When Iowa Department of Public Health officials planned their health provider flu vaccinations, they learned that many Iowa providers were above the recommended age requirements to receive the live virus H1N1 vaccination. In fact, no providers in Van Buren County were below the cut off age of 49.

Expanding insurance coverage is important, experts say, but that is only half the battle. For many Americans, particularly in rural parts of the country, access to high quality health care services could remain elusive.

“We have some serious challenges in Iowa as it relates to the number of providers that we have,” said Tom Newton, executive director of the Iowa Department of Public Health. “We do have a high percentage of our population in Iowa that is insured at this time, and I would tell you that even some of them struggle right now to get access to health care. You can’t just assume that by providing people with a source of payment that you’ve provided them with access to health care.”

As The Iowa Independent has previously reported, the Hawkeye State, like many other rural states, is coping with a plummeting number of health care professionals, including specialists, primary care physicians, nurses and behavioral health professionals.

While several factors such as perceived career stress and compensation issues are at the root of the decline, the problem is also being amplified by a rapidly aging health care workforce.

As a part of H1N1 flu response and vaccination plan development for health care providers, Newton said he spoke with a public health administrator in Van Buren County about the department’s plan to utilize flu mist, a live-virus vaccination that is delivered through the nose like a nasal spray. Because that vaccination contains a live virus, its use has been restricted to certain age groups.

“Health care providers were going to be our targeted audience for using flu mist, at least in some cases. But, in Van Buren County they do not have any health care providers that are under the age 49,” Newton said, noting that regulations prohibit anyone 49 and up from using the live virus. “That presents problems for us from a vaccination standpoint, but what does that say about health care providers in those communities? There are probably going to be some of those folks who are eligible to retire within five years.”

The alarming demographics and shrinking number of health care workers in rural areas are not just limited to primary care doctors. Other components of health care are also in short supply in much of Iowa.

“We aren’t just talking about those people that are traditionally thought of as health care providers – it’s dentists, it’s mental health and it’s even pharmacy,” said Cheryll Jones, a southeastern Iowa pediatric nurse practitioner who serves on the board of the Iowa Rural Health Association. “There aren’t necessarily huge numbers of pharmacies in rural areas. So, even if you have a provider, you may have to travel a fair distance to get your prescription filled.

“[Workforce] is a concern that we have, and not just for rural, but especially for rural. Certainly, the need for folks to have health insurance is important, and that is where a lot of the focus has been, but access to insurance does not equate to access to care.”

A declining and aging workforce is probably the most publicly visible of the challenges facing a health care system, but it is far from the only challenge for rural areas. According to Tim Size, executive director of the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative, his state, like Iowa, has maintained a relatively low uninsured rate.

“We are very used to dealing with rural health in an environment where most people have insurance cards,” Size said. “People having insurance cards is much better than people not having insurance cards, but it doesn’t deal with the long, long list of issues that we have to struggle with.”

As health care companies react to the current global economic recession, there will be efforts to make health care services more centralized, which isn’t always in the best interest of rural consumers or providers.

“We need collaborative ways for rural to work with rural and for rural to work with urban that maintains services available in the rural areas,” Size said. “From that respect, we have to be very concerned about the economic incentives that will come with reform. … There are a lot of models floating around out there that have tended to be developed in urban communities and we need to be very cautious about those being mandated into rural communities without any demonstrating or testing of the idea.”

When it comes to the debate over improving health care, Newton said, “It all comes down to how you define access.” For many rural residents, the definition is likely to remain too narrow to make much of a difference.

The 2010 Agriculture Appropriations Act, which passed the U.S. House on Thursday and the Senate on Friday, contains $350 million that will benefit dairy farmers. Of that amount, $60 million will be used for cheese and other dairy product purchases. The commodity purchases will be used by the government to fill food banks for struggling families that have been hit by economic hard times.

The remainder of $290 million, earmarked for direct aid to dairy farmers, will be distributed at the discretion of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who is expected to rely heavily on the expertise of his dairy advisory committee. The funding is not expected to resolve the long-term problems plaguing dairy farmers, but should help many producers through the current financial crisis.

The appropriations bill totals $121.2 billion, including $23.3 billion in discretionary spending. Although many areas and programs received reduced federal funding as a part of the appropriations bill, Congress provided no funds for the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network, which was authorized as a part of the Farm Bill. Without the program, many states continue to scramble to meet the behavioral health needs of agricultural and rural workers under economic stress.

