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
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
Gubernatorial candidate Ed Fallon stopped by Grinnell for lunch today. At least 30 students attended. Fallon began by talking with students informally at each table, and, afterwards, gave a speech and answered questions from the group. There’s an approximation of what happened (we have the event’s audio, and we’ll probably drop some clips into our podcast, coming soon) after the jump.
Ed Fallon began his speech with his clean elections proposal. He names Maine and Arizona as the two states with the best clean elections systems in the country. He quotes a Maine state legislator saying that universal health care can only happen after a clean elections law, because right now special interests control too much. He says often the special interest money goes to Republicans, but he takes a jab at Patty Judge’s money, too.
He says that the primary is the place to make sure you vote for candidates whom you really believe in.
He says that he’s not wealthy, unlike other people who run for public office, and that he lived without any health insurance for a long time. He talks about universal health care again. He criticizes sales tax exemptions for hospital purchases and not for everyday consumers. He says he tries to change things, but, although most legislators agree with him, they all get strongarmed by party leadership who are in the pockets of special interests. As governor, he could be on the same playing field as special interests, which would give him the opportunity to change things.
He talks about how his campaign is going: 1200 volunteers, over 120 house parties, organization in 73 of Iowa’s 99 counties.
Finally, he criticizes cuts in education in Iowa. He wants to end the cuts in the Iowa tuition grant. He says that Iowa’s education system was one of the best in the country, but it’s struggling because of tax cuts for the rich. We gave $16 million to Maytag, and the outgoing CEO of Maytag got a $19 million bonus.
Notes from the Q&A:
On how Ed will get universal health care passed in Iowa’s political climate:
“I believe that if people are fired up about something, the legislature will get it done. Because legislators respond to three things: a lot of them really want to do the right thing. A lot of them feel bullied into doing the wrong thing because of the thread of not getting reelected — if they offend one of their big funders. But most importantly — more important than anything — is the voter. People in their district who feel strongly about an issue. If everybody in their district is talking about health care, and they make it clear that they want to see a universal health care system pass, that lawmaker is going to have to support that or risk losing in the next election. So what I can do as governor is create a climate where people are talking about the issue. Where there’s an expectation that something’s gonna happen. I don’t care if it’s a Republican or Democratic legislature. I’d rather it be a Democratic legislature, but again it doesn’t have to be to get it done. It doesn’t have to be, but we could get a better plan if we have a Democratic legislature.”
On intelligent design:
“I don’t think intelligent design is very intelligent. It’s funny the euphemisms they come up for things, isn’t it? I mean, we used to call it creationism. It’s a back-door way of trying to work religion into the public school curriculum, and that bothers me. And, you know, I’m a religion major; I value my faith quite deeply. But I also value the principle of separation of church and state. And it just seems to me it’s a slippery way of trying to get it into the back door.”
He went on to give a pretty scholarly account of creation stories in Genesis.
On criminal justice system:
“Our criminal justice system is really out of whack. It’s really focused on incarceration. There has been a trend in the legislature to create longer and longer sentences in response to concerns about public safety. A particular crime happens and the response is to enact a new penalty for it.”
He went on to give examples of this, including our 2,000 foot rule for sex offenders, which Fallon says makes us looks bad because of how many problems have been exposed about it. He was the only no vote on the law. He favors a restorative justice approach, or “community based corrections.”
“It involves trying to work with community. I’m really concerned that the current process is not really fair to the victims and the victims’ families as well.”
On alternative energy:
“We have the capacity in Iowa to be energy independent… We can be energy independent in 10 years… The challenge in my mind is making sure the energy industry we create is locally controlled. Right now, again it’s related back to campaign finance reform, you’ve got big companies … that know how to play the game financially.”
Takes a jab at Culver, whose top donor is an energy company from another state.
On the Iowa rainforest:
“It’s kind of ironic that we’re going to build a rainforest in Iowa even as we import these low-cut burgers at McDonalds that involve destruction of the rainforest in Central and South America… I’ve never supported the rainforest… I’d like to see us do more for prairie restoration.”
On immigration:
He’s a welcoming person. He spoke (in Spanish) at the big protest in Des Moines.
April 22nd, 2006
