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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A white nationalist super-PAC is ending its telephone campaign to urge Iowa voters to support Donald Trump in the February 1 caucuses, William Johnson told Bleeding Heartland today. Johnson is both the treasurer of the American National Super-PAC and one of three speakers on the robocall, which went out this past weekend. Bleeding Heartland posted the audio and call script here.

Speaking by phone today, Johnson estimated that he had spent about $5,000 on the calls. He said the order was placed to reach some 300,000 households, starting with residents of smaller Iowa towns and building up to voters in larger cities. Johnson said the campaign targeted landlines only, in order to comply with the law. He indicated that his group will not continue to place these calls or any other pro-Trump robocall before the Iowa caucuses, saying, “I didn’t want this to be a big issue.”

Johnson declined to elaborate further. I interpreted his comment to mean he intended to encourage Iowans to caucus for Trump but did not want his own advocacy of white separatism to become a controversy distracting from that goal. I suspect the “big issue” was probably unavoidable, since I am not aware of any precedent for a white nationalist group making independent expenditures to promote a leading major-party presidential candidate among a wide audience. Then again, I have not seen the Des Moines Register or other mainstream Iowa media covering this story, so perhaps Johnson had grounds to hope the American National Super-PAC’s support for Trump could fly below the radar. UPDATE: Ed Tibbetts wrote up the calls for the Quad-City Times; the Cedar Rapids Gazette and Sioux City Journal picked up his piece.

I have not been able to confirm how much Johnson spent on the robocalls, because his super-PAC has not filed independent expenditure reports with the Federal Election Commission. Johnson’s understanding is that such disclosure is not required, he told me today. That may be accurate, assuming the super-PAC spent less than $10,000 cumulatively, as Johnson states, and the expenditure occurred before January 12.

300,000 robocalls seems like a very large number for a state with a population of around 3 million. A source with experience running statewide campaigns in Iowa told me the estimate sounded reasonable, adding that $5,000 would certainly cover calls to at least 160,000 households, depending on the vendor, service, and technology used.

Johnson and Reverend Ronald Tan, another speaker on the robocall, had recorded an hour-long radio program to advocate for Trump’s candidacy. The episode of “For God and Country” was to have aired six times between January 12 and 22 on Des Moines-based KPSZ Radio, also known as “Praise 940.” Johnson forwarded his e-mail correspondence with a sales representative for the Des Moines Radio Group, which shows the company approved the program and sent a contract to Johnson on January 7. Johnson returned the signed contract the following day, indicating that a check for $2,100 was in the mail. Also on January 8, the white nationalist American Freedom Party announced the robocall and radio persuasion campaign.

Shortly after 10 am on January 11, the same representative for the radio group e-mailed Johnson, “Unfortunately, we’ve been advised by our attorney NOT to run the For God & Country program on KPSZ. If/when we receive the check for payment, we will return it uncashed.” I was not able to obtain further details from the Des Moines Radio Group about the attorney’s legal reasoning. Johnson emphasized that the Des Moines Radio Group had listened to the show and approved the content before sending the contract.

Asked whether the pro-Trump radio program may air on another station before the caucuses, Johnson said he contacted all of Iowa’s Christian radio stations, some 40 by his estimate. He is still waiting to hear back from one, which has not ruled out running the program. Some stations did not respond or refused to sell air time, either because they do not run programming containing advertising or because they did not approve of the commercials embedded in “For God and Country.” One of the ads promotes a school run by Mormons, and another promotes the Daily Kenn website. That site describes itself as a “conservative web site with an emphasis on anti-racism,” “including anti-white racism.” Battling pervasive “cultural Marxism” in our society, writers for the Daily Kenn focus on “black-on-white crime,” among other “signature issues.”

I will update this post as needed with details on any Iowa broadcast of “For God and Country.” Asked whether the American National Super-PAC will spend money urging New Hampshire voters to support Trump, Johnson said he set aside money for New Hampshire but was not sure now if he would spend it.

P.S.- Johnson identified himself as a “farmer and white nationalist” on the robocall. He told me today that he grew up on a cotton farm in Arizona and currently owns a stone fruit farm in California.

For months, white supremacist groups have been promoting Donald Trump for president on neo-Nazi websites like The Daily Stormer. Evan Osnos wrote a detailed piece on the phenomenon for The New Yorker in August. If you doubt that neo-Nazi is an appropriate label for the movement, read some of the responses Anna Merlan received from Trump’s white nationalist fans after she published about the same topic at Jezebel.

What had been mostly a stealth campaign to build support for Trump went above ground this weekend with a wave of robocalls to potential Iowa caucus-goers, paid for by the American National Super-PAC. Talking Points Memo posted the audio yesterday. I enclose the same audio clip and my transcript below, thanks to John Deeth, who received the audio file from an Iowan on January 9.

A pro-Trump radio ad campaign paid for by the same white nationalists is set to air on Des Moines Radio Group’s KPSZ-AM from January 12 through January 22. In a January 8 press release, the American Freedom Party’s presidential candidate Bob Whitaker

stated that he did not feel that his campaign is undermined by William Johnson’s efforts. “Our campaign slogan is ‘Diversity is a Code Word for White Genocide.’ Donald Trump’s campaign may help remind Americans that all genocide, even against white people, is evil. My campaign is there to help keep the candidates on point regarding race in America.”

MONDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: The Des Moines Radio Group ultimately declined to accept this ad placement. Scroll to the end for details.