One of the areas that saw an increase in funding was the national food stamp program, which received $58.2 billion. That, when combined with stimulus monies from earlier in the year, results in a 19 percent increase from last year’s levels.

A program to assess the safety of Chinese chicken imports, heavily backed by the National Pork Producers Council, was also included in the bill. Language included in the bill allows the USDA to conduct scientific risk assessments on the safety of the processed chicken imports from China.

King scored a 96 out of 100, losing out on collecting the group’s “Defenders of Liberty” award due to his vote last year to override President George W. Bush’s veto of the $307 billion farm bill. The entire Iowa delegation voted to override.

Iowans were not completely shut out of the group’s awards, though. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Mt. Vernon, received the “True Liberals” award for voting against all 25 of the bills used to determine the rankings, scoring a perfect zero.

Rep. Tom Latham, R-Ames, scored an 88 percent, losing points for supporting an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and tax credits for alternative energy sources. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Waterloo, scored a 4 percent, voting against the group’s position on 24 of 25 issues (he initially voted against the financial services bailout but supported a later version). Rep. Leonard Boswell, D- Des Moines, also scored a 4 percent (he supported a bill permitting D.C. residents to own firearms in response to a Supreme Court decision).

In the Sentate, Republican Charles Grassley scored a 76 percent and Democrat Tom Harkin scored scored a 4 percent.

The 25 bills which the group used to compile its ratings reflect a cross-section of issues, including taxes, energy, climate change, unions and culture topics like abortion and gun ownership.

The ACU has issued its rankings every years since 1971, providing a numerical indicator of how much  lawmakers agree with the group’s conservative ideals. The group was founded in December 1964 following the defeat of Republican Barry Goldwater in that year’s presidential election. It is probably best known as the sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Sen. Barack Obama campaigns in Cedar Rapids, 7/31. (Photo: John Deeth)

70 percent: Obama’s winning percentage in his best county, the People’s Republic of Johnson County. Obama exceeded a local Lyndon Johnson record of 68 percent from 1964. The dusty old canvass books may tell if Obama’s margin breaks any sort of FDR record. Johnson County had by far the biggest Obama percentage in the state.

Other counties that traditionally go heavily Democratic, such as Des Moines, were just over 60 percent. Obama had an unusual hot spot on the Minnesota border, topping 60 in Winneshiek, Worth, and in his second best county, 63 percent in Howard. Democrats picked up highly targeted state House and Senate races in Winneshiek, so the extra effort may have been a factor.

81 percent: McCain’s winning percentage in his best county. One guess… yeah, Sioux County.

30,069: Obama’s Johnson County winning margin. Local Democrats set a goal of 25,000 months ago, and far exceeded John Kerry’s 19,000 margin.

4,173: John McCain votes in Iowa County.

4,173: Barack Obama votes in Iowa County, giving Iowa County the Golden Hanging Chad Award for close results. Cedar County got national attention in 2000 with an election night tie, but less attention for a final count that gave Al Gore the county by two votes.

55.2 percent: The percentage of Johnson County’s vote that came in as early ballots. Yes, more people voted before Election Day than on Election Day. Statewide, 533,967 voters had returned absentee ballots through midday Tuesday, 16 percent higher than 2004. Absentees postmarked by Monday, Nov. 3 can still be counted, which might affect a couple of the races listed below.

62.6 percent: Senator Tom Harkin’s winning margin. Some polls showed low-profile Republican Christopher Reed breaking 40 percent, but he landed at 37.4. That can now be marked as the official baseline for Republican votes in Iowa, a few points above Democrat Art Small’s 2004 loss to Chuck Grassley.

O. Kay Henderson at Radio Iowa reports that Reed has still not called to congratulate Harkin, but then, neither has Jim Ross Lightfoot, who lost to Harkin 12 years ago.

35.7 percent: Republican Dave Hartsuch’s count in the 1st Congressional District, lowest among the ten major party nominees. Rob Hubler made the deep red 5th District as competitive as any of the others, with 37.3 against Steve King.

42.2 percent: Republican Kim Schmett’s percentage, making his race against 3rd District Democrat Leonard Boswell, surprisingly, the closest in the state.

0: Iowa women elected to Congress or governorship, as Iowa remains in the club with Mississippi. Democrats had high hopes for Becky Greenwald in the 4th, but Tom Latham held her under 40 percent.

