If Iowans were voting for governor today, 43 percent would support Democrat Fred Hubbell and 41 percent Governor Kim Reynolds, according to a new poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom. Another 9 percent of the 555 likely voters surveyed were undecided, and 7 percent backed Libertarian Jake Porter. The poll validates the view of leading election forecasters that the governor’s race is a toss-up. Selzer’s poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 points.

If this snapshot of the race accurately reflects the views of Iowans likely to vote in November, I’d rather be Hubbell than Reynolds. An incumbent barely above 40 percent despite much higher name recognition than her opponent is not in a strong position. Nevertheless, the Register’s survey points to ways either Reynolds or Hubbell could improve their prospects during the final six weeks of the campaign.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and previously was editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of the Des Moines Register. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Some of the most stressful memories I have of my school days involve the words, “We’re going to have a pop quiz today.”

Don’t panic, but there’s a pop quiz today. Here goes:

Six-term U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack will spend more than a million dollars over the next seven weeks running television commercials for a race not seen as competitive by any election forecaster or political advocacy group.

Meanwhile, his campaign has contributed just $125,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party’s coordinated effort to boost candidates running for all state and federal offices.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Richard Lindgren critiques the way ethics boards dominated by lawyers, such as Iowa’s campaign regulator, typically analyze controversial actions. -promoted by desmoinesdem

A recent Associated Press news story parsed through the repeated practice of Kim Reynolds, current governor of Iowa, of taking trips using planes owned by businessmen who do substantial business with the state. The most recent incident, involving a vendor handling state workers’ compensation claims, was approved by the executive director of the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, so it must be ethical, right?

The reality is that ethics boards dominated by lawyers, such as Iowa’s board (the executive director and the board chair are both lawyers), tend to slip into a very bad habit of equating whether an action is ethical based on whether or not it is legal. To use another Iowa example from another agency, there are many hog lots now in rural Iowa that have met the “legality” tests on their placement and practices, but if you ask any adjacent neighbor, the smell is overpowering and undeniable.

Governor Kim Reynolds swore an oath to “support the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of Iowa.” But when she missed a deadline for filling a district court vacancy in June, she did not follow the process outlined in Iowa’s constitution.

Public records obtained by Bleeding Heartland indicate that Reynolds did not convey her choice for Judicial District 6 to anyone until four days after her authority to make the appointment had lapsed. Nevertheless, staff assured the news media and Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady that the governor had named Judge Jason Besler on time.

Reynolds and Secretary of State Paul Pate later signed an appointment and commission certificate that was backdated, creating the impression the governor had acted within the constitutionally-mandated window.

For a team that’s run a smooth and successful operation all year, Fred Hubbell’s campaign was surprisingly inept at managing the controversy over whether the candidate would release his tax returns.

John Morrissey delved into a little-noticed financial report by AmeriHealth Caritas. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Although it left the Iowa Medicaid program more than seven months ago, AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa, Inc. continues to string along claims payments due to Iowa providers.

AmeriHealth – which is owned by Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia – reported $14.6 million in unpaid liability for claims submitted last year by Iowa Medicaid providers, according to the company’s most recent quarterly financial filing with the Iowa Insurance Division. Meanwhile, the managed-care organization has racked up more than $6 million in administrative costs so far this year to manage the now-closed operation.

UPDATE: Anderson did not collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. His statement appears at the end of this post. By his account, Governor Kim Reynolds supported his efforts.

Republican lawyer Patrick Anderson has launched a last-minute campaign for Iowa attorney general, seizing on the brutal murder of Mollie Tibbetts as his driving issue.

The monthlong search for University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts ended in heartbreak today. Cristhian Bahena Rivera led investigators to the victim’s body in a cornfield. He reportedly confessed to the crime and faces first-degree murder charges.

Because Rivera is from Mexico and has been living in this country without authorization for several years, Iowa’s top Republican elected officials moved quickly to blame Tibbetts’ tragic death on immigration policy.

Prospects for Democrats to gain ground in the Iowa Senate took a sharp turn for the worse over the past week. The party’s best pickup opportunity became a more difficult race when GOP incumbent Rick Bertrand unexpectedly decided to seek a third term after all. Meanwhile, Republicans landed their strongest possible candidate for a Democratic-held seat now open because of Senator Chaz Allen’s unexpected retirement.