Open Secrets does not yet have any donor information about the super-PAC, but in the call script, a man identifying himself as “William Johnson, a farmer and a white nationalist” says he paid for the robocalls. A statement of organization filed last week with the Federal Election Commission lists William Johnson as the super-PAC’s treasurer. No independent expenditure reports have been posted yet on the FEC’s website; those are supposed to be filed within 48 hours of an independent expenditure supporting or opposing a candidate. I will update this post if and when more details become available on how much money this PAC is spending to promote Trump’s candidacy. At this writing, I have not yet seen any comments from Trump or his campaign about the white nationalist effort to boost his support in the Iowa caucuses.

UPDATE: The Southern Poverty Law Center’s profile of the “uninspiring but determined white separatist” Johnson is worth reading in full. I’ve posted a few excerpts below. Although Johnson called himself a farmer on the robocall to Iowans, he spent a career as a corporate attorney.

As of Monday morning, Trump has still not commented on this story. He campaigned in Ottumwa on January 9.

UPDATE: The radio ads will be hour-long editions of the “For God and Country” programs, featuring Reverend Ronald Tan and William Johnson. Added more details on the ad campaign at the end of this post.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann blew a gasket in March when soon-to-be presidential candidate Scott Walker hired a consultant who had said some disparaging things about Iowa:

“It’s obvious she doesn’t have a clue what Iowa’s all about,” Mr. Kaufmann said. “I find her to be shallow and ignorant,” he added, “and I’ll tell you, if I was Governor Walker, I’d send her her walking papers.”

A few months later, Kaufmann brought down the hammer on some volunteers who displayed the Confederate flag on behalf of a county GOP committee:

“I am just absolutely, utterly disgusted on multiple levels,” Kaufmann said in a telephone interview. “Shame on them and I don’t want them in my party.”

The Iowa GOP leader’s reaction to Donald Trump’s latest disgraceful, illegal idea was weak by comparison.

The Iowa Democratic Party held its final Jefferson-Jackson dinner Saturday night, drawing some 6,000 activists to hear three presidential candidates speak in Des Moines. Last night’s spectacle won’t loom as large over the Iowa caucus campaign as the JJ did in 2007, when it took place in November and the caucuses were scheduled for early January, rather than February. But some new tactics emerged during the speeches by presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and Hillary Clinton. My thoughts on the evening’s highlights are after the jump.

I am a sucker for hand-made political signs, so I also enclose below my favorite pictures from the crowds in the bleachers. I put “Feel the Bern” in lights up top because I’ve never seen electrified signs at the JJ before.

While I see the value in supporters waving signs (or glow sticks, as many did last night) at a big rally, the “sign wars” some campaigns stage before multi-candidate events have always struck me as pointless. How does it demonstrate “organizational strength” to send a few staffers to put up printed materials in windows or along a road? Why would anyone want their volunteers to stand around yelling for hours before the dinner, rather than saving their energy and voices to show that enthusiasm inside the hall? For those who disagree with me and love the show, Pat Rynard chronicled the morning and afternoon activities by all three campaigns at Iowa Starting Line.

As for why I called it the “final” JJ, the Iowa Democratic Party’s annual fall fundraiser will continue under a to-be-determined name honoring icons considered more inclusive. You can send your suggestion to the state party using this form through February 15, 2016.

Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb ended his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination today. Warning that “The very nature of our democracy is under siege due to the power structure and the money that finances both political parties,” Webb said he will spend the next few weeks deciding whether to run for president as an independent. He still believes he “can provide the best leadership” to meet the country’s challenges and intends “to remain fully engaged in the debates that are facing us.”

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who was the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, recently estimated that getting on the ballot in all 50 states would cost about $8 million and would require a lot of organizational work. Webb asserted today, “I have no doubt that if I ran as an independent we would have significant financial help.” But his presidential campaign raised less than $700,000 during the entire third quarter. Nor did Webb build much of an organization, even in the early-nominating states.

Webb could devote the next year to seeking ballot access and public attention, winning a few percent of the vote in the best-case scenario. Or, he could influence a salient public policy debate that is close to his heart with a much smaller investment of his time and other people’s money.

The Des Moines metro area has made plenty of “best places” lists during the last five years, but Chamber of Commerce types won’t be bragging about the top ten ranking that appeared last week. After examining “the disparities between white and black Americans in several economic and social measures” across the country, Thomas C. Frohlich and Sam Stebbins of the 24/7 Wall St. website “identified the 10 worst cities for black Americans.” The authors noted, “Four of the cities with the worst racial inequality are in Illinois, two are in Iowa, and all are in the Midwest.”

Follow me after the jump to learn why the Des Moines metro area ranked ninth and the Waterloo/Cedar Falls metro area tenth on this list.

I used to loathe the end of January. Around that time, anxiety-ridden managers would start suggesting that I help organize the Black History Month activities for February. Bless their hearts. They either genuinely felt our staff needed to be more conscious of the contributions African Americans made to society, or somewhere in their manager handbook, this was mentioned in the cultural sensitivity part.

Growing up, I was always slated to read the “I Have A Dream,” speech in class or chosen to explain how the Underground Railroad operated without physical tracks. Back in 1st grade, when our progressive music teacher wanted us to learn about soulful pop music, she wrote a play and cast me as Michael Jackrabbit, the moonwalking bunny with a culturally ambiguous face.

All of this was a version of tokenism that I had become accustomed to before I even knew tokenism was a thing. Tokenism is race and gender agnostic. No one is safe. Consider the exemplary woman who has broken into the good ‘ole boys club of corporate America, or the lone gay man at a job  brimming with tough guys and their laughable displays of machismo, or in my case, the prototypical black face in nearly every social group to which I’ve belonged. Anyone can become a victim of tokenism, but it will always befall the Only One in the Room, a phrase that I’ve borrowed from a recent NPR article. The article, “On Wyatt Cenac, Key & Peele, And Being The Only One In the Room,” describes situations wherein there is only one minority in a group, otherwise known as the last 20 years of my life. Life is hard for the token, and it’s hard for the Only One. When you are both at once, it feels like playing a game of chess while balancing on a high wire.

