Former Republican State Senator David Johnson will remain an independent during the Iowa legislature’s 2017 session, but he will not be entirely shut out of committee work. William Petroski reported for the Des Moines Register this weekend that Democrats offered Johnson one of their positions on the Natural Resources Committee, recognizing his work on issues in that committee’s jurisdiction. In recent years, Johnson has been the leading Republican advocate for increasing conservation spending in the state budget as well as for raising the sales tax to fill the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund.

Johnson quit the Republican Party in June to protest the nomination of Donald Trump for president. He had occasionally found himself at odds with this GOP colleagues before then. For instance, he supported the unsuccessful Democratic effort to stop Medicaid privatization and later voted for a Democratic bill on stronger Medicaid oversight.

First elected to the Iowa House in 1998 and to the Senate in 2002, Johnson told Petroski he hasn’t decided whether to run for re-election in Senate district 1 next year. Zach Whiting, a staffer for U.S. Representative Steve King, announced in August that he will run in Johnson’s district, which is the GOP’s second-safest seat in the state. The latest figures from the Secretary of State’s office show Senate district 1 contains just 7,900 active registered Democrats, 21,374 Republicans, and 13,574 no-party voters. The five counties in the district voted for Trump by wide margins in November. The GOP nominee received 81.4 percent in Lyon, 78.8 percent in Osceola, 68.2 percent in Clay, 65.5 percent in Palo Alto, and 65.2 percent in Dickinson.

Despite having only one committee assignment for the coming legislative session, Johnson sounds content with his new independent status:

“I have made some votes in the past that I wasn’t comfortable with, and I don’t believe really represented the district that I am honored to represent,” Johnson told The Des Moines Register. “I am free now to really follow my conscience and my constituents. We always talk about how you should put your district first. Well, I can now because I represent everybody. I don’t represent Republicans here. That has created quite a furor among some Republican leaders, and that’s fine.”

According to legislative records cited by Petroski, an independent hasn’t served in the Iowa Senate since 1925 or in the Iowa House since 1972.

Freedom to chase any story that captures my attention is the best part of running this website. A strong sense of purpose carries me through the most time-consuming projects. But not all work that seems worthwhile is fun. Classic example: I didn’t enjoy communicating with the white nationalist leader who bankrolled racist robocalls to promote Donald Trump shortly before the Iowa caucuses.

Continuing a tradition I started last year, here are the Bleeding Heartland posts from 2016 that have a special place in my heart. Not all of them addressed important Iowa political news, but all were a joy to write.

For the first time last year, I put some thought into what posts had consumed the greatest amount of my energy. I realized that some of those deep dives were among my most satisfying writing projects. That new awareness informed my editorial choices in good and bad ways. Unfortunately, some election-related stories I would have covered in previous cycles didn’t get written in 2016, because I was immersed in other topics. On the plus side, those rabbit holes led to work I’m proud to have published.

Assembling this post was more challenging than last year’s version. Several pieces that would have been among my most labor-intensive in another year didn’t make the cut. A couple of posts that might have made the top ten were not ready to go before the holidays. Maybe they will end up in a future collection of seventeen posts I worked hardest on in 2017.

Voters in some Davenport precincts will choose a new state senator today in a special election that Governor Terry Branstad set at the worst possible time.

Democratic State Representative Jim Lykam appears to be on track to succeed the late Senator Joe Seng, despite the governor’s efforts to engineer even lower turnout than for a typical election to fill an Iowa legislative vacancy.

Despite early efforts to consolidate the Republican establishment around Governor Terry Branstad’s successor, Ron Corbett announced this morning on Simon Conway’s AM 600 Radio show that he will not run for re-election as Cedar Rapids mayor in 2017 and will consider running for governor in 2018. By that time, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds will be the incumbent, assuming the U.S. Senate confirms Branstad as ambassador to China, as expected.

Corbett has been laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial bid for some time. Since creating a new conservative think tank late last year, he’s been rolling out policy proposals and speaking at numerous Rotary clubs and other groups around the state.

The Republican Party of Iowa will back Reynolds against any GOP primary challenger in 2018, state party chair Jeff Kaufmann has warned. (CORRECTION: See update below.) But Corbett has presumably found enough support among potential major donors to proceed with considering a gubernatorial bid. I look forward to covering that primary and will update this post following a press conference Corbett has planned for this morning. Corbett would need to raise millions to run an effective statewide campaign, especially since the Republican Governors Association might get involved to protect Reynolds.

Related side note: There’s no love lost between Corbett and Branstad, dating from the time during the 1990s when Corbett served as Iowa House speaker. As soon as Branstad was back in the governor’s office in 2011, he issued an executive order on project labor agreements that caused problems for a big Cedar Rapids project. Branstad didn’t accommodate Corbett’s efforts to negotiate, and Corbett and Cedar Rapids leaders eventually backed down to avoid costly litigation.

UPDATE: Adding to this post after the jump.

Jennifer Jacobs reported for Bloomberg last night that Governor Terry Branstad has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offer to become the next U.S. ambassador to China. Jacobs cited three unnamed sources, and an unnamed member of Trump’s transition team confirmed the news to the Washington Post this morning. I expect Trump to make the official announcement during his Thursday “thank you” rally in downtown Des Moines. (By the way, many central Iowa Democrats as well as Republicans received a robocall invitation to that rally, featuring Donald Trump, Jr.)

I wish Branstad well in his new adventure. He’ll have a lot to contend with: the president-elect’s recent overture to Taiwan was destabilizing; Trump’s threats to punish China for supposedly unfair trade and currency practices could spark a trade war; and horrific air pollution has made Beijing “almost uninhabitable.”

Kim Reynolds is the fifth woman to hold the office of Iowa lieutenant governor and will soon become the first woman governor in our state’s history. Branstad has been saying for years he wanted her to succeed him, and many Democrats expected him to step down before the end of his sixth term, to give her the advantages of incumbency going into the 2018 campaign. The domain KimReynoldsforgovernor.com has been registered since 2012, Mark Langgin pointed out today.

