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
I posted about this a few days ago: Nussle made the first TV buy of the 2006 gubernatorial election — and it only cost $500,000! The ad is now online, so watch it a few times (Quicktime, Windows Media). It’s short and incredibly empty of substance, but here’s what it claims (and why it’s flat-out wrong, line by line):
Nussle learned leadership “from the ground up.” That’s mostly just a stupid thing to say. I wonder whether they focus grouped to determine that the “from the ground up” leadership style was more appealing than other less creative, more conventional leadership styles. (The “don’t make a huge surplus into a huge deficit” style of leadership comes to mind as one potential alternative…)
Keep reading; the fun has just begun.
“In Congress, Jim is a leader in the fight to control spending and clean up the house ethics scandal.” I can’t believe he went there. My only guess why is that he knew the Democorats wouldn’t have the money to spend on response ads right now, so audiences wouldn’t hear about how he is as responsible as anyone in Washington for the devastating budget reversal that turned a $236 billion surplus into a $412 billion deficit.
And I’d like to see him try to prove the claim that he’s a leader in the fight to “clean up the house ethics scandal,” but I’m suspicious that the language here, too, is more “manipulative” than, say, “truthful.” The phrase “clean up the house ethics scandal” seems to achieve a number of marketing objectives: First, the language of “cleaning up a scandal” is a lot more favorable to Nussle than the language of “cleaning up a group of crooked politicians,” because Nussle is, on many accounts, a crooked politician. Second, calling it a “scandal” makes it sound like anyone who mentions it or tries to draw attention to it is just a gossip (a gossip who hates FREEDOM). And third, it makes Nussle’s position offensive rather than defensive. If his position were merely “I’m not scandalous,” it would be a weak, defensive position. “I fight scandal” is offense. And he has the money, so he can preempt us like that.
Nussle wants to “make Iowa’s schools the world’s best.” He should’ve thought about it before he co-sponsored the now-infamous No Child Left Behind Act, which attempted to force Iowa to model its education system after the bottom-of-the-barrel Texas system. You’d think that Nussle would at least realize that such a flawed un-funded mandate was a bad idea after the fact, but no, he still touts it on his generic, uninspired education flyer.
He also has his own plan, called “Empowering Parents With Choice in Education” (oh, so now he’s pro-choice). It is also just a tax credit, but it doubles as a creative backdoor into a school voucher program. Except, unlike the other places where school voucher programs have been proposed, this won’t be targeted towards the socioeconomically needy. He just wants to give away $1,500 in tax credits to anyone who wants to send a kid to private school. That’s per kid (maximum $6,000 for married couples or $3,000 for single filers). Iowa already ranks in the bottom half of the nation in per-pupil spending and is losing teachers to bordering states. Do we really need to make it worse? And is a tax credit alone really something Nussle has the right to call an education plan of any kind? I’m thinking not.
Nussle wants to make Iowa “the renewable energy capital of the world.” According to Nussle’s “Energy Project 20/20″, that mostly means tax breaks. Past that, his position is wishy-washy. He does borrow some pretty sweet corn photos from the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, though.
Nussle wants to promote “affordable health care.” He has no health care plan on his web site. He does have a PDF of his “record on health care”, though, and it ain’t pretty. The first vote listed is, well, see for yourself: “Nussle Fought for Iowa Hospitals to Ensure Fair Reimbursements, Extended Coverage and Greater Flexibility.” It made sure hospitals got more money, which Nussle thinks might have also meant employees got paid more. In particular, “providing higher payments for all physicians with a 5% bonus payment to physicians in rural areas.” Way to fight for the underdog.
The second “accomplishment” listed is merely that, as budget chairman, Nussle oversaw the passage of the 2006 budget, which, among about a bazillion other things, “resulted in continued funding for Medicare and Medicaid.”
The rest are generally pro-hospital and pro-doctor (including fighting against “frivolous law suits” and voting “to cut away needless paperwork”).
And finally, he claims that he’ll “energize Iowa’s future.” I don’t see that happening.
April 24th, 2006