Pictures of Governor Kim Reynolds and acting Lieutenant Governor Adam Gregg are plastered all over the governor’s Iowa State Fair booth, contrary to the intent of a law Reynolds signed in June.

“It’s not certain to me that [my son] Matthew is safe with a Republican governor and a Republican legislature,” David Hudson told the Des Moines Register’s Tony Leys after Governor Kim Reynolds declined to reappoint him as co-chair of Iowa’s Medical Assistance Advisory Council. “And I say that as a lifelong Republican! Because I just don’t see the governor asking the right questions and doing the right thing for my son.”

By dumping Hudson and another council member who spoke out about problems related to Medicaid privatization, Reynolds has once again shown she is unwilling or unable to engage with facts on the ground related to Iowans’ health care.

Governor Kim Reynolds will hold less frequent press conferences for the duration of this year’s campaign, her staff acknowledged this week after persistent questioning by political reporter Barbara Rodriguez. The governor’s spokesperson downplayed the significance of abandoning the weekly presser, an Iowa tradition Governor Bob Ray established and Terry Branstad and Tom Vilsack maintained. All public events on Reynolds’ schedule would provide opportunities for journalists to ask questions, Rodriguez was told on July 31.

That promise didn’t hold up well. The very next day, Reynolds read carefully from written remarks when announcing District Court Judge Susan Christensen as her choice for the Iowa Supreme Court. Christensen briefly thanked her family, friends, and colleagues, and promised to support the constitution. End scene, with no question time for the assembled media. The governor’s staff also ignored my written inquiry related to the Supreme Court appointment.

It’s not hard to guess why Reynolds would block journalists from asking her or Christensen about the process for selecting the first new justice to join Iowa’s high court in seven and a half years.

Only 40 percent of registered Iowa voters approved of Governor Kim Reynolds’ work in the latest quarterly survey by Morning Consult, released on July 25. Some 39 percent of respondents disapproved and 21 percent didn’t know enough about Reynolds to have an opinion.

The findings suggest a noticeable slide in Reynolds’ net approval over the past six months. During the third quarter of 2017, Morning Consult found Reynolds was “off to a solid start, with an approval rating of 45 percent and a disapproval rating of 27 percent.” At that time, 30 percent of Iowa respondents didn’t know enough to have an opinion. The numbers from the fourth quarter of 2017 were little changed: 44 percent approve/29 percent disapprove/27 percent don’t know. Disapproval ticked up among Iowans surveyed from January through March, when the Republican-controlled legislature was in session, but the governor was still clearly in net positive territory: 42 percent approve/35 percent disapprove/23 percent don’t know.

Now, the difference between Reynolds’ approve and disapprove numbers is less than the Morning Consult poll’s 2 percent margin of error. As a general rule, any approval rating below 50 percent suggests an incumbent has reason to worry; 40 percent approval is well into the danger zone.

Before Democratic readers start celebrating, a few cautionary notes are in order:

Matt Chapman had a “visceral reaction” to the governor’s campaign ad about mental health. -promoted by desmoinesdem

If you watch Jeopardy! or the local news, you have been seeing a lot of campaign commercials for Governor Kim Reynolds. The first three were biographical in content, and the latest attacks Fred Hubbell over his leadership of the Younkers department store chain. (Iowa Starting Line pointed out that ad featured local GOP activists posing as people affected by store closures.)

The fourth Reynolds campaign spot, “Leader,” gaslights Iowans on our state’s inadequate mental health system.

“Tariffs are the greatest!” President Donald Trump tweeted today, adding that “All will be Great!”

A few hours later, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced “up to $12 billion in programs” aimed at helping farmers, “in line with the estimated $11 billion impact of the unjustified retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods.”

Trump will surely talk up the assistance at his joint event with Representative Rod Blum (IA-01) in Dubuque on July 26. But the escalating trade war isn’t just affecting farmers. Steel tariffs are hurting manufacturers too. “Whirpool shares plummeted Tuesday after executives blamed rising steel and aluminum costs for diminished quarterly earnings,” Michael Sheetz reported for CNBC on July 24. Whirlpool’s refrigerator factory in Amana is the largest employer in Iowa County.

While Democrats criticized the temporary response to a “self-inflicted wound,” top Iowa Republicans reacted to the farm aid plan in three distinct ways. Blum and Representative Steve King (IA-04) unambiguously praised the president. Their U.S. House colleague David Young (IA-03) was notably more critical of Trump’s policy. Iowa’s U.S. senators, Governor Kim Reynolds, and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig tried to thread the needle, depicting themselves as fighting for Iowa farmers and open markets without denouncing the president’s approach to trade negotiations.

