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Rubbermaid announced last night that it will be moving 500 jobs from Centerville (population 6,000) to Kansas. The company turned down the offer of a $1 million tax break under Vilsack’s Iowa Values Fund, and executives explained that they believe there are more opportunities for expansion in Kansas. Vilsack’s statement, issued this afternoon, doesn’t seem very reassuring to the hundreds of Iowans finding their jobs in jeopardy lately:
Today’s news is upsetting, but it reinforces my commitment to creating and retaining sustainable, quality jobs in our state. We are working every day to transform Iowa’s economy and minimize the impact of a changing, global marketplace.
Chris Woods at Political Forecast covers the possibility of an override of Vilsack’s veto on eminent domain.
The Concord Monitor’s story on Vilsack’s visit wasn’t exactly positive- it noted that he doesn’t have foreign policy experience beyond a few recent trips abroad and that he called complaints in New Hampshire about the possibility of making the primary later in the nominating calendar ”overblown.”
Another article says Vilsack’s people are leaving New Hampshire out to dry:
The plan has yet to be made final by the rules committee and the full DNC, but New Hampshire Democrats widely viewed the Iowa votes as a clear break from the decades-long alliance between the two states to work together to protect their early positions.
New Hampshire Democratic Chair Kathy Sullivan, herself a member of the DNC rules committee, said:
“There are a number of New Hampshire Democrats who are disappointed that the Iowa commissioners and member of the rules committee have not voted with New Hampshire on these things.”
Vilsack said he has not talked to the Iowans on these panels about it. One of them was Des Moines attorney Jerry Crawford, a big contributor to Vilsack’s Heartland PAC. The rules committee member is Sally Pederson, Vilsack’s own lieutenant governor and chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party.
Even more embarassing for Governor Vilsack, his wife was forced to wear ugly shoes while touring a plant in NH.
June 15th, 2006
The Des Moines Register released a poll today that was conducted May 29-June 1, so I imagine this will be the last numbers we get before Tuesday. Here’s how it breaks down:
Culver 36% - Blouin 28% - Fallon 21% - Mohammed 1% - 14% undecided
It doesn’t look like the survey questions created the alleged “Fallon supporters don’t fit the likely voters criteria” effect, but with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points and a huge chunk of undecideds, a convention decision is becoming more and more likely. I wish Drew’s blog was still around so we could review what the delegate break down would be.
The article accompanying the poll does a surprisingly good job of highlighting and analyzing the things each candidate has going for him: Blouin is counting on union organizers for his GOTV, but according to the poll Culver has more support amongst union families. Fallon claims independents and Republicans will jump ship and vote in the Democratic primary, but the poll also says Blouin and Culver have picked up more outside the party support. Culver has garnered the most youth support, but people over 64 are much more likely to turn out. The article also does a nice job of interviewing supporters who sum up the main issues of the campaign, but you can read that for yourself.
Finally, the poll also asked if people wanted to continue with the direction and priorities for the state set by Governor Vilsack. A whopping 50% said no! I definitely wouldn’t want to commence my bid for the presidency with that kind of sentiment a brewin’, but that’s just me.
All in all, I think this quote from a Fallon press release sums it up best: “‘We’ll find out on election day,’ he said while eating a sandwich.”
p.s. The coverage of Mike Blouin’s bus tour on his website actually resembles a blog! After months and months of campaigning and claiming to be tech savvy and “hip”, someone has finally grasped that “blog” is more than a buzz word! I bet Andy McGuire had something to do with this. (She told us she’s addicted to blogs.)
June 4th, 2006
As we draw closer to June 6th, primary day, Culver and Blouin continue to exchange accusations. Culver is now trying to paint Blouin with the same pro-Big Business, anti-farmer brush that Blouin, in his a TV ad spot, was able to color Culver with. It goes like this: first Blouin says that Culver worked as a paid lobbyist for a giant meat-packing firm. Then Culver does the classic I’m-rubber-and-you’re-glue counter by saying that actually it is Blouin who has promoted meat-packing interests in the state.
Earlier this week Culver, in his first attack ad, criticized Blouin for being against stem cell research. Then Blouin responded by saying that he would support a change in the stem cell law, a reversal on the position he held last year.