Reynolds will select the next lieutenant governor, and she may use that power to neutralize a potential rival, such as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. (Why Northey would agree to that arrangement is a mystery to me.) I don’t expect Reynolds to clear the field for the 2018 Republican primary, but as governor, she will be able to raise more money and possibly deter some ambitious people. Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett has been laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial campaign for years. I don’t know how many major donors would back him now that Reynolds will be the incumbent, though. Running a credible campaign against her would require millions of dollars.

Many Democrats were delighted to read this morning that Representative Steve King told The Hill’s Scott Wong he is thinking about running for governor himself. I suspect this will play out like the early months of 2013, when King attracted a lot of attention by saying he might run for U.S. Senate. I never believed then and don’t believe now that King will run for higher office. However, two recent developments may have changed the equation for him.

First, Iowa’s sharp turn to the right this November may have convinced King he has a chance to win a statewide election, which didn’t appear to be the case a few years ago. Second, he and Branstad are not on good terms. King was a leading surrogate for presidential candidate Ted Cruz, whom Branstad attacked shortly before the Iowa caucuses. Reynolds and many other prominent Iowa Republicans endorsed King before this year’s GOP primary in the fourth Congressional district, but Branstad didn’t join them. Adding to the insult, soon after King defeated State Senator Rick Bertrand in that primary, the governor’s son Eric Branstad hired some of Bertrand’s former staffer to work on Trump’s campaign.

Any thoughts about Branstad’s prospects in China or the 2018 campaign are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: The Des Moines rumor mill sees State Representative Peter Cownie as a likely lieutenant governor choice for Reynolds. Further updates are after the jump.

Nearly every day brings news of another Donald Trump cabinet appointee whose agenda would hurt millions of Americans. Yesterday, we learned that the next secretary of Health and Human Services will be U.S. House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price, who favors rapid privatization of Medicare, less protection for people with pre-existing health conditions, and total repeal of the Medicaid expansion that has saved lives.

But I want to set government policy aside for now and focus on an equally urgent matter. The president-elect is not mentally fit for the world’s most important job. Unfortunately, all signs point to Republicans in Congress enabling and normalizing his erratic and dangerous behavior.

What a way to begin the holiday season: Governor Terry Branstad’s administration is negotiating new employment contracts on the assumption that health insurance benefits will no longer be subject to collective bargaining.

Judging by past experience in Iowa and other states, the 59 incoming House Republicans and 29 Senate Republicans will rubber-stamp the new policy, gutting a collective bargaining law that has served this state well since 1974.

For years, I’ve predicted Governor Terry Branstad would step down before the end of this term in order to allow his chosen successor Kim Reynolds to run for governor as an incumbent in 2018. My thinking was influenced by political reality: the lieutenant governor has neither a strong ideological or geographical base nor the stature in Iowa Republican circles to win a statewide primary from her current position.

I saw two likely windows for a Branstad resignation: soon after the 2016 general election, or immediately following the 2017 legislative session. Either time frame would give Reynolds a boost on fundraising and other incumbency advantages going into a gubernatorial primary against rivals such as Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey.

In recent months, I’ve become convinced Branstad would serve out his sixth term after all. At least a dozen sources have independently indicated that the governor sounds open to running for re-election again in 2018. The resounding Republican victories in this year’s Iowa House and Senate races give Branstad another reason to stick around: the chance to work with a GOP-controlled legislature for the first time since 1998.

Yet President-elect Donald Trump has hinted Branstad might be his pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to China. Speaking to reporters before his birthday party/fundraiser last night, Branstad said, “I’m not ruling anything out.”

I don’t see it happening.

Pete McRoberts, a close observer of many Iowa Democratic campaigns, kicks off Bleeding Heartland’s series of guest contributions on how the party can recover after routs in two consecutive elections. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The days after any election offer for winners, some hope and excitement, and for losers, the opportunity to examine – in as close to real time as possible – where candidates and organizations succeeded, and failed. We get a re-set. If used properly, the days and weeks after an election loss – no matter how hard that loss is – can affirmatively help us do better at what we sought to do.

This is not a wholesale analysis of the Democratic Party in Iowa or the 2016 numbers, and it’s not a general ‘how to’ guide. It’s an attempt to go under the hood, and look at some very specific structural issues highlighted by the elections of 2014 and 2016. At a gut level, it’s very easy to conclude there’s no upside of such a clear election loss. But these losses are something more than simply parties exchanging power, or a reflection of competing views about the future.. They represent one of our deepest forms of communication with one another. If we listen — and act — we can create a party in Iowa that once again, not only wins elections, but is truly representative of the millions of people in the state whose hopes and fears are both real, and for whom we do our work.

All but one of the 29 Republicans who will serve in the Iowa Senate for the next two years elected their leaders on Friday, changing little from the group that led the minority caucus during the last legislative session.

Bill Dix moves from Senate minority leader to majority leader.

Jack Whitver moves from minority whip to Senate president.

Jerry Behn, who preceded Dix as minority leader but hasn’t been in leadership since 2012, will become Senate president pro tem. He’s the longest-serving current Republican senator.

My own state senator, Charles Schneider, moves from an assistant minority leader position to majority whip.

Dan Zumbach and Randy Feenstra will be assistant majority leaders, having been assistant minority leaders during the last legislative session. The other two assistant majority leaders are new to leadership: Michael Breitbach and Amy Sinclair, the only woman in the 29-member incoming GOP caucus.

After the caucus meeting, Dix spoke only in general terms about the new majority’s plans.

Iowa House and Senate candidates were required to file their last pre-election campaign finance reports on Friday. In stark contrast to four years ago, Republicans are outspending Democrats in most of the contested state Senate districts. (I’ll address spending in the key Iowa House races in a different post.)

Currently, there are 25 Senate Democrats, 23 Republicans, and one independent. If former GOP Senator David Johnson makes good on his promise to remain an independent in 2017, and Democrats win the December special election to replace the late Senator Joe Seng, Republicans would need to pick up three seats to gain control of the upper chamber for the first time since 2004.

