The Suffolk University Political Research Center asked 800 Iowa “likely voters” about this year’s biggest races. The margin of error for the survey, conducted between April 3 and April 8, is plus or minus 3.5 percent. Suffolk’s press release summarizing the highlights is here. Full results are here (pdf). Tables are here (pdf).

Representative Bruce Braley leads all Republican rivals for U.S. Senate in the first Iowa poll conducted after Braley’s comments about Senator Chuck Grassley gained wide attention. Braley is still better-known than the GOP candidates, and more Iowans have a favorable than unfavorable impression of him. The bad news for Braley is that he is below 40 percent against each of the Republican candidates.

Suffolk’s poll indicates that the GOP IA-Sen primary is now a two-tier race, with State Senator Joni Ernst and Mark Jacobs each commanding more than 20 percent support, and the other candidates in the single digits. That makes sense, since Ernst and Jacobs have the most establishment support and are the only Senate candidates who have been able to raise their name recognition through paid advertising. But 40 percent of respondents were undecided.

Governor Terry Branstad’s still in positive territory, with 48.5 percent of respondents viewing him favorably and about 35.4 percent unfavorably. His lead over Democratic State Senator Jack Hatch is smaller in this poll than in any other Iowa survey I’ve seen, though: 42.4 percent to 32.1 percent.

Among respondents who said they are likely to participate in the 2016 Democratic caucuses, 63 percent favor Hillary Clinton. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren was far behind with 12 percent, followed by Vice President Joe Biden with 10 percent. It’s hard to say who is really in second place, since the margin of error for the Democratic caucus-goer subsample is quite large (plus or minus 8.4 percent). Nevertheless, Clinton clearly maintains a commanding lead.

I wouldn’t read much into the Iowa GOP caucus results from this survey. All the potential presidential candidates (Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, Marco Rubio, and Condoleezza Rice) are clumped close together, between 6 and 11 percent support. That’s within the the margin of error of plus or minus 8.7 percent for that subset of the Suffolk poll.

Any Iowans who don’t already know that Representative Bruce Braley disparaged Senator Chuck Grassley at a fundraiser will likely hear about it very soon. Priorities for Iowa announced yesterday that it is spending $250,000 to run a television ad statewide featuring Braley’s remarks. Click through to watch the 30-second commercial. Priorities for Iowa was formed by supporters of Joni Ernst for U.S. Senate. We’ll probably never know who put up a quarter of a million dollars to run their ad, since 501(c)4 groups can keep their donors’ identities secret.

Meanwhile, rival GOP Senate candidate Mark Jacobs just launched a new 60-second radio ad featuring Braley’s comments. Click through to listen.

Lacking the money for paid advertising at this point, the other Republican contenders in the IA-Sen primary have to settle for condemning Braley in social media posts and e-mail blasts to supporters.

Braley’s staff got a couple of reminders yesterday that they need to raise their game. The Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs dinged the campaign for misspelling the words “baling” and “detasseling” in a press release defending the Democratic candidate’s record on agricultural issues. (For what it’s worth, my spell-checker marked the correct spelling of “detasseling” in red.) Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski noticed that a stock photo accompanying a Braley Facebook post was of a farm in England, not Iowa.  

Politics ain’t beanbag. As a talk radio host with a sizable conservative audience in northwest Iowa, Sam Clovis must have been a valuable ally for former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum during the 2012 Iowa caucus campaign. Clovis has explicitly modeled his U.S. Senate campaign on Santorum’s grassroots effort. But speaking to Iowa reporters yesterday, Santorum indicated that for now, he is staying out of the GOP primary for U.S. Senate.

“I have a very, very good friend who’s in the race – Sam Clovis who’s a terrific guy, is a good friend and someone who was a great support of mine, you know, Sam’s a #1, top-flight kind of guy,” Santorum says. “Right now I have sort of not gotten engaged in that race. I may.”