Likewise, the Iowa Republican blogosphere was convinced, without any neutral indications to guide them, that Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the 2nd District was the sleeper candidate of the entire nation. But she only pulled 38.9 percent to Democrat Dave Loebsack’s 57.1, with the remaining 4 points going to two other candidates.

31-19: The new Iowa Senate margin. Democrats gained three Senate districts. Swati Dandekar won an expected victory in open District 18 in Marion, and Mary Jo Wilhelm knocked off GOP incumbent Mark Zieman in District 8 in the northeast corner. Steve Sodders took open District 22 from the GOP in Marshall County. But two incumbent Democrats went down in defeat: Jeff Danielson in Waterloo’s District 10 and Frank Wood in the Quad Cities District 42.

6: State Rep. Wes Whitead’s lead in House District 1. Not percentage lead, vote lead. Six (6) votes, the state’s closest. Seesaw results and conflicting reports kept the Iowa House in question during the night. For a few hours, Rep. Elesha Gayman was shown as losing, but the highly-targeted Democrat held on once the absentees were added in.

160: Democrat Larry Marek’s winning margin in House in House District 89 for a Democratic gain. Marek won with a big margin in the Johnson County part of the district, the same way Becky Schmitz carried the corresponding Senate District 45 two years ago.

56-44: The new Iowa House margin, with six Democratic gains. In addition to Marek, the pickups were open district 16 in the northeast (John Beard) and 13 in Mason City (Sharon Steckman). Kerry Burt knocked off ex-TV anchor Tammy Weincek in Waterloo’s District 21. Gene Ficken defeated incumbent Dan Rassmussen in District 23 in Buchanan and Black Hawk counties. Phyllis Thede, who narrowly lost a Senate seat to Hartsuch two years ago, beat incumbent Jamie Van Fossen in Davenport’s District 81.

But Democrats lost three seats, including two in two northern Linn County. Nick Wagner beat Gretchen Lawyer in open District 36 (Dandekar’s old seat), and Renee Schulte bashed first term Rep. Art Staed over the head with a flowerpot (a frequent ad theme) in District 37 by 47 votes, which is within the provisional ballot and late absentee ballot margin.

Incumbent Democrat Mark Davitt appears to have lost in House District 74, though the Des Moines Register reports that Davitt’s campaign gathered different numbers and says they won.

If all results hold (Staed and Whitead may not), that’s a Democratic gain of three from the last session, but only a gain of two over the 2006 election results. In perhaps the most frustrating result for Democrats, party switcher Dawn Pettengill held on in Benton County’s District 39.

60.8 percent: The narrow winning margin for the $20 million Johnson County conservation bond. The issue got off to a roaring start with 70 percent of the absentee, but saw its margin drop through the night. Two vote No committees fought the measure, but by the time they got started many votes were already in the box. (Like mine–making their two robocalls asking me to vote no pretty much moot.) Local Republicans were urging a No vote on their headquarters answering machine, while the Democrats formally endorsed a Yes vote. With so many Democrats voting early, the election day pool of voters leaned more GOP than average. The measure won the Election Day vote in Iowa City by 60-40 but lost by the same margin in the rest of the county. Janelle Rettig of the Land Water Future vote Yes committee calculates the winning margin at 486 votes.

44: Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. Obama frequently credited Iowa for the Jan. 3 caucus win that sent him on the road to the White House, and that should help Iowa keep its place in the front of the line for the 2012 and 2016 nomination process.

Editor’s note: Some of these numbers could change before results are certified, so take them with a grain of salt.

“I think this is the type of year where that is possible,” Culver said in an interview at Obama’s Friday rally. “It could be like 1964. We (Democrats) literally had people on the ballot in 1964 who didn’t even know they were on the ballot.”

In Iowa’s Fifth District, Democrat Rob Hubler of Council Bluffs is challenging three-term U.S. Rep. Steve King,. R-Kiron.

“Perhaps the people of the Fifth District want a change,” said Culver, a Democrat.

While King is considered the decided favorite by all logical measures, Culver said Democratic momentum, turnout and early voting are off the charts — all factors that could sweep Hubler past a stunned King.

Obama’s visit to Des Moines in the final days of the campaign helps candidates up and down the ticket across the state, Culver said in an interview with Iowa Independent following Obama’s speech to an estimated crowd of 25,000 in downtown Des Moines.

“The fact that he’s here is really going to help us down the stretch as far as getting everyone to the polls,” Culver said.

