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.
Under a proposed redistricting plan released Thursday by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency, only four of the state’s legislative districts would become battlegrounds for incumbents of opposite political parties.
New boundaries drawn for Iowa’s 100 House seats, if ultimately approved by the Legislature and Gov. Terry Branstad, would result in some instances of more than one incumbent being located in the same district. Of those potential conflicts, one district would create a face-off between incumbents of opposite parties, three districts combine two incumbent Democrats and nine districts combine incumbent Republicans. In addition, 14 districts were drawn that contain no incumbent legislators.
The proposed districts for the 50 seats in the Iowa Senate contain 7 instances of districts that will have no incumbent. In three of the newly drawn districts, incumbent Republicans and Democrats could face-off. One district has a match-up between Democrats and three districts have match-ups between Republican incumbents.
The new Senate districts that would contain both a Democrat and Republican incumbent are District 1 (Democrat Jack Kibbie and Republican David Johnson), District 21 (Democrat Matt McCoy and Republican Pat Ward), and District 26 (Democrat Mary Jo Wilhelm and Republican Merlin Bartz).
Newly formed House District 13 creates a conflict between Democrat Chris Hall and Republican Jeremy Taylor.
Iowa House District 8 would create a potential three-way contest between incumbent Republicans Stew Iverson, Linda Upmeyer and Henry Rayhons.
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