But Santorum said he is being selective about his endorsements because, he said, “the more you do, the less effective you are.”

You mean, less effective like endorsing State Representative Walt Rogers for Congress, only to see Rogers bail out of the IA-01 primary?

Santorum was in town yesterday to raise money for Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s Congressional campaign in IA-03. I wasn’t surprised when Santorum backed Schultz, but arguably, Clovis did a lot more to promote Santorum’s presidential aspirations than Schultz with his 11th hour endorsement. For sure Clovis was more influential than Rogers during the Iowa caucus campaign.

Unfortunately for Clovis, money talks, and he hasn’t raised enough of it to run an effective statewide Senate campaign. How tough to be blown off by Santorum, though. As a consolation prize, Clovis got the endorsement of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum yesterday. I wonder how many rank and file Iowa Republicans remember Schlafly, a conservative icon of the 1970s and 1980s.

UPDATE: David Bossie’s group Citizens United just endorsed Clovis as “the only full-spectrum conservative” in the IA-Sen race.

Every candidate for public office has to learn basic rules of campaigning, such as, “Every mic is a live mic.” In other words, always assume you may be overheard when you stand next to a microphone, even if you think it’s not turned on.

In the age of camera phones and YouTube, candidates may be speaking into a live mic even when there’s no microphone to be seen. Representative Bruce Braley, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa, learned that lesson the hard way today.  

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey shows Mark Jacobs with a small lead over the rest of the Republican field in the U.S. Senate race. Democrat Bruce Braley leads all the major Republican contenders, but by a smaller margin than he did last July. Click here for complete results, including question wordings and cross-tabs. PPP surveyed surveyed 869 Iowa voters, including 283 Republican primary voters, between February 20th to 23rd, producing a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percent for the statewide poll and 5.8 percent for the Republican primary findings.

The GOP Senate candidates are still largely unknown, even to Republican voters, but Jacobs has the highest name recognition, thanks to radio and television commercials his campaign has been running since early December. Among PPP’s Republican respondents, 42 percent were undecided, followed by 20 percent for Jacobs, 13 percent for State Senator Joni Ernst, 11 percent for former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker, 8 percent for Sam Clovis, and 3 percent each for Paul Lunde and Scott Schaben.

Among the full sample, Braley has the highest name recognition but is still unknown to nearly half the respondents. He leads Whitaker by 40 percent to 34 percent, Ernst and Jacobs by 41-35, and Clovis by 42-34. In PPP’s July 2013 survey, Braley’s lead averaged 11 points. The polling firm’s Tom Jensen argued that the “pretty clear reason” for the tightening in the Senate race is that “Barack Obama’s approval rating in the state has dropped a net 10 points compared to the summer.”

Earlier this month, Jacobs’ campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing Jacobs leading the Republican field for the primary, with 22 percent support compared to 11 percent for Ernst, 8 percent for Whitaker and 6 percent for Clovis. Jacobs’ poll, conducted by Hill Research Consultants, found Jacobs and Braley essentially tied (Jacobs 42 percent, Braley 41 percent), with more upside than for Jacobs because of the Democrat’s higher name recognition.

I agree with the Republicans who claimed that Jacobs’ higher name recognition and GOP support is merely a function of his heavy spending on paid advertising. He should be polling better after two months of radio and television while his opponents’ campaigns are dark. On the other hand, who’s going to stop him if his GOP rivals lack the resources to get their message out before June?

Sam Clovis dodged what could have been a fatal blow to his U.S. Senate campaign when Bob Vander Plaats decided not to run. But to have any hope of winning the GOP primary, the Sioux City-based college professor and former radio host needs to raise real money and consolidate social conservative support quickly.  

Jennifer Jacobs has the exclusive for today’s Des Moines Register: three-time Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats has decided not to run for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat. He had previously appeared to be leaning toward running and had promised to make a decision by February 15. While some observers may be surprised he opted out, given polls showing him leading the GOP field, no one can be surprised by his reason:

Instead, his priority is his new book, “If 7:14.” It’s based on a Bible passage that says if people pray and turn from their wicked ways, God will hear and heal their land.

