The Quad City Times is reporting that the Fair Share proposal for non-union employees to pay their fair share of the benefits they receive due to working in union shops might be dead for the legislative session. The Republican Party has been solid in their opposition to this measure. It’s part of their anti-labor and anti-working families agenda. One hopes that enough votes can be mustered up in the next few days to pass Fair Share and to help puncture the myth that weak labor unions are somehow correlated with a strong business environment. After all, aren’t “right to work” states like Mississippi and Wyoming centers of economic growth? If Iowa wants to attract new businesses, emulating Mississippi is not the wisest way to do so.
And frankly, the opposition to Fair Share has nothing to do with attracting businesses to the state. As a University of Iowa economist pointed out recently, “why would a unionized company care how many of its workers paid how much to the union?” The opposition to fair share isn’t about making sure that people can avoid paying for benefits they receive or about attracting business to Iowa, it’s about Republicans who want to hurt organized labor and working families in the state of Iowa. It’s a shame that even with a Democratic legislature, the Republicans may still be able to impede such an important piece of legislation.
The Hill is reporting that it seems quite likely that 20 states will hold a national primary on February 5. We’ve reported on the issues that this frontloading can cause before. There’s also a Bleeding Heartland post about possible alternatives to the entire primary system. With states all shifting their dates up, it will definitely make the caucuses more important. Unfortunately, it may also lead to the caucuses being held in 2007 too.
In this post on MyDD by DesMoinesDem that we mentioned before, the way that an Iowa Precinct Caucus works is explained. The post takes care to differentiate the type of party building activity is from a more traditional one-man-one-vote primary. Using data from the Des Moines Register, we did a breakdown of what counties benefited and what counties were hurt by the caucus system in 2004.
In 2004, 122,193 people attended the Democratic Precinct Caucuses to elect 3000 delegates to the State Convention. This averages out to just under 41 caucusgoers per delegate elected. However, this average wildly differed in every county. In Johnson County, home of the University of Iowa and the most Democratic county in the state, it took nearly 80 caucusgoers to elect one delegate. However, in tiny Fremont County located in the heart of Republican Western Iowa, it only took 22 caucusgoers. When one looks at the number of caucusgoers that it takes to elect a delegate in each county, there is a clear pattern. Caucusgoers in small, rural, Republican counties wield disproportionate power compared to those in more urban Democratic counties. In fact, the people who are most disadvantaged by this are students. Of the four counties where it required the most caucusgoers to elect a delegate, three of them had significant student populations: Johnson, Poweshiek and Story. It is a system that favors the old over the young, the rural over the urban, Western Iowa over Eastern Iowa. It is a method that of selecting a candidate that has a clear bias and to be successful, presidential candidates have to spend a disproportionate amount of energy on less populous rural areas. The full breakdown is below the fold:
1 JOHNSON 79.21276596
2 POWESHIEK 69.8
3 JEFFERSON 68.46153846
4 STORY 65.97674419
5 DECATUR 54.625
6 WARREN 52.19148936
7 POLK 50.74651163
8 WINNESHIEK 49.6
9 DALLAS 49.09302326
10 MADISON 45.4
11 CEDAR 42.55555556
12 JASPER 42.45454545
13 MARSHALL 42.4
14 DAVIS 41.25
15 MAHASKA 40.5
16 WOODBURY 40.18518519
17 MUSCATINE 40.11428571
18 BOONE 40
19 MARION 40
20 BUCHANAN 39.47826087
21 IOWA 39.46666667
22 GREENE 39.41666667
23 WAPELLO 39.3902439
24 CLAY 39.33333333
25 ADAIR 39
26 BREMER 38.65217391
27 PALO ALTO 38.54545455
28 LINN 38.22807018
29 WAYNE 38
30 MONROE 37.875
31 HARDIN 37.63157895
32 WEBSTER 37.34146341
33 HAMILTON 37.29411765
34 LOUISA 37.1
35 WASHINGTON 36.89473684
36 DES MOINES 36.84313725
37 BUENA VISTA 36.8125
38 APPANOOSE 36.76923077
39 SIOUX 36.18181818
40 UNION 35.69230769
41 DUBUQUE 35.60952381
42 ADAMS 35.4
43 KOSSUTH 34.9
44 SCOTT 34.57142857
45 HARRISON 34.5
46 MONONA 34.5
47 KEOKUK 34.4
48 POTTAWATTAMIE 34.27941176
49 JACKSON 34.19047619
50 MILLS 33.3
51 TAMA 33.26315789
52 CLAYTON 33.15
53 RINGGOLD 32.83333333
54 BLACK HAWK 32.72058824
55 GUTHRIE 32.66666667
56 PLYMOUTH 32.47058824
57 VAN BUREN 32.33333333
58 FAYETTE 32.18181818
59 SHELBY 32.11111111
60 IDA 32
61 HENRY 31.84210526