The Iowa Democratic Party announced today that its State Central Committee voted “to begin the process to change the name of the annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner following the 2015 Dinner.” In a statement I’ve enclosed in full below, state chair Dr. Andy McGuire said “it is important to change the name of the dinner to align with the values of our modern day Democratic Party: inclusiveness, diversity and equality.” She promised that all Iowa Democrats will have a chance to suggest new names for what has often been the party’s largest gathering of the year.

One obvious choice would be to name the dinner after longtime Senator Tom Harkin, now that the Harkin Steak Fry is no more. Or, if party leaders want to stick with historical figures whose legacy unites Iowa Democrats, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

The continuing controversy over displaying Confederate flags has divided the Republican caucus in the U.S. House, forcing leaders to cancel a vote planned for today on a bill to fund the Interior Department for the 2016 fiscal year.

For the second time in less than a month, Iowa’s four U.S. representatives split along party lines over how to handle Democratic efforts to remove all Confederate flag images from the Capitol.

Follow me after the jump for background and details.

While too many Republicans of national stature “tread carefully” in commenting on displays of the Confederate flag, Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann provided a clinic this week on how to talk about the issue.

Representative Steve King and Senator Joni Ernst joined the long list of Republicans who announced plans this week to reject or donate campaign contributions from a white supremacist leader based in Texas. Earl Holt is the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens. That group’s publications inspired the racist beliefs of Dylann Roof, who allegedly shot and killed nine people and injured others at last week’s attack in a historic black church.

Holt donated $1,000 to King’s 2012 re-election campaign and $1,500 to the Republican’s 2014 campaign in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. On June 22, King posted this statement on his campaign website:

King for Congress will be donating the amount of past donations received from Earl Holt, President of the Council for Conservative Citizens, to both the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund and to the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. Our prayers are with the families and friends of those affected by this tragedy.

Also on Monday, Ernst announced on Simon Conway’s WHO Radio show that she will donate $1,000 (the amount Holt donated to her U.S. Senate campaign) to the Charleston church. I didn’t see any statement on her Facebook page or campaign website, which at this writing consists only of a landing page seeking contact information and donations from supporters.

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

Last week Andrea Farrington’s family buried the Coral Ridge Mall shooting victim, who should have enjoyed a long and healthy life but had the misfortune to attract the attention of a loser with a gun fetish. After she reported his sexual harassment, he allegedly went home to retrieve his gun and shot her three times before running away. I have nothing profound to say about this horrendous crime, so I refer you to Lynda Waddington’s latest column for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Since Wednesday, millions of Americans have grieved for the nine people killed and others who were hurt during a massacre in a historic South Carolina black church. The alleged murderer appears to have been motivated by paranoid racist fantasies. Again, words fail me. Grant Rodgers and Danielle Ferguson reported for the Des Moines Register,

Two Cedar Rapids [black] churches have reached out to their city’s police department, asking officers to review their emergency plans and possibly provide additional active shooter training, said Greg Buelow, a department spokesman. Buelow said he would not release the names of the churches at their request.

Similar conversations will happen at Des Moines’ Faith Missionary Baptist Church, where parishioners finished their own open-door Wednesday night worship service shortly before news broke of the Charleston killings, said deacon Arnold Woods Jr., who’s also president of the Des Moines NAACP.

How sad that people have to think about such contingencies when they come together to worship.

All topics are welcome in this open thread. Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) inspired the unifying theme of this weekend’s post, when he approvingly linked to this recent article by Heather Mac Donald called “Practical Thoughts on Immigration.” King commented, “USA declining 2 Third World status bc shrinking %age who would reverse course don’t realize demographics r destiny.” At this writing, King has not responded to my request that he clarify whether he meant to say that a U.S. where non-Hispanic whites are a minority would inevitably sink to “Third World status.”

Meanwhile, the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that immigration contributed greatly to Iowa’s population growth of 2 percent between 2010 and July 1, 2014.

After the jump I’ve enclosed a map showing the latest Iowa county population estimates, some links on the Census Bureau data, and excerpts from Mac Donald’s commentary, which struck a chord with King.

Ten potential Republican presidential candidates will speak at Bruce Rastetter’s Iowa Agriculture Summit today, and a few more may send videotaped remarks. But only one GOP contender was the focus of a long and flattering feature by the Des Moines Register’s chief political correspondent the day before the event.

When Jeb Bush hired longtime Iowa GOP consultant David Kochel, I figured friendly coverage in the Register would be coming to the former Florida governor. During last year’s U.S. Senate campaign, just about every line Joni Ernst’s backers wanted out there ended up in some Des Moines Register piece by Jennifer Jacobs. Still, Jacobs’ spread on Bush in Friday’s Des Moines Register shocked me. The message could hardly have been more perfectly tailored for Iowa Republicans if Bush’s spin doctors had written it themselves.

Technically, it’s still a long weekend for some people, so here’s an open thread for all topics.

Establishing a holiday to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a long road, as Ben Kamisar reported for The Hill yesterday:

The King holiday used to be controversial, only passing the House more than ten years after Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) filed the first bill calling for a day to commemorate the slain civil rights icon. The measure eventually passed in 1983. Ninety representatives and 22 senators voted against it. […]

There are only six current members of Congress who previously voted against creating a national holiday for King. Another small handful did so at the state level.

