Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
There’s an interesting discussion going on at the liberal blog Bleeding Heartland about the cause of failed prevailing wage vote, and some of the blame is going to President Barack Obama.
In July, the Iowa Independent reported on the Obama campaign’s move to effectively replace the Iowa Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign with a campaign funded by Obama and focused on electing him rather than the entire Democratic ticket.
In other recent campaign cycles, the state party’s coordinated campaign was the method by which Democrats pooled their resources to avoid certain campaign redundancies. Candidates could buy into the campaign, and the state party would provide them with resources they otherwise couldn’t afford.
When Iowa Independent’s story about the largely disbanded coordinated campaign broke, many worried that an intensified focus on the Obama campaign would hurt down-ticket races, particularly state legislative races in areas where Obama was not focusing his efforts.
According to Bleeding Heartland:
… staffers and volunteers in the unprecedented number of Obama field offices didn’t even collect voter IDs for our state House and Senate candidates. Our legislative candidates weren’t usually mentioned in scripts for canvassers and rarely had their fliers included in lit drops.
In the end, Obama carried this state by 9 points, but we lost several excrutiatingly close races:
Incumbent Art Staed lost House district 37 by 13 votes.
Incumbent Mark Davitt lost House district 74 by 163 votes.
Our incumbents almost lost House districts 1 and 8, which the Republicans weren’t even seriously targeting.
Jerry Sullivan lost House district 59 by 93 votes.
Kurt Hubler lost House district 99 by 370 votes
In an interview with the Iowa Independent after the general election, the Obama campaign’s state director Jackie Norris (who is now Michelle Obama’s chief of staff) said more should have been done to educated voters about down ballot races. That would have made Obama’s coattails longer in the Hawkeye state.
The prevailing wage debacle has given Democratic leadership a black eye and has emboldened the state’s GOP. It has raised rifts within the party and hurt the chances of other labor-backed bills later in the session. Democrats were confident they had the 51 votes necessary to pass the bill, but the coalition imploded when an amendment to the measure proposed by Rep. McKinley Bailey failed to win passage. In response, Bailey, a Democrat from Webster City, voted “no” and the weekend-long stalemate began.
Monday afternoon, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy changed his vote to a “no,” a move that will allow him to bring the bill up for reconsideration later this session. Thus the bill failed on a vote of 49-49.
Follow Jason Hancock on Twitter
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter