Although no elected officials have been willing to embrace the idea of selling (or leasing) the Iowa Lottery, the newspaper Iowa depends upon has been treating it as the most serious policy proposal of the 2009 legislative session.

Des Moines Register Political columnist David Yepsen staked his credibility on the claim that “The fix is in” — that the state’s sale of the lottery was “a done deal” — last Thursday.  That’s because “Powerful people such as Gov. Chet Culver, Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy and Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal are saying nice things about the idea.”  (Or maybe it’s because Civic Skinny said so.)

Never mind the fact that, at least as of last Thursday, there were too many unanswered questions in the capitol to assess whether the idea has legs at all.  Never mind the fact that “saying nice things” entailed speaking noncommittally, in generalities, after being pressed by Des Moines Register reporters on the subject.  Never mind that Jason Clayworth, the paper’s own captiol reporter, said “I don’t believe it has serious consideration this session” in a web video debate with Yepsen on Friday (below).

Even the announcement from the governor’s office Saturday that its proposed budget would not include selling the lottery failed to convince Yepsen to change the subject.  He wrote not one, but two columns about selling the lottery over the weekend.  The Register newsroom also pushed out two breaking news text message alerts to its list of mobile phone subscribers regarding Culver’s announcement that he was not going to sell the lottery, as if it was shocking, front page news.  (And then, in the Sunday Register, it was.)

The Register may see this as a victory for themselves.  They lambasted a proposal to sell the lottery that no elected official was willing to put his or her name behind, and Culver ultimately rejected it.  But not before GOP legislators were able to use Yepsen’s work as a springboard to launch their own media offensive.

This was a manufactured controversy from beginning to end.

(Of course, if the proposal becomes more serious even after Culver’s decision to exclude it from his budget, we’ll be watching it as closely as anyone.  We just prefer to wait for more hard information than our ink-stained colleagues before we unleash a series of critical articles and columns about a particular subject.)