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On Wednesday, Tom Latham joined 177 other House Republicans to vote against H. Res 1113, a resolution “That the House of Representatives celebrates the role of mothers in the United States and supports the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day.” This was part of an attempt of House Republicans to make an attempt to make some sort of statement about their disapproval of Democratic procedural tactics. So, how did Tom Latham show his contempt for such tactics? He did so by taking a stand against such radical statements as “we honor ourselves and mothers in the United States when we revere and emphasize the importance of the role of the home and family as the true foundation of the Nation.” It’s long been clear that Latham is out of touch with Iowa’s working families. This vote against motherhood only reinforces Latham’s continued contempt for Iowa’s working families.
May 11th, 2008
Tom Latham, despite representing a swing district, has signed on to some rather extreme pieces of legislation in Washington DC this session. Latham has co-sponsored a bill that would gut what remains of the Wagner Act by passing so-called “right-to work” legislation, (HR 697) Many Republicans in the Iowa State House have taken similarly despicable stands. Latham has also signed on to HR 2380. This bill would permanently repeal the estate tax. Apparently, Tom Latham thinks working Iowans don’t pay enough taxes while Paris Hilton is paying far too much.
Latham is supporting other extreme legislation as well, including HR 618, which seeks to undermine Roe v. Wade. It’s clear that Tom Latham supports a far-right wing agenda that is out of touch with what his constituents support. In fact, it’s so far right-wing, it seems even more extreme than Steve King. However, when one considers that the National Journal ranked Latham as even farther from the mainstream than King, it’s not a surprise. One hopes that despite a slow start to fundraising that the eventual nominee for the 4th District is able to defeat an extremist like Tom Latham.
April 26th, 2008
All signs are positive that Governor Culver will sign the collective bargaining bill that will give public employees the same rights as those in the private sector. Iowa Progress previously commented on this bill before and Culver’s reluctance to sign it-although perhaps displaying the some of the same pique that the post attributes to Chet. What is clear is that the bill is a good piece of legislation that will help all Iowans.
Culver has been a good governor so far and shown notable leadership on issues such as stem cell research. While his equivocation on this issue was less than admirable, what matters is that he is coming down on the right side at the end of the day and will ensure that Iowa’s public employees get a fair deal.
April 24th, 2008
As much there was the hope that something would emerge to comment upon, other than Ed Fallon’s continued trawl through the gutters of dishonesty, sleaze and self-aggrandizement, it is disappointing that it is just Fallon’s political tone-deafness. Barney Frank, as the first openly gay man in Congress, has led the effort to pass a bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against someone based on sexual orientation. However, to get the bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, Frank had to allow a compromise that removed the ban on discrimination based on gender identity from the bill. As a result, Ed Fallon is outraged about the first gay rights bill in history to be passed by House of Representatives and believes that the first openly gay man in the U.S. Congress is betrayed the cause of gay rights.
In addition, Fallon attacks Leonard Boswell for voting for the bill. Apparently, Boswell’s support for this compromise “calls into question how forcefully he’ll seek full equality for the GLBT community in the future.” In other words, Ed Fallon is attacking Leonard Boswell for being insufficiently pro-transsexual. Apparently, Boswell joining with Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin to fight discrimination against gays and lesbians wasn’t enough for Ed Fallon. Fallon would rather have no protections instead of a compromise.
Aside from pointing out the Republican negative ads against Fallon write themselves, this shows the fundamental political flaw with Fallon. (Besides, of course, the sleaze and dishonesty). Fallon seems to think that unless something is perfect, it’s wrong. He ignores compromise and bathes the sense of self-righteousness that enables him to believe that his IM For Iowa slush fund is perfectly legitimate and that a clean elections advocate can make up statements from the FEC. If Iowans want a Congressman who values ideological purity over getting things done, they already have Steve King and at least we know where King’s money is coming from.
April 18th, 2008
While most of the attention paid to Iowa fundraising numbers in the first quarter of this year went to the 3rd District primary, it’s worth noting that there is a Democratic primary in the 4th District too. However, the haul for Democrats there was much less promising. Two of the candidates, William Meyers and Kevin Miskell have not even filed reports with the FEC. This is a sign that they have either not raised enough money to need to file reports or they are too incompetent to get their information in on time. One suspects that the former is the case but no matter what the scenario, it does not mark them as promising candidates in the primary (let alone in a general election against a well-funded long-time incumbent).
Of the remaining two candidates, Kurt Meyer raised $130,000 but, of that sum, $100,000 came from Meyer himself. Of the remaining $30,000, there are two noteworthy donors. The Mitchell County Democratic Party gave Meyer $500 and 2006 Democratic nominee for the 4th District, Selden Spencer, gave $250. It is also worth noting that 85% of Meyer’s itemized donations came from out of state. However, Meyer ended the quarter with $108,000 cash on hand.