The six who cast votes against the national holiday are all Republicans: Sens. Richard Shelby (Ala.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), John McCain (Ariz.) and Orrin Hatch (Utah), as well as Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.) and Hal Rogers (Ky.). Shelby cast his vote as a Democrat, before he switched parties. […]

A Grassley spokesperson noted that the Senator has been “very active in several African American causes,” including efforts to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act when he joined the Senate in the early 1980s. More recently, he has advocated for black farmers who had been discriminated against when applying for financial help.

“Senator Grassley’s vote against an MLK Day holiday was purely an economic decision both in the cost to the broader economy in lost productivity, and the cost to the taxpayers with the federal government closed,” the aide told The Hill in an email.  

Not one of Grassley’s finer moments, that’s for sure.

Bleeding Heartland has compiled other links related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. here, here, here, here, and here.

I haven’t seen the movie “Selma” yet. For those who have, what did you think?

Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady delivered his annual State of the Judiciary address to Iowa House and Senate members this morning. The full text is available here (pdf), and I’ve posted important sections after the jump. Cady hailed progress the court system is making on helping Iowa children and improving efficiency and transparency. He described ongoing initiatives to improve how Iowa courts handle family law cases and review guardianship and conservatorship laws and procedures. Cady also asked lawmakers to appropriate 4.7 percent more funding for the court system in the next fiscal year.

Cady cited recent work within the judicial branch to “better understand and address the persistence of racial disparities” in the criminal justice system–a longstanding problem in Iowa. I enclosed below reaction from Assistant House Minority Leader Ako Abdul-Samad. Abdul-Samad is one of five African-American members of the Iowa House.

Finally, the chief justice alluded to a shooting last September during a meeting of the Jackson County Board of Supervisors as he called for action “to make every courthouse in Iowa safer and more secure.”

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

I hope everyone in the Bleeding Heartland community had a good Thanksgiving holiday and is enjoying the weekend, however you prefer to celebrate. For those who still need to use up leftovers, I’ve posted a few ideas for soup here and my favorite thing to do with extra cranberry sauce.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Winter storms and “Black Friday” shopping have dominated newscasts for the past day or two, but the big story of the week was the St. Louis County grand jury declining to indict Officer Darren Wilson in connection with the August 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old. I cannot imagine how awful it would be to lose a child in that way, knowing that the person responsible will never even stand trial. Whether or not you believe Wilson acted improperly, there was clearly enough evidence to indict him. Let a jury sort out whether he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt at a criminal trial. Signs point to the prosecutor not even trying to get an indictment. A New York Times graphic I’ve posted below shows “what was different about the Ferguson grand jury.”

Not surprisingly, there was unrest in Ferguson for two nights following the grand jury’s announcement. Most of the protesters there and elsewhere were peaceful, despite feeling intense anger. However, some looting and burning incidents provided fodder for Officer Wilson’s sympathizers to portray those who protested Brown’s death as “thugs” or worse. I mostly avoided social media arguments over the Ferguson case but saw many people talk about blocking or unfriending racists in their feeds. Spectra Speaks wrote this counter-intuitive post: “Dear White Allies: Stop Unfriending Other White People Over Ferguson.” It’s worth a read.

A common thread in many online arguments over Ferguson was someone reacting negatively to the phrases “white privilege” or “check your privilege.” For people who don’t understand what that means, Des Moines-based writer Ben Gran spelled it out:

White privilege exists for all white people, even poor whites.

“White privilege” doesn’t mean you get free stuff for being white. “White privilege” doesn’t mean that life is easy if you’re white. “White privilege” doesn’t mean that you get everything handed to you on a silver platter for being white.

“White privilege” means that there are certain HORRIBLE things that are MUCH LESS LIKELY to ever happen to you because you’re white.

For example, if my son were waving a pellet gun around in public, it is much less likely that anyone would call the police, much less likely that police would open fire on him within seconds of arriving on the scene, and much less likely that police would stand around not administering first aid afterwards. Which is not to say it’s advisable for anyone to wave a pellet gun around–only that doing so while white is much less likely to get you killed.

UPDATE: PBS published an outstanding chart comparing “several key details” of Officer Wilson’s version of events to testimony various witnesses provided during the investigation. The chart “doesn’t reveal who was right or wrong about what happened that day, but it is a clear indication that perceptions and memories can vary dramatically.”

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

Today’s Des Moines Register featured a front-page article by Kathy Bolten about the massive racial disparity in arrest rates across Iowa. The piece contained new analysis and statistics on a longstanding problem in our state. I’ve posted some excerpts after the jump. This database includes detailed from 41 Iowa law enforcement jurisdictions that “arrest blacks at a higher rate than people of other races.” Iowa-Nebraska NAACP President Betty Andrews noted that when blacks and whites are detained for the same alleged offenses, police are more likely to charge blacks. The American Civil Liberties Union found last year, “Iowa has the largest racial disparity in the country of arrests in marijuana possession, with blacks being more than eight times as likely to be arrested than whites, even though whites use marijuana at about the same rate […].”

Speaking of double standards, MacKenzie Elmer reported for the Des Moines Register last week that on October 3, an Urbandale police officer let Joni Ernst’s spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel get away with driving drunk. Knowing that an arrest would get her fired, he let Hamel off with a warning. I’ve posted excerpts from that piece after the jump too. Raise your hand if you think a non-white drunk driver who initially lied to the police would have received the same sympathetic hearing from an Urbandale cop. Less than a month later, Hamel was arrested in West Des Moines for OWI. Fortunately, she didn’t kill or seriously injure anyone in the meantime.