Vander Plaats said he has been booked for speaking engagements across the country, including at the Billy Graham Evangelical Association in North Carolina a few weeks ago, the New Canaan Society in Florida, a conference in Texas next week with pastors from large churches, and the National Council of Religious Broadcasters the following week.

“When God seems to be blessing an initiative, and there’s a lot of opportunity with that initiative, it’s hard to walk away,” he said.

That’s the BVP Iowans know and love (or at least love to hate): always happy to promote himself.

I think Vander Plaats recognizes that his ship has sailed in Iowa politics. He would have zero chance of beating Bruce Braley in a statewide election and might not even win a Republican primary. All he could accomplish in a Senate campaign is mess things up for Matt Whitaker and Sam Clovis. They are fighting over the “principled conservative” niche against establishment-friendly GOP candidates Joni Ernst and Mark Jacobs. I would call Clovis the big winner from today’s news, since he is the most natural fit for social conservative voters who might have been drawn to BVP. Clovis is trying to repeat the grassroots strategy Rick Santorum used in his 2012 Iowa caucus campaign.

UPDATE: Added the press release from the FAMiLY Leader below. Vander Plaats is such a shameless showboater.

SECOND UPDATE: Added more details below from Steve Deace, a big supporter of Vander Plaats’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

Of the four leading Republican candidates for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, three have denounced this week’s vote to suspend the federal government’s debt ceiling.

The odd man out is trying to avoid the subject.

President Barack Obama addresses both houses of Congress tonight. The big policy news will be a new executive order requiring federal contractors to pay workers hourly wages of at least $10.10. The move could affect hundreds of thousands of workers. Last year the president proposed increasing the federal minimum wage to $9.00 per hour, but Senator Tom Harkin and other liberal Democrats argued for raising the wage to $10.10. Obama indicated his support for that wage level in November.

I will update this post later with highlights from tonight’s speech and reaction from Iowa’s Congressional delegation. Meanwhile, this thread is for any comments about the substance or the politics of the State of the Union address.

On a related note, I hope Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is right about the president refusing to negotiate with Congressional Republicans over raising the debt ceiling.

UPDATE: Click here for the full transcript of the president’s speech, as prepared. I’ve added some Iowa reaction after the jump.

Lining up with a Republican pollster’s survey last month, Quinnipiac’s latest Iowa poll shows Democrat Bruce Braley with single-digit leads over all of the Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, despite record low approval for President Barack Obama. Full results are here. Key findings:

President Barack Obama gets a negative 38 – 59 percent job approval rating among Iowa voters, according to a poll released today, his lowest score in the state and one of his lowest in any state or national survey conducted by Quinnipiac University. […]

President Obama gets negative scores of 30 – 67 percent among men, 45 – 51 percent among women, 7 – 93 percent among Republicans and 31 – 62 percent among independent voters. Democrats approve 82 – 15 percent. […]

In the 2014 Senate race, U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democrat, gets 43 percent, while U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker, the Republican, gets 40 percent. Braley tops other possible Republican contenders:

44 – 38 percent over State Sen. Joni Ernst;

46 – 37 percent over businessman Mark Jacobs;

44 – 36 percent over former U.S. Senate aide David Young;

45 – 34 percent over radio commentator Sam Clovis;

46 – 40 percent over political activist Bob Vander Plaats. […]

Iowa voters say 46 – 41 percent that they want the Republican Party to control the U.S. Senate.

The usual caveat applies: this poll of 1,617 registered voters has a statistical margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points, but a survey of Iowa voters eleven months before the midterm election doesn’t necessarily reflect the group of Iowans who will cast ballots next fall.  