Barry Goldwater lost one of the great landslides of American history in 1964. But the 2008 numbers aren’t at landslide levels, at least not yet. Chuck Todd of MSNBC thinks an Obama popular vote win is a certainty, since Obama does way better in red states than John Kerry did, but a McCain electoral college win is still possible.

But CNN reported yesterday that McCain bailing out of Iowa, New Mexico and Colorodo yesterday. McCain, who’s known to be a gambling man, needs to draw to an inside straight, run the table, hit the superfecta… choose your long-odds gambling metaphor, and insert Pennsylvania as your long-shot horse.

Steven Stark at Real Clear Politics argues that, rather than 1964, 2008 more closely resembles 1968 or 1932 — a year of realignment to be followed four years hence by the landslide:

Parties decisively thrown out of power usually spend the next campaign turning to their fringe, on the theory that “if we had only stuck to our principles, instead of compromising, we would have won.” Already we can see numerous Republicans mouthing that mantra. If followed to its conclusion, the result in 2012 will be the same as it was in 1936 when the Republicans nominated Alf Landon after the FDR landslide in 1932, and in 1972 when the Democrats nominated George McGovern after the GOP won the White House in 1968.

Read Iowa’s Republican blogs and you’ll see that already: the state convention Republican National Committee election where party stalwarts were replaced by the heads of the Iowa Christian Alliance and Iowa Right to Life, the complaints that longshot U.S. Senate Candidate Chris Reed and 1st District congressional nominee Dave Hartsuch are being undercut by the “Romney Party of Iowa,” the Iowa Christian Alliance’s call for a no vote on all judges unless they get answers on “whether the judge leans to the left or to the right.” They’re convinced that the road to victory starts with a hard right turn.

If they do that, Stark argues, other forces will come into play:

But beyond that, the Republicans could face an even greater challenge. In times of economic turmoil, American history teaches us that voters usually seek out a populist alternative. The greatest political threat to FDR in the early ’30s came not from the Republicans but from his own party’s Huey Long, with his “share the wealth” economics.

The Kingfish, of course, was removed from the equation with his 1935 assassination. But Stark — now that’s funny, Long was semi-fictionalized as “Willie Stark” in “All The King’s Men — Stark argues that the populist of the 2010s may be a revived Pat Buchanan, or fellow talking head Lou Dobbs playing the immigration card.

One could add Ron Paul to that list. Though he’s running for re-election to Congress as a Republican, the one-time presidential candidate and internet phenomenon has endorsed Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party for president, and in a post-apocalyptic Republican landscape, Paul and his massive fundraising and contact lists could be a key player.

Nichols said active and growing progressive groups are standing up to power and winning more consistently than pundits and politicians want you to know.

He took the time to talk with the Iowa Independent by phone Monday afternoon about politics, the media and Iowa’s role in selecting the next president.What will your speech Friday evening focus on?

What I’ll be saying is what I’ve said a lot in the states of the upper Midwest, but especially in Iowa, and that is that Iowans actually created the current presidential race. They recognized the remarkable nature of Barack Obama’s presidency on the Democratic side, and they saw through the Bush administration’s efforts to put up [Massachusetts Gov.] Mitt Romney as a candidate. They rejected him and went for [Arkansas Gov. Mike] Huckabee, which kept [Sen. John] McCain alive to ultimately win the Republican nomination. So to a larger extent in many years, Iowa has defined this presidential race.

The interesting thing is that it’s going to come back to Iowa. In fact, Iowa will be a critical battleground state throughout the race. It’s important that Iowans don’t just let this happen to them. They should be pressuring the candidates and continuing to define this race. They have the power to do so because it is a battleground state, but more than that, I think the three upper Midwest states of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, all of which were essential to Obama winning the Democratic nomination, voted for him because he was a progressive. They voted for him because they saw him as clearly the most anti-war of the candidates, but also because they saw him as a break from Bush-ism. Arguably, the way to understand the 2008 presidential election is that everybody is trying to get away from Bush, and I think it’s very important that folks in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin don’t lose sight of that and don’t let Barack Obama let them down. If he starts to waiver on the war, civil liberties, trade policy, campaign finance, as he has and has disappointed some people, then Iowans should give the message that they expect more from their candidates than just boring centrist politics.

Are you getting a sense that progressives around the country are getting worried of late with Barack Obama?

The [The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] vote especially concerned a lot of people. I hear that, but I don’t hear an outright abandonment by progressives. It’s not like I hear “Oh, we’re not going to back Obama now.” It’s just a matter of how excited they get about him and also has some impact on his ability to draw people to the polls.