Hamel’s arrest occurred on October 29, and she resigned from the Ernst campaign the following day. Surely reporters covering the IA-Sen race would have noticed that Ernst’s primary press contact was gone. Yet the Register’s first report on the incident appeared on the newspaper’s website on November 6 and in print the following day. Republican blogger Craig Robinson breathed a sign of relief: “Can you imagine the mess this would have created for Ernst if it had gotten out before Election Day?”

The delay fueled some suspicions that the Register held back the Hamel story until after the election. Given Ernst’s margin of victory, this news could not have affected the outcome, but getting knocked off message in the final days could have been significant in a close campaign. On November 7, I asked the Register’s political reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Jason Noble when they noticed Hamel was gone and when they found out why.

After getting no response for two days, I took the same questions to the Des Moines Register’s Editor and Vice President Amalie Nash. She responded promptly,

Thanks for asking the question. We published the story on Gretchen Hamel’s arrest as soon as we were able to confirm it. We were aware she had exited the campaign and inquired with Joni Ernst’s staff as soon as we found out she was gone. We were told she submitted her resignation due to a “drinking incident,” but the campaign declined to release additional details. We continued asking questions of other sources until we were able to find out where the incident occurred and get details from the police department. As soon as we got confirmation of her arrest, we published a story.

I was confused about why it took the Des Moines Register so long to confirm Hamel’s arrest. Details about the case were posted on the Iowa Courts Online website on October 30 and 31. Searching for Hamel’s name would have allowed any Register employee to confirm the arrest in seconds. Furthermore, a major newspaper presumably has a staffer checking arrest logs on a daily basis. When two WHO-TV reporters were arrested for drunk driving in Des Moines this past summer, the Register had a story up with their mugshots less than three days after the incidents.

Nash responded to my follow-up question by saying, “We have staff checking [arrest logs] daily in Des Moines, but not all surrounding communities on a daily basis.” Hamel was arrested in West Des Moines and booked at the Dallas County jail. Nash later elaborated,

We received the tip that she may have been arrested on an OWI last Wednesday [November 5] and were able to confirm and publish with details by Thursday [November 6].

As I noted, we don’t do daily stops at the West Des Moines Police Department to check arrest logs. We get over there as much as we can, but do not have the staffing to make a daily visit.

It seems unlikely that political reporters who talk frequently with Republican sources would not have heard anything about Hamel’s arrest until seven days after the fact. And if that’s true, I wonder why Jennifer Jacobs and Jason Noble didn’t just say so when I first asked them about it. In any event, that’s the official explanation from the Des Moines Register.

UPDATE: Some Iowa politics-watchers have asked me why it matters when the Register covered Hamel’s arrest. Although Ernst was winning the IA-Sen race regardless, it matters if anyone at any level in the Register’s newsroom held back a story to preserve good relations with and access to people around the senator to be.

The Des Moines rumor mill says other area reporters had the story about Hamel’s OWI but decided against running it, period. We can debate whether it’s newsworthy that a campaign staffer was driving drunk. But Register Editor Amalie Nash takes a different position: the incident “was newsworthy, which is why we published a story as soon as we learned of her arrest.” It is frankly hard to believe that no one in the newsroom knew about that event before November 5.

P.S. I forgot to mention that Annah Backstrom, the Register’s “content strategist for politics,” also declined to answer my straightforward question about when staff at the newspaper found out why Hamel was no longer working for Ernst.  

Republicans had a lot to celebrate on November 4, and Democrats have plenty to worry about after the midterm election debacle.

But all is not rosy in GOP world either. If I were a Republican, I’d be particularly concerned about three things.

Two weeks after election day, political junkies like me are still processing what happened. Losing control of the U.S. Senate was the most obvious bad outcome for Democrats, but maybe not the most concerning one. The Senate map for 2016 gives Democrats a lot of opportunities to make up ground.

Five other political realities have been bothering me more.  

Many Iowans think of our state as a great place to settle down, thanks to relatively low unemployment, crime rates, living costs, and other quality of life factors (such as short commute times). After considering 44 criteria, the StateMaster website ranked Iowa the sixth best state to live. The latest Kids Count report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Iowa third in terms of children’s well-being.

So Danielle C. Belton’s article for The Root last week should be a wake-up call. For the roughly 102,000 Iowans who are African-American, this state doesn’t stack up nearly as well against the competition. In fact, Belton considers Iowa the fourth-worst state for black people.

If you’re black and into marijuana, avoid Iowa. The state arrests blacks at a rate eight times higher than whites for marijuana possession, despite the rate of drug usage between blacks and whites being about the same. For years, Iowa also held the title for locking up black people at a higher rate than any other state (it recently lost that crown to Wisconsin). While other states have large prison populations, what makes Iowa stand out is that it’s a relatively small state with a small population. In fact, its black population is only about 3 percent. Adding insult to injury, the poverty rate among African Americans in Iowa is 31 percent, compared with 11 percent for white Iowans.

The massive racial disparity in Iowa’s arrest and imprisonment rates has been one of the country’s worst for a long time. Way back in 2005, Bruce Dixon of the Black Commentator highlighted Iowa as one of the “ten worst places to be black” for this very reason. If Governor Terry Branstad wants to spend the next four years cementing his legacy as a leader who cares about all Iowans, he should try to do something about this persistent problem. I don’t know how to change the culture in local law enforcement or county attorney offices, but there’s no excuse for such a large disparity in whether people will be arrested or charged for the same unlawful behavior. Surely the governor’s staff could research, and Branstad could propose, policies Iowa can adapt from other states that have addressed this problem.

