Search Results for ‘mary lundby’
The other day, the Iowa State Senate voted by a margin of 47-2 to close the Fallon Loophole that allows candidates to pay themselves with campaign funds. The issue of candidates paying themselves salaries with campaign funds came to the fore after it was revealed that Fallon paid himself nearly $14,000 in campaign funds after losing his 2006 bid for Governor. While Fallon attacked this initiative as “status quo politics at its worst” and described the bill as a “silly bill.” However, it is no different than legislation passed by Barack Obama in the Illinois State Senate which prevented candidates from paying themselves with campaign funds in that state. While Fallon, after being paid by John Edwards during the caucuses, is now an enthusiastic supporter of Obama, it seems Fallon does not share Obama’s zeal for change in this aspect of campaign finance reform.
It’s also worth noting that the only two Senators who wanted to keep the Fallon Loophole opened were Jack Hatch, who represents Fallon’s former district and has to kowtow to Fallon’s base and Mary Lundby, the former Republican leader in the Senate who openly displayed her contempt for organized labor last year.
There was a time when Ed Fallon would have proud that any campaign finance reform bill passed by a margin of 47-2. Now he calls it silly and displays open disdain for a small step forward for good government and honest politicians. It’s sad that once again, as with I’M For Iowa, Fallon values his own personal gain over campaign finance reform.
April 23rd, 2008
In non-Vilsack news, it’s worth pointing out that the Iowa State House approved stem cell research last night by a vote by a vote of 52-46. The bill passed despite heavy Republican opposition. Stem cell research was one of the major issues that Chet Culver ran on in 2006 and Chet came out heavily in favor of stem cell research before the legislative session. This bill will make sure that life saving research can take place and, in particular, take place in Iowa. It’s an important milestone that got buried by Tom Vilsack dropping out this morning. It’s pointing out and reminding people that although Iowa will not be home to the next President, it may be home to a cure for cancer, Parkinson’s Disease or another terrible disease.
February 23rd, 2007
As Mark over at Bleeding Heartland notes, four Iowa House Republicans, including Scott Raecker, requested a hearing on a bill and then didn’t show up for the hearing. The bill, SF 62, passed the Senate unanimously. At the hearing, only three people showed up. The four House Republicans have every right to call for a hearing to be held on SF 62 or on any other bill. But for them to set up a hearing and then not show up is an insult to every taxpaying Iowan. It shows that those four legislators are more interested in political gestures (and political gestures that waste taxpayer money to boot) than actually governing. This is a new low for State House Republicans, who have already spent the still young legislative session insulting working families and playing politics with the health of Iowans. Now, they’re not even bothering to show up for work. But if Raecker and his three fellow goldbricks, Carmine Boal, Linda Miller and Tami Wiencek, don’t want to do their jobs, that’s fine. I’m sure we can find four good Democrats to replace them in 2008.
February 20th, 2007
We recently did an overview of the top three opportunities for the Democrats to pick up seats in the Iowa State Senate in 2008. Now we’re going to take a look at the three most vulnerable seats that the Democrats have to defend. Although there are only ten Democrats in the State Senate up for re-election in 2008, many of them had close races in 2004 and will face fierce opposition from Republicans who have been pushing an agenda that would deny sick people the possibility of one day being cured, hurt working families and make it more difficult for Iowans to vote. Not exactly a popular combination, although unfortunately it will be a well funded one. Here are the three Democratic Senators who will have the toughest races in 2008:
1. Frank Wood (parts of Clinton and Scott Counties) In 2004, Wood defeated incumbent Republican State Senator Bryan Sievers in a race that was decided by less than 500 votes. Wood’s district comprises most of rural Scott and Clinton Counties and Republicans have an registration advantage of over 1,000 voters in the district. With this registration advantage, his district will be squarely targeted by the Republicans in 2008. His district also comprises the area represented by Elesha Gayman, who won an upset victory over her Republican opponent Jim Van Fossen in 2006, despite not being a targeted candidate. Gayman will have a major bulls eye on her back as Republicans need to win her seat to take back a majority in the Iowa House. The effort against her will help Wood’s Republican opponent as well. The GOP will also be building up its organization in Scott County after Chet Culver won the county by a tremendous margin of 9,000 votes. Even with a strong top of the ticket with Bruce Braley and Tom Harkin, Wood will face a very tough fight in this Republican-leaning district.