The goal of Republicans is going to be to make Obama look like just another politician. If they can succeed in doing that, they are going to succeed in depressing turnout in November. That’s something the Obama people have to be very cautious about.

One of the things I’ll be talking about this week is my sense that the problem here is that people on the East Coast and West Coast do not trust the Midwest. They don’t understand us. They refer to the Midwest as “flyover country.” They think that Midwesterners are a bunch of ignorant, easily duped quasi racists. That’s the image of the Midwest a lot of East and West Coasters have. The reality is that people in Iowa on Jan. 3 went to the polls and essentially made it possible for an African American to be president. Far from being the dupes that Midwesterners are portrayed as, we can be more ahead of the curve than most folks. We’ve sorted out most of the complexities and controversies of this race.

Yet one of the big dangers is that political strategists from New York and Washington, D.C., will say to Obama that he has to dumb himself down and become a boring centrist in order to appeal to the battleground states in the upper Midwest. The fact is, nothing could be further from the truth.

Here’s a question for you. Since 1964 when Lyndon Johnson had his landslide election, who did the best as the Democratic nominee for president in the Midwest?

Bill Clinton?

Nope. Not by a long shot. Bill Clinton barely got 50 percent in the Midwestern states. It was Mike Dukakis. He had some of his best finishes in the upper Midwest. But he was dismissed by the folks on the East Coast as this intellectual elite, but Midwesterners voted for him without batting an eye. They prefer somebody who is smart and talks to them in a realistic and progressive manner. When Democrats abandon progressive messaging is when they run into trouble. The progressive message goes back to the roots of the Midwest. Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin became primary backers of the Republican Party prior to the Civil War, when the Republican Party was a radical party. These states at the turn of the last century were hotbeds of populist, progressive activism. These three states, back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Democrats were having a terribly tough time winning Senate seats, bucked the trends and backed progressive candidates.

Iowa elects Tom Harkin, defeating a conservative Republican incumbent. Then, Minnesota elects Paul Wellstone, defeating a conservative Republican opponent. Then in 1992, Wisconsin elects Russ Feingold to the Senate, again defeating a conservative Republican incumbent. Here’s where it gets really interesting. Harkin, Wellstone while he was alive and Feingold have kept getting re-elected, even though they are consistently accused of being too left-wing, too dangerous, too scary for the Midwest and the Democratic Party. There is a terrible misinterpretation of these states by campaign strategists, and the biggest danger they have this time around is if they make Barack Obama too boring and too centrist. If they do, he will suffer the fate of Al Gore and John Kerry.

What do progressives in Iowa need to do to make sure that doesn’t happen?

Look at the recent congressional election cycle. Who won? Bruce Braley and David Loebsack. What did they do? They ran to the left in their primaries and during the general elections. The answer in Iowa is not to dumb it down and go centrist. It doesn’t work in Iowa, and it doesn’t work in other states, either. The pollution of our political process has been that so much of our national media and national political crowd have so much disrespect for the Midwest and the middle of the country and have convinced a lot of political activists that the folks in the middle of the country are a bunch of yahoos. The fact of the matter is, if the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington had come up with a candidate to run against [former Iowa First District U.S. Rep.] Jim Leach, it wouldn’t have been anybody like David Loebsack. There’s no way they would have let him run. In fact, they didn’t get excited about him until they realized he might win.

It’s important for Iowans to realize their own genius. To figure out that they’ve got it figured out. They have to stop bowing to some consultants and strategist from somewhere else. They know how to win.

With that in mind, how important is it to keep the Iowa Caucuses first in the nation?

I’m for Iowa being first. And I’m a big fan of reforming the political process around the country in a bunch of ways. I’m not the biggest fan of caucuses. I think they have a lot of problems. They don’t get the turnout that primaries do, even in Iowa where you have the most popular caucuses in the country. That, in my opinion, is a serious issue. That’s something I would like people to think about seriously, not just in Iowa, but across the country. It’s better to have the maximized turnout.

But, that said, I like the idea of Iowa and New Hampshire going first. These states are serious about the political process, and the people in these states are often able to see beyond and break through the spin that comes out of Washington. They vote for a candidate that’s not supposed to have a chance, and that sends a powerful message across the country. They also reject candidates who are just PR put-up jobs. I don’t think you want to lose that political wisdom.

