The state of Iowa cannot enforce the latest attempt to discourage and criminalize undercover reporting at livestock facilities. U.S. District Court Senior Judge James Gritzner on December 2 granted a request for a preliminary injunction against a law enacted in March, which prohibits “agricultural production facility trespass.”
Shoppers in the U.S. spent an estimated $160 billion on gift cards in 2018, up from around $90 billion a decade earlier. The holiday season is the peak time for those purchases.
State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald has warned that much of the value will go to waste. Years ago, his office had a tool to help Iowans recoup the cost of unused gift cards. But state legislators had a different idea.
An under-reported Iowa politics story this year has been strong Democratic recruiting for the 2020 state Senate races. Even though recapturing the Iowa Senate is likely to take at least two election cycles, given the current 32-18 Republican majority, Democrats have declared candidates in five out of six Senate seats the party lost in 2016.*
Other Democrats are actively campaigning in three Senate districts that were only nominally contested in 2016.**
As of this week, Democrats also have a challenger in an Iowa Senate district that is so heavily Republican the party did not field a candidate for the last election.
State Representative Mary Gaskill will seek a tenth term in 2020, House Democrats announced on November 7.
That’s good news for Democrats, who might have had a difficult seat to defend if Gaskill had chosen to retire.
Imagine you’re a newly-elected legislator. Your party leaders think highly enough of you to make you a committee chair right away. It’s a good committee, handling important bills on subjects you care about.
Would you walk away from that post, less than a year into a four-year term, to spend more time running for another office? State Senator Mariannette Miller-Meeks just did.
Former Polk County auditor and Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro remembers his longtime friend, former State Senator Dick Dearden. -promoted by Laura Belin
What a difference a year makes. In the course of a little under one year, two rock solid Democrats have left us.
A competitive primary is shaping up in the safest Iowa House seat for Democrats. Last week University of Iowa law professor Christina Bohannan announced she will run for House district 85, setting up a race against ten-term State Representative Vicki Lensing.
Republicans won six Democratic-held Iowa Senate districts in 2016. All of them were among the eighteen Iowa Senate districts where voters had favored President Barack Obama in 2012 but Donald Trump four years later.*
Some of the largest swings toward Trump occurred in northeast Iowa. Parts of four counties make up Senate district 32, where Democrat Pam Egli recently announced that she will challenge first term State Senator Craig Johnson.
While this race does not currently appear to be among the best 2020 pickup opportunities for Democrats in the upper chamber, it could become competitive. Either way, state legislative elections in this part of Iowa will be important to watch for signs of whether Republicans are able consolidate their 2016 gains.
State Representative Pat Grassley, who will become Iowa House speaker when the legislature reconvenes in January, is the latest high-ranking Iowa Republican to promise not to change our state’s redistricting process. That’s good.
Unfortunately, GOP legislative leaders and Governor Kim Reynolds have not yet answered an essential follow-up question.
Two Democrats are now running in Iowa Senate district 20, likely to be one of next year’s most competitive state Senate races.
Information technology professional Charlie Hodges of Urbandale will seek the Democratic nomination in a district covering the northwest suburbs of Des Moines (see map below). Johnston City Council member Rhonda Martin has been campaigning here since May. The winner of the June 2020 primary will face four-term Republican State Senator Brad Zaun.
UPDATE: Breitbach announced on February 10, 2020 that he will retire. State Representative Michael Bergan is expected to run in Senate district 28 rather than for re-election in House district 55, but he has not clarified his plans. LATER UPDATE: Bergan will run for the House again. Spillville Mayor Mike Klimesh will seek the GOP nomination in the Senate race. I’ve added background on him below.
A few words about the title: Republican State Senator Michael Breitbach has told some constituents and people connected to the legislature he does not plan to seek a third term in 2020. So Matt Tapscott may end up running for an open Iowa Senate seat.
In response to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiry, Breitbach commented via e-mail on October 14, “There is plenty of time for me to make my decision whether to run again in 2020. I was very happy with the support I received in my last election and I feel I have been successful during my time in the Senate.”
Having covered the Iowa legislature for more than a decade, I’ve learned to be skeptical about retirement rumors. Party leaders have a way of talking reluctant incumbents into seeking re-election. Breitbach has good committee assignments; not only does he chair the Senate Appropriations Committee, he also serves on the Commerce and Transportation panels.