I enclose below in-kind contribution figures for the Senate districts expected to be in play next Tuesday. Candidates running elsewhere did not report large in-kind contributions from their respective parties.

Iowa Republicans have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars this fall on television commercials and direct mail highlighting supposedly wasteful spending by Democratic state lawmakers. For the fourth election cycle in a row, many of these attacks repeat zombie lies from the 2010 campaign about money spent on “heated sidewalks” and a “trolley for lobbyists.”

As Bleeding Heartland explained here, Iowa House and Senate Democrats never approved money for heated sidewalks. They simply rejected a GOP amendment to a 2010 appropriations bill, which would have prohibited using state funds for “geothermal systems for melting snow and ice from streets or sidewalks.” The amendment was pointless, because planners of the award-winning streetscape project in question had already ruled out heated sidewalks in favor of porous pavement.

What about the Republican hit pieces claiming Democrats spent money on a “trolley for lobbyists”?

Fighting for his political life in a district that’s trending away from him, Iowa House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow has approved hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign spending on television commercials. Two spots have trashed his Democratic challenger Jennifer Konfrst over accounting errors that led to some overdue taxes. The first Hagenow hit piece was blatantly false. The second ad, now in heavy rotation on Des Moines stations, is more narrowly focused on a tax lien put on Konfrst’s home more than a decade ago.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann portrayed Konfrst as unfit to serve because she made a mistake calculating child care expenses. After hiding from early media inquiries about his commercial, Hagenow defended the ad last week, telling the Des Moines Register, “One of the biggest jobs we deal with (in the Legislature) is spending taxpayers’ dollars […] And our focus has always been to handle that as responsibly as possible.”

So why did House Republican leaders give their blessing for the Iowa GOP to spend more than $93,000 promoting Shannon Lundgren, a House candidate with a much larger federal tax liability that “remains unpaid”?

Melissa Gesing reached her limit this week. Four days after a 2005 video showed Donald Trump telling a reporter he could “do anything” to women, two days after Trump insisted in the second presidential debate that those comments were merely “locker room talk,” Gesing stepped down as president of the Iowa Federation of Republican Women. In her October 11 resignation letter, she described her move as a “last resort,” saying she can’t “look at myself in the mirror each morning if I do not take a stand against the racism, sexism, and hate that Donald J. Trump continues to promote.” She explained her decision at greater length in a blog post called “Ending this bad and unhealthy relationship.”

So far, no other woman in the top echelon of Iowa Republican politics has jumped ship. The Iowa Federation of Republican Women named a new president today and restated its support for the Trump-Pence ticket.

But how long can that last, with more women coming forward every day to say Trump kissed or groped them without consent, and used his position of power to walk in on women or underage girls undressed?

Good news for Iowa Republicans: their second major early vote mailing produced a surge in absentee ballot requests. President Barack Obama won this state in 2012 thanks to votes cast before election day, so shrinking the Democratic advantage in absentee ballots has been a key goal of the GOP’s turnout program.

Bad news for Iowa Republicans, though: tens of thousands of GOP voters received their absentee ballots just in time for Donald Trump’s 2005 videotape to become one of the most talked-about political stories of the year.

Republican State Representative Ken Rizer announced on Facebook Saturday evening that he “can’t in good conscience” vote for Donald Trump and will write in Mike Pence for president. Rizer, who supported Jeb Bush before the Iowa caucuses, said he had “aggressively prosecuted Airmen who sexually assaulted women” and is aware of “groping” and “lewd conduct” his college-aged daughters face. He concluded that Trump’s comments in a recently-released 2005 video “reveal an arrogant lack of character unfitting for a college undergrad, for an Airman, and most certainly for our Commander in Chief.”

Rizer represents House district 68, a swing seat in the Cedar Rapids suburbs. He defeated Democrat Daniel Lundby in 2014, but Barack Obama outpolled Mitt Romney here in the last presidential election cycle by 54.45 percent to 44.08 percent. The latest voter registration numbers show the district contains 6,596 active registered Democrats, 6,103 Republicans, and 7,384 no-party voters. As of October 7, Democrats in Rizer’s district lead Republicans in absentee ballots requested by 1,698 to 844 and lead in early votes cast by 672 to 221.

I enclose below more comments from Rizer this evening, a map of House district 68, and background on the incumbent and his Democratic challenger Molly Donahue. She’s on the web here and on Facebook here.

The precincts in House district 68 also lie in Iowa Senate district 34, where Democratic State Senator Liz Mathis faces Rene Gadelha in a race both parties are targeting.

I will update this post as needed if other sitting Iowa Republican lawmakers announce that they won’t support Trump. On the morning of October 8, State Senator Jack Whitver posted on Twitter, “The comments and actions by Donald Trump are inexcusable and despicable. He should step down.” However, Whitver did not clarify whether he will vote for Trump, assuming he stays in the race.

Also on October 8, State Senator David Johnson issued a statement calling on Governor Terry Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds to “condemn Trump publicly” now that “Trump’s true anti-women sickness has been revealed.” Johnson is the only Iowa legislator affiliated with neither party, having left the GOP in June to protest Trump’s impending nomination for president.

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 43 percent to 39 percent in the new Iowa poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register. It’s the first Selzer poll here since before the June 7 primary elections, and its findings are in line with other recent statewide surveys showing Trump ahead. Some 6 percent of respondents favored Libertarian Gary Johnson and 2 percent Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

This poll was in the field from October 3-6, before Friday’s explosive news that Trump was videotaped in 2005 bragging to an entertainment reporter about how he liked to assault women he found attractive (“I just start kissing them. […] I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. […] Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”). Jason Noble’s write-up notes that Trump’s attitude toward women was already among the biggest concerns for Iowa voters about the GOP nominee.

I enclose below excerpts from that story and from others about the latest Trump uproar. A separate post is in progress about the hole Iowa Republican leaders have dug for themselves by fully embracing Trump’s candidacy. All of our state’s top GOP elected officials are standing behind their party’s nominee, even as they condemn his comments in the 2005 video.