Any comments about the U.S. Senate race are welcome in this thread. Braley will be pleased to be leading every Republican, even among respondents who overwhelmingly do not approve of President Obama’s job performance and narrowly prefer GOP control of the U.S. Senate. He should be behind in this survey.

Iowa Republicans can take heart that Braley is below 50 percent against every opponent, despite having higher name recognition.

Before I got sidetracked by the shocking news about Tom Latham, I was working on a post about Republican Mark Jacobs’ first television commercial, which hit the airwaves yesterday. Follow me after the jump for the video and transcript.

I’m not sure it’s a great use of campaign funds to advertise during the holiday season nearly six months before the primary, but Jacobs is the only Republican candidate for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat who can afford to buy tv time. He may as well exploit that advantage. The Jacobs campaign went up on statewide radio earlier this month. This relatively small buy of $138,000 will run the introductory spot on cable statewide and on network television in the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Sioux City markets through January 4. Sioux City is the home base for Senate candidate Sam Clovis, who needs a strong showing in northwest Iowa to have any hope of winning the nomination.  

The U.S. House adjourned for the rest of 2013 yesterday after approving several major bills. By a surprisingly large 332 to 94 majority (roll call), representatives approved The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, a federal budget compromise worked out by Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan. Most of the House GOP caucus supported the budget deal, including Tom Latham (IA-03). Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) were among the 163 Democrats who voted for the budget deal. Steve King (IA-04) was one of the 62 Republicans who voted no because the agreement increased domestic discretionary spending. The 32 House Democrats who opposed the deal objected to the fact that it did not include an extension of unemployment benefits, did not reverse more of the “sequester” federal spending cuts, and increased federal worker contributions to their pensions.

Also yesterday, House members passed by voice vote a one-month extension to most federal agricultural programs, giving a conference committee more time to work out a deal on a long-term Farm Bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the upper chamber won’t pass any more short-term farm bill extensions, but he’ll probably have to backtrack now to prevent farm programs from expiring on January 1.

Finally, the House approved by 350 votes to 69 a compromise on the defense authorization bill. All four Iowans voted for the National Defense Authorization Act, negotiated informally by House and Senate Armed Services Committee leaders after the Senate Republicans blocked a vote on the defense authorization bill before Thanksgiving. I need more time to read up on what’s in the final compromise, so will cover the details of the defense authorization bill in a future post.

After the jump I’ve enclosed comments on yesterday’s votes from the Iowans in Congress and some of the candidates for U.S. House and Senate, where available. UPDATE: Added more comments below. However, Steve King has uncharacteristically not released a statement explaining his vote on the budget compromise. His office did not respond to my request for comment or to the Sioux City Journal’s Bret Hayworth.

Time to catch up on news about the many Republicans running for or thinking about running for Senator Tom Harkin’s seat next year. Links about most of the contenders are after the jump.

Any comments about the IA-Sen race are welcome in this thread.

A new Harper Polling/Conservative intel survey shows Democrat Bruce Braley narrowly leading five Republicans running for the U.S. Senate, even though a generic Republican slightly leads a generic Democrat among the sample.

Harper Polling surveyed 985 likely Iowa voters (whatever that means a year before the election) on November 23 and 24. The sample should have produced great results for GOP candidates; about 39 percent described themselves as conservatives, 37 percent moderates, and just under 18 percent liberals. Only 39 percent of respondents described themselves as “Obamacare supporters” while more than 52 percent were “Obamacare opponents.” Nearly 38 percent of the sample said they were Republicans, less than 35 percent Democrats, and less than 28 percent no-party voters. That’s not far off the statewide turnout for the 2010 midterm election. Iowa Democrats hope to improve on that dismal turnout next year.

Despite a respondent pool that would seem to favor the GOP, a generic Republican Senate candidate leads a generic Democrat by only 42 percent to 38 percent in the new Harper Polling survey. Braley had small leads (between 3 percent and 6 percent) in named match-ups against Sam Clovis, Joni Ernst, Mark Jacobs, Matt Whitaker, and David Young. I wouldn’t read too much into those head to head numbers, because Braley had far higher name recognition than any of the Republicans, as we’ve seen in several other IA-Sen polls. Still, Braley has to be encouraged to be leading GOP candidates in a survey with a conservative-leaning sample.