Look at what Iowa did this year. Against all the expectations, Iowa voted for an African American guy and a preacher from Arkansas. That was not how this race was supposed to go. I think any time that a state is able to not only think for itself but break pattern and do things the political process doesn’t like, that’s something we ought to wrap our arms around and embrace. We should say, “Thank you, keep doing it.”

Do you have an opinion on who would make the best running mate for Obama?

Tom Harkin. He would be a great vice-presidential candidate. Russ Feingold would be an absolutely fantastic candidate. Only the screwed-up thinking of Washington and New York, where I spend a lot of my time, so I don’t hate these places, but only the screwed-up thinking of strategists who don’t come out to battleground states would imagine for a second that those would not be good choices. A fiery populist who could go out and deliver a great speech, that would be someone great to put on Obama’s side.

Here’s one of the realities of politics that doesn’t get mentioned enough: When you pick a vice-presidential candidate, the most evil thing imaginable is the idea of balancing the ticket. Obama has a liberal image, so people say he has to pick a conservative to run with him. The problem with that strategy is that we have a disproportional amount of vice presidents who one day become presidents. Or at the very least become the next nominee of the party. Balancing the ticket is not a very healthy strategy, because it’s almost saying that “I want to win this time, but I’m going to cede the future. I’m going to guarantee that the future belongs to someone who isn’t like me and doesn’t share my values.”

How well do you think the mainstream media has done covering the presidential race?

A lousy job. I don’t call it mainstream media anymore because they’ve so botched their franchise that now increasingly people are turning to places like the Iowa Independent for their information. People are rejecting what was once the mainstream and are looking for new ways to get information.

Our major media in this country does a rotten job of covering politics. It gets more excited about rumors and stereotypes than it does about issues and practical challenges for this country. Our media in this country would rather do anything but look at the serious issues in this campaign.

We are at war in Iraq today not because of George Bush and Dick Cheney but because the media in the U.S. did a lousy job of covering the run-up to the war in Iraq. Bush is president today because major media did a lousy job of covering the Florida recount in 2000. They actually allowed James Baker to say that recounting votes is somehow too difficult to do. The fact is, we’ve been recounting elections since the founding of the republic. The race in 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams was filled with recounts, at least 36 recounts. We don’t have a problem with recounts in this country — we have a problem with media that are so inept, so incompetent that it relies more on spin than on going out and doing real journalism.

Media in this country have replaced civic and democratic values with commercial and economic values.

The newspaper you work for, the Capitol Times in Madison, Wis., has gone through quite a transition in recent years. How has the change from a daily, print paper to an online-focused publication changed the way you and your staff operate?

It’s definitely changed things a lot. The Cap Times still puts out two weekly print editions, so it hasn’t quite made the whole leap into the digital age, but it’s not there in the traditional, daily form any longer. The afternoon daily newspaper is a disappearing reality. It was getting to the point where, though the Cap Times had one of the highest proportional circulations of any afternoon daily in the country, it was still just not growing or expanding. A tremendous amount of energy was being put into trying to stay above water circulation wise as an afternoon daily.

Because the morning space was not open to us, the choice was made to try going online and really pouring resources into a digital reality. Really covering stories like you would for a daily newspaper, but putting them up instantaneously, updating them, having a lot more commentary, and it seems to work very well, especially for those of us who still cling to some of the old print realities. There is a lot of traffic on the Web site. It seems to be influential, and politicians seem to take it seriously.

The goal was to continue and maybe expand its influence and its ability to speak out, and that seems to be working. I’m not going to say everything is working, and you know full well that it is hard and sometimes challenging to know what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.

As long as the Cap Times can remain a strong, progressive voice in the upper Midwest as it has been since 1917, then I’m pretty happy about it.

Do you see this as the model newspapers will one day have to follow?

I do. I’m not saying that I’m happy about it. I’m a big fan of the daily newspaper. If I go to a town, I pick up the newspaper. It’s something I’ve always done, and I don’t like the idea of moving away from print. But the rapidly declining circulations of daily newspapers, the diminishing of their own size and the decreasing in the amount of coverage they’ve done is troubling.

A great example is the Des Moines Register, which remains one of the better regional dailies in the country, but it has certainly pulled itself in. When I was a kid, it went to every county in Iowa, and it covered every county in Iowa. In Wisconsin, with the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel, they covered the entire state. That doesn’t happen anymore. It’s not because editors and journalists don’t want to cover things. It’s because it’s getting harder to do, certainly economically.

