yesterday:

This morning, Lehman said she was referring to an Obama speech in Cairo last summer in which he reached out to Muslims “to seek a new beginning.” In that speech, he makes no comment about being Muslim, a transcript shows.

Lehman said she objected to Obama’s speech because “it just had a sense of embracing or aligning with the Muslims. I don’t know. It was unnecessary the stuff he said. That’s the whole point.”

Lehman said she would never give anyone the impression that she is anything but a Christian.

“I don’t give myself an appearance to the Muslims that I am aligning myself with the Muslims. I am strictly a Christian. I believe that. I stand by that. I’ll die by that,” she said.

Jason Hancock noted at Iowa Independent that this isn’t the first time Lehman has used her twitter account to claim Obama is Muslim. According to Stein, though, she may be “the first [Republican] national committee member to fully endorse the Obama-is-a-Muslim view.”

Lehman told Politico to read Obama’s lips regarding his faith. She should take her own advice. She ignores the president’s numerous public statements about being a Christian because in her opinion, one speech “had a sense of embracing or aligning with the Muslims.” Republicans should be embarrassed to have one of their leaders pushing conspiracy theories, and it’s a sad comment on the Iowa GOP that no one stepped up to counter Lehman’s view.

Speaking of poor form, neither Stein nor Jacobs linked to this blog, which was the first to report on Lehman’s comments about the president’s faith.

UPDATE: The Iowa Democratic Party cited Lehman’s comments in a fundraising e-mail, which you can read here. Todd Dorman posted a funny take on this episode too.

Krusty Konservative feels Lehman is “not helping the Republican cause.”

Following up on my post about a very bad week for Brad Zaun’s campaign, here’s a piece by Civic Skinny with more details on Zaun’s unpaid bills:

According to Polk County District Court records, Republican Zaun ignored for years – until he decided to run for Congress – bills for $1,070.77 from Iowa Health Des Moines and $50.66 from Radiology PC. He was sued in March of 2005 and failed to appear in court or answer the complaint. Judgment was entered against him in May of that year.

He continued to ignore the bills and the judgment against him, and in February 2006 the court ordered the Polk County sheriff to garnish money in Zaun’s account at Liberty Bank in Des Moines. But it wasn’t until last Nov. 17 – four-and-a-half years after judgment was entered against him – that the court entered a “release and satisfaction of judgment” order indicating that the judgment, the interest and all costs had been paid.

Two weeks later, the Urbandale legislator announced he would run for Congress. He won a seven-way primary and now faces incumbent Democrat Leonard Boswell. “I’ll take the same principles of fiscal responsibility…that I’ve lived by…to Washington,” he told The Des Moines Register last December. He didn’t say whether those principles included being a deadbeat.

Aside: The Iowa Republican platform says medical care “is a privilege, not a right.” But, to give Zaun his due, it doesn’t say you must pay for that privilege.

I was wondering whether last week’s revelations will do lasting damage to Zaun’s campaign. Kathie Obradovich tries to answer that question in her latest Des Moines Register column:

I asked Iowa State University political scientist Dianne Bystrom whether voters actually care about this kind of stuff.

She pointed to a bipartisan survey done for the Project on Campaign Conduct at the University of Virginia in 2000. A majority of voters – 57 percent – believed negative information provided by one candidate about his or her opponent was relevant and useful when it related to: talking one way and voting another, not paying taxes, accepting campaign contributions from special interests, current drug or alcohol abuse, and his or her voting record as an elected official.

A bigger majority, 63 percent, believed certain negative personal information should be considered out of bounds: lack of military service, past personal financial problems, actions of a candidate’s family members, and past drug or alcohol abuse.

So the voters in this survey, at least, wouldn’t want to hear about Zaun’s past financial hardships, except as it related to paying taxes.