At tonight’s Reagan dinner in Des Moines, Iowa GOP chair Jeff Kaufmann said the country has “two flawed candidates” but confirmed he will vote for Trump. Republican National Committeeman Steve Scheffler offered a prayer expressing hope that people will understand “elections are not always about perfection.” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley didn’t mention Trump in his speech, which framed the election as a battle over the direction of the Supreme Court for the next 40 years. Senator Joni Ernst bashed Clinton’s character while not discussing Trump, whom she praised at the Republican National Convention and invited to headline her biggest event of the year. Governor Terry Branstad, whose son Eric is Trump’s campaign manager in Iowa, told the Reagan dinner crowd, “We need to elect Donald Trump and Mike Pence to make America great again!”

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. UPDATE: Radio Iowa’s O.Kay Henderson posted the audio from most of the Reagan dinner speeches. The featured guest speaker, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas,

said Trump has let the GOP down “again.”

“The words on that tape were demeaning and they were shameful,” Cotton said and, as he continued, one woman yelled “Impeach Hillary” and others grew agitated. “Donald Trump doesn’t have much of a choice at this point. Tomorrow night at that debate, he needs to throw himself on the mercy of the American people. He needs to take full responsibility for his words and his actions and he needs to beg for their forgiveness and he needs to pledge that he’s going to finally change his ways.”

If Trump will not act contrite, Cotton said Trump needs to consider stepping aside so an “elder statesman” may run in his place. That declaration was initially greeted with silence, then many in the crowd applauded.

Iowa House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow has plenty of reasons to worry about being re-elected in House district 43. During the last presidential election year, he won his race by fewer than two dozen votes, and the district has fewer registered Republicans now than it did in November 2012. His well-qualified challenger Jennifer Konfrst has been working hard, and Democrats in the district have submitted nearly 1,000 more absentee ballot requests than have Republicans.

Hagenow didn’t run any positive television commercials during the 2012 election cycle and only started airing a misleading ad against his opponent in late October.

In contrast, a few weeks ago the majority leader went up with a bizarro world tv ad portraying himself as an advocate for education. That spot was ludicrous on several levels, as Bleeding Heartland discussed here and Iowa Starting Line chronicled here. Hagenow has been part of a leadership team that for several years in a row ignored Iowa law on setting K-12 education funding. He and his fellow House Republicans have repeatedly refused to appropriate enough money to help school districts keep up with rising costs. Although Hagenow postures as a supporter of preschool in his tv ad, he voted to eliminate the state preschool program in early 2011. Furthermore, because House Republicans insisted on only a small increase in K-12 school funding this year, the West Des Moines school district (where most of Hagenow’s constituents live) cut its 3-year-old preschool program.

But as deceptive as Hagenow’s positive ad is, the hit piece he started running against Konfrst on October 5 is even more mendacious.

Donald Trump’s unrehearsed speaking style has been an asset for most of this campaign. People want to watch a guy who could say any off-the-wall thing at any moment.

Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps because he has a short attention span, Trump spent a lot less time preparing for last night’s debate than Hillary Clinton did. His aides didn’t try to hide that fact. His spokesperson mocked Clinton’s intense prep sessions. Trump himself needled his opponent about it during the debate.

Not doing his homework turned out to be a big mistake.

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

Many cities and towns in northeast Iowa have been flooded over the last few days, and Cedar Rapids is bracing for the city’s second-worst flood in history. The latest forecast indicates the Cedar River will crest Tuesday morning around 23 feet, about two feet below the projected crest from a couple of days ago but still seven feet above “major flood” level. Many downtown streets are closed, National Guard members will assist local law enforcement, and a small army of volunteers have been sandbagging and trying to protect local landmarks. The Cedar Rapids Gazette is regularly updating this page with more 2016 flood coverage.

Several Iowa House Republican candidates began running television commercials this past week. Some GOP candidates for the Iowa Senate have been on the air for a couple of weeks now, and campaigns on both sides have begun to send out direct mail. Usually, those communications are not available online, so I appreciate reports on any direct mail pieces or state legislative campaign commercials you’ve seen or heard on radio and tv stations in your area. Whatever details you can remember are helpful, as are screen shots or pdf files showing images. My e-mail address is near the lower right-hand corner of this page.

In Iowa House district 43, one of the top targets for Democrats, House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow is running a tv ad whitewashing his record on education. Several other Republicans are trying out similar talking points, which presumably tested well in polls that were in the field a few weeks ago. I’ll have more to say about Hagenow’s ad in a future post. A few key points for now:

• Five legislative sessions in a row, House Republicans have refused to pass bills setting state support for K-12 education (“allowable growth”) on the timeline required by state law. Their delays left school district leaders unable to plan their budgets on time.
• Six legislative sessions in a row, Iowa House and Senate Democrats have fought House Republicans over education funding. Every year, House GOP leaders insisted on a final budget below what school districts, community colleges, and state universities would need to keep up with rising costs.
• Hagenow absurdly postures as a supporter of more funding for preschool. In reality, within weeks after Republicans took over the Iowa House in 2011, Hagenow and everyone else in his caucus voted to eliminate state preschool funding. If Hagenow had gotten his way, Iowa would not even have a state-supported preschool program for 4-year-olds.

Speaking of revisionist history, Donald Trump’s campaign is now claiming that Carter Page was never a foreign policy adviser to the presidential candidate. Both Trump and Page talked to journalists in March about his adviser role. Why the change? Probably because according to Michael Isikoff’s September 23 story for Yahoo News, “U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine” whether Page “has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials.” Questions center on Page’s activities during a July visit to Moscow.

But how well-connected is Page in Russia anyway? Julia Ioffe talked to specialists in the U.S. and Moscow and reported in her must-read piece for Politico, “despite the tightly knit nature of the expat business community in Russia, no one I spoke to had ever heard of Carter Page.” Several people who have worked in the Russian energy sector discounted Page’s self-described role with the gas monopoly Gazprom. People who knew Page from Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office or his work with Russia’s electricity monopoly were unimpressed. Talk about irony: the ultimate con man Trump, who lies about matters large and small, may have been tricked into elevating Page’s stature.