Fallon is getting marginalized even as he maintains the ‘higher ground.’ He has called for all of the candidates to run a positive campaign, but that is easy to do when no one is attacking him because he is not seen as a credible opponent. But I think Fallon is right. This is only the primary and we seem to be getting pretty heated here. Long about June 7th it seems like the Democrats might begin regretting these nasty campaign ads when Nussle drags out his war chest and begins buying up all of TV ad time he can get his hands on. After the primary it might be difficult if Culver or Blouin has to suck it up and endorse the other one, but that is what we are going to need to beat Nussle in November. Maybe it isn’t unprecedented to have negative primaries, but it seems like they are losing track of what really matters.
May 26th, 2006
Sorry again for the collective hiatus from here, but we’re working hard to keep our coverage up during this recovery week after the end of school. In particular, we hope to have some coverage of Governor Vilsack’s (generally unpopular) commencement address at Grinnell earlier this week, in which he reportedly spent most of his time on US Foreign Policy.
But before we hop back on the train, it’s worth noting that Jim Nussle has redesigned his web site and general online presence — probably with the help of some very expensive (out-of-state) consultants. I’m comfortable admitting that his site is, with a few flaws, the best-looking of the gubernatorial candidates (and he’s using his email list more than the other candidates are), but that doesn’t mean he actually knows anything about the internet himself.
In addition, the top story on his site repeats what seems to be his new talking point, about “Iowa’s Energy Stool.” It’s actually a Cedar Rapids Gazette article, but Nussle is really using the stool “metaphor.” Further reinforcing the idea that Nussle talks talks out of his ass?
And, in light of this news story, here’s a photo the Nussle campaign might wish wasn’t on the Nussle family web site.
May 25th, 2006
Political Forecast has a post on Mike Blouin running negative TV ads against Culver. The buzz around the ads is that they are ineffective and make Blouin look desperate. I agree—this sure doesn’t seem like a frontrunner’s tactic. Then again, does Blouin look any worse than Culver’s petty jabs during the debates? Remember the “flip-flop” comment?
So let’s not pretend this is the first shot, or that Culver doesn’t have a mud trebuchet himself.
When Blouin visited Grinnell a few weeks ago, he went out of his way to stress that he would never run negative ads, but that he would “defend himself” if necessary. Sadly, he’s gone back on his pledge and stooped low. Too bad Culver was already there.
Of course, there’s still one spotless candidate—Fallon. Unfortunately, he’s wearing that stupid, stupid, hat.
May 18th, 2006
With gas prices soaring to above $3/gal in parts of the country it is no wonder that people are talking about alternative energy. Here in Iowa, of course, we like to talk a lot about ethanol, because we grow a lot of corn, one of the materials that can be turned into ethanol.
The Department of Agriculture announced this week that increased demand for ethanol is driving corn prices up, so at least Iowa farmers can receive some benefit from the high gas prices.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington are considering legislation that would mandate an increase in the amount of ethanol used for fuel. Both Democrats and Republicans from the Midwest are proposing legislation, and while they think that it is useful to both be working on similar proposals, it seems unlikely that any bills would actually pass as midterms approach. There is concern that mandating the use of ethanol might not be the wisest move right now:
“To say that we have to incorporate these huge volumes of ethanol into gas regardless of what they cost is not very good policy if you’re trying to moderate gasoline prices,” said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.
Furthermore, there is speculation that the dramatic increase in corn-derived ethanol costs may actually be contributing to high gas prices. So as a recap, so far we’ve got people saying high gas prices are driving up corn prices and other people saying that high corn prices are driving up gas prices. This economist though says that the only thing determining gas prices is good ol’ supply and demand.
So lets complicate things a little further: according to the same Register article there are also proposals in Congress to end the 54 cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Places like Brazil are big ethanol producers, but they make it from sugar cane, not corn. However, it is uncertain if this would really reduce gas prices. Not to mention,
Latham, a close ally of House Majority Leader John Boehner, said the tariff cut would be unlikely to pass the House.
Another question that is being debated is how useful ethanol really is. While the debate over gas prices is one thing, the larger issue here is renewable energy. Is ethanol really a viable energy resource? Recent studies coming out of Cornell University have found that ethanol actually takes more energy to make than it produces. Basically that is bad. So even if ethanol could replace a sizable chunk of our foreign oil imports we might be better off looking for ways to power our vehicles with natural gas or coal (the biggest electricity producers in the U.S.).