62 CASS 31.75
63 BENTON 31.74074074
64 CHICKASAW 31.5
65 PAGE 30.6
66 CARROLL 30.23809524
67 AUDUBON 30.125
68 HOWARD 30
69 FRANKLIN 29.81818182
70 GRUNDY 29.8
71 WRIGHT 29.69230769
72 CRAWFORD 29.58333333
73 FLOYD 29.16666667
74 CERRO GORDO 28.83636364
75 LUCAS 28.44444444
76 O’BRIEN 28.1
77 JONES 28.04545455
78 CLARKE 28
79 ALLAMAKEE 27.69230769
80 BUTLER 27.23076923
81 DELAWARE 27.16666667
82 WINNEBAGO 26.91666667
83 SAC 26.8
84 LEE 26.51111111
85 DICKINSON 26.5
86 HUMBOLDT 26.5
87 POCAHONTAS 26.5
88 LYON 26.33333333
89 CALHOUN 26.09090909
90 OSCEOLA 25.75
91 MONTGOMERY 25.375
92 TAYLOR 24.83333333
93 WORTH 24.8
94 MITCHELL 23.16666667
95 HANCOCK 23.09090909
96 EMMET 23
97 CHEROKEE 22.69230769
98 CLINTON 22.47457627
99 FREMONT 22.28571429
There are are two really good posts on other blogs this afternoon that are worth mentioning. First is desmoinesdem’s explanation of the Iowa Caucuses on MyDD. It does a great job of giving people who have never been to or experienced an Iowa Caucus a sense of how an actual precinct caucus works. The second is an interview with Chris Dodd that’s also on MyDD. It is the second in MyDD’s series of interviews with Presidential candidates. Both are interesting posts and are well worth a read.
In his column in today’s Register, David Yepsen sees Tom Vilsack’s departure as a bad sign for the caucuses. Now the first primary is not Iowa but the invisible primary of fundraising. Now a candidate needs to raise a lot of money to compete and if they can’t, they will be forced to drop out. Yepsen sees a scenario where “by Labor Day, there may be only three or four viable candidates in each party.” This is all baseless fearmongering.
First, there’s a long precedent of candidates dropping out early because they can’t raise money. If David Yepsen wants some examples, from 2000 alone, I’m sure that Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole could have told Yepsen that, if not a couple of others. But Vilsack’s the only candidate, at least on the Democratic side who won’t be able to raise money. Of the three second tier candidates remaining, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson all will have ample financial resources. Both Biden and Dodd are Senate Committee Chairs and Richardson is the former Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. All three are national political figures to a much greater extent than Tom Vilsack and should be able to raise considerable amounts of money. They all should have more than enough money in the bank to be competitive into 2008. (Provided, of course, that they do a better job budgeting than Vilsack did.) Yepsen is falling into the common tendency among columnists to draw as grand conclusions as possible from events. Vilsack’s dropping out is not indictative in and of itself of some major new trend. He just couldn’t cover his payroll, and one should be careful drawing larger conclusions than that.
Now that we’ve done overviews of the most vulnerable Democratic seats in the State Senate and our best pickup opportunities in 2008, it’s time to move on to the State House. Democrats picked up five seats in the Iowa House in 2007 to gain a 54-46 majority. The Republicans will be gearing up for 2008 determined to take back the majority under their leader, Chris Rants. But the Democrats have quite a few opportunities to pick up seats too. Here are our five best chances to gain seats:
1. Tami Wiencek (Waterloo) This is the only seat the Republicans picked up in 2006 and one they never should have picked up in the first place. 2006 was a Democratic year and Black Hawk County was no exception: Chet Culver won there with 58% of the vote, which was 3 points better than John Kerry in 2004 and 4 points better than Tom Vilsack in 2002. However, the Republicans managed to pick up a Democratic seat in Waterloo that a Democratic incumbent had won comfortably with over 60% of the vote in 2002 and 2004. What happened? The Democratic incumbent, Don Shoultz, got complacent and Wiencek ran a strong campaign and beat him by 300 votes. Wiencek benefited from being a well-liked local television anchor whereas Shoultz, a 24-year incumbent, was not exactly Waterloo’s most beloved citizen. This is a seat in a strongly Democratic area with a big Democratic registration advantage. It should be a Democratic seat. As a result, Wiencek is very vulnerable in 2008 and will have a tough time holding on to all the crossover voters who elected her in in 2006 with Shoultz off the ballot and with the Presidency up for grabs. Although she’s presenting herself as a moderate, it’s tough to imagine Bill Dotzler being represented by a Republican State Representative at all, let alone for more than one term.