Governor Kim Reynolds launched her first negative television commercial on July 20, with a spot focusing on decisions Fred Hubbell made as chief executive of Younkers during the 1980s. The move came a few days after another national election forecaster declared the Iowa governor’s race a “toss up,” as Cook Political Report did last month.

Incumbents who are confident about their standing with voters don’t typically go negative on tv this far out from an election. New campaign disclosures filed on July 19 show that while Reynolds had more cash on hand than her opponent–even after spending $1.2 million on advertising since the end of May–Hubbell more than doubled her fundraising during the same period and will likely be competitive financially through the November election.

Randy Richardson, retired associate executive director of the Iowa State Education Association, connects some dots. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The very first sentence on the “About” page of the Iowa Association of School Boards (IASB) website reads, “Since 1946, the Iowa Association of School Boards has been committed to serving Iowa school boards and public schools.” However, public school employees may begin to wonder given some of the organization’s recent actions.

After eight years as an all-male club, the Iowa Supreme Court will soon gain its third ever woman justice.

Members of the State Judicial Nominating Commission submitted three names to Governor Kim Reynolds on July 10: District Court Judge Susan Christensen of Harlan, private attorney Terri Combs of West Des Moines, and District Court Chief Judge Kellyann Lekar of Waterloo. Within the next 30 days, Reynolds must choose one of those women to replace retiring Justice Bruce Zager.

Follow me after the jump for highlights from each finalist’s application and remarks before the commission.

Seven Orlando parks in eight days equals gallons of sweat, aching legs, and gigantic lines. It means grandchildren smiles and fast food overdose. Days divided into ride time waits, Fast Pass deadlines, and heat-induced observations before being dropped and twirled. These are those observations.

If a party is going to defend ripping babies from their families at the border, it can’t call itself pro-family or even pro-life.

Pro-choice advocates were jubilant about the Iowa Supreme Court’s landmark decision striking down a major section of a 2017 anti-abortion law.

However, the other major piece of that law remains in effect: a near-total ban on abortions beyond 20 weeks “post-fertilization.” Speaking to reporters on June 29, American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa legal director Rita Bettis asserted the 20-week ban is “clearly unconstitutional and a violation of women’s fundamental rights.” She declined to say whether the ACLU will challenge that provision: “We don’t forecast our litigation strategy.”

Although I am not an attorney, I am a third-generation supporter of reproductive rights in Iowa. So I’ve been thinking about how a case could get the 20-week ban before the Iowa Supreme Court.

Five Iowa Supreme Court justices ruled today that a mandatory 72-hour waiting period for all women seeking abortion violates due process rights and equal protection guaranteed under the state constitution. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa had challenged that provision, part of a law Republican legislators and Governor Terry Branstad enacted in 2017.

Today’s decision guarantees that the 2018 law banning almost all abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected will be struck down. A lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood, the ACLU of Iowa, and the Emma Goldman Clinic is pending in Polk County District Court.

In addition, the ruling indicates that even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in the coming years, Republicans will be unable to ban or severely restrict abortion rights in our state.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Mark Cady rejected the “undue burden” standard for evaluating abortion restrictions, set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1992 Casey decision. I enclose below the full text of the majority opinion and the dissent by Justice Edward Mansfield, whom President Donald Trump has named as a possible U.S. Supreme Court pick. I’ve excerpted some of the most important passages.

A separate section of the 2017 law, banning almost all abortions after 20 weeks gestation, was not challenged in this case and remains in effect.

Some Iowa judicial trivia: today marks the second time the Iowa Supreme Court has overturned an abortion-related ruling by Polk County District Court Judge Jeffrey Farrell. He had also upheld the administrative rule banning the use of telemedicine for abortion. The Supreme Court unanimously struck down that rule in 2015.

Governor Kim Reynolds restored voting rights to 35 Iowans during her first year in the state’s top office. That number represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of at least 60,000 Iowans who are ineligible to vote due to a felony conviction. Just 241 Iowans–less than one-half of 1 percent of those disenfranchised–have regained their voting rights since Governor Terry Branstad changed the system seven years ago to require a cumbersome application process.