Zaun said at the Iowa State Fair, “a lot of people in the 3rd District have been behind on their bills,” and that’s true. He added, “I never waited for the government to come in and help me out. It wasn’t their responsibility and it’s not any of your responsibility.” But in a different way, he did wait for the government to step in and deal with his problem. The court had to order money garnished from his account after he ignored its judgment. It’s one thing to be behind on some medical bills and your mortgage payment. It’s another to defy a court order to pay your bills, as Zaun (a state senator!) did in 2005 and 2006. The outstanding bills weren’t fully paid until three and a half years after the court told the sheriff to take money from Zaun’s bank account. Perhaps that doesn’t rise to the level of “talks one way and votes another,” but it undermines the message of personal responsibility and financial restraint Zaun will try to use against Boswell.

Combined with the 2001 police report first reported by the Des Moines Register on August 19 and picked up by Politico, the news about Zaun’s financial history could hurt his campaign’s fundraising, increasing Boswell’s money advantage in the final weeks. Krusty Konservative thinks Zaun’s Republican rivals were “idiots” not to vet the nominee more thoroughly before the crowded IA-03 primary.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers? Is Zaun looking at a serious problem for his campaign, or nothing more than a few bad news cycles in August?

UPDATE: Zaun tried to change the subject yesterday with a boilerplate press release: “Congressman Boswell has become a ‘rubber stamp’ for Speaker Pelosi and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party […] Boswell supports Pelosi over 98% of the time, and her brand of San Francisco liberalism has nothing in common with the needs of Iowa.” Yawn. Tying the Democrat to Pelosi didn’t work too well for Republicans in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional district earlier this year.

You come across the strangest things on Twitter sometimes:

Yes, it’s delusional to believe Politico is in the game to “protect” Barack Obama, but for now I’m more interested in Republican National Committeewoman Kim Lehman’s claim that the president is Muslim. Presumably she was responding to Tim Grieve’s August 19 report for Politico on the latest Pew survey about the president’s religion. Pew found that about 18 percent of American adults say Obama is Muslim, while about 34 percent say Obama is Christian. About 34 percent of those who identified themselves as conservative Republicans told Pew Obama was Muslim. Grieve’s report referred to “a dramatic spike in false views about the president’s religious faith.” Politico’s Josh Gerstein also reported on the Pew finding, as well as a Time magazine survey which (using different wording) found even higher numbers of Republicans believe the president is Muslim.

Neither Lehman nor anyone else would claim Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad’s not really a Christian because his mother was Jewish. Yet for some reason, it’s not enough for Lehman that Obama has been baptized, regularly attended Christian churches for many years and was sworn in on a Christian bible.

I wonder how many other prominent Iowa Republicans believe the urban legend about Obama being Muslim. Representative Steve King recently claimed Obama is a “Marxist” who “surely understands the Muslim culture.” What about Senator Chuck Grassley, Representative Tom Latham and Republican Congressional candidates Ben Lange, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Brad Zaun?

State party chairman Matt Strawn and Steve Scheffler, head of the Iowa Christian Alliance, are Iowa’s other two representatives on the RNC. Do they and members of the Iowa GOP’s State Central Committee share Lehman’s view?

Branstad’s own interfaith family background makes him an ideal person to speak publicly about religion as a matter of faith and an individual’s spiritual journey, as opposed to a genetic inheritance. But I’m not holding my breath for Branstad to dispel false rumors about Obama. He generally avoids taking any position that would anger conservatives–when he’s not kowtowing to far-right sentiment, that is.

When Congress passed $26 billion in fiscal aid to the states, including $96.5 million in education funding and $128 million in Medicaid assistance for Iowa, Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad avoided commenting on the issue. Scott Keyes of Think Progress was in Iowa recently and got Branstad to speak on the record about the issue. Click the link for the audio and the full transcript. Excerpt:

[Think Progress]: They just passed that big state aid bill out in Washington. I was curious how you felt about that.

BRANSTAD: I have real concerns because there’s strings attached to that. And it’s one-time money, so it doesn’t solve the problem, it just puts it off a year. And it increases the federal debt. I don’t think they should have done it. I’m not sure, we’ve got to see what the strings are and whether or not we should even accept it or not.