2. Tom Hancock (Jones and parts of Delaware and Dubuque Counties) In 2004, Tom Hancock defeated incumbent State Senator Julie Hosch by 122 votes. She had won the seat two years before by less than 500 votes. Hancock’s district comprises all of Jones County, along with rural Dubuque County and the parts of Delaware County that are south and east of Manchester. The district is very competitive, although Democrats have a registration advantage of 1,500 over the Republicans, over 40% of the voters are independents. However, Hancock will be running as an incumbent in 2008 and will have all the advantages of incumbency. Hancock won in 2004 despite running behind John Kerry in Delaware and Jones Counties and a very small advantage in the Democrats’ traditional strength of absentee ballots. Although this race will receive a lot of attention from both parties, a strong organization should put Hancock over the top in a neutral election climate. However, if there’s even a mild Republican lean in 2008, Hancock will be in trouble.
3. Tom Rielly (Keokuk and Poweshiek Counties, parts of Iowa, Mahaska and Tama Counties) Tom Rielly’s district is more Republican than that of any other Democratic State Senator up for election in 2008. However, Rielly has a solid base of support in otherwise heavily Republican Mahaska County (a county that is so Republican that Bill Clinton only received 40% of the vote there in 1996). Excluding absentee ballots, Rielly ran 10 points ahead of John Kerry in Mahaska County in 2004. Rielly also has the advantage of representing Grinnell, which is a strongly Democratic college town with very high student turnout. Poweshiek County, where Grinnell is located, is increasingly Democratic (it was one of three counties in Iowa that Bush won in 2000 and that John Kerry won in 2004). Rielly won the county by 700 votes in 2004 and should improve on that margin in 2008. The rest of the district comprises Keokuk County, which is slightly Republican leaning, though Rielly won it in 2004 and Iowa County (besides Marengo and the area immediately around it) which is a 50/50 county. Like Hancock, Rielly should be fine in a neutral climate but his big strength is a large number of ticket-splitters. If a candidate runs who can energize the Republican base, Rielly will have a hard fight. But if the rumors are true that someone like Danny Carroll will run, Rielly should be fine.
Other Democrats who will face highly competitive challenges in 2008 are: (in alphabetical order) Jeff Danielson (Black Hawk), Gene Fraise (Henry and Lee), Mike Gronstal (Pottawatomie) and Brian Schoenjahn (Buchanan and Clayton and parts of Black Hawk, Delaware and Fayette).
February 20th, 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
Mary Lundby, the Brutus to Stew Iverson’s Caesar, showed that she had the same ability to read English as her noble Roman predecessor the other day when she said that SF 115, the bill before the Iowa State Senate to allow stem cell research, would allow human cloning. In fact, she went even further than that;
“I’ve seen the deterioration of things that we consider taboo. Gratuitous violence on television and in video games. If you watch any of the prime time sitcoms, the double entendre has new meaning in the fact that it shows up in every other sentence. I just think Iowans are going to draw the line at the process of human cloning.”
Apparently, the reason for stem cell research was Tipper Gore’s failure twenty years ago and it’s just one slippery slope from Darling Nikki to curing Parkinson’s.
Lundby, along with other Republican all stars like David Hartsuch, are trying conflate stem cell research with human cloning. If they had bothered to read the bill, rather than talking points written by the Iowa Christian Alliance, they would have noticed that the bill explicitly bans human cloning and states that one of the purposes of the bill is “to prohibit human reproductive cloning.” It further goes on to explictly define human reproductive cloning as “human asexual reproduction, using somatic cell nuclear transfer, for implantation or attempted implantation into a woman’s uterus or substitute for a woman’s uterus. ‘Human reproductive cloning’ does not include somatic cell nuclear transfer performed for the purpose of creating embryonic stem cells.” It seems fair enough but you would think from Mary Lundby’s language that Chet Culver was using the proposed state grant for stem cell research to create something out of Blade Runner in Iowa City.