Ioffe’s reporting suggests that Iowa’s own Sam Clovis recruited Page on behalf of the Trump campaign. Clovis refused to answer the journalist’s questions.

Final note: Craig Robinson and I discussed the Trump campaign’s Russia connections with Dave Price for one of WHO-TV’s September 21 newscasts; click here to watch that video. Robinson and I talked about other aspects of the presidential race on today’s edition of “The Insiders.” I’ll add links when they become available.

When it comes to racially divisive public statements, few members of Congress are in Representative Steve King’s league, and Donald Trump surpasses every presidential candidate of the last half-century aside from George Wallace. Yet King strongly objects to critics who would portray him or Trump as racist. Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reported yesterday on King’s interview with a Fort Dodge-based radio station:

“And now we’ve got the Congressional Black Caucus here in Washington, DC, today will be leading a protest and they have declared Donald Trump to be a racist. Now, why are they the authority on that?” the Iowa congressman said on KVFD AM1400 radio in Iowa. “I call them the self-segregating caucus, and so, they long ago moved away from the integration that we really need in this country.”

Click through to hear the audio clip and read more comments from King. He’s still bent out of shape over African-American journalist April Ryan confronting him in July about his assertion that white people had contributed “more to civilization” than had “other categories of people.”

King is uncomfortable with black people calling attention to systemic racism, whether they be farmers who sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over decades-long discrimination policies or a football player declining to stand during the national anthem. In a classic example of what psychologists call projection or scapegoating, King labels African Americans “divisive” if they want an important historical figure to be represented on currency, and considers public discussion of police misconduct grounded in racism to be “anti-white.” Yet he considers it appropriate to display a Confederate flag on his desk in the halls of Congress.

Some Congressional Black Caucus members literally put their lives on the line to integrate public spaces in this country. Yet King would have us believe the caucus is a force of racial divisions because its members object to Trump’s manifold racist comments. King’s remarks to KVFD reminded me of a Gallup poll from the summer of 1963. During that critically important time for the civil rights movement, some 60 percent of respondents nationwide said “mass demonstrations by Negroes” are “more likely to hurt the Negro’s cause for racial equality.” Talk about projecting blame and responsibility “towards a target person or group.”

Final thought: King posturing as a supporter of “the integration that we really need” will be news to many of his constituents. Iowa’s fourth Congressional district includes many counties with large Latino populations. Those families are keeping schools and local businesses viable in numerous cities and towns. But that hasn’t stopped King from disparaging Spanish-speaking immigrants and their children as drug mules, or from trying to restrict birthright citizenship to exclude children of people who came to this country illegally.

UPDATE: Added below an image King tweeted on September 23, in which references to NFL player Colin Kaepernick and police officers were replaced with “King” and “Muslim” to highlight what King called “the contradictions of political Correctness.”

Although Iowans won’t be able to cast ballots in person or by mail until next Thursday, September 29, candidates and volunteers have been collecting absentee ballot request forms for weeks as they knock on doors.

Today the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office provided this year’s first statewide early voting numbers. Absentee ballot requests are down considerably compared to mid-September 2012 and 2014.

That the Republican Party of Iowa has not yet mailed its first big piece of early vote literature can’t fully explain the trend. At this point in the last two election cycles, absentee ballot requests from Iowa Democrats alone far exceeded current numbers.

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

The Des Moines Register’s Kyle Munson published an excellent profile of Iowa Republican operative David Kochel and his battle with leukemia. I enclose excerpts below, but do click through to read the whole piece. Kochel has worked for numerous Republican candidates, most recently Jeb Bush. He was a senior strategist for Joni Ernst’s Senate campaign in 2013 and 2014 and for Mitt Romney during the last presidential election cycle.

Kochel has been on the #NeverTrump train for months–an anomaly in Iowa circles, where most well-known Republicans have fallen in line behind the nominee. Yet around the country, a stunning number of GOP elected officials, commentators, or former staffers have said they will not vote for Trump under any circumstances.

Last month, Tara Golshan and Sarah Frostenson compiled a list of more than 100 #NeverTrump Republicans, and 50 former national security officials from GOP administrations signed a letter warning that Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

Several newspapers that had endorsed GOP presidential nominees for decades have rejected Trump, most recently the New Hampshire Union Leader, which called Trump “a liar, a bully, a buffoon.”

All those traits were on display this past week, when Trump tried to blame Hillary Clinton for starting the “birther” movement, called for Secret Service agents protecting Clinton to disarm and “see what happens to her,” and went off script during a rally to complain about a mosquito.

On the plus side for Trump, the media’s renewed focus on the Republican candidate’s contributions to birtherism kept devastating scoops by Kurt Eichenwald and David Fahrenthold from getting much traction this week. Excerpts from Eichenwald’s cover story for Newsweek are after the jump.

Meanwhile, pathetic lackey and convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza took to Twitter to defend Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who “unlike someone else we know–LOVES his country & FIGHTS for its interests.” When a commenter pointed out that D’Souza “would be dead” if he were in Russia and criticized the president, D’Souza countered that opposition figure Garry Kasparov “is a public critic of Putin & very much alive.” The former world chess champion posted a priceless response: “Have you noticed I live in New York now? Stop spitting on the graves of Putin’s victims with your dictator worship.” Kasparov added a few minutes later, “If you can’t articulate criticism of Hillary Clinton or Obama without praising a brutal dictator, you’re incompetent & should just shut up.”

It wasn’t for nothing some called D’Souza “Distort D’Newsa” when he became a nationally-known flame-thrower during the 1980s.

Leaders of a campaign to provide a “permanent and constitutionally protected funding source dedicated to clean water, productive agricultural soils and thriving wildlife habitats” in Iowa touted support in the business and agriculture communities this week. You can watch Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy‘s September 12 press conference here or listen to the audio at Radio Iowa. Under a state constitutional amendment Iowa voters adopted in 2010, revenues generated by the next 3/8th of a cent sales tax increase (estimated at more than $180 million per year) would flow into a Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund. Scroll to the end of this post for a current list of IWLL coalition members and details on the formula for allocating trust fund money.