Going digital is going to become more common, but I want to emphasize that simply going digital without providing the resources isn’t going to work. Going digital costs a lot of money, because while you don’t have cost of printing and distribution, to do what you need to do and to cover all of a community, region or state, you have to have people and you have to pay them a decent wage. The reality is that ultimately we can’t have really good quality journalism without some sort of long-term compensation for the people that produce it.

When all this does sort out, advertisers are going to go to sites and bloggers that attract a lot of interest, and that’s going to be done with quality coverage. Quality is going to be the deciding factor.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement will hold their statewide convention Friday and Saturday at the Hotel Fort Des Moines. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

There’s 125 ballgames this fall in the battle for the Iowa Legislature. More players may yet get on the field, but as of the primary, one of the big two teams is forfeiting the fight in 36 of those contests.

Parties have until Aug. 15 to nominate legislative candidates by convention. Minor party and independent candidates have the same deadline.Unopposed seats are a dirty little open secret of politics. Neither political party responded to requests for a post-primary update. Parties like to keep the free rides they have, don’t want to look bad for failed candidate recruitment efforts and no one wants to acknowledge that sometimes the lines and demographics determine the outcome and some races are just not winnable.

Take for example open Senate District 2 in the state’s northwest corner, where George Bush’s 2004 margin in Sioux County was larger than his statewide total. That’s right, if Sioux County had been ceded to South Dakota, John Kerry would have won a 98-county Iowa. District 2 is one of six Senate races, out of 25, that Democrats are letting slide.

Most of those are on heavily GOP turf. But if an election year turns into a massive partisan landslide, like 1964 or 1974 for the Democrats or 1994 for the Republicans, parties may well regret any lost opportunities such as Senate District 30. Rumors of a top-tier Democratic candidate in that West Des Moines district, against Republican incumbent Pat Ward, failed to materialize.

Republicans are only leaving one Democratic senator unopposed, with no candidate against the state’s longest-serving legislator, Jack Kibbie, in District 4. But they’ve left 20 House seats unchallenged.

Many of those are in heavily Democratic areas. The three House members with districts that are entirely in Johnson County are all unopposed. Greens and Libertarians have run, but Vicki Lensing has not seen a GOP opponent since her first run in 2000, and Mary Mascher has not faced a Republican since her second term in 1996.

While Democrat Doris Kelley only carried the then-open House District 20 in Black Hawk County with 51.5 percent in 2006, there is no Republican candidate this time. The GOP is also letting Mary Gaskill’s House District 93 in Ottumwa slide. Though Wapello County is also strongly Democratic, the seat was held briefly by Republican Galen Davis. However, his one win was mainly the result of some divisive Democratic primaries.

Democrats are running candidates in 90 of 100 House contests, leaving 10 uncontested.

The Democrats aren’t running against Mike May, R-Spirit Lake, in House District 6. Democrat Greg Stevens once held the seat. Redistricting made the district less Democratic in 2002, but he held on by less than 100 votes before May beat him by 1000 votes in 2004.

Democrats also made serious recent efforts at House District 79 centered in Cedar County. Democrat Mike Owen ran hard against GOP incumbent Dan Boddicker in 2002 and lost a close race to Jeff Kaufmann in 2004. Democratic numbers slipped a bit in 2006 when Owen chose not to run. Democrat Rebecca Spears, a self-starter unknown to party activists, filed this year but quit the race.

House District 69 is open this year as moderate Walt Tomenga is stepping down. He saw a competitive 2004 race but won handily in 2006. Conservative Erik Helland won big in the GOP primary, and moderates who backed Tomenga and primary loser Al Lorenzen have no Democratic option.

Races with no Republican candidate

Senate District 4: Jack Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg
House District 15: Brian Quirk, D-New Hampton
House District 20: Doris Kelley, D-Waterloo
House District 22: Deborah Berry, D-Waterloo
House District 24: Roger Thomas, D-Elkader
House District 25: Tom Schueller, D-Maquoketa
House District 30: Dave Jacoby, D-Coralville
House District 34: Todd Taylor, D-Cedar Rapids
House District 42: Geri Huser, D-Altoona
House District 46: Lisa Heddens, D-Ames (this race will likely have a Libertarian Party candidate)
House District 48: Donovan Olson, D-Boone
House District 49: Helen Miller, D-Ft. Dodge
House District 66: Ako Abdul-Samad, D-Des Moines
House District 68: Rick Olson, D-Des Moines
House District 77: Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City
House District 78: Vicki Lensing, D-Iowa City
House District 88: Dennis Cohoon, D-Burlington
House District 90: John Whitaker, D-Hillsboro
House District 93: Mary Gaskill, D-Ottumwa