Federal courts will be lost for a generation as an avenue for protecting civil liberties, now that President Donald Trump will be able to replace U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in addition to stacking district and circuit courts with dozens of right-wing ideologues. (Iowa Supreme Court Justice Edward Mansfield and Eighth Circuit Appeals Court Judge Steven Colloton were on the list of 21 possible Supreme Court picks Trump released during the 2016 campaign.) The growing conservative grip on the federal courts means more and more important legal battles will be fought at the state level.

Governor Kim Reynolds will fill an Iowa Supreme Court vacancy later this year, after Justice Bruce Zager retires. Today the judicial branch published the applications for fifteen women and seven men who are seeking to replace Zager.

Governor Kim Reynolds downplayed her association with U.S. Representative Steve King on Friday, saying “No two people are going to agree on everything” and describing the bigoted loudmouth as just “one of over 4,000 honorary chairs” of her campaign.

When it has suited her political purposes, she has spoken of King in a much more flattering way.

Editor’s note: Des Moines Democratic activist Robert Niederklopfer drew the cartoon posted above.

The crisis of some 2,300 children separated from their parents after crossing the southern border of the U.S. reached a tipping point this week. The “zero-tolerance policy” is two months old, but new images of kids locked in cages and heartbreaking sounds of children crying for their parents outraged millions of Americans.

A new national poll suggests voters oppose taking children away from their parents by a two to one margin. Thousands have called their members of Congress to demand action. Former acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Obama administration John Sandweg has warned that many of the separations will end up becoming permanent. Several “tender age” shelters are housing very young children, some unable to talk or remember their parents’ names.

I enclose below comments from leading Iowa politicians on the issue. Most predate the executive order Trump signed today, which will do nothing for families already separated and may not help new arrivals either.

John Morrissey is a native Iowan and longtime Des Moines resident. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Despite promises of huge annual cost savings resulting from Medicaid privatization, Iowa’s medical assistance programs spent more in eleven months of the current fiscal year than during all of the previous fiscal year.

Despite support from his predecessor Bill Northey, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig needed four ballots to secure his party’s nomination at the June 16 Republican Party of Iowa state convention. Governor Kim Reynolds appointed Northey’s longtime deputy to serve out his term in March. Naig finished far ahead of the other four Republicans running for secretary of agriculture on June 5 but fell 0.3 percent short of the 35 percent threshold needed to win the primary outright.

What a difference two election cycles makes. After going all in against longtime Attorney General Tom Miller in 2010 and making a token effort to defeat him in 2014, Iowa Republicans did not even nominate a candidate for attorney general at their June 16 state convention.

It’s an embarrassing capitulation for a party whose leaders relentlessly and dishonestly bashed Miller during last year’s controversy over Governor Kim Reynolds’ constitutional authority to name a new lieutenant governor.

“Iowa is on the front lines of this fight for voting rights in America,” Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander told state Democratic convention delegates on June 16. “And I’m here because a threat to democracy anywhere in America is a threat to democracy everywhere in America.”

The founder of Let America Vote was the only non-Iowan on the convention speaker’s list. His remarks were a highlight of the morning proceedings, so I’ve enclosed below the audio clip and full transcript. Among the memorable lines: “let’s send a message to every vote-suppressing politician in Iowa and across America that if you want to attack democracy, you’ve got to go through us. And if you want to come for our right to vote, we’re coming for your job.”

Kander has visited our state more than a dozen times in the last year and a half, raising awareness about voter suppression and headlining events for Democratic candidates or progressive organizations. Let America Vote’s executive director Abe Rakov has been based in Des Moines since last fall.

The group will particularly target the Iowa secretary of state race; Kander told reporters yesterday that Democratic nominee Deidre DeJear is “totally awesome.” (Fact check: true.) Let America Vote will also support some state legislative candidates. Last weekend they had interns out canvassing for four Democratic challengers in the suburbs of Des Moines: Heather Matson (House district 38), Karin Derry (House district 39), Kristin Sunde (House district 42), and Jennifer Konfrst (House district 43). Kander said on June 16 that Let America Vote has more than 40 interns on the ground in Iowa and knocked more than 7,000 doors here in the last five days.

“Whether it’s her own story or distorting facts about my story, one thing is clear: Governor Reynolds is running a campaign about yesterday,” Fred Hubbell told Iowa Democratic Party state convention delegates on June 16. “We’re running a campaign about tomorrow. We are running to get Iowa growing the right way.”

