A few days ago, The Register wrote an article documenting State Representative Dawn Pettengill’s dissatisfaction with the Democratic leadership in the State House. Here’s a snippet:
“I’m just trying to get through this term as a Democrat,” said Pettengill, the former mayor of her hometown of Mount Auburn who is now in her third year in the Iowa House. “People elected me as a Democrat, and I would not change during a term, that’s for sure.”
Her indecision leaves Democratic leaders questioning whether they should recruit a replacement candidate for the 2008 primary, and Republican leaders wondering if she might be on their team by the general election.
Will she defect? Well, she says she won’t during this term. In general, though, I’m not too worried about it. Pettengill has always seemed concerned with her ability to get elected in a district that she perceives as leaning more Republican than Democrat. She has developed a reputation (partly, but not wholly, deserved) for being emotionally volatile. Although she has condemned other legislators’ pet projects and voted against them, she is somewhat famous for her own pet projects: last year, she sponsored legislation to ban stores from selling sex toys to minors, and this year, she was the main proponent of the bill that recently passed preventing Iowa from having any business dealings with businesses supporting the genocide in Darfur. (I don’t mean to claim that either of these bills is bad policy, but neither is exactly in the front of most Iowans’ minds.)
The Register notes a few key places where Pettengill differs from the Democratic leadership in the House, but none of them are cut and dry reasons for a defection to the Republicans (or even to the Independent ticket):
But the strain of the last month has taken a serious toll as she struggled with her dislike of bills dear to many Democrats — raising the minimum wage (she voted yes after some reluctance), upping the cigarette tax (she voted no), campaign finance reform (she may vote no), and allowing public employee unions to charge nonunion members a “fair share” fee (she firmly intends to vote no).
On raising the minimum wage, she did end up voting yes, and the political realities in her district meant that “some reluctance” on the vote was smart. On voting against the cigarette tax, she justifies her decision for liberal (dare I say Democratic) reasons:
During a caucus meeting on the cigarette tax two weeks ago, Pettengill wept as she explained that when she was 19 years old, she found herself living on her own with a baby, balancing college classes and a job. She couldn’t afford cigarettes, but they were such a critical source of comfort that she sacrificed food to buy them.
She objects to a cigarette tax because it is increcibly regressive — it takes money disproportionately from the poor, and, because it is a flat fee, it takes a greater percentage of the disposable income of a poor person than it does a rich person. Yes, it internalizes an externality, yadda yadda yadda; but there is a principled, liberal argument to be made against it. Frankly, I was surprised more members didn’t express that opinion. Maybe only a small minority of the party holds this view, but it isn’t because they are the more conservative members of the party.
On campaign finance reform, it really isn’t clear that all of the Democratic leadership are fully supporting the VOICE bill. Good liberals generally like it (despite the short-term strategic disadvantages it may present to parties currently in the majority of the legislature), but this isn’t exactly an issue that everyone is closely aligned over.
And finally, on FairShare, it disappoints many labor activists that Pettengill does not support it, but again, there is a fair amount of diversity among Democrats on this subject. Some have more union shops in their districts than others, and some have different opinions of labor unions than others. Our Democratic State Senator, Tom Reilly, voted against FairShare, and he isn’t leaving the party anytime soon. Again, it’s an issue where some people within the labor movement are doubting policies like this, so it isn’t’ only conservatives who oppose it.
So is it really just the House leadership’s fault that Pettengill is disgruntled, as others have claimed? No. The House leadership is doing its job. Their job is to push a Democratic agenda in the legislature, and they have to keep their members in line whenever they can. They’re getting results, and, unless Pettengill does end up defecting, no one will even remember this story in six months.
March 31st, 2007
When the Republicans had the majority in the state legislature, they passed laws like this that made voting more difficult by instituting restrictive ID laws for new voters. When they were trying to hold their majority in the state legislature, they did dirty tricks like this to suppress voting. But now that they’re in the minority, they’re not stopping their crusade to impede voting. In the State Senate, Assistant Minority Leader David Johnson has recently introduced a bill that would require voting places to close two hours earlier. If his bill becomes law, it would significantly impede the ability for working Iowans to make it to the polls. As we have commented before, there are already too many impediments to voting. In the 2006 election, voter turnout in Iowa was less than 40%. While most people would be concerned about the fact that voter turnout for such an important election was so low, by introducing this bill, David Johnson and the rest of the Republican leadership seem to be concerned that voter turnout was so high. Johnson and his Republican cronies should be ashamed of themselves for trying to put yet another stumbling block before Iowa voters.
January 28th, 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