Without knowing which parties will control the Iowa House and Senate next year, it’s hard to gauge prospects for passing a sales tax increase. Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy commented on Monday, “The best time to move on a piece of legislation is just following an election. That’s when you get your best bipartisan compromises, and I think ultimately, this is something we can find a bipartisan compromise on.”

Who might lead statehouse Republicans toward such a compromise is unclear. The GOP lawmaker most supportive of IWLL has been State Senator David Johnson. But he left the party this summer to protest presidential nominee Donald Trump and told Bleeding Heartland in a recent interview that he plans to remain an independent during the 2017 legislative session.

At least one Republican running for governor in 2018 will support the sales tax increase: Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett. That stance will put him in conflict with either Governor Terry Branstad or his chosen successor, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds. In addition, support for funding IWLL among major farm lobby groups could create problems for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, also a likely gubernatorial candidate in 2018.

Donald Trump is too ignorant to be president, according to former Lieutenant Governor Joy Corning, the most prominent Iowa Republican to disavow the GOP nominee.

Corning served six years in the Iowa Senate, then eight years as lieutenant governor during Terry Branstad’s third and fourth terms. Since unsuccessfully seeking the GOP nomination for governor in 1998, she has held leadership roles in numerous non-profit organizations. As a pro-choice moderate, she has been increasingly outnumbered within Iowa GOP ranks. Nevertheless, she supported every Republican presidential nominee from Dwight D. Eisenhower through John McCain, Corning told Bleeding Heartland yesterday in a telephone interview. Despite voting for President Barack Obama in 2012, she never left the Republican Party and endorsed Jeb Bush before this year’s Iowa caucuses.

Corning said she realized while watching the Republican debates that Trump was not a candidate she could ever support. As for why, she cited his “know-it-all demeanor when he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Had she ruled out voting for him by the time he locked up the GOP nomination? “Oh, yes. Yes.”

Like State Senator David Johnson, who came out against Trump this summer, Corning declined to state publicly for whom she will vote in November.

After Jeb Bush announced in May that he would not support Trump, I sought comment from State Senator Charles Schneider and the six Iowa House Republicans who had endorsed the former Florida governor before the caucuses. Schneider said, “I intend to vote for Trump assuming he is the nominee,” while State Representative Greg Forristall likewise confirmed he “will vote for the Republican nominee.” State Representative Dave Heaton commented at that time, “It’s pretty hard for us to turn our back on the party’s selection, so I probably would support [Trump].” State Representatives Zach Nunn, Linda Miller, and Ron Jorgensen did not respond to my inquiries.

Republicans are testing potentially damaging messages about Iowa House Democratic candidates, along with statements that might increase support for GOP candidates in battleground legislative districts. After listening to several recordings of these telephone polls and hearing accounts from other respondents, I have three big takeaways:

• Republicans are seeking ways to insulate themselves from voter anger over inadequate education funding and the Branstad administration’s botched Medicaid privatization;
• The time-honored GOP strategy of distorting obscure legislative votes is alive and well;
• The Iowa Democratic Party’s platform plank on legalizing all drugs may be used against candidates across the state.

Read on for much more about these surveys.

Zach Whiting, a staffer for U.S. Representative Steve King, will run for the Iowa Senate in 2018 against Republican State Senator David Johnson, Tom Lawrence reported today for nwestiowa.com. Whiting told Lawrence, “David Johnson’s decision to leave the Republican Party has left his constituents without a representative, without an effective representative.” Johnson announced on June 7 that he was changing his registration to no-party because of Donald Trump’s “racist remarks and judicial jihad.” I assume he will rejoin the GOP soon after the November election, though he has not promised to do so.

Lawrence’s article did not mention another likely motivation for Whiting’s bid: Johnson supported and donated to Iowa Senate colleague Rick Bertrand’s challenge to King in the fourth Congressional district this year. King won just under 65 percent of the Republican primary vote. Johnson later told the Sioux City Journal he would support Bertrand for Congress again, adding, “There is too much blind loyalty to Steve King.”

Follow me after the jump for more about the political make-up of Iowa Senate district 1, background on both candidates, and first thoughts on Whiting’s chances.

So much for an “unofficial” role: Governor Terry Branstad, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, and Republican power-broker Bruce Rastetter are among more than 60 people named this morning to Donald Trump’s “Agricultural Advisory Committee.” Its “executive board members will convene on a regular basis,” according to a news release I’ve posted after the jump. Note that the campaign statement misspells Northey’s name and describes Rastetter as having hosted the “first Republican Presidential debate.” Actually, Rastetter organized an Iowa Ag Summit at which nine presidential contenders (not including Trump) appeared in March 2015. New Jersey journalist Claude Brodesser-Akner was the first to report Branstad’s and Rastetter’s involvement as Trump advisers last week.

The other Iowans on the list released today are:

• Sam Clovis, who traded in his conservative and religious principles last summer to become Trump’s “national chief policy advisor”;

• former State Representative Annette Sweeney, a friend of Rastetter’s since childhood who chaired the Iowa House Agriculture Committee until redistricting forced her into a losing primary battle against fellow House Republican Pat Grassley. She was a key player in passing Iowa’s unconstitutional “ag gag bill,” the first of its kind in the country. Soon after finishing her legislative service, Sweeney became president of a public policy group called Iowa Agri-Women.

• Ron Heck, identified as an Iowa farmer and past president of the American Soybean Association.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. Northey is widely expected to run for governor in 2018 rather than seek a fourth term as secretary of agriculture. His likely opponents in a GOP gubernatorial primary include Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds and Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett. While the lieutenant governor has repeatedly urged Iowans to vote for Trump at public events, Corbett has wisely kept some distance between himself and the presidential nominee. He steered clear of Trump’s rally in Cedar Rapids on July 28.