So until Breitbach publicly announces he’s done, I assume he will be on the ballot next November in one of eighteen Iowa Senate districts where voters favored President Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016.*
Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer raised more than $1.5 million during the 2018 election cycle and donated most of the money to the Republican Party of Iowa, for use in competitive state legislative races. Upmeyer surely raised significant funds during the first nine months of this year, before she confirmed plans to step down as speaker. (We won’t know how much until Iowa lawmakers file their next campaign finance disclosures in January.)
What’s going to happen to the money in Upmeyer’s campaign account, given that the soon-to-be-former caucus leader won’t run for re-election in 2020?
You can follow Andrea Phillips through her campaign website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. She stepped down as the Iowa Democratic Party’s first vice chair before launching this campaign. -promoted by Laura Belin
My mother worked her way up from bank teller to bank manager while my Dad worked as a blueprint repair man, instilling in me there is no substitute for hard work. Growing up with these influences I worked my way through college, with the help of Pell Grants and student loans, graduating with a degree in economics.
Iowa House Republicans meet in Des Moines this morning to elect new leaders for the 2020 legislative session. Linda Upmeyer announced on September 30 that she will step down as House speaker when the legislature reconvenes in January and will not seek re-election next November. She said in a written statement that she wants to spend more time with her husband, children, and grandchildren.
Speaking to WHO Radio’s Jeff Angelo on October 1, Upmeyer said she was also influenced by her predecessor Kraig Paulsen’s decision to leave the post long before an election. A new speaker is “well-served” by having a session under their belt, which helps them with fundraising and recruiting candidates, she explained. “I wanted to make sure that whoever was going to be leading the caucus in the future had those tools at their disposal going into this next election.”
Sources close to the legislature indicate that current House Appropriations Committee chair Pat Grassley is likely to become the next speaker, with Matt Windschitl moving up from House speaker pro-tem to majority leader. Current Majority Leader Chris Hagenow may not be part of the new leadership team, for reasons that remain unclear. UPDATE: The caucus selected Grassley as speaker, Windschitl as majority leader, and State Representative John Wills as speaker pro tem.
I’ve been thinking about Upmeyer’s legacy and how she influenced the chamber.
UPDATE: Hanusa announced in March 2020 that she will not seek re-election. Original post follows.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control of the Iowa House after the 2020 elections. One seat that wasn’t on the party’s 2018 target list (but should have been) was House district 16, covering part of Council Bluffs. State Representative Mary Ann Hanusa had a close shave there, defeating Democrat Steve Gorman by only 114 votes, a roughly 1 percent margin.
Gorman is running for the Iowa Senate this cycle, but as of October 1, Democrats have a strong challenger for the House seat: Jen Pellant.
Democratic State Representative Mark Smith will not seek re-election in 2020, Lana Bradstream was first to report for the Marshalltown Times-Republican on September 22. Smith broke the news the previous day during an event featuring presidential candidate Cory Booker in Marshalltown. He elaborated on his reasoning in a column for the Times-Republican.
North Carolina Republican lawmakers have a history of behaving like “banana republic” autocrats, canceling primary elections they couldn’t rig and attempting to limit the authority of the governor and Supreme Court after GOP candidates lost last year’s elections for those offices.
Today Republican leaders of the North Carolina House pulled something new out of their bag of reprehensible tricks. They called a surprise vote to override Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of the state budget while many Democratic colleagues were absent from the chamber for a 9/11 remembrance event or committee hearings.
I doubt Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer would stoop so low. But even if she wanted to, she could not attempt this gambit here.
Art Small is an economist and data scientist who grew up in Iowa and is currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is volunteering through Tech for Campaigns on a state legislative race in Virginia. -promoted by Laura Belin
Knowledgeable observers increasingly see the Iowa House as a likely battleground in the 2020 election cycle. In yet another sign that control of the chamber will be in play next year, Tech for Campaigns, a national group that funnels volunteers with digital skills to support Democratic candidates, today announced that the effort to flip the Iowa House has made it on the group’s “priority list” for the 2020 election cycle.
Following gains last November and Andy McKean’s party switch in April, Democrats need a net pick-up of just four seats to flip the chamber blue.
Urbandale Mayor Bob Andeweg recently changed his party registration and will manage Democratic State Representative John Forbes’ 2020 campaign in Iowa House district 40.
Speaking at a fundraiser for Forbes in Lions Park on September 7, Andeweg said he’s “been a Republican my whole life.” Because he believes in nonpartisan local government, he has rarely spoken publicly about his party affiliation as mayor since 2005 or on the city council prior to that. Regarding his party switch, Andeweg said, “I truly believe this is where I need to be at this point in time.”
