Tom Beaumont wrote a piece in the Register yesterday probing some of the campaign irregularities that Chase Martyn uncovered last week. While both pieces reinforced the fact that something irregular was happening with Fallon’s group “I’m for Iowa.” Fallon answered questions about how much money he made from the group very differently in both articles. In the Iowa Independent piece, Fallon said “”I think both Lynn and I took a small draw on the business [I’m for Iowa], but again, it was just getting going”. However, Lynn Heuss, Fallon’s “partner” in I’M For Iowa said in the Des Moines Register article that “Fallon has drawn a salary of $3,000 per month from the organization this year.” This means either one of two things. The first is that Fallon lied when he said he only “took a small draw on the business.” The second is that Fallon considers $3000 a month to be “a small draw”, in which case one wonders if Ed Fallon learned accounting from Ramona Cunningham.
However, it’s much more likely that Fallon lied to Iowa Independent. In which case, one wonders why Fallon was lying. After all, if everything perfectly legal and ethical about I’M for Iowa, why would he lie about how much money’s he made from the group? Not to mention, if Ed Fallon is running a full-time campaign for Governor and I’M for Iowa can have no legal connection with his campaign, what is Fallon doing for I’M for Iowa that’s worth $3000 a month. Unfortunately, until Fallon makes public the list of I’M for Iowa’s donors as well as fully discloses all of the group’s activities we are only left to speculate.
March 30th, 2008
The Politico has this profile of the head of the far right Iowa Christian Alliance, Steve Scheffler. Scheffler has become a major player in Iowa Republican politics over the past six years as the far right has reasserted its dominance over the Republican Party of Iowa as Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, Iowa congressional delegation and our control of the Governorship attest to. Scheffler brags in the article that three quarters of the Republicans who show up to caucus “will be down the line on life, immigration, marriage and spending.” Aside from that fact that these aren’t all typical social conservative hot-button issues, it gets to the question of what the actual composition of the caucus crowd will be.
Every candidate tries to draw out special niches that they think that they will get a lot of support from. In 2004, as Roger Simon’s classic piece about the caucuses noted “Dick Gephardt targeted family farmers; Howard Dean went after the young and disenchanted; [John] Kerry pursued veterans.” With both parties holding highly competitive caucuses, there will be a lot of competition for both groups. It’s fair to say though that we can tell some of the core demographics that candidates will go after in 2008. McCain will go after veterans (and Giuliani may too), Romney will go after fellow Mormons (there aren’t a lot in Iowa but enough to make a difference), Huckabee and Brownback after fellow evangelicals (perhaps special denominational focuses after Protestants and Catholics respectively). All the candidates will go after people in all of these communities but there are some communities where they have a more significant appeal. So why does this matter? Because every person who goes to the Republican caucuses is someone who cannot go to the Democratic ones. In 2004, the fight for the Republican nomination was not competitive. This meant that only diehard Republicans attended the caucuses. In 2008, both parties will feature highly competitive primary battles. That means there will be big advantages for candidates whose niche voters are also their party’s base voters. Of all the candidates mentioned, this has big ramifications for John McCain, his special appeal is with veterans and he will probably try to emulate John Kerry’s strategy of wooing veterans in 2004. Kerry was able to attract quite a few veterans who were Independents and Republicans to come caucus for him in 2004. The problem for McCain is, many Democratic veterans will be participating in the Democratic caucuses. Another problem is that all the Republican veterans who showed up to support John Kerry will getting harassed by Democratic candidates as well, since they showed up to a previous Democratic caucus. This means that they’ll be getting a ton of phone calls from Democrats, which will drown out any attempt by McCain to reach out to them. This puts McCain at a disadvantage and it makes more likely that a right winger will triumph in Iowa on caucus night.
March 1st, 2007
We had a lot of bloggers at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner over the weekend, but because this week is an academic break for us, I’m not sure when we’ll post about that. I did think this was worth mentioning, though:
Yesterday, the Times ran a piece identifying what the GOP considers its best “pickup” opportunities — that is, seats held by Democrats that the Republicans could win. Because of the political climate, there are only three of them that they’re devoting resources to, and one of them is you-know-who:
For Republicans, the vast majority of that money has gone to protecting incumbents. The party is on the offensive in races for three seats: two held by Democrats, Representatives Leonard L. Boswell of Iowa and Jim Marshall of Georgia, and one being vacated by Representative Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont who typically voted with the Democrats.
Perhaps the other notable point made in the article is that the GOP has all but given up on Ohio. Those Grinnell students out there from Ohio (and there are a lot of you), keep this in mind: the Republicans have written off the DeWine campaign and the Blackwell campaign, and are pulling their resources from the state.
The decision about Mr. DeWine’s seat came after recent internal polls showed Mr. DeWine’s Democratic challenger, Representative Brown, jumping to a large lead. Mr. Brown’s surge came despite a barrage of Republican advertisements intended to portray him as weak on national security — the very line of attack that had given party officials confidence earlier this year that Mr. DeWine would be re-elected.
Normally, a party would be averse to scaling back its help for a senator in a state with as many as five competitive Congressional races also on the ballot. But in this case, Ohio Republicans said, Mr. DeWine and Republican Congressional candidates face the added problem of being dragged down this November by the party’s candidate for governor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who polls show is facing a double-digit loss to the Democrat, Representative Ted Strickland.
If you’re from Ohio but live in Grinnell and have been on the fence about whether to vote here or there, you know what to do.
October 16th, 2006
