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.
With relatively few worries about re-election for the first time, Sen. Tom Harkin is turning his efforts to helping state legislative candidates. A campaign email Monday steered Harkin supporters to a “Building Blue” page, where readers can enter their email address (thus building Harkin’s list) and vote on which legislative candidates should receive up to $7,000 from Harkin.
But a look in the drop-down boxes shows that incumbents with primaries are listed, but their challengers aren’t. A Harkin spokesperson said the list was provided by the House Democratic Caucus and did not constitute endorsement, but the House Democratic campaign director says otherwise.“We gave the Harkin team our list of all the House candidates,” House campaign director Kevin Boyd told Iowa Independent. “They made the decisions about who to include in their program and who not to include.”
Iowa Democrats have primaries in nine state House seats and one state Senate race. Three incumbents face primary challengers, and Harkin’s Building Blue page lists the incumbents but not the challengers.
“It’s a continuation of the same thing I’ve faced with the House caucus,” Ballard told Iowa Independent. He said that he had spoken with Harkin staff about the exclusion and that while they were sympathetic, they said they were taking their lead from the House caucus. “This is the same House caucus that has denied me access to the VAN,” the state party’s database, Ballard said.
In one open seat, one candidate was briefly listed while his primary rival was not. On Monday, the Harkin site included Windsor Heights Mayor Jerry Sullivan, but not his Democratic primary rival in open House District 59, Mark Matel. However, Harkin’s spokesperson said Sullivan’s inclusion was inadvertent, and Sullivan had been dropped from the page late Tuesday morning. The three incumbents with primary challengers were still listed.
In the other five House primaries, and the one Senate primary, the Breaking Blue page lists no candidates.
In the biggest contest of all, the not-quite-done presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Harkin is still neutral. In Iowa’s next-highest-profile contest, Harkin has endorsed 3rd District Congressman Leonard Boswell over primary challenger Ed Fallon.
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