He and Forbes have been friendly since the early 1990s, and Forbes managed Andeweg’s first campaign for city council in 1999. He fell short in that effort but was later appointed to fill a vacancy, then won his next city council race and subsequently four terms as mayor. The two men “worked well together” when Forbes served on the city council, and Andeweg praised Forbes’ ability to get things done in a Republican-controlled chamber.
Every election cycle brings at least one or two huge upsets in an Iowa House or Senate race. The most shocking result from a 2016 Iowa legislative race was four-term incumbent State Senator Tom Courtney losing to Thomas Greene in Senate district 44. Like the five other Iowa Senate Democrats who lost their re-election bids that year, Courtney represented constituents who had favored President Barack Obama in 2012 but voted for Donald Trump four years later.
Courtney announced on August 30 that he will try to win his old job back in 2020. He’ll be heavily favored to win the Democratic nomination, but he’ll have at least one competitor in the primary: Rex Troute.
This commentary was a group effort by Upgrade Medicaid organizers Jenn Wolff, Shelley Jaspering, Kyle Spading, Elaine Gartelos, Tucker Cassidy, and Evan Schultz. -promoted by Laura Belin
Thousands of disabled Iowans rely on Long Term Support Services through Medicaid. Those services were designed to provide daily living assistance for individuals to maintain normal lives in their homes.
Because of Medicaid privatization, some individuals have been forced to consider nursing home placement, which is typically more expensive than community living.
Some sobering facts about the bloodbath that was the 2016 election in Iowa:
Donald Trump carried eighteen state Senate districts that had voted for President Barack Obama in 2012.*
Eleven of those eighteen were even-numbered districts, which are on the Iowa ballot in presidential election years.
The four Republicans who already represented Obama/Trump districts all easily won another term in the Iowa Senate.**
But six of the seven Democratic senators up for re-election in Obama/Trump districts lost: Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (Senate district 8), Mary Jo Wilhelm (Senate district 26), Brian Schoenjahn (Senate district 32), Steve Sodders (Senate district 36), Tom Courtney (Senate district 44), and Chris Brase (Senate district 46).
With Republicans now enjoying a 32-18 majority in the upper chamber, Democrats need to win back at least a few Obama/Trump seats next year to have a realistic chance of regaining Iowa Senate control after the next round of redistricting.
Democrats have been actively campaigning in Senate districts 8 and 44 for some time. Now GOP State Senator Jeff Edler has a strong challenger in Senate district 36.
Republicans have recruited a strong candidate for what should be one of the top-targeted Iowa House races in 2020.
Before State Representative Andy McKean switched parties in April, he had served in the Iowa legislature for 27 sessions as a Republican. Now House district 58 is the reddest Iowa House seat currently represented by a Democrat.
GOP officials hope Dr. Steve Bradley, a dentist in the area, will prevail among Iowans who heavily favored Donald Trump and Governor Kim Reynolds in the last two elections. Next year’s race in House district 58 will be a fascinating test of whether voters’ growing affinity to Republicans matters more than their longtime support for McKean.
The Libertarian Party of Iowa and its prospective candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020 have filed a federal lawsuit charging that a new law violates their “violates fundamental voting and associational rights,” as well as equal protection guarantees, by requiring candidates from minor political parties to file nominating papers in mid-March, when Democratic or Republican candidates could qualify for the general election ballot as late as August.
Previous court rulings indicate they have a strong case.
The Iowa Civil Rights Commission’s interim executive director stepped down last week, following an extended period of uncertainty for the agency charged with enforcing the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
Linda Grathwohl did not explain her decision in the letter she delivered to Governor Kim Reynolds on July 11. In an e-mail to the commission’s staff the same day, Grathwohl didn’t specify any reason for leaving, saying she planned to return to Iowa Legal Aid once her resignation was effective on July 25. Attempts to reach Grathwohl for further comment by phone, e-mail, and Facebook message were unsuccessful.
Nearly seven months have passed since Grathwohl’s predecessor, Kristin Johnson, left at the end of her term. Reynolds has not appointed a permanent executive director, and correspondence obtained by Bleeding Heartland through a public records request shows little sign the governor or her staff are interested in the agency’s work.
A Polk County District Court has ruled that transgender Iowans must exhaust all administrative remedies before challenging in court a new state law designed to prevent Medicaid from covering gender-affirming surgery.