Becky Greenwald raised almost $24,000 although $3,500 of that sum came from her own pocket. Of the rest, almost half came from donors with the last name Garst. As Greenwald’s mother was married to a member of the Garst family, it’s not a surprise that she was able to take advantage of her familial connections for her campaign. In fact, one of the Garsts, Marilyn Garst of Coon Rapids, has already maxed out to Greenwald for both the primary and general elections. This means that nearly 10% of the money Greenwald raised in the quarter cannot be used in a primary. However, as Greenwald was holding a major fundraiser with Tom Vilsack after the end of the quarter, one suspects her fundraising will increase. But in the meantime, she ended the quarter with just over $20,000 on hand.
Both Greenwald and Meyer are strong candidates but it’s still unclear what the result of what will almost certainly be a sleepy, low-turnout primary will be. While Greenwald will stand out as the only woman on the ballot (and Meyer has a very similar last name to Meyers), there are also very competitive primaries in Mason City and Decorah, which will drive turnout in the northern part of the district. As Meyer is from Northern Iowa while Greenwald is from Dallas County, this may help him if voters base their decision on geography. But then again, most voters may not know who any of the congressional candidates even are, let alone where they are from.
April 16th, 2008
While the top of Ed Fallon’s balance sheet shows a very solid fundraising quarter, the details hide a sad truth. Fallon’s ethics woes have hurt him badly among potential donors. Fallon’s credibility gap over issues related to I’M for Iowa has led to fewer and fewer donors trusting him. While Fallon claimed 2,082 total donors for the quarter, almost 80% of them wrote their checks before mid-February. In the last six weeks of the quarter, Fallon’s fundraising slowed to a trickle. The result is that Fallon has already spent nine out of every ten dollars that he has raised and, after counting for outstanding debts, he has less than $3000 available to spend on the last 90 days of his campaign. If Fallon’s fundraising continues to dry up, he won’t have enough money to meet his payroll, let alone pay himself through “the Fallon loophole“. Of course, if Fallon had been upfront about I’M for Iowa and its donors, none of this would have happened. But, like Richard Nixon, it seems it was not the crime that brought Ed Fallon down, it was the cover up.
April 15th, 2008
David Yepsen was singing the praises of Chet Culver today for undermining efforts to allow teachers and other public employees the same rights as private sector employees. Apparently if this happens, there’s a chance that teachers may negotiate for smaller class sizes as part of collective bargaining and why would any Iowa school want smaller class sizes? Except, of course, that there is a definitive link between class size and academic performance among students. Yepsen also brings up the scary fact that the collective bargaining bill would mean more binding arbitration which Yepsen is sure means higher costs to government. However, Ed Tibbets in an exhaustive piece for the Quad City Times shows that binding arbitration only happens rarely. In fact, it only occurs in 1% of all contract disputes in Iowa. In fact, binding arbitration may work against teachers and other public employees union. While opponents of the bills claim that in arbitration cases involving school districts, teachers prevail against management 57% of the time (although includes a mere 63 cases that occurred over the past 5 years), the Quad City Times’ review of arbitration cases in Scott County shows the contrary and management prevailing over public employees almost 60% of the time.
However, this isn’t stopping the fearmongering. Far-right organizations like Iowans for Tax Relief are claiming (without any data to back up their claims, of course) this could lead to disastrous rises in property taxes, leading Iowa to become more like such states as Maryland, Kansas and Maine and less like such states as Alabama, Arkansas and New Mexico (which incidentally not only have the lowest property taxes in the nation but rank in the bottom for household income, percentage of those living in poverty, employment and just about every other indicator of economic and social health available). So why is Chet going against fairness for teachers and other public employees (along with virtually every Democrat in the legislature) to bathe in the good graces of Iowans for Tax Relief and David Yepsen?
One assumes this is political posturing, designed to strengthen Culver’s hand in his dealings with the legislature. After all, as the Sioux City Journal notes “Culver raised no objections with the substance of the bill, just the process by which it passed. Spokesman Brad Anderson said Culver was ‘not pleased’ that he wasn’t notified earlier, and felt the public should have been included in the debate.” This isn’t politics, it’s personal pique.