In reality, the Republican caucus in the State Senate, and especially a vulnerable moderate like Mary Lundby, is beholden to the far right wing elements in the Republican Party of Iowa like the Iowa Christian Alliance (in fact, it’s fair say that, to a large extent, the entire RPI is beholden to the Iowa Christian Alliance ) and the right wingers are taking their pound of flesh on this issue. Bill Dotzler gets it right when he says the Republican opposition is based on “politics and semantics, not the issues.” Although adult illiteracy is embarassing, Mary Lundby using it to hide a problem far worse, the fact that she’s playing politics with people’s lives.
February 13th, 2007
If Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post can already start looking at 2008 US Senate races, we feel like it’s not too soon to start looking at 2008 Iowa Senate races. Today, we’re going to take a look at the top Democratic pickup opportunities. Although the Democrats picked up seats in 2004 to reach a 25-25 tie in the Senate, the Republicans will still be defending 15 seats in 2008, 5 more than the Democrats. Not only will the GOP go into 2008 with more seats to defend, they will be a party that is deeply divided. Nearly half of the Republicans in the State Senate walked out of the leadership election in November. They haven’t become much more unified since. Here are a list of the three most vulnerable seats that the divided Republican caucus will have to defend in 2008:
1. Larry McKibben (Marshall and Hardin Counties). McKibben represents a district that Chet Culver won by nearly 1500 votes in 2006. It consists of Marshall County, a traditionally strong Democratic county and Hardin, a mildly Republican leaning county. In 2004, McKibben edged out the Democratic candidate, Wayne Sawtelle, a labor activist, by less than 800 votes. McKibben owed his victory to piling up a huge lead in Hardin County, despite running significantly behind George Bush in Marshall County. The large labor community in Marshalltown will still be gunning for McKibben in 2008 and McKibben won’t be running on anywhere near as strong a ticket in 2008. With Tom Harkin up for Senate and Selden Spencer making a more serious attempt to run against Tom Latham, McKibben won’t have the advantages he had in 2004. He’s hanging on by a slim thread and this race will probably be decided again by less than 1000 votes.
2. James Hahn (Cedar, most of Muscatine and a little of Johnson counties). Hahn, one of the 8 anti-Lundby Republicans in the State Senate, defeated incumbent Democrat Thomas Fiegen after redistricting in 2004. Fiegen previously only represented the Cedar County part of the district and lost his bid for re-election in the new district by less than 2000 votes. This will be another place where the Democrats will benefit from having a much stronger ticket. The 2004 Democratic candidate for U.S. House, long-shot Dave Franker will be replaced on the ticket by incumbent Representative Dave Loebsack. This means there will be a whole lot more resources available in Muscatine County, a county which isn’t that important in a statewide race but is a crucial swing county in the 2nd Congressional District. John Kerry won Muscatine County in 2004 by 500 votes despite a weak showing statewide. Chet Culver won it by 2000 votes. If the Democratic Presidential nominee has a Chet Culver-like performance in the Presidential and gets 55% of the vote, this seat should go. If Iowa continues to be a tightly contested swing state, it probably won’t.
