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Ed Fallon made his primary challenge official against Leonard Boswell today. As part of our continuing analysis of the race, it’s worth previewing one of Fallon’s likely attacks against Boswell. Fallon is a campaign finance reform fanatic and Boswell has taken a lot of money from political action committees. In fact, in the first three quarters of 2007, Boswell has taken in $433,000 in contributions from PACs, making up 75% of total contributions recieved. Much of the money is the result of a simple matter of timing. Leonard Boswell is a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee and this was the year that the Farm Bill came up for a renewal.
But Boswell received significant contributions from organized labor and fellow Democrats in the House. Boswell received, by Iowa Progress’s count, contributions from 17 different labor unions along with the AFL-CIO totaling $85,000. Boswell’s contributors run the full gamut of the American Labor Movement. Boswell took in contributions from unions ranging from SEIU and UNITE HERE to the Ironworkers and the Machinists. Boswell’s congressional support is just as broad. Boswell received support from 17 of his Congressional colleagues, along with support from DCCC and $9000 in contributions from Barack Obama’s PAC, Hopefund. Boswell’s contributions include Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. And while it’s not surprising that Boswell took in contributions from fellow “Blue Dog” Democrats like Alan Boyd and Mike McIntyre, Boswell also received support from leading liberals like Barney Frank and Jan Schakowsky and from fellow Iowa Congressman, Bruce Braley.
In contrast to his contributions from PACs, Boswell’s individual contributors overwhelmingly came from Iowa and over 86% of his individual contributors were Iowans. But what’s most interesting is the contrasts within his contributions. Boswell took in money both from the National Pork Producers Council and from the League of Conservation Voters. Not only that, Boswell is perhaps the only Congressman who took in contributions from the NRA and the Human Rights Campaign.
Leonard Boswell has a broad range of contributors, this stems from the fact that he is a Democratic congressman in a swing district who has a lot of seniority on a major committee. But at the core, Boswell has clear support from fellow Democrats and from labor unions. Although, while Fallon may see the initial appeal of attacking Boswell on PAC contributions, it might not profit him. After all, it doesn’t suit his message to remind Democratic voters that in a Congressional District that George W. Bush won, it might be helpful in a general election to have a Democrat who can boast the support of both Nancy Pelosi and the NRA.
January 9th, 2008
Cross-posted at Iowa Independent
As the Iowa legislative session came to a close early Sunday, House Democrats marveled that they had passed all but one of the items on their legislative agenda. The next day, they learned that they were short one more thing: a caucus member. The two issues were not unrelated.
On Monday, Rep. Dawn Pettengill, a Democrat from Mount Auburn, announced that she was becoming a Republican. Over the session, Pettengill had become increasingly estranged from the Democratic Party. When Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Democrat from Des Moines learned of the news—after the press—he was “disappointed, not surprised,” he said in a phone interview yesterday. “It was more of a shift on paper. We tended not count on her to be a team player, even on procedural matters.” Pettengill did not return calls for comment.
While Pettengill clashed with her former party on a variety of issues, perhaps the most significant one was the proposed Fair Share bill, which would have allowed public employee unions to charge fees for services given to nonunion workers. “In the end, it was a pretty scaled down, reasonable proposal,” McCarthy said. It would ensure that workers “kick in their fair share of those services.”
Fair Share, despite being passed in the Iowa Senate, never came to a vote in the House because, McCarthy said, “We just didn’t have the votes to get it done.” McCarthy said that the proposal had the support of 50 Democrats in the caucus but lacked that crucial 51st. “We don’t have that large a majority.” One Democratic representative, Ray Zirkelbach of Monticello is currently serving in Iraq, and in addition to Pettengill, two other members of the Democratic caucus refused to support the bill. McCarthy declined to name those representatives.
McCarthy said that on the way to regaining the majority in the 2006 elections, some conservative Democrats ran, or were recruited, to defeat Republican incumbents. Keeping them on board for certain issues, he said was “challenging.” In the interview, McCarthy did not seem angry that the bill failed to pass; he simply stated matter-of-factly that “the answer is to continue to try to educate [reluctant members] and to pick up a few more seats” in order to make up for deserters.
According to the Des Moines Register, the Democratic leadership spent four hours trying to convince its caucus members to support the bill, and that Pettengill emerged with “tears on her face when she left the room where Democrats were meeting in private.”
McCarthy bristled at the suggestion that he had tried to strong-arm people for support. “I definitely didn’t,” he said. “We used tough arguments trying to convince people… We did that through civil and respectful conversation.” McCarthy said, “The argument that we were strong-arming people was coming from right wing Republican propaganda.” The charge, he said, was “a falsehood, a lie.”
In the end, McCarthy, said that he was not sure whether Pettengill’s defection could have been prevented. “She’s gone through a fairly significant emotional journey this session,” he said. “She was formerly a close person friend with me. That friendship had withered away, and she became more distant with members of her caucus.”