Any comments about the Senate race are welcome in this thread.

Catching up on news from last week, former energy company chief financial officer Mark Jacobs is now an official candidate for the U.S. Senate. His campaign is on the web here, on Facebook here, and on Twitter here. Scroll to the end of this post to read his announcement speech in full, or listen to it at Radio Iowa. The key excerpt: “Jobs are my top priority. In fact, you can’t spell Jacobs without jobs. And if you send me to the United States Senate, I will make jobs for Iowa my number one priority.”  

Here’s my first take on Jacobs’ strengths and weaknesses in the crowded Republican field. Any comments about the Senate race are welcome in this thread.  

Mark Jacobs officially launched his campaign for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat today. I’ll post a roundup of news clips and early thoughts on his strengths and weaknesses tomorrow.

First, I want to highlight the biggest reason Jacobs will be a serious contender for the nomination: the poor fundraising by other declared Republican candidates for Senate.

Iowa wildflower Wednesday is on hiatus, but here’s an open thread. What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers?

I didn’t manage to post a Veterans Day linkfest on Monday, but I was interested in this article about the “long decline of veterans in Congress.”

Military service was once almost a prerequisite for service in Congress. Veterans comprised more than three-fourths of both the House and Senate at one point last century. Since then, their membership has declined to about 20 percent of both chambers.

Of the Iowans now serving in Congress, only Senator Tom Harkin is a veteran. Several Iowa candidates for federal office have served in the military, though, including Steve King’s Democratic challenger Jim Mowrer and Republican U.S. Senate hopefuls Sam Clovis and Joni Ernst.

The suicide rate among U.S. veterans has long been a national disgrace. The Military Suicide Research Consortium provides information on the problem and resources for those needing help.

Speaking of national disgraces, roughly 900,000 veterans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) saw their food assistance benefits cut at the beginning of November. The SNAP cuts King and other House Republicans are demanding in conference committee negotiations over the farm bill would deny federal food assistance to approximately 170,000 low-income veterans.

Representative Tom Latham fell for some Veterans Day-themed satire about MSNBC host Chris Hayes. A good reminder that deleted tweets and Facebook posts never truly disappear.  

The 2014 fiscal year began at midnight. Congress is ringing in the occasion with the first partial federal government shutdown since the mid-1990s. The U.S. House and Senate have been unable to agree on a continuing spending resolution, because most House Republicans insist on defunding or delaying the 2010 health care reform law as a condition of funding most government operations.

Details on Iowa Congressional votes on budget resolutions are after the jump, along with comments from all the Iowans in Congress and many of the candidates for U.S. House or Senate.

Authorization for most federal agricultural programs also expired at midnight, and it’s not clear when Congress will be able to agree on a short-term extension or a new five-year farm bill. Toward the end of this post I’ve enclosed some comments on the failure to pass a farm bill.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair A.J. Spiker tried this week to end discussion over the unpopular decision to schedule the state GOP convention for July 2014. However, he was forced today to acknowledge that the State Central Committee cannot ignore criticism from a growing number of elected officials, GOP candidates, and even central committee members.

Depending on how a possible diplomatic breakthrough develops, the U.S. House and Senate may not take any vote on authorizing the use of military force in Syria. However, several members of Congress and Iowa Congressional candidates have made additional comments on the situation since last week’s news roundup. I’ve posted the latest statements about military action in Syria after the jump and will update this post as needed.

UPDATE: Added reaction to President Barack Obama’s televised address on Syria this evening.