2. Chuck Gipp (Allamakee and part of Winneshiek County) Over half the registered voters in Oklahoma are Democrats, however the state hasn’t voted for a Democratic candidate for President since 1964. Gipp’s district in the northeast corner of the state is Iowa’s version of Oklahoma. Although its voters may disproprtionately registered Republicans, many of them have been reliably voting Democrat for years. The district is heavily Republican in party registration (3,000 more Republicans than Democrats) and Gipp won with 59% of the vote in 2006. However, those party registration numbers hide that his district is actually much more Democratic than it looks. John Kerry actually won the district by a handful of votes in 2004. Winneshiek County was one of three counties in the state (along with Jasper and Poweshiek) that Gore lost and Kerry won, and Kerry improved on Al Gore’s performance in Allamakee County by nearly 5 percentage points. Gipp is retiring at the end of this term. Although he was able to maintain a strong hold on the seat as a popular incumbent, any Republican candidate in 2008 will have a much more difficult time. Allamakee County, which makes up half the district, was once reliably Republican. Bill Clinton barely won it in 1996, Chet Culver won it by 10 points in 2006. This changing political trends will make it a tough seat for the Republicans to hold on to without an incumbent running.
3. Dan Rasmussen (Buchanan and parts of Black Hawk and Fayette) Rasmussen is a three term incumbent from a strongly Democratic district. Despite receiving only 30% of the vote when he first ran for the State House as a sacrificial lamb, Rasmussen has quickly entrenched himself as a popular incumbent in Buchanan County. While Chet Culver romped home in the district, winning Buchanan County with 58% of the vote, Rasmussen managed to pull out a lead of 800 votes in the county over his Democratic opponent, Pete McRoberts. The district has a strong Democratic registration advantage and is the most Democratic state house district in the state with a Republican incumbent. John Kerry won the district with 54% of the vote in 2004. Rasmussen’s popularity spooked the Iowa Democratic Party in 2006 and support was pulled away from Pete McRoberts to other candidates who they saw as more promising. However, despite that, McRoberts still received 48% of the vote. Despite Rasmussen having the advantage of incumbency, this is a seat where the demographics just aren’t in his favor. If a Democratic candidate receives the necessary support in even a neutral year, this seat should be a Democratic pickup.
4. David Deyoe (Story County outside of Ames and part of Hamilton County) Deyoe’s district experienced two of the most competitive state legislative races in the state in 2006, both Deyoe’s 800 vote victory over Susan Radke and the hardfought slugfest between Democrat Rich Olive and Republican Jim Kurtenbach for State Senate that Olive won by 62 votes. However, while Radke lost, Chet Culver pulled out a narrow victory in the district. The big difference between Radke and Culver was their relative performance in the Democratic town of Nevada. Although both Deyoe and Radke were from Nevada, Deyoe was much more well liked. As a result, Deyoe received 55% in Nevada, almost the same percentage that Culver received. The district does have a strong Republican edge in voter registration but that’s connected with the traditional Republicanism of Story County. The district is definitely a swing district. If the Democrats field a strong candidate who could run with the rest of the ticket in Nevada, this is definitely a winnable district in 2008.
5. Doug Struyk (Council Bluffs) Struyk’s seat was won by a Democrat in 2002. Unfortunately, that Democrat was named Doug Struyk. Struyk defected in 2004 right at the filing deadline. The seat has always been relatively close and in 2006, Struyk won with only 53% against a nontargeted candidate who raised a mere $1400 in a nearly four month period leading up to the election. It’s a district that will be getting a lot more attention in 2008 as its State Senator is Mike Gronstal, who is arguably the most powerful man in the state right now. Gronstal will devote as many resources as possible to turning out a lot of Democratic voters in his district and that will help any candidate running against Struyk. Struyk himself is evidence that the district can elect Democrats and when someone endorsed John Kerry in 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2008, it’s fair to say that Struyk, like the candidates he supports, can be attacked as a flip flopper too. This will be an uphill race, but if enough resources are devoted to the seat, Struyk can and should be beat. The Democratic Party should have a zero tolerance policy for Benedict Arnolds and there’s no better place in Iowa to implement this policy than by beating Doug Struyk.
Other vulnerable seats held by Iowa House Republicans include (in alphabetical order): Betty DeBoef (Keokuk County, most of Iowa County and parts of Poweshiek and Tama), Polly Granzow (Hardin County and part of Marshall) Sandy Greiner (Washington County and parts of Jefferson and Johnson), Kraig Paulsen (Cedar Rapids), Thomas Sands (Louisa County and parts of Des Moines and Muscatine) and Bill Schickel (Mason City).
Bill Richardson is coming to Iowa in early March and one of the events on his schedule is a house party at the Indianola residence of State Representative Mark Davitt. Needless to say, when a state legislator has a house party for a Presidential candidate, it seems quite likely that the state legislator is supporting that candidate. And if Davitt is endorsing Richardson, it offers Richardson a major boost in Warren County.