Today’s Des Moines Register features a long front-page story by Daniel Finney and Jeffrey Kummer on Storm Lake (Buena Vista County) as one of Iowa’s most diverse communities, and expected trends in the state’s demographics between now and 2020. I encourage you to click through and read the whole thing. After the jump I’ve enclosed a few excerpts and one graphic from the feature. Separate, shorter pieces examine diversity trends in the Des Moines metro area (Polk and Dallas counties), Webster County (including the Fort Dodge area), and Butler County (the least diverse in Iowa).  

On Monday, Michael Barbaro of the New York Times examined Iowa’s population shift from rural to urban and suburban areas as “a potent but unpredictable undercurrent in a closely fought Senate race.” I’ve enclosed a few excerpts at the end of this post. Barbaro interviewed people northwest Iowa’s heavily white Pocahontas County, as well as in downtown Des Moines, the far western suburbs in Dallas County, and Denison (Crawford County), a town where almost half the residents are Latino.

I spent some time in Denison last fall and was impressed by the vibrant downtown, with more locally-owned shops and restaurants than I’ve seen in most Iowa towns of similar size. One resident told me that approximately 75 percent of students in Denison’s public schools are Latino. That has helped the area avoid the steep enrollment declines and school closures seen in Pocahontas, as Barbaro recounts, and in so many other communities.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.  

Anyone who has followed Representative Steve King’s career knows that he is prone to racially insensitive comments that minimize realities of how African-American people are often treated in this country. Specifically, he has long defended racial profiling by law enforcement. King’s most recent comments on this topic made national news yesterday. As the country reacts to yet another police shooting of an unarmed black man, King has determined that we don’t need to worry about racial profiling by police in Ferguson, Missouri. You can watch his whole Newsmax interview here or read the highlights here:

“This idea of no racial profiling,” King said, “I’ve seen the video. It looks to me like you don’t need to bother with that particular factor because they all appear to be of a single origin, I should say, a continental origin might be the way to phrase that.”  

This man thinks it’s a horrible infringement of liberty for a corporation to be required to provide contraception coverage, yet he is incapable of acknowledging the long and well-documented history of police officers killing black men for no reason. I don’t think this was a slip of the tongue–King thinks ahead of time before making the offensive comments that end up on highlight reels.

I’ve posted the Iowa Democratic Party’s reaction to King’s “hateful rhetoric” after the jump.

UPDATE: Some progressives believe King is “crazy,” while some conservatives believe the liberal media are out to make the congressman look bad. I say both groups are wrong. Speaking to the Sioux City Rotary Club more than six years ago, King admitted that “he plans everything he says, no matter how ‘provocative’ — it’s weighed ahead of time, never off the cuff and designed to stir discussion of key issues.”

Republicans have been long been masters at demanding that prominent Democrats apologize for some obscure person’s offensive comment. Today the Black Hawk County Republicans used this tried and true technique to score a story by the Des Moines Register’s chief politics reporter. In a now-deleted post on the Black Hawk County Democrats’ Facebook page, a volunteer shared a graphic comparing Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Among other things, the graphic described Reagan as a “white supremacist.”

Jennifer Jacobs’ story leads with a Republican press release and includes an apology from the chair of the Black Hawk County Democrats for this “unfortunate” and “unacceptable” post. However, nowhere does Jacobs hint at why anyone would think to apply this label to Reagan in the first place. Maybe she’s playing dumb, or maybe she’s too young to remember.

Sad to say, the U.S. has had more than a handful of white supremacist presidents. I don’t think Reagan was one of them. But I recommend the following reads on his use of racially charged language to win support for his political agenda.

Ian Haney-Lopez provides a good overview of how Reagan “used coded racial appeals to galvanize white voters.”

During the 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement, to deliver this speech declaring his support for “states’ rights.” (full transcript) As Bob Herbert wrote many years later, “Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans – they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.”

David Love chronicles Reagan’s “troubling legacy” on race. Not only did he oppose the Voting Rights Act of 1965, during the 1980 campaign he criticized that law as “humiliating to the South.”

In 1981, Reagan White House aide Lee Atwater gave a remarkably frank interview about the GOP’s “Southern strategy.” He described how overtly racist political rhetoric evolved into conservative slogans about busing or economic policies that hurt black people more than whites.

Peter Dreier reminds us that Reagan’s “indifference to urban problems was legendary” and notes that his administration “failed to prosecute or sanction banks that violated the Community Reinvestment Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in lending.”

On a related note, Reagan’s riff about “welfare queens” is perhaps the most famous example of how he used racial code words. Josh Levin published a fascinating profile of the con artist who inspired that part of Reagan’s stump speech.

I was so focused on the environmental impacts of Governor Terry Branstad’s recent vetoes, I failed to look closely at other appropriations in a supplemental spending bill he axed. Today I learned from Democratic State Senator Rob Hogg,

Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the start of Freedom Summer and the murder of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney – it is too bad Governor Branstad vetoed the $300,000 the Legislature appropriated on a bipartisan basis to help the African-American Museum of Iowa collect Iowa’s civil rights history and educate the public about these historic events.

There it is on page 4 of Senate File 2363: $300,000 for “an oral history of civil rights” at the African-American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids.

It’s maddening that Governor Branstad has no problem with tens of millions of dollars in tax giveaways to wealthy corporations, yet he pleads fiscal prudence when vetoing spending like this, which serves the public interest without major impact to the state budget. Many of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights activists have already passed away, and those who haven’t are senior citizens. “Freedom Summer” was a major event in 20th century American history. Some Freedom Summer veterans with connections to Iowa City or the University of Iowa have already told their stories to historians or recorded their memories on paper or film. The Historical Iowa Civil Rights Network are doing their part too, and you can follow their work here. I’m disappointed that the African-American Museum of Iowa won’t have the funding to collect and archive these stories on a larger scale.  