Several members of Congress from Iowa spoke out about potential U.S. intervention in Syria last week, and Bleeding Heartland sought comment on the issue from the declared Congressional candidates. News clips and the statements I’ve received so far are after the jump. I will update this post as needed. Note: most of the comments enclosed below came before President Barack Obama confirmed on August 31 that he will seek Congressional authorization for a strike on Syria. (He never sought approval for military action in Libya two years ago and he believes he has “the authority to carry out this military action [in Syria] without specific congressional authorization”.)

I am 100 percent convinced that both the House and the Senate will approve the use of force in Syria, perhaps after revising the administration’s first draft, which “is not particularly constrained.”  

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I am no expert on foreign policy or the Middle East, but my gut feeling is that military intervention will not accomplish anything good in Syria. It’s a “tall order” to “mount a limited, targeted, and effective strike that will indeed deter Assad without drawing the United States deeper into the ongoing civil war, causing unacceptable unintended consequences.” By the way, former State Department official William Polk wrote the most interesting analysis I’ve read so far about the situation there.  

The Republican Party of Iowa’s State Central Committee meetings rarely make news, but two proposals approved on August 24 could affect next year’s elections.

UPDATE: Added Governor Terry Branstad’s reaction at the end of this post.

SECOND UDPATE: Added reactions from Senator Chuck Grassley and several of the GOP candidates for U.S. Senate.

Representative Steve King’s assertion that there are 100 drug mules for every “DREAMer” who’s a valedictorian continues to reverberate across the country. National television networks and blogs have chewed over the story, and many politicians have condemned King’s statement, including House Speaker John Boehner.

King stands by his comments and claims that the intense criticism proves he has “won the debate” over immigration policy. Yet a new poll of residents in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district suggests that King is out of step even with his own constituents.

Follow me after the jump for details on that poll and a roundup of reaction to King’s words about undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children.

Quinnipiac University released more results from its latest Iowa poll yesterday. I’ve posted some thoughts below regarding the responses on next year’s U.S. Senate race, the 2016 presidential election, and marriage equality in Iowa.

State Senator Joni Ernst made her U.S Senate campaign official last week by bringing her Joni for Iowa website live and posting several slogans on a campaign Facebook page. She plans several public events around Iowa later this week, beginning at the Montgomery County courthouse in Red Oak.

Ernst is the fifth candidate in the Republican field, after Matt Whitaker, David Young, Sam Clovis, and Paul Lunde–or the sixth if you count Mark Jacobs, who has formed an exploratory committee but not announced his candidacy. Lots of links and early thoughts about her campaign are after the jump.

JULY 17 UPDATE: Adding news from Ernst’s campaign kickoff events below.

Public Policy Polling has a new poll out on the Iowa governor and U.S. Senate races. Click here for Tom Jensen’s summary and here (pdf) for full results with questionnaire and cross-tabs. PPP surveyed 668 registered Iowa voters between July 5 and 7, producing a statistical margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percent.

Highlights: both President Barack Obama (46/50) and Governor Terry Branstad (45/46) are slightly underwater on approval ratings. However, Branstad has double-digit leads over Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, State Senator Jack Hatch, and State Representative Tyler Olson. Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds is much less known than Branstad and is tied with or barely ahead of the Democratic candidates in hypothetical gubernatorial match-ups.

In the Senate race, Democratic Representative Bruce Braley has higher name recognition than any of the Republicans and is more liked than disliked by Iowans who have an opinion about him (34 favorable/24 unfavorable). In head to head match-ups, he leads Matt Whitaker by 9 points, Sam Clovis, Joni Ernst and Mark Jacobs by 12 points, and David Young by 13 points.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I wouldn’t read too much into horse race polling 16 months before the election, especially since none of the Senate candidates are particularly well-known, nor are the Democrats running for governor. Braley polls about the same against any of the Republicans now, but as the campaign progresses I believe it will become apparent that certain GOP candidates have more upside than Clovis, for example.  