Davitt is a well-liked State Representative who defeated another popular incumbent, former State Senator Doug Shull, to win re-election to his third term in 2006. Davitt’s family also has strong local roots. His father also served as a State Representative from Warren County and his wife is the publisher of the local paper. Davitt is the leading Democrat in the 14th most important county in the state in the Iowa Caucuses.
Mark Davitt is comparatively unknown next to another politician who endorsed a candidate in the caucuses this week, Tom Daschle, who endorsed Barack Obama. But it’s doubtful whether the mind of any caucusgoer will be swayed by Tom Daschle’s endorsement. However, while Mark Davitt is nowhere near as well known nationally or even statewide as Daschle, his opinion is a lot more likely to sway caucus goers, particularly those in Warren County. Iowa Caucuses are not won by the endorsements of major national politicians, they are won by the support of well-respected community leaders like Mark Davitt. If Davitt is backing Richardson, his endorsement is worth more than that of 10 Tom Daschles.
Last month, Hillary Clinton made a widely publicized visit to Iowa to kick off her Presidential campaign. However, since then, she has not been in Iowa at all and has no announced plans to visit again anytime in the future. She still has only assembled a barebones Iowa staff (though there is speculation she will inherit former Vilsack staffers). It seems very peculiar for such a major candidate to have such a minimal presence in Iowa compared to her competitors. Although the Clinton campaign is clearly focused on fundraising right now, it still seems to unwise to lay low in Iowa when John Edwards and Barack Obama have been visiting the state weekly.
In today’s Des Moines Register, Tom Beaumont officially bestows the mantle of frontrunner in the caucuses on John Edwards. Now that Tom Vilsack has dropped out, there is no native son running and everyone can comfortably call Edwards the frontrunner. Beaumont notes that being the frontrunner gives Edwards’ certain advantages but it also means that he now has even more riding on the caucuses.
However, there are rumors in Des Moines that Edwards may have an ace up his sleeve. There has always been a close relationship between Edwards and Chet Culver. Their staffers are to some extent, interchangeable. Key Culver staffers like Patrick Dillon and Brad Anderson worked for Edwards in 2004 (and in Anderson’s case, on his 1998 Senate race.) In fact, Edwards’ state director, Jennifer O’Malley, is engaged to Culver’s Chief of Staff, Patrick Dillon. These ties are the tip of the iceberg. The Culver and Edwards people are heavily intertwined, and the list of connections goes far deeper. The current rumor is that while Chet Culver will not endorse any candidate (since he has to preserve Iowa’s first in the nation status), Mari Culver will endorse John Edwards at some point. This would follow the precedent set in 2004, where Christie Vilsack served as a surrogate for her husband in endorsing John Kerry.
Mari Culver’s commercial during the campaign where she called her husband “a big lug” was considered a turning point in the campaign. It’s unclear exactly how important an endorsement from Mari Culver would be for the Edwards campaign. But it would definitely help Edwards’ standing as the “frontrunner” and add momentum whenever he decides to make Mari Culver’s endorsement public. ( This is assuming, of course, that this speculation is correct)
While we’re speculating on endorsements, it’s worth noting that Mike Gronstal and Tom Courtney appeared at a Chris Dodd event in Des Moines last week. It’s the first reported public appearance at a Presidential candidate’s event by either man. With Vilsack out of the race, state legislators will have a lot more freedom to endorse and it will be interesting to see if either Gronstal or Courtney take advantage of that freedom. An endorsement by either man would give Dodd a lot more credibility in Iowa.
While most people think that the Iowa Legislature’s passage of a bill to authorize stem cell research was an important step that offers hope to tens of millions of Americans suffering a wide range of horrible diseases and ailments, there are some dissenting voices. A far-right wing Catholic organization called Fidelis denounced the passage of the bill as “a shameful and cowardly flip flop.” Fidelis also pointed out who the real villain was behind the bill. It wasn’t Chet Culver, Mike Gronstal or Pat Murphy. It was “California rock star” Sheryl Crow. Apparently Crow called a wavering Democratic state legislator and encouraged him to vote for the bill, although the legislator, Brian Quirk of New Hampton, said that he was swayed not by Crow, but by the more mundane concept of giving sick people hope. Despite that, Fidelis still attacked Sheryl Crow for her role in corrupting the state of Iowa. The attacks may not be true but all Fidelis really wants to do is have some fun.
On a side note, fierce stem cell opponent Betty DeBoef, voted for the bill. Why? Apparently, she pressed the wrong button on the voting machine. When you can’t operate a two button machine on one of the most important bills of the year, something’s really wrong. There have been rumors that DeBoef might retire for sometime. A mishap like this can only make it more likely that DeBoef will follow Iowa’s ban on stem cell research off into the sunset.