In a July 18 order dismissing the ACLU of Iowa’s lawsuit on behalf of Mika Covington, Aiden Vasquez, and the LGBTQ advocacy group One Iowa, Judge David Porter wrote that the plaintiffs seeking surgery “have an adequate remedy at law” and that their case “is not ripe for judicial consideration.”
In other words, Covington and Vasquez must jump through hoops that will take many months, possibly years, before any court can consider their claim that denying Medicaid coverage for medically necessary procedures violates their constitutional rights.
Porter’s decision ignored evidence pointing to the law’s discriminatory intent as well as its impact on the plaintiffs.
A third candidate is seeking the Democratic nomination in Senate district 22, which is likely to be among Iowa’s most competitive state legislative races in 2020.
Continuing Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of the Iowa legislature’s work during the 2019 session.
Iowa’s environmental community had something to celebrate when state lawmakers adjourned for the year without passing legislation that would crush small-scale solar development. An unusual coalition including solar installers, environmental groups, and livestock farmers helped keep the bill bottled up in the Iowa House despite intense lobbying by MidAmerican Energy and its allies, along with massive spending by undisclosed donors.
Unfortunately, lawmakers approved and Governor Kim Reynolds signed several other measures that will be detrimental for Iowa’s natural resources and take our state’s energy policy in the wrong direction. The new laws take effect today, as the 2020 fiscal year begins.
A second Democrat announced her candidacy this week in an Iowa Senate district that will be a top target next year.
Ross Wilburn will be the Democratic candidate in the August 6 election to represent Iowa House district 46. Delegates to a special nominating convention in Ames on June 29 chose Wilburn on the second ballot.
The former Iowa City mayor, who has worked for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach since 2014, recently told Bleeding Heartland that if elected to the state House, he wants to address problems with privatized Medicaid, climate change, and gun violence. Other priorities for Wilburn are strengthening public school districts, restoring collective bargaining rights for public workers, and making Iowa more welcoming and inclusive for marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ community, people of color, veterans, and people with disabilities.
For the second time this year, voters in a college town will elect a new Iowa lawmaker when most students are not on campus. Governor Kim Reynolds announced today that the special election in House district 46, covering part of Ames, will take place on Tuesday, August 6.
The College and Young Democrats of Iowa quickly denounced the decision: “Anyone else having some déjà vu with the timing of this special election? @KimReynoldsIA is once again denying students – many who will not be on campus until late Aug. – the chance to vote in the IA House district they heavily occupy.”
Whereas Reynolds clearly tried to suppress student and faculty voting by scheduling the Senate district 30 special election during the University of Northern Iowa’s spring break, the timing of the coming vote in Ames is arguably consistent with standard Iowa practice.
However, the governor could have and should have set the date a few weeks later, allowing greater participation by Iowa State University stakeholders.
Republican State Senator Charles Schneider coasted to re-election in 2016. He defeated his Senate district 22 challenger Andrew Barnes by more than 4,000 votes after spending only a token amount on the race. In fact, Schneider gave most of his own campaign funds ($133,000) to the Iowa GOP for use in more competitive state Senate districts.
Schneider drew his first declared challenger for this cycle on June 11, when Tricia Gavin announced her candidacy. At least one other Democrat is seriously considering this race, so Schneider’s general election opponent will not be known until after the June 2020 primary.
Given recent political trends in the western suburbs of Des Moines, it’s already obvious that Senate district 22 will be a top Democratic target next year.
State Representative Lisa Heddens will resign from the Iowa House in the middle of her ninth term after being appointed to the Story County Board of Supervisors on June 13. The Ames Democrat and ranking House member of the Health and Human Resources budget subcommittee was one of five people vying to replace Republican Rick Sanders. He stepped down last month to serve as president of Iowa State University’s Research Park.
Heddens’ appointment creates the first all=female board of supervisors in Iowa history. Her colleagues governing Story County will be fellow Democrats Lauris Olson and Linda Murken, who outpolled GOP incumbent Martin Chitty in November 2018.
Governor Kim Reynolds will soon set a special election for Iowa House district 46, covering part of Ames (see map at the top of this post).
Democratic State Senator Claire Celsi has extensive experience in the public relations field. -promoted by Laura Belin
As ranking member of the Iowa Senate’s Administration and Regulation Appropriations Subcommittee, I was supposed to be privy to budget requests from state agencies, including the governor’s office. Unfortunately, Governor Kim Reynolds refused our committee’s request to appear in person to explain why they were requesting a 10 percent increase in their budget while requesting a “status quo” budget from all other state departments.