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. The ruling means that legally married gay and lesbian couples in Iowa and elsewhere will be entitled to equal treatment under federal law. More than 200 Congressional Democrats, including Senator Tom Harkin and Representatives Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack, signed an amicus curiae brief urging justices to strike down the key provision of the DOMA, adopted in 1996 with overwhelming bipartisan support.  

In a separate case, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that backers of California’s Proposition 8 did not have standing to appeal a lower-court ruling striking down that ballot initiative. The decision means that LGBT couples will be allowed to marry in California. It does not affect other states’ statutory or constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. Braley and Loebsack were among scores of Congressional Democrats who recently posed for the “NoH8” campaign supporting marriage equality and opposing Prop 8.

Excerpts from the DOMA decision and Iowa reaction to today’s rulings are after the jump. I will update this post as needed. At this writing, most of the Congressional delegation has not publicly commented on the Supreme Court decisions.

I also enclose below Democratic State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad’s reaction to yesterday’s disgraceful 5-4 Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is sticking to his promise not to play favorites in the GOP primary for the open U.S. Senate seat. Last week news emerged that Grassley will be a “special guest” at fundraisers for his former chief of staff, David Young. This week both Matt Whitaker and Sam Clovis revealed that Iowa’s senior senator has offered to be a guest at fundraisers for their own Senate campaigns. Whitaker said in a statement that he looks forward to Grassley’s “help and his counsel”. Clovis told the Des Moines Register,

“He wanted to commend me for being in the race,” said Clovis, a Sioux City conservative radio personality and college economics professor. “He said he had to remain neutral in this primary … and he wanted to make sure everything was being played even.” […]

Clovis said he and the senator have “a great relationship” after years of animated discussions on the radio.

Grassley has repeatedly expressed concern that Representative Bruce Braley, who is unchallenged in the Democratic primary for Senate, will go into the general election with a financial advantage.

Speaking to Cameron Joseph of The Hill, The Iowa Republican blogger Craig Robinson sounded a more skeptical note: “Yes, Grassley says he’s neutral, but nearly everyone connected to him is supporting Young. Appearance and perception are two different things. The whole Grassley operation is helping Young.”

It’s time for a new discussion thread on the campaign for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat. I’ve pulled together lots of news on the declared and potential Republican candidates after the jump.

Some candidates who have expressed interest may back off before the filing deadline next March, but if most of them follow through, it’s plausible that no Republican will receive 35 percent of the vote in the June 2014 primary. That would allow statewide GOP convention delegates to select a nominee to face Democrat Bruce Braley in the general election.

Sam Clovis announced yesterday that he will seek the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Clovis is ending his conservative talk radio program and has a sabbatical for the coming academic year from Morningside College in Sioux City. After the jump I’ve posted more background on Clovis, including the statement of purpose he posted on his campaign website, as well as highlights from his news conference yesterday. You can watch clips from his speech here, and he is on Twitter here. Many Iowa conservatives will buy what Clovis is selling, but can he raise the money to run a strong statewide campaign?

Meanwhile, Alexander Burns reported at Politico yesterday that State Senator Joni Ernst is consulting with GOP strategist David Polyansky as she lays the groundwork for a Senate campaign.

“She’s making all the steps necessary to advance towards a campaign,” said one Republican close to Ernst. “I think she has the core nucleus [of a campaign] in place so that, should she decide to pull the trigger, she’d be able to do so fairly soon.”

The Sunday Des Moines Register featured a guest editorial by Mark Jacobs, a former energy company executive who is also considering the Senate race. After the jump I’ve posted some bullet points from that editorial, which focused on next steps for Iowa in education reform.

If no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the vote in the June 2014 primary, a statewide convention will determine the GOP nominee for Senate.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that Polyansky previously worked for the presidential campaigns of Mike Huckabee and Michele Bachmann, although he bailed on Bachmann a few months before the Iowa caucuses.