The Prison Policy Initiative, a non-partisan non-profit organization created “to document and publicize how mass criminalization undermines our national welfare,” has published a fascinating report on the “global context” of sky-high U.S. incarceration rates. I knew that our country locks up more of its residents per capita than any other country on earth, but I didn’t realize that if you consider the 50 states and Washington, DC individually, three dozen American states have a higher incarceration rate than Cuba, which has the world’s second-highest incarceration rate. Iowa now has 437 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 residents, putting us among the states with the ten lowest incarceration rates. Even so, just three other countries (Cuba, Rwanda, and the Russian Federation) imprison more residents per capita than Iowa. The report notes,

Utah, Nebraska and Iowa all lock up a greater portion of their populations than El Salvador, a country with a recent civil war and one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Five of the U.S. states with the lowest incarceration rates – Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island – have higher incarceration rates than countries that have experienced major 20th century social traumas, including several former Soviet republics and South Africa.

States in New England tend to have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by the Midwest. Most states with the highest incarceration rates are in the South.  

The Prison Policy Initiative recently published a detailed comparison of state prison systems. The Iowa profile shows the growth in the incarceration rate as well as the massive racial disparities other researchers have found in our state. I’ve posted a few graphs after the jump. (Note that one graph shows an incarceration rate a little below 300 per 100,000 residents, rather than 437. That’s because the graph below includes only people serving a prison term longer than one year.) Click here for links to all state incarceration rates by race and ethnicity and here for a report “tracking state prison growth in all 50 states.” Data on that last page show how “state-level policy choices have been the largest driver of our unprecedented national experiment with mass incarceration.”

Since Democrats changed U.S. Senate rules in November to remove the 60-vote threshold for cloture motions on most presidential nominees, senators have confirmed dozens of President Barack Obama’s appointees as federal judges, ambassadors, and to various executive branch positions. In fact, fifteen presidential nominees sailed through the process during the past month alone.

Yesterday, for the first time under new Senate rules, Democrats could not muster even a simple majority of votes in favor of cloture on a presidential nominee. Alexander Bolton and Ramsey Cox reported on the controversy that torpedoed Debo Adegbile’s nomintaion to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Critics said Adegbile was unfit for the job because as director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he had supported efforts commute the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, “who was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.”

Seven Democrats joined all the Republicans present to defeat the cloture motion on Adegbile’s nomination by 52 votes to 47 (roll call). The Iowans split along party lines, with Senator Tom Harkin supporting cloture on Adegbile’s nomination and Senator Chuck Grassley voting against the motion. Harkin sharply criticized his colleagues, saying Adegbile would have been confirmed if he were white.

Bolton and Cox saw yesterday’s vote as “a stinging defeat for Obama.” I see it as a more stinging defeat to basic concepts underlying the American justice system: everyone has a right to a defense, and defense attorneys should not be held accountable for their clients’ conduct. Going back to the colonial period, this country has a tradition of attorneys providing a vigorous defense at trial to even odious criminals. President John Adams remained proud of his work defending the British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre of 1770 and opposing the death penalty for them, even though they had shot and killed patriots.

UPDATE: Added comments from Harkin after the jump.

Government offices and many public school districts were closed today in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bleeding Heartland has compiled links about King to mark this day for the past three years, as well as on last summer’s 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Here’s a new batch:

The civil rights leader was a fan of the “Star Trek” television series and persuaded Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) not to leave the show during the second season.

Thomas J. Sugrue on Restoring King: “There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted and words more drained of content than Martin Luther King.”

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon on The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV: “[N]ational news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.”

Daily Kos user HamdenRice on why Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did: “his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer.”

Todd Dorman on King’s visits to eastern Iowa in 1959 and 1962:

“We have come to the point,’ Dr, King said, “where we can say in the South to those who use violence against us:

“We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.

“We will meet your physical force with soul force.

“Do to us what you will, and we still love you.”

P.S.-“Abigail Van Buren” published this quote from Dr. King in today’s “Dear Abby” column. It was new to me, but I agree with her that it “applies to many aspects of life”: “All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face-to-face with another problem.”

Iowa’s “C+” average in a new report on The State of Women in America masks a large disparity in Iowa’s ranking across the three dozen factors measured. Anna Chu and Charles Posner of the Center for American Progress compiled the report released this week. The fact sheet on Iowa is here, and these interactive tables show how Iowa compares to other states overall and on each metric. I’ve listed the metrics considered in each area after the jump. This page explains in more detail the methodology and data used to measure the states.

The C+ grade for Iowa reflects a ranking of 21st out of 50 states when all factors are considered. Iowa did best in the “health” area, with an A- grade and a ranking of seventh. The percentage of our state’s population lacking health insurance is relatively low. Several reproductive rights issues were examined, which means that our state’s grade and rank might be far lower if the Iowa Senate had not been under Democratic control these past few years (blocking efforts to restrict access to legal abortion).

In the “economic security” area, Iowa was ranked 32nd and received a D+ grade. Those low marks reflect the gender gap in wages, especially for Iowa women of color, and the lack of any state policy on “paid family, medical, or temporary disability leave.”

Iowa’s worst marks were in the “leadership” area, where our state got an F and ranked 42nd among the states. Who can be surprised, given our dismal record of electing women to high office? The Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University has an extensive database of reports on women’s representation in Iowa government at the local, state, and federal level. The Center for American Progress also noted the fact that “Women hold only 33.3 percent of the managerial jobs in Iowa, despite making up 51 percent of the state’s population.”

Fifty years ago today, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his most famous speech to a crowd of at least 250,000 people during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After the jump I’ve posted the “I Have a Dream” video and other links related to this moment in American history.