3. Mary Lundby (Linn) Although Lundby is the Republican leader in the State Senate, she is one of the most moderate members of the Republican Caucus who replaced former leader Stew Iverson in a coup in April 2006. She was also one of two Republican State Senators to oppose an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to ban gay marriage during the last legislative session. Her socially moderate views make her a good fit for a State Senate district that has about 12,000 Democrats, 12,000 Republicans and 17,000 Independents in the suburbs of Cedar Rapids that she won with nearly 60% of the vote in 2004. However, it does not make her a good fit in the Republican Party of Iowa which is dominated by social conservatives. Her only ally in the Republican caucus on the gay marriage issue, Maggie Tinsman, was defeated in the 2006 primary by an extreme right wing organization called Iowans for Tax Relief. She was beaten by a fellow who can best be described as the Steve King of East Iowa, David Hartsuch. Considering that half the Republicans in the State Senate don’t support Lundby, it won’t be a surprise if Iowans for Tax Relief tried to beat Lundby in the primary. If they do, an ultra conservative will be very vulnerable in this moderate seat. The other possibility is that Lundby, a cancer survivor may call it quits. After all, why would anyone in their right mind really want to manage a Senate caucus with a proclivity for sectarian violence that would make an Iraqi province blush? If the seat becomes open, it will become an extremely competitive race and with compartively high costs to run a campaign in the Cedar Rapids media market, it will easily become the most expensive State Senate race in the state. However, if Lundby stays on the nature of the district makes it Republican favored but still competitive. However, the mix of all three possibilities, a Republican primary, retirement and re-election keeps this seat highly competitive.
Other vulnerable Republicans are (in alphabetical order): Jeff Angelo (South-Central Iowa), Jerry Behn (Boone and Dallas Counties), John Putney (Benton, Grundy, Tama and part of Iowa County), Brad Zaun (suburban Polk County) and Mark Ziemann (Allamakee, Chickasaw, Howard and Winneshiek Counties)
February 6th, 2007
Mike Gronstal and Mary Lundby are calling for a vote on anti-bullying legislation to protect gay students. Pat Murphy spoke to this issue when he came to our Campus Dems meeting last week, and Advocate.com notes the same pesky roadblock to which he alluded: Chris Rants. What does Rants find wrong with protecting GLBT students from verbal and physical harassment in school, you might ask? Here’s a charming quote: “We need to protect fat kids, kids with glasses, kids who are too smart, kids who aren’t too smart…. Schools should be a safe place regardless of whatever sets you apart.”
New York Governor George Pataki is opening an office in Des Moines this week, making him the first presidential hopeful to do so. New York Public Radio even calls it a “campaign office,” and doesn’t mention Freedom PAC, to whom the headquarters technically belongs.
The Register leads with both Culver and Nussle encountering a skeptical crowd at a VFW meeting Saturday, but based on the article, it sounds like Nussle had a harder time of it. Culver was asked where he would get the money to fund his proposals to help veterans, and responded with concrete plans to streamline the state budget and utilize the tax surplus. Nussle, on the other hand, was confronted with his anti-veteran congressional voting record, and replied, “My grandmother always taught me growing up that actions speak louder than words. Every opportunity I’ve had, when I’ve been chairman, I’ve increased the budget over what the president, over what the budget … recommended.” I’ll let you insert something snarky of your own here.
A new Register poll shows Hillary Clinton losing Iowa to four Republican potentials. It also finds that 57% of respondents think it is a bad idea for Vilsack to run for president.
Oh, and CIETC is thinking of changing its name.
September 25th, 2006
Mary Lundby became one of the most powerful Republicans in Iowa yesterday, as Yepsen babbles. Republicans want us to think that this means they’re “not your father’s Oldsmobile anymore.” I never thought that to begin with; but still, this isn’t going to change my mind about them. If Yepsen is to be believed, we do have something to look forward to:
This is no guarantee of GOP success in November. While replacing a floor leader in the midst of a session is a big deal in the political community, it’s doubtful anyone about to vote for a Democrat in an Iowa Senate race this November will change their minds as a result of Lundby’s coup.
And if you think she’s going to be better at campaigning around the state, think about it: this is seen as a coup precisely because of how different she — a city slicker — is compared to the typical Iowa Republican model of rural conservatism. She’s going to get to the one restaurant in Barnes City (it’s across from the grain elevator, if you want to go) and balk. Republicans are trying to cast her as a McCain. Making this woman their mouthpiece for the elections won’t necessarily make their powerful grassroots base (i.e. religious conservatives) happy.
Update: LyingAroundIowa reports that there has already been a staff resignation in connection with this (and that there will be more). Although they also erroneously claimed that Iverson was going to quit the legislature completely, and they are sometimes narrowminded.
April 12th, 2006