He also questioned the logic of Pettengill’s decision. Not only had she joined a party that, according to McCarthy, sent 27 negative mailings against her in the last election—“some of the most vicious, vile, mean spirited negative campaigning I’ve ever seen”—but that the party she joined was out of power. “We can’t find anybody within the last 30 years that leaves the majority party and the power to deliver to her constituents,” he said. “If I were a constituent, I would be shocked and outraged that she gave up the ability to deliver in exchange for feeling good.”
McCarthy agreed with the idea that Pettengill was reading her district wrong, that it is not as conservative as she believes. “I think,” he said with resignation, “she’s confused.”
May 3rd, 2007
Today was a big day in the Iowa House, where Representatives voted 59-37 to pass Senate File 427, which updates Iowa’s civil rights law to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (and perceived sexual orientation).
Until yesterday, few people expected the bill to make it to the floor of the House at all, even though it passed the Iowa Senate last month. Without a guarantee that the bill would pass (or even a guarantee that all of the Democrats would sign on), the leadership was reluctant to force its members to make a vote that could hurt them in their reelection campaigns. Ex-Speaker and current Minority Leader Chris Rants was doing everything he possibly could to prevent any Republican members from supporting the bill (even though some Republicans were definitely interested), and it looked like he might succeed in forcing a stalemate through the end of the legislative session.
In the end, though, the Democratic leadership put civil rights ahead of political concerns, and put the bill up to a vote. The result was a resounding victory. And, although Murphy and McCarthy have been getting a lot of grief about VOICE and a few other issues that have worked up our blogging community, this should earn them back some street cred.
More from Mark’s diary over at BleedingHeartland (partially cross-posted with permission):
Senate File 427 updates Iowa’s Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination in employment, public accommodation, housing, education, or credit practices based on age, race, creed, color, sex, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
The discussion on various blogs throughout the state over the past few months has focused on what the Iowa Legislature has FAILED to accomplish - rather than the victories. This bill is truly a victory for progressives and for everyone who would like to call Iowa home. Leadership in both chambers made this bill a priority throughout the session - and now we can separate ourselves from the 33 other states where it’s OK to dismiss employees because of their real or perceived sexual orientation.
In particular, it was leadership from Democrats in cooperation with Iowa businesses and civil rights leaders who pushed this bill through to final passage. Corporate America is rapidly realizing that creating a tolerant atmosphere for everyone to work is an important part of growing a business - and a state. According to an article in Fortune Magazine:
So it’s clear where big business is going. What’s interesting is to watch it pull the rest of the country along. It turns out that the most important factor shaping people’s feelings about gay issues is not their age or even their religion - although those do matter - but whether they have relatives, friends or co-workers who are gay.
“The more out and open people are, the more changed the straight people are all around them,” says Joe Solmonese, the Human Rights Campaign president. HRC began organizing workplaces to secure benefits for gay employees. This has inadvertently become a shrewd political strategy as well. “To move the mindset of the American people, we need to find the places where they congregate,” Solmonese says. “Priority one is corporate America.”
April 26th, 2007
I know, I live in Iowa, so a defense of the caucuses that comes from me is just going to seem like I’m greedy. I should say that before I moved to Iowa for college four years ago, I shared the opinion that the importance of the caucuses is unjustifiable, and that a national primary would be more democratic. Then I experienced the caucuses (in 2004), and I changed my mind.
Over on MyDD, desmoinesdem published the second part of her diary series, “How the Iowa caucuses work.” She echoes concerns that we brought up here about inequalities in the caucus system based on delegate assignment, demonstrating that it takes more caucus-goers to elect a delegate in precincts with higher concentrations of activist Democrats who have free evenings than in precincts with lower concentrations of said activists. (E.g., it took about 70 caucus-goers to elect one delegate in the Poweshiek County, where I caucused in 2004, while in less-Democratic and less-populous Fremont County, it only took 22 caucus-goers to elect one delegate.)
The conclusion of all of this? The caucus system (according to our own Geraldine) “favors the old over the young, the rural over the urban, Western Iowa over Eastern Iowa.”
Why is this wrong? Well, while the caucus system seems to create inequalities on the surface, it can compensate for deeper inequalities. Many have complained, here and elsewhere, that the Iowa Caucuses are unfair to families with young children, workers who have evening shifts, handicapped persons, and, generally, people with busy schedules, because it requires them to take several hours out of a weekday night to argue with their neighbors about politics. Not everyone can do that, and it’s understandable.
That is why precincts are assigned delegates before caucus night: if a disproportionate number of Democrats in X precinct have to work the night shift or have young children (or even if there’s a blizzard), the system currently in place ensures that their precinct will still be important. And precincts are the smallest geographic unit our election officials recognize for general elections, so it is assumed that others in your precinct likely represent similar interests to yours. Think of it as a much more geographically specific version of the electoral college. (Maybe you have your problems with that system, too, but at least this caucus math has a constitutional precedent.)
Aside from that, though, here’s a question nobody has asked: what is the harm in giving Iowa’s downtrodden rural hamlets and agricultural areas a little attention from the rest of the country every four years? It isn’t like John Edwards is going to spend the last week before the caucuses camped out in Keokuk and Grundy Counties just because each caucus-goer is worth more there. At the end of the day, Keokuk and Grundy still represent a tiny fraction of the total delegates needed to win, and putting on events and doing GOTV work is easier and far more efficient in urban areas like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
While disparities in caucus-goer to delegate ratios from county to county may seem a little alarming, the truth is that urban areas are still immensely important, and that a candidate can win the caucuses without putting practically any resources into the less populous half of Iowa’s 99 counties. A campaign will hire more than 10 full-time field organizers for Polk County before they will hire a single full-time organizer for Grundy County. And most importantly, I don’t know a single Iowa Democrat who will argue that Polk County (Des Moines area) Democrats don’t have enough influence on state politics, the state party, or the caucuses.
I hope this will be the start of a series of posts written here as a defense of the Iowa Caucuses. Toward that end, I’m looking for more arguments to respond to. So, dear readers, please participate: What arguments against the Iowa Caucuses do you find most compelling?
March 6th, 2007
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.
February 28th, 2007
As the Quad-City Times reports the consensus in the State Legislature seems to be moving towards allowing counties to ban smoking in the workplace. This is probably the best first step towards gradually banning smoking in every workplace in Iowa. Places ranging from the United Kingdom to New York City have already passed comprehensive workplace smoking ban with no negative consequences and the bill would allow Iowa counties and municipalities the opportunity to do so as well. Smoking causes a variety of health problems and workplace bans help to spare workers and customers from being exposed to second hand smoke. The government does everything possible to protect coal miners from suffering serious health problems on the job, shouldn’t bartenders and waitresses deserve the same protection? It is also clear that smoking bans have no negative economic consequences.
An interesting issue is from what quarters will support for the legislation come from. It is legislation that cuts across traditional party lines. Some Democrats may be too libertarian to support it, while some Republicans feel that this is an area where government should intervene. It’s an issue that has not been calcified to the point where you can expect every member of one party to support it and every member of the other to be against it. One hopes that there can be bipartisan support for allowing county and local governments to ban smoking in workplaces. It is a good first step and it is one that will save a lot of lives at almost no cost.
February 19th, 2007
Throughout most of the world, Labor Day is celebrated on May 1st to commemorate the aftermath of the so-called “Haymarket Riots” when a mass strike for an eight hour working day in Chicago was crushed by the police. The police used a bomb that was thrown at a line of policemen that killed one and fatally wounded six more (thrown either by an agent provocateur or by a lone crazed anarchist) as an excuse to fire into a crowd of peaceable demonstrators. The deaths of the policemen served as a pretext to round up the city’s labor leaders who were put on trial in front of a packed jury as accessories to murder, despite the fact there was no evidence of any connecting them to the deaths of the policemen. Seven were sentenced to death, and although the sentences of two of them were commuted to life in prison, four innocent men were murdered by the State of Illinois (and a fifth committed suicide on the eve of his execution).
How do Mary Lundby and the other State Senate Republicans want to commemorate this hallowed day for the Labor Movement? They’ve introduced a bill to declare May 1 as Iowa’s Right To Work Day to remember the passage of Iowa’s anti-labor “Right To Work” Act. The resolution also praises the Taft-Hartley act, which enabled states to pass “right to work” legislation, and is the most anti-Labor legislation in American history. Taft-Hartley was described by Harry Truman as “a clear threat to the successful working of our democratic society.” As contemptuous as this resolution is, it’s just a resolution and merely a symbolic statement. However, it’s part of an ongoing effort by the Republican Party to undermine the Labor Movement and the rights of working people that goes back beyond Taft-Hartley. But Iowa Republicans aren’t limiting themselves to symbolic gestures.
The Republicans in the State House are also opposing the Fair Share Law in Iowa. This merely mandates that “all workers who receive union-negotiated benefits contribute to the cost of providing those benefits.” However, the Republicans claim that this will destroy business in Iowa. This is baseless assertion that was easily refuted by Peter Fisher, a University of Iowa economist, who pointed out, “Why would a unionized company care how many of its workers paid how much to the union? I can only conclude that firms who assert that they will not come to Iowa because of fair share are looking for a low-wage location and want weak labor unions to help ensure that it will remain a low-wage location.” It’s a shame that Republicans are continuing their efforts to undermine workers’ rights and thumbing their noses at those who actually work to help Iowa’s working families.