August 28 will mark 50 years since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington, where he delivered his most famous speech. To mark the occasion, the Pew Center released a report on racial disparities (real and perceived) in the U.S.

The analysis finds that the economic gulf between blacks and whites that was present half a century ago largely remains. When it comes to household income and household wealth, the gaps between blacks and whites have widened. On measures such as high school completion and life expectancy, they have narrowed. On other measures, including poverty and homeownership rates, the gaps are roughly the same as they were 40 years ago.

I strongly recommend clicking through to read the full report. What a treasure trove. Chapter 1 covers perceptions of progress toward racial equality. Chapter 2 covers opinions about “short-term progress for black Americans.” Chapter 3 “looks at a variety of economic, educational, health, political and social indicators to assess change in the relative well-being of black and white Americans in recent decades.” I wasn’t surprised to learn that white respondents are much more likely than African-Americans to say that “the situation of black people in this country is better now than it was five years ago.” It’s striking that only a minority of white respondents perceive that “blacks in their community are treated less fairly than whites by the criminal justice system, in the workplace and when voting in elections.”

This slideshow highlights the key findings from the Pew Center’s report, and this interactive feature tracks up to 50 years of data on “racial and ethnic gaps among whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics.”  

A Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman of both second-degree murder and manslaughter today in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The verdict doesn’t surprise me. No one witnessed the whole encounter that led Zimmerman to shoot an unarmed teenager. Although I did not watch the trial, I gather from commentaries and coverage at Talk Left and elsewhere that the defense turned several of the prosecution witnesses and produced their own witnesses supporting parts of Zimmerman’s story. They didn’t need to prove the self-defense narrative–only create reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors.

That said, I doubt any jury would have acquitted an African-American man of shooting an unarmed white teenager under the same circumstances.

Roberto Martinez, a former U.S. attorney in Florida’s Southern District, made the case for a manslaughter conviction in the Miami Herald. I recommend reading the whole piece, but I’ve posted an excerpt after the jump. Even those who believe the jury reached the right verdict from a narrow legal perspective should acknowledge that Zimmerman’s stupid and reckless behavior caused the death of an innocent child. This verdict does not vindicate the actions of vigilante wannabe cops.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

UPDATE: Why am I not surprised? State Senator Kent Sorenson (contender for creepiest Iowa lawmaker) celebrated the verdict as “a victory for 2nd Amendment rights around the nation.” Hat tip to Christian Ucles, who commented, “Really Kent? The death of a child is a victory for 2nd amendment rights. […] You make me sick. I can’t believe to think that you and I both went to the same church, an considered you a Brother in Christ. You value guns and the actions of gun owners over the lives of children not your own?” In the comment thread, Sorenson responded, “Your [sic] a political hack that [sic] doesn’t care about anything other then [sic] your parties [sic] talking points!”

SECOND UPDATE: Iowa House Democrat Ako Abdul-Samad reacted to the verdict here.

THIRD UPDATE: Comments from President Barack Obama and Representative Steve King are after the jump. King really goes out of his way to stir up the pot sometimes.

Most political junkies love a good brawl. While Congress-watchers were paying attention to fights this week over the president’s proposed budget, confirming federal judges, or tightening up gun ownership regulations, a non-controversial but significant bill zoomed through the U.S. House and Senate.  

The Republican National Committee released a so-called “autopsy” on the 2012 election results today. You can read the full report on the “Growth and Opportunity Project” here. I’ve posted a few excerpts, links and thoughts after the jump.

Any comments about the GOP’s rebuilding and rebranding effort are welcome in this thread.

President Barack Obama’s 50-point edge over Mitt Romney among Asian American voters was one of the most surprising election results for me. Growing up during the 1980s, it seemed like all of my Asian American friends’ parents were Republicans. Bill Clinton received an estimated 31 percent of the Asian American vote in 1992, compared to 62 percent for Obama in 2008 and 73 percent for Obama this year.

Since the election, I’ve read several attempts to explain this trend. The most interesting links are after the jump.

More than 1,100 people attended the Governor’s Bullying Prevention Summit in Des Moines yesterday. To his credit, Governor Terry Branstad stayed all day to listen to speakers like Sioux City Superintendent of Schools Paul Gausman and Rosalind Wiseman, author of the book “Queen Bees and Wannabes.” The governor also announced a new hotline and website designed to help young people targeted by bullies.

I was unable to watch the livestream from what sounds like a fantastic event. After the jump I’ve posted a bunch of news and links about the summit as well as background on Iowa’s anti-bullying policies.  

Leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People urged Governor Terry Branstad yesterday to change Iowa’s extreme restrictions on voting rights for ex-felons and to address the huge race disparity in Iowa incarceration rates.

At least 200 people gathered on the west steps of the Iowa State Capitol Monday evening for a rally and vigil marking one month since Trayvon Martin’s killing in Floriday. After the jump I’ve posted a few notes from the event, along with links about the impact of Martin’s death on the debate over proposed “stand your ground” legislation in Iowa.

The Iowa Senate confirmed six of Governor Terry Branstad’s appointees to state offices and boards yesterday, but Democratic senators indicated that two of the governor’s picks may not receive the two-thirds vote needed in the upper chamber. Meanwhile, Branstad suggested at his weekly press conference that race may be a factor in opposition to Isaiah McGee as director of the Iowa Department of Human Rights.

Follow me after the jump for more on who was confirmed yesterday and the battles coming later this week.

UPDATE: On April 12 the Senate rejected McGee as well as William Gustoff, one of Branstad’s appointees to the state Judicial Nominating Commission. Senators confirmed Teresa Wahlert with two votes to spare and three members of the Environmental Protection Commission. Details on the April 12 votes are below.