Branstad added that he was against the 2009 stimulus bill and wasn’t sure whether he would accept or reject stimulus funding for Iowa.

Perhaps Branstad has never heard of economic cycles. Congress approved the stimulus bill when the U.S. was in the middle of the worst recession since World War II, and state revenues were dropping at the sharpest rate seen in 60 years. Although the recession is technically over, and state revenues are increasing in Iowa, shortfalls are still projected in key social services.

Branstad says federal assistance “doesn’t solve the problem, it just puts it off a year.” But if the economy continues to improve, state budgets will be under less strain in the 2012 fiscal year. Branstad would rather give up an additional $96.5 million for Iowa schools during the current fiscal year, which would cost approximately 1,800 teachers’ jobs. He would rather do without an extra $128 million for Medicaid, and I doubt he’ll offer an alternative budget showing how he would meet the need for those services. Branstad can’t explain how he would have balanced the current-year budget without stimulus funds, just like he can’t explain how he would pay for his new spending promises.

Branstad is wrong about the $26 billion fiscal aid bill adding to the federal deficit, by the way. The Congressional Budget Office confirmed that the bill’s costs are fully offset by closing tax loopholes and various spending cuts.

The Democratic National Committee voted today to keep the Iowa caucuses the first presidential nominating contest in 2012, according to Iowa Democratic Party Executive Director Norm Sterzenbach, who’s attending the DNC meeting.

I’ll update this post with more details as they become available. In July, the DNC Rules Committee approved the following calendar: Iowa caucuses on February 6, 2012; New Hampshire primary on February 14; Nevada caucuses on February 18; and South Carolina primary on February 28. All other Democratic nominating contests would occur in March or later. The Republican National Committee has adopted a calendar keeping Iowa first as well.

Any thoughts about the 2012 caucuses are welcome in this thread.

Iowa Republicans talk a good game about winning the third Congressional district in November, but Brad Zaun faced a number of setbacks this week in his campaign against seven-term Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell.  

Workers at Iowa's leading manufacturer of wind turbine towers successfully took on company intimidation and two union-busting firms to express their right to join a union.

Terry Branstad is taking a lot of shots at Governor Chet Culver on the campaign trail. I don’t know what’s more maddening: his lies about Culver’s record, his silence about important news affecting the state budget or his selective amnesia regarding his own record as governor.

While campaigning in Williamsburg on August 12, Branstad criticized how Culver handled questionable spending and personnel policies in the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division. Culver had the Department of Management impose tighter controls on the division after learning about some problems in 2008. At that time, the governor also sought legal advice about firing Alcoholic Beverages Division Lynn Walding. The Iowa Attorney General’s Office indicated Culver lacked “sufficient legal basis” for removing Walding before his fixed term was up, so Culver declined to reappoint Walding in 2010. (Incidentally, some Republicans thought Walding should have been kept on.)

According to a Culver campaign press release of August 13, Branstad told his audience in Williamsburg, “If that had been my Administration, they would have been fired immediately.” Trouble is, Culver’s campaign staff hopped in the wayback machine and found:

When a similar incident happened in the Alcoholic Beverages Division during the Branstad Administration, then known as the Beer and Liquor Control Department, Branstad didn’t even try to take any action. He even ignored an inspector general report that said they should be fired. […]

Iowa’s Inspector General Said Two Managers at the Beer and Liquor Control Department Should Be Fired. “Iowa’s inspector general said Tuesday that deputy director George Price and properties manager Dicta Izzolena should be fired from the Iowa Beer and Liquor Control Department.” [Des Moines Register, 11/21/1984]

An Affair Between Top Managers at the Liquor Department Caused Morale Problems. “[State Inspector General] Gamble concluded that there is a ‘morale problem’ at the department because of the relationship between {Deputy Director George] Price and [Properties Manager Dicta] Izzolena.” [Des Moines Register, 11/21/1984]