SECOND UPDATE: I keep forgetting Paul Lunde, who is also seeking the GOP nomination for Senate. James Lynch reports that if elected, Lunde “plans to introduce what he calls the ‘second Bill of Rights’ – 12 constitutional amendments that include making Social Security and Medicare permanent, changing the Electoral College, instituting a limited national sales tax and setting term limits for members of Congress.”

Conservative talk radio host and Morningside College professor Sam Clovis plans a press conference on June 10, Bret Hayworth reported for the Sioux City Journal yesterday. Clovis has previously said he may run for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat. He declined to specify whether he will announce a Senate campaign on Monday, but said he will disclose news “that affects my future” and “is a commitment for something down the road.” These comments seem to indicate that Clovis is leaning toward running:

“I’m a very principled man, a man of great integrity, so that is a skill set that I think is very much there,” he said.

“I’ve been a natural leader my whole life and I think those are, again, skills that are very lacking in Washington. Because we don’t have people who are willing to stand up and tell people the truth and then stick to their principles to make sure that happens. Everything seems to be about self-interest, nothing seems to be about the people of the country.”

Clovis added, “I’ve been an executive, I’ve been in business, non-profit, for-profit, education, military service second to none, a very distinguished career there. So I have all of the credentials that one would need to be a person that one would look to to lead and do the things that are necessary to lead this country, particularly if one pursued public office in the United States Senate.”

I have no idea whether Clovis can raise enough money to run a credible statewide campaign, but having hosted a radio show for the past two years, he probably has better communication skills than any other potential Republican candidate. As a self-described “red-meat conservative,” Clovis would compete aggressively in a primary. Both of the declared GOP Senate candidates have vulnerabilities: Matt Whitaker failed to stake out a clear position on “Obamacare,” and David Young (amazingly) was not familiar with the “fair tax” proposal.  

All of the candidates seeking to replace U.S. Senator Tom Harkin will need to work hard on raising their name ID in the coming year, judging from the new Quinnipiac University poll. Quinnipiac surveyed 1,411 registered Iowa voters between May 15 and 21, producing a margin of error of +/- 2.61 percentage points. Representative Bruce Braley, who is so far unchallenged in the Democratic primary, is the best known of the Senate contenders, but even so, 57 percent of respondents said they had not heard enough about him to form an opinion. Braley was in positive territory (27 percent favorable/14 percent unfavorable) among the respondents who expressed an opinion.

Quinnipiac asked Iowans about five potential Republican candidates for Senate. Although Secretary of State Matt Schultz holds a statewide office, 81 percent of respondents said they had not heard enough about him to form an opinion. About 11 percent had a favorable view of Schultz, 7 percent unfavorable.

The other possible GOP candidates were even less well known. Former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker’s numbers: 8 percent favorable, 4 percent unfavorable, 86 percent haven’t heard enough. State Senator Joni Ernst: 5 percent favorable, 3 percent unfavorable, 92 percent haven’t heard enough. Iowa GOP chair A.J. Spiker: 2 percent favorable, 6 percent unfavorable, 91 percent haven’t heard enough. Senator Chuck Grassley’s staffer David Young: 3 percent favorable, 2 percent unfavorable, 94 percent haven’t heard enough.

Several of those Republicans are much more widely known among GOP activists. Still, the Quinnipiac poll indicates that the eventual nominee will have plenty of work to do before the June 2014 primary. Then again, the competitive GOP race will generate a lot of media coverage next spring, while Braley could be fighting to keep his name in the news without a rival on the Democratic side.

Speaking of Republican competition, Sioux City-based college professor and talk radio host Sam Clovis may run for Senate. He told Bret Hayworth of the Sioux City Journal that he is “deeply steeped in the intellectual aspects of conservatism” and could appeal to the primary voters who are “ready for a red-meat conservative.” The Iowa Republican’s Craig Robinson reported that Young has resigned his position on Grassley’s staff, is buying a house in Dallas County, and has retained consultants and a pollster for a Senate race. Meanwhile, Whitaker is already moving to the right on “Obamacare.”