What a lot of people are depending on in the future of ethanol is that there will be some technology advances. However, those advances are expected to come from finding new sources for ethanol, like plant wastes and wood chips. So what does this all mean? I don’t really know either, but it seems like the benefits Iowa derives from the ethanol industry might not be there in the future. (Maybe we should be focusing on that other renewable energy resource that we have a lot of…wind!)
May 12th, 2006
Some of these topics deserve a bit more coverage than this post will give them, but still, here are the skinnies…
- Tom Vilsack will make his first visit to New Hampshire next month, headlining a fund-raiser for Democrats from Manchester (NH’s largest city). He was supposed to go last Fall, but somehow hurricane Katrina forced him to reschedule. Past guests at this particular event include both Al Gore and John Kerry.
- Results from the immigrant protests are beginning to be quantified here in Iowa. United for the Safety and Dignity of Immigrants, a big immigrants’ rights organization here in Iowa, has estimated that 40,000 Iowans participated in the May 1 “Day Without Immigrants.” It’s also being estimated that 17 Iowans who participated were fired as a result. It seems impossible to even begin to understand how either of those statistics were compiled, but there they are.
- The University of Iowa is trying to improve gender equity in its faculty hiring and promotion process. They’re still well short of their (somewhat meager) goal of making their faculty 32% female by 2010, but a committee today proposed improving the situation with a fairer tenure review process that wouldn’t penalize women who take maternity leave. Women make up an “increasing” percentage of their faculty, but the “increase” is less than 1% a year.
- Archer Daniels Midland is building two new ethanol plants, one of which will be in Cedar Rapids (the other will be in Columbus, NE). Both plants will output about 275 million gallons a year. The Cedar Rapids plant will be finished in the second half of 2008, and it’ll expand ADM’s ethanol output from 1 billion gallons a year to 1.5 billion.
- Diebold screws up again, and it looks like it’s going to affect us in Iowa. Computer scientists are calling this newly discovered way of tampering with “black box” voting machines the “worst case scenario” and the “most serious security breach.” They won’t even describe the flaw because of the risk of any Joe Schmo doing it to tamper with or disable the voting machines. Maybe private companies shouldn’t be controlling the way we elect our government officials?
- And, finally, Iowa’s corn is looking a little purple. I don’t know enough about agriculture to know how big a deal it is, but it sounds kind of funny.
I’m going to try to take some time to write up another post about the political implications of the Maytag closure tonight, so don’t be alarmed that I haven’t included a single story on that in this roundup.
May 11th, 2006
Drew does a nice job of explaining why dragging Mike Mauro into CIETC is silly and why Yepson stanks.
The Register goes over Ed Fallon’s latest ads. They have some cute ideas, but I’m not sure cute is what one looks for in a successful gubernatorial tv ad. Also, why are they only running on cable tv? That seems a little anti-Fallon to me.
The Quad-City Times reports on fifth-graders learning about death the hard way: “Feathery down flew as the hawk scarfed down the first duckling and supplemented its feast with two more.”
There’s some good news at least. 81% of this year’s corn is in the ground. (How on earth do they know that?)
May 9th, 2006
Last week’s podcast was a huge success, so we’re bringing it back. Again, unfortunately, the feeds aren’t working yet, so you have to listen and download directly from here. As our software bugs are worked out, we’ll be able to do more in the RSS department.
On this week’s show, Hannah, Alec, and I discuss our GOTV push for the satellite voting station we had on campus last Friday, we reflect on the three campaigns’ visits to campus that day, and we assess the debates from last week.
May 3rd, 2006
This week has been busy for many members of Campus Democrats. Fallon and Blouin visited last week, we produced a podcast, we conducted interviews with campaign staffers, we set up a pretty ambitious GOTV/voter reg. strategy for tomorrow, and we tried to coordinate visits from all three campaigns. All of our events are open to the public, so please feel free to show up; and, if you’re a Poweshiek County resident, register and vote! (All county residents who are U.S. citizens are allowed to register and to vote at our Satellite Voting station.) The polls are open from 9 to 4.
Here’s the schedule of candidate visits:
The candidates are coming rain or shine, so if weather gets bad we’ll have new locations for the outdoor events nearby. And if you’d like to volunteer to help coordinate things, meet the Campus Dems representatives outside ARH; someone will be there for most of the day.
Campaign interviews with representatives of the Fallon and Culver campaigns will be up over the next 24 hours.
April 27th, 2006
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