Top People at the Beer and Liquor Control Department Made Dubious Expenditures. “The state auditor’s office will investigate questionable business transaction at the Iowa Beer and Liquor Control Department, Deputy State Auditor Kasey Kiplinger said Wednesday… During the course of his investigation, Gamble said he also discovered a number of dubious expenditures at the department, including $2,000 for a tulip bed, $2,800 for patio furniture. $255 for a redwood planter, a painting contract that grew from $550 to $3,400, and the addition of a second layer of wall paneling in a state liquor store.” [Des Moines Register, 11/22/1984]

Branstad Said He Wouldn’t Take Action To Correct Problems at the Liquor Department. “Branstad told reporters it is up to [Dept. Dir.] Gallagher and the Beer and Liquor Control Council to Decide what action to take, if any, when Gamble completes his investigation, because the governor has no direct control over the agency. ‘I believe that once they’ve got the facts and the information, they will make the appropriate decision,’ Branstad said.” [Des Moines Register, 11/14/1984]

Bad Actors at the Beer and Liquor Control Department Only Received a 30 Day Suspension. “Two Iowa Beer and Liquor Control Department officials were suspended for 30 days without pay Monday even though Iowa Inspector General Jerry Gamble said they should be fired.” [Des Moines Register, 11/27/1984]

I didn’t remember this incident, but you’d think it would have made an impression on Branstad. Then again, he seems to conveniently forget lots of things that happened in the 1980s and 1990s. I expect Branstad to get a refresher course on his own record during the next couple of months. The Culver campaign has had staff go through 1,000 boxes of files from Branstad’s time as governor, and only a small portion of what they found has been published so far.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

August 13 was the deadline for third-party candidates seeking state offices to submit their nominating petitions to the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office. (Third-party candidates for county offices have until August 25 to do so).

This pdf file contains the complete list of candidates who have qualified for the ballot for federal offices, statewide offices or seats in the Iowa House and Senate.

Four candidates filed for the governor’s race: Jonathan Narcisse of the Iowa Party, Eric Cooper of the Libertarian Party, David Rosenfeld of the Socialist Workers Party, and a “fathers’ rights” activist named Gregory James Hughes. John Deeth noted that Iowa has more gubernatorial candidates than in any cycle since 1994, and that “the first cycle since 1998 that the Greens have had no top of the ticket candidate” in Iowa.

When Narcisse announced plans to run for governor, many people assumed he would draw votes primarily from Governor Chet Culver, whom Narcisse supported in 2006. However, Narcisse told the Des Moines Register this week,

“One pleasant surprise has been the number of [Bob] Vander Plaats supporters breaking our way. They understand, despite the rhetoric of candidate [Terry] Branstad, that his sixteen years in office make it clear he just doesn’t care about their priorities. So I’m seeing a lot of that support pour my way especially from rural communities,” said Narcisse.

Libertarian candidates also filed for U.S. Senate and in the first and second Congressional districts, as well as for secretary of state. Given how easy it is to qualify for the ballot in Iowa House and Senate districts (50 signatures for a House race and 100 signatures for a Senate race), I was surprised not to see more Libertarian candidates file for the state legislature. They didn’t venture beyond college towns. Libertarian candidates filed in Senate district 15 and House district 30, both in the Iowa City area where Republicans didn’t field a candidate against Democratic incumbents (Senator Bob Dvorsky and State Representative Dave Jacoby). They also fielded a candidate in House district 46, which includes a big chunk of Ames. Democratic incumbent Lisa Heddens has a Republican challenger too.

The Libertarian candidate for governor, Eric Cooper, has set a goal of winning at least 2 percent of the vote this year to gain major-party status. After that, Libertarians would field candidates in as many statehouse districts as possible in 2012 and beyond. But why wait until then? If I were a Libertarian trying to spread a message about the Republican Party betraying small-government principles, I would have fielded candidates against lots of Republican incumbents, especially those who have no Democratic challenger. They might have received a surprisingly large protest vote, generating some free media attention for the Libertarians in November.

This is an open thread. Share anything on your mind this weekend, whether or not it relates to the upcoming elections.