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.
Mike Huckabee, outspent by his main rival 20-1 and considered a dark horse candidate just a few months ago, won the Iowa Republican Caucus by a comfortable margin.
Huckabee claimed victory during a speech before his supporters at about 9:40 p.m. Mitt Romney, who led in the polls for months, finished in second place and John McCain and Fred Thompson were fighting for third place.
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to love a state as much as I love my home state of Arkansas,” Huckabee said. “But tonight I love Iowa a lot.”
The number of Evangelical Christians voting in this year’s caucus was nearly double that of previous years. But Ted Sporer, the Polk County Republican Chairman and the author of a popular conservative blog, said Huckabee’s popularity cut across doctrines.
“His support came from Evangelicals but it also came from people like David Oman and (Polk County Supervisor) Bob Brownell, who are more moderate Republicans,” Sporer said.Here are the results with 85 percent of precincts reporting in:
Huckabee, 35,342, 34 percent of the vote; Romney, 26,067, 25 percent; Thompson, 13,805, 13 percent; McCain, 13,509, 13 percent; Paul, 10,006, 10 percent; Giuliani, 3,576, 4 percent; Hunter, 454, 1 percent.
Republicans across the state reported a huge turnout at caucus sites.
Huckabee was an asterisk in the polls for much of the summer despite a strong performance in the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames in August, an event won by Romney.
His poll numbers began taking off in November and grew through mid-December, when he held a double-digit lead over Romney in one poll. But Romney’s efforts to raise questions about Huckabee’s record on crime, taxes, and immigration — in addition to a close scrutiny by a press corps that had mostly ignored him for seven months of the campaign — brought his numbers back down to earth.
The two campaigns were a study in contrasts: Romney spent millions of dollars on television advertising for much of the year, while Huckabee’s cash-poor organization had to depend on retail politics to gain support. And while Romney used millions of dollars of his own money to finance his campaign, Huckabee was forced to travel out of state to raise money once his popularity soared.
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