While Republican insiders across the country despair about the presidential race, dozens urging the Republican National Committee to stop investing in Donald Trump, others wishing in vain that Trump would drop out, and some even quitting their political jobs, Iowa’s most influential Republicans continue to stand with the GOP nominee.

This week, Governor Terry Branstad confirmed plans to advise Trump on policy; his major influencer Bruce Rastetter will reportedly do the same. In addition, two other well-known GOP operatives took on formal roles in Trump’s Iowa campaign. Jamie Johnson will be coalitions director and Jake Ketzner a senior advisor. Johnson is a veteran of Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential bid. After a spell supporting Ted Cruz, he landed with Rick Perry’s short-lived campaign this cycle. An ordained minister, he will presumably focus on engaging evangelical Christians, a key constituency for Santorum in 2012 and for Cruz this year. Jake Ketzner managed Representative Steve King’s re-election campaign in 2012, the year he faced Christie Vilsack in a substantially redrawn district. Ketzner left Branstad’s staff for a lobbying job last summer and soon became a senior adviser to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s Iowa caucus campaign.

Why are more respectable Republicans joining what looks like a sinking ship? For one thing, the latest public polls show Trump running better in Iowa than in national polls or surveys in swing states with more diverse populations. So even if Trump gets blown out nationally, working on his campaign here might not be a liability, especially if he carries Iowa or loses by a relatively small margin. Also, hitching your wagon to a toxic nominee is less risky when your state’s governor, lieutenant governor, GOP U.S. senators and representatives are giving you cover. UPDATE: Forgot to mention that going all-in for Trump helped our state’s establishment secure a promise from the nominee that if he’s elected, the Iowa caucuses will remain first in the nominating calendar.

Neither Branstad nor any Republicans who represent Iowa in Congress have responded to my questions about worrying aspects of Trump’s candidacy. To my knowledge, only two GOP elected officials in Iowa have publicly ruled out voting for Trump: State Senator David Johnson and Hardin County Auditor Jessica Lara. Tips are welcome if readers know of other GOP officials willing to say #NeverTrump. I’ve sought comment from many whom I considered “likely suspects.”

Several experienced Iowa campaign operatives have said they won’t vote for the GOP nominee, including David Kochel, a former strategist for Mitt Romney and senior figure in Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign. Justin Arnold, former state political director for Marco Rubio, explained in a March op-ed column for the Des Moines Register why he would not support Trump under any circumstances. He announced earlier this month that he has joined the direct mail and political consulting firm Majority Strategies. That company’s clients include U.S. Representative Rod Blum (IA-01) and at least one Iowa GOP state committee.

Joel Kurtinitis, a onetime staffer on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign and former Republican State Central Committee member, published a blistering commentary at The Blaze on Friday: Five Things You Can Never Say Again After Voting Trump. I enclose below excerpts from a piece that social conservatives might describe as “convicting.”

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues to build a strong field operation in Iowa and other battleground states, while Trump’s ground game is remarkably weak and in some areas literally missing in action.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. The Iowa State Fair opened on Thursday and runs through Sunday, August 21. A summer cold moving systematically through our household has so far kept us from the fairgrounds, but we will get there once or twice this week. Bleeding Heartland has previously published my best advice for enjoying the fair, especially in the company of young children. The schedule of candidates speaking at the Des Moines Register’s “soapbox” near the administration building is here. Like Brad Anderson, I was surprised Senator Chuck Grassley passed on the opportunity. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, though. Grassley tends to avoid putting public events on his schedule in Polk and several other large-population counties.

Three weeks ago today, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst took the stage at the Republican National Convention to make the case for Donald Trump and bash Hillary Clinton, particularly on issues related to foreign policy and the military. For those who missed the speech, I’ve embedded the video at the end of this post. The full text is available here.

Other controversies of the day overshadowed the substance of Ernst’s remarks, delivered late in the evening to an “almost empty” hall. Most of the senator’s statements about Clinton and Trump were matters of opinion. However, Erin Jordan of the Cedar Rapids Gazette zeroed in on one verifiable claim: “According to the FBI, ISIS is present in all 50 states. Think about it for a moment — terrorists from ISIS are in every one of our 50 states.”

After researching federal data on terrorism and the material Ernst’s office provided in support of her assertions, Jordan gave Ernst an “F.” But Ernst refuses to acknowledge that she distorted and exaggerated what FBI investigators have found.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump campaigned in Iowa Thursday for the first time since the February 1 precinct caucuses. Follow me after the jump for clips and highlights from his events in Davenport and Cedar Rapids.

Among Iowa’s 99 counties, Linn County (containing the Cedar Rapids area) and Scott County (containing the Iowa side of the Quad Cities) are second and third in the number of registered voters. Trump finished third in Linn County on caucus night, behind Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. He was a close second to Rubio in Scott County and repeatedly praised the Florida senator during his Davenport speech.

Three 40-something politicians who had hoped to be this year’s GOP presidential nominee addressed the Republican National Convention last night. Only one of them upstaged what was supposed to be the evening’s highlight: a speech by vice presidential nominee and Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Although Senator Ted Cruz drew boos from many in the crowd and was panned by some journalists, he ended the night better-positioned for a possible 2020 race than either Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Senator Marco Rubio.

The Republican Party of Iowa changed its bylaws earlier this year to prevent a repeat of what state party chair Jeff Kaufmann has called “the 2012 fiasco.” During the last Republican National Convention, 22 of Iowa’s delegates cast their ballots for Ron Paul, who had finished third in the Iowa caucuses. Only six of our state’s delegates cast ballots for GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

Kaufmann has described the Iowa GOP’s new rules as designed to force RNC delegates to “vote with the intentions of the caucusgoers — the wishes of the grassroots.”

So why did all 30 of Iowa’s votes go to Donald Trump during today’s roll call vote in Cleveland?

The good news for U.S. Senator Joni Ernst was she didn’t make any gaffes during her speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

The bad news: her speech made little impression on the relatively few people who watched it.

Representative Steve King’s concerns about people of non-European origin damaging American civilization are not news to anyone who has followed the Iowa Republican’s career. In the last month alone, King has asserted that it is “racist” to add the image of Harriet Tubman to the $20 bill and that the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union may help save western civilization. At the same time, King has no problem displaying a Confederate flag, under which people fought and died to preserve slavery and divide this country, on his office desk.

King takes the alleged superiority of white culture for granted, which might not raise eyebrows on the conservative radio and television programs where he is a frequent guest. But when King floated those views to MSNBC’s national viewing audience this afternoon, the reaction was as explosive as the wave of outrage and mockery regarding House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “so white” selfie with interns.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with Representative Steve King has probably heard some of his statements about immigrants who are not authorized to be in this country.

But although I’ve followed King’s career closely for more than a decade, I didn’t know until I saw this news segment yesterday that he displays a Confederate flag on his desk.

Craig Robinson has stopped publishing regularly at The Iowa Republican and plans to transform the site into a personal blog, he told Bleeding Heartland yesterday. Robinson has been the publisher and primary author at Iowa’s most widely-read conservative political website since its launch in 2009. Other writers have been regular contributors over the years, but since early 2015, The Iowa Republican has published press releases or pieces by Robinson himself. Updates became noticeably less frequent over the past year, compared to the blog’s output during the 2011-2012 Iowa caucus campaign and GOP primary season.

The last new post at the site was a May 9 commentary by Robinson, who took shots at Republicans unhappy about Donald Trump becoming the likely presidential nominee. In keeping with past practice, the author did not mention that the Trump campaign did more than $116,000 in business with the Global Intermediate direct mail firm, for which Robinson serves as president.

Via e-mail, Robinson explained that he will likely continue to publish occasional opinion pieces at The Iowa Republican but has “no time table” for when that may begin. He may also use the site “to promote Global Intermediate’s capabilities to readers and potential clients.” As for disclosing his side work for political campaigns to the many national reporters who quote him about Republican happenings (most recently Matt Viser in the Boston Globe), Robinson sees connecting those dots as the journalist’s responsibility: “I don’t think its necessary for me to provide a list of current and former clients, anytime I have been asked I have been forthcoming. I have hosted CNN, FOX News, NBC, ABC and a handful of local news outlets at my Global office for the past couple of years, I’m not exactly hiding from anyone.”

I enclose below more excerpts from our e-mail correspondence, some passages from the May 9 post at The Iowa Republican, and details on Global Intermediate’s work for the Trump campaign to date.

Iowa is universally acknowledged to be in play this fall. All signs point to Trump investing significant resources here; he needs the six electoral votes and has hired our governor’s son as his state director. Whether or not Global Intermediate produces any more direct mail for the GOP nominee, national journalists seeking local Republican commentary should identify Robinson as someone who has done work for the Trump campaign–not only as a former Iowa GOP political director and publisher of The Iowa Republican blog, as has been standard media practice up to now.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Jim Comey made an “unusual statement” today explaining why the FBI is recommending “no charges” in connection with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

Legal experts have been saying for a long time that criminal charges were unlikely, in the absence of intent to break the law, especially since former CIA Director David Petraeus was allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor for deliberately leaking classified information.

However, Clinton’s ill-advised e-mail practices will remain a political problem for the presumptive Democratic nominee. Comey underscored the “extremely careless” handling of classified information by the secretary and some of her colleagues. U.S. House Republicans plan to hold hearings on why the FBI didn’t recommend criminal charges. Today U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley called on the FBI to release more evidence from its investigation “so the public can make an educated decision on its own about the judgment and decision-making of all the senior officials involved.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Braun and Jack Gillum of the Associated Press examined six public statements by Clinton about her e-mails that were either questionable or untrue, based on the FBI’s findings. Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann repeatedly alleged today that the investigation had been “rigged,” saying Clinton had “lied” on many occasions and that “anyone else in the country” would be indicted for similar conduct.

I enclose below the full statements from Grassley and Kaufmann, along with some expert opinions on the case and some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments about the FBI recommendation. Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. Former Justice Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called Comey’s press conference “absolutely outrageous” and a violation of standard department practice not to comment on ongoing investigations.

UPDATE: Grassley told reporters on July 6 that he has written to Comey asking for answers to many questions about the e-mail investigation. He also said some senators are drafting a bill to revoke Clinton’s security clearance, adding that such a bill might be “an unconstitutional bill of attainder.”

SECOND UPDATE: Representative Steve King posted on Twitter on July 6, “FBI Dir. Comey/DOJ gave us truth but not justice. Confirmed, the Rule of Law took a heavy blow again from the Clintons. Obama is culpable.”

Something strange happened in Iowa House district 88, which unexpectedly became an open seat last month. Less than two hours after State Representative Tom Sands disclosed on June 9 that he would not seek another term, Republicans announced that Jason Delzell would be a candidate in the district. The timing signaled that Delzell was Sands’ preferred successor and the GOP establishment’s choice for the nomination.

However, on June 23, delegates to a special convention nominated Louisa County farmer David Kerr instead. I didn’t hear that news until late last week, because in contrast to past practice when state legislative seats have been open, the Iowa GOP did not announce the special convention date in advance, nor did they send out a statement afterwards on the convention results. Some journalists were informed after the fact that Kerr was nominated, because a press release about him appeared in the Muscatine Journal and Quad-City Times on June 24.

That statement said nothing about a contested race for the GOP nomination, but Delzell confirmed a few days ago via e-mail that he did not withdraw his candidacy and “fought to the end” on June 23. I don’t know how close the vote was. From what I can gather, no journalists attended the special convention, so I assume none were informed about it in advance. For whatever reason, Republicans did not want to draw attention to this event. I have not seen any statement indicating whether Sands endorsed Kerr or lobbied on his behalf.

I enclose below some background on Kerr, along with a map of House district 88. Democrats are poised to nominate Ryan Drew for this House race, though a special convention has not yet been held. Both parties are likely to target House district 88, which contains 5,566 active registered Democrats, 6,397 Republicans, and 6,775 no-party voters, according to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. President Barack Obama outpolled Mitt Romney here by 50.9 percent to 47.9 percent in 2012.