Hubbell’s first speech to a large crowd since his decisive victory in the high-turnout June 5 primary served several purposes:

• Preview the main themes of his general election campaign;

• Reassure Democratic activists (many of whom had been strongly committed to other candidates) that he shares their values and goals;

• Address and reframe early attacks from Governor Kim Reynolds; and

• Introduce his running mate State Senator Rita Hart, who’s not well-known outside Clinton and Scott counties.

For those who weren’t able to attend the convention, I enclose below audio and full transcripts of the speeches by Hubbell and Hart.

Iowa moved from “Likely R” to “Toss Up” in the latest Cook Political Report governor race ratings, announced this morning. That’s a big shift: typically election forecasters would move a race from “likely” Democrat or Republican hold to “lean,” rather than going straight to toss up.

Representative Steve King is making national news again, this time for re-tweeting a neo-Nazi British politician. King’s long had a thing for European right-wingers who stir up racist fear about non-white immigration. As usual, no House Republicans are calling for King to resign, nor has any prominent Iowa Republican denounced the sentiments. King repeated his warning about immigration this morning.

J.D. Scholten won the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district convincingly with 51 percent of the vote in a three-way field. He will be the underdog in November. All the major election forecasters rate this district as safe for Republicans, since King won more than 60 percent of the vote in 2014 and 2016.

On the other hand, a few months ago, a Democrat won a special election in a Pennsylvania U.S. House district with a partisan voting index of R+11–the same as IA-04. More recently, a Republican barely won a special election in an R+13 Arizona House district.

Here’s what Scholten needs to pull off what would be a huge upset:

Governor Kim Reynolds usually excels at staying on message. Whether reciting a prepared script or taking questions at a press conference or interview, she can repeat the same talking points almost word for word, months apart.

Forced to go beyond rehearsed answers yesterday, Reynolds revealed what she really thinks about marriage equality.

Most Iowa politics watchers expected Fred Hubbell to win the Democratic nomination for governor last Tuesday. But the scale of his victory surprised many. How did Hubbell gain more than 55 percent of the vote and carry 96 of 99 counties against several other well-qualified candidates?

Hubbell’s unprecedented spending before an Iowa primary made him much better-known than the other five Democrats on the ballot. Television advertising was the campaign’s most costly investment: sixteen different commercials aired on stations reaching at least two-thirds of Iowa’s population, beginning last October.

The county-level results suggest that while Hubbell could have become the nominee without such saturation, tv ads helped him win a majority rather than merely a plurality among primary voters.

Competitive races for governor and in three of the state’s four Congressional districts drove Democratic turnout for the 2018 primary far beyond the level reached in any previous year. Bleeding Heartland compiled some of the notable numbers.

Many Iowa candidates filed their last financial disclosures before the June 5 primary on Friday. Those reports were required for anyone running for governor who raised $10,000 or more between May 15 and 29, for those seeking other statewide offices who raised at least $5,000 during the same time frame, and for state legislative candidates who raised at least $1,000.

Follow me after the jump for highlights on fundraising and spending by all the Democratic and Republican Iowa candidates for governor, state auditor, secretary of state, secretary of agriculture, attorney general, and state treasurer. Bleeding Heartland discussed the previous financial reports on the governor’s race here. Those covered campaign activity from January 1 through May 14.

Governor Kim Reynolds used her item veto power today to preserve a pilot program designed to facilitate fair, cost-effective decisions on pretrial release for criminal defendants.

State Senator David Johnson, the only independent to serve in the Iowa legislature in recent decades, announced today he will not seek re-election in November. He had won four previous state Senate races as a Republican and indicated last year that he planned to run for another term. However, Johnson had neither raised nor spent any money from his campaign account since January 1.

The retirement gives the GOP, which already holds 29 of the 50 seats in the upper chamber, a clear shot at picking up Senate district 1 in the state’s northwest corner. According to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, this district contains 7,304 active registered Democrats, 20,589 Republicans, and 13,333 no-party voters. Only one seat (nearby Senate district 2) is more heavily skewed toward the GOP. Brad Price, Zach Whiting, and Jesse Wolfe are competing for the GOP nomination in Johnson’s district. Democrats did not field a candidate here.

Continuing a series on news from the Iowa legislature’s 2018 session that attracted little attention before lawmakers adjourned for the year.

The Iowa Senate confirmed almost everyone Governor Kim Reynolds nominated for a state board or commission this year with unanimous or near-unanimous support. However, opposition from Democratic senators blocked three of the governor’s more than 200 appointees (full list here).