Since our committee’s process was prematurely cut short by Committee Chair Representative John Landon, I attempted to go through staff back channels to find out what the $200,000 increase would be used for. I was told that Reynolds had requested the hiring of two analysts, one for tax policy and one for healthcare policy. I thought those were perfectly reasonable requests, since both areas have been so completely botched by Republicans in the past three years. But I still wondered why no one would come to our committee meeting to explain the request.
Now we have the answer. Turns out, the governor is planning to hire a “public relations manager.” I have some advice for the new staff member, based on my years of experience in public relations, brand management and communications. Some of my former clients were state agencies, so I know the demands they will be facing.
Governor Kim Reynolds asked for and received a nearly 10 percent budget increase for her office operations during the fiscal year beginning on July 1, with a view to hiring two additional full-time employees. Republican lawmakers told members of the Iowa House and Senate the extra funding was for analysts to focus on health policy and tax policy.
This week the governor’s office posted a new job listing on a state government website. Instead of seeking a health or tax policy analyst, the governor is hiring a full-time “public relations manager” to coordinate messaging about her initiatives.
Bruce Lear floats ideas on how to start repairing the damage from Iowa’s 2017 collective bargaining law, a “devastating step back in time” for public sector employees. -promoted by Laura Belin
It was a time of bell bottoms, shiny shirts, and men with shoulder-length hair. Disco was born, and Vietnam escalated. Nixon visited China; Americans loved the tv shows All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and Sanford and Son. It was America prior to 1974.
Governor Kim Reynolds made headlines last week with two vetoes: blocking language targeting the attorney general, and rejecting a medical cannabis bill that had strong bipartisan support in both chambers.
A provision she didn’t veto drew little attention. For the foreseeable future, it will prevent Iowa courts from using a tool designed to make the criminal justice system more fair to defendants of all races and income levels.
Reynolds should appreciate the value of the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), since she works closely with two former State Public Defenders: Lieutenant Governor Adam Gregg and the governor’s senior legal counsel Sam Langholz. But last year she ordered a premature end to a pilot program introducing the tool in four counties. The governor’s staff did not reply to repeated inquiries about the reasoning behind Reynolds’ stance on this policy.
Notably, the owner of Iowa’s largest bail bonding company substantially increased his giving to GOP candidates during the last election cycle, donating $10,100 to the governor’s campaign and $28,050 to Republicans serving in the state legislature.
A new state law denying sex education funding to Planned Parenthood will likely be found unconstitutional, a Polk County District Court has determined.
Judge Joseph Seidlin issued a temporary injunction to block new statutory restrictions on Planned Parenthood of the Heartland’s access to government sex education grants. His order, enclosed in full below, found Planned Parenthood would suffer “irreparable harm” if the law took effect. State agencies are due to announce fiscal year 2020 recipients for the Community Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention and Services Program (CAPP) and the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) on May 31.
In addition, the court’s order stated Planned Parenthood was “likely to succeed on the merits of its equal protection claim” under the Iowa Constitution, since the law contains an exemption for a “nonprofit health care delivery system” that provides abortions in some locations.
One Iowa Action: “We should not be encouraging half-measures and disparate treatment of our fellow Iowans.” -promoted by Laura Belin
Des Moines Register Opinion Editor Kathie Obradovich’s recent column sets out a laudable goal; protecting both religious liberty and the LGBTQ community (What if Iowa could protect both religious freedom and LGBTQ rights?).
Unfortunately, the substance of the piece misses the mark by pulling from erroneous source material that equates Utah and Iowa, two states with very different legal and political landscapes. In doing so Obradovich implies, perhaps unintentionally, that LGBTQ Iowans need to start from a place of compromise when their rights and freedoms are threatened.
Nick Miller announced his candidacy in Iowa House district 19 at a May 23 event in his home town of Polk City. The fifth-generation Iowan, who is also a small business owner and Drake University student, would face House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow in the general election if he becomes the Democratic nominee. Miller said his campaign will be grounded in the principles of “Investing, Educating, and Sustaining.”
I want to represent all working families and Iowans; I want to represent a new generation of Iowans; and, I want be a voice for the voiceless and will stand up and fight for what is right.
Although I didn’t include this district in my overview of potentially competitive state House races, I’ll be watching this campaign for a couple of reasons.