As a result, Culver’s annoyance with Mike Gronstal and Pat Murphy, he’s fanned the flames of this issue in a way that has energized Republicans and hurt working people. Iowa Democrats have waited 40 years to pass progressive legislation and for Culver to show such pettiness by standing in the way is disgraceful and sullies an otherwise admirable record as Governor. As Jack Kibbie notes, one imagines that Culver will support the collective bargaining bill “because of his future. He’s running on the Democratic ticket, I presume.” But if Culver continues to stand against guaranteeing public employees the same rights as their private sector counterparts, he’ll be as good a fit on the Republican ticket as on the Democratic one.
March 30th, 2008
Jon Corzine has recently introduced a plan in New Jersey to force many of that state’s 566 municipalities to merge together. New Jersey has almost no county government and most local governmental functions are performed at the municipal level. However, over the half of the municipalities in New Jersey have a population of less than 10,000 and the resulting map looks like that of Germany in the Middle Ages, a landscape speckled throughout by innumerable miniature jurisdictions, each of which have their own police force, fire department and school system. The result is a massive wastage of taxpayer money as services are duplicated and triplicated within miles of each other.
Iowa has a similar problem. Iowa has 99 counties with a median population of about 16,000. In a state with a declining tax base and a shrinking rural population, this is totally inefficient. The result is that the State Legislature is forced to subsidize many county governments who can’t bear the costs of having their auditor, recorder, attorney, etc. The reason that there are so many counties in Iowa was so that no one would be more than one day’s wagon ride away from their courthouse. In the age of the automobile, when most rural Iowans drive 20 miles to go grocery shopping at Super Wal Mart, it is strange that there is still a pressing need to keep a County Recorder so close at hand.
Iowa has no need for 99 county courthouses or 99 county attorneys or replicating all the functions of county government 99 times throughout the state. That is why County Consolidation is so important. County consolidation is a good government that both liberals and conservatives can support. For conservatives, it means reducing taxes and the size of government. There are basic efficiencies of scale that can be achieved consolidating services which will save rural taxpayers money. In addition, it reduces the size of government. For liberals and progressives, it frees up government funds to be used on health care or education rather than maintaining a multiplicity of deputy auditors throughout rural Iowa.
Having 99 counties is wasteful and archaic. If Iowa can reduce the number of counties down to 50 or even 75, it would easily save tens of millions of dollars every year and help reduce taxes throughout the state. It is sensible, it is logical and it needs to happen.
March 23rd, 2008
Polly Granzow, the Republican State Representative from House District 44, comprising Hardin County and most of Marshall County outside of Marshalltown, is not running for re-election in 2008. This combined with Larry McKibben’s decision not to seek re-election in the Senate District that includes all of Marshall and Hardin Counties, puts local Republicans in a bind as Century for the Common Iowan notes. However, it puts the State Republican Party into even bigger bind.
So far, nine Republican incumbents in the State House are not running for re-election according to Iowa Independent. This includes every Republican but one in Polk County as well as Democratic leaning seats in Mason City and Decorah that are currently held by Bill Schickel and Chuck Gipp respectively. Granzow only won by 300 votes in 2006 and her district should be very competitive as an open seat in 2008.
But this underlies the fact that while Iowa Republicans are citing the House as one of their few bright spots in 2008. When the only two Democratic open seats are incumbents running for State Senate, it’s a pretty dubious bright spot. GOP prospects in the State House may seem brighter than those against Tom Harkin or in the State Senate. But that’s merely contrasting a good chance of losing by a landslide to almost certainly getting blown out. Unless something unexpected happens nationally or in state politics (like a political scandal or a Fallon win in the 3rd District primary) it seems pretty clear that calling the Iowa House a bright spot is only a relative term for Iowa Republicans.
February 25th, 2008
Century of Common Iowan is reporting that Larry McKibben, the incumbent Republican State Senator in Marshall and Hardin Counties will not be running for re-election. When Iowa Progress ranked the top opportunities for Democrats to pick up seats in the State Senate last year, McKibben was listed as the most vulnerable Republican.
Of the eight Republicans named on that list, McKibben is now the fourth to decline to run for re-election in 2008. It’s clear that Senate Republicans know that they are in trouble in 2008. The most vulnerable seats for Senate Democrats are all in Eastern Iowa which has been growing increasingly Democratic and it’s quite likely no incumbent Democrat will get defeated in November. That combined with an increasing number of Republican open seats means that Senate Republicans are on the ropes. It’s likely that they will face a net loss of two or three seats and could be in a position where they begin the January 2009 legislative session with only 15 Senators.
However, one thing is sure. Whether the Senate Republican Caucus has two Senators or 42 Senators, they are sure to be factionalized and divided no matter what. It’s one thing to be a member of a minority party but when you’re a member of a minority party where the caucus meetings resemble Kenyan street battles more than a gathering of like-minded legislators, it’s clear that you’ll be in the minority for a long time to come.
February 14th, 2008
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