February 17th, 2007
Hotline On Call has a poll that shows Americans are just as likely to vote for a homosexual as they are to vote for a 72 year old for President. The poll also shows that Americans are significantly more uncomfortable casting their ballots for a Mormon or for someone on their third marriage than they are about voting for a African-American or a woman. This is not good news for Republicans. However, they can take hope from the fact that the poll doesn’t do anything to ascertain how Americans feel about voting for the children of millworkers.
But this age bias spells trouble for McCain. McCain hasn’t looked well in recent television appearances and considering that the rest of the major Republican contenders all look relatively youthful, it will not present a good contrast when McCain makes joint appearances with other candidates at debates and forums.
In other news, Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas and possible Presidential candidate, introduced a bill to legalize growing hemp in the United States. The bill’s co-sponsors include senior Democrats like George Miller and Barney Frank as well as Dennis Kucinich. Paul also recently introduced a bill that would have the United States withdraw from the UN. However, Kucinich did not co-sponsor that bill.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the first television advertisements of 2008 are up in Iowa. Duncan Hunter has already started advertising on local television in Des Moines. Hunter also received glowing praise from George Will the other day. However, Hunter is still firmly parked in the back of the pack among Republican candidates and shows no sign of making any progress. But he still has at least one person who think he’s the best Republican President candidate ever. After all, Hunter is the only candidate running from either party to speak out against the Chinese threat to Panama.
February 17th, 2007
David Yepsen’s column today makes the argument that Democrats in the state legislature should avoid changing anything to do with Iowa’s right to work law or risk losing control in 2008. He asserts that “Polls show overwhelming support for such worker freedom.”
A few weeks ago, I started getting strange calls on my Blackberry from a number I didn’t recognize. I didn’t answer the first few times the number popped up. Finally, after it was clear that this person wanted to talk to me and would not leave a message, I answered the next call I got, and it turned out to be someone in a call center in Missouri (I think it was Missouri) taking a poll. It was clear from the first question (something to do with protections for “the right to life,” without saying what the “right to life” was) that the poll of Iowa voters was being conducted by some conservative operation.
Question three, word for word, was “Do you support Iowa’s Right To Work Law?”
All of the survey questions were slanted to create a pattern of “Yes” answers (that is, when they wanted someone to say they did not support a particular law, they would ask “Do you disagree with X?” instead of “Do you agree with X?”), and the callers seemed to have been instructed to sound happier when someone answered “Yes” rather than “No.” In a survey like that, of course the vast majority of Iowa voters are going to say “Yes.”
But if you asked them, instead, “Do you think it is important that Iowa workers are able to engage in collective bargaining with their employers?” it seems plausible that an equal number would have said “Yes.” I’m not sure what polls Yepsen has seen on the issue, but I thought at least mentioning how slanted and disingenuous the survey I got was might help get us beyond the discussion of poll numbers.
January 30th, 2007
Where does the Red Flag wave highest in Iowa? According to the results of the last election, it’s in Ladora, Iowa where Helen Meyers, the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party received 5% of the vote. I know you’re thinking two things. First, that the Socialist Workers Party isn’t Socialist at all, instead it’s a Trotskyite group that adheres to the Pathfinder Tendency and second, Ladora, Iowa? Ignoring the first point as niggling (after all, Ladora, Iowa, Stronghold of Trotskyism isn’t a very good headline), why Ladora? Well, Iowa County itself was Helen Meyers’ strongest county in 2006, she pulled over 3% of vote? But what made Ladora particularly Socialist or rather Trotskyite. Looking at the results, the clear and unexciting answer is a mathmatical fluke. After all, 10 votes out of 207 isn’t terribly statistically significant. But it’s worth noting that Meyers did much better in the rural areas than in Polk County (Des Moines). She got 2% outside of Polk and 1.3% in Polk. Although Boswell’s a relatively moderate Democrat, the 3% obviously wasn’t a liberal protest vote. If there was such a thing, it wouldn’t have been in Iowa County which isn’t that liberal, it would have been in Polk, which contains some of the most liberal parts of the 3rd District. So what’s going on?
The answer as best I can piece together is pretty simple. There was a decent number of people in rural areas tired of what was happening in Washington who didn’t want to vote for an incumbent-even a Democratic one-but sure didn’t want to vote for Jeff Lamberti. So, instead, they voted randomly for the Socialist candidate at the spur of the moment. (It’s noteworthy that Meyers did significantly better on Election Day than on absentee ballots) It wasn’t a lot of people but enough to be noticed. I suppose this is probably bad news for those who looked forward to Ladora being the cradle for Iowa’s dictatorship of the proletariat but, not to worry, Helen Meyers didn’t do too badly in North English either.
January 23rd, 2007
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