Races with no Democratic candidate

Senate District 2:  Open Seat (Dave Mulder retiring, Randy Feenstra GOP nominee)
Senate District 26: Steve Kettering, R-Lake View
Senate District 28: James Seymour, R-Woodbine
Senate District 30: Pat Ward, R-West Des Moines
Senate District 32: Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale
Senate District 36: Paul McKinley, R-Chariton
House District 5: Royd Chambers, R-Sheldon
House District 6: Mike May, R-Spirit Lake
House District 51: Rod Roberts, R-Carroll
House District 63: J. Scott Raecker, R-Urbandale
House District 69: Open Seat (Walt Tomenga retiring, Erik Helland GOP nominee)
House District 79: Jeff Kaufmann, R-Wilton
House District 82: Linda Miller, R-Bettendorf
House District 83: Steven Olson, R-DeWitt
House District 97: Rich Anderson, R-Clarinda
House District 98: Greg Forristall, R-Macedonia

Kyle D. Payne, 22 of Ida Grove, presented his guilty plea Monday in Iowa District Court for Buena Vista County. He agreed he was guilty of felony attempted burglary in the second degree and two counts of invasion of privacy, a serious misdemeanor.

In documents filed with the court, Payne agrees that “with an intent to arouse my sexual desire, I photographed and filmed Jane Doe and her breast without her consent.” A portion of the plea agreement stating that Payne was of sound mind when the incident took place in early 2007 was stricken from the document, leaving only the portion where Payne agrees that he is currently of sound mind.

At the time of the incident, Payne had been employed by Buena Vista University as a dormitory resident adviser. Police reports indicate that while attending to an intoxicated and unconscious female student, Payne reportedly assaulted and photographed her. The guilty plea entered Monday did not include assault charges. Tips received by police and campus security following the incident led to a 10-month investigation that resulted in Payne’s arrest in February.

Payne has been posting to a personal blog, The Road Less Traveled, since November 2007 and has made violence — especially sexual violence against women — a focus of his writings there. In the “meet the blogger” section he writes:

Kyle is a social justice educator, writer, and activist. Much of his work is concerned with putting a stop to violence against women. For years Kyle has served as an advocate for survivors of sexual violence and other forms of abuse, in addition to promoting what he calls ‘a more just and life-affirming culture of sexuality’ through activism and education. As a researcher, Kyle has studied the feminist anti-pornography movement and is particularly interested in men’s roles in confronting pornography and the rape culture. In addition to his pro-feminist work, he is involved with anti-racist, free speech, peace, and anti-globalization movements.

The page goes on to list his educational degrees, awards and years of involvement in various groups.

Payne, who identified with radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin, attended a training for feminist anti-pornography activists in January at the University of Texas in Austin. An article in the Ida County Courier stated that Payne had “written papers and given several public presentations on feminist critiques of pornography, prostitution, and the ‘rape culture,’ in addition to serving as an advocate for survivors of sexual violence.” According to a resume previously posted on his blog, he has attended many such conferences since 2004.

Payne faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $7,500. As a condition of the plea deal, the state has agreed that no other charges will be filed as a result of this incident. Sentencing has been set for Aug. 11.

Leonard Boswell and Ed Fallon? Nope. Hop in the Wayback Machine and set the dial to 1970, when Republican incumbent Fred Schwengel and challenger David Stanley faced off in Iowa’s last primary challenge to a congressional incumbent — nearly 40 years ago.

David Stanley, 1968

David Stanley is better known in this century for his leadership of the conservative group Iowans for Tax Relief than for his U.S House and Senate bids. Schwengel, who died in 1993, is the name behind the Mississippi River Bridge on Interstate 80. But in 1970, the two faced off in what was then numbered the 1st Congressional District.

Schwengel won that June 1970 contest, with 56 percent to Stanley’s 44 percent. Stanley carried the counties in his old legislative district, Muscatine and Louisa. The race was studied by University of Iowa political scientists Donald Johnson and James Gibson, who published an article in the March 1974 edition of the American Political Science Review that called the race a classic example of “the divisive primary.”

Like Boswell, Schwengel had only one loss on his electoral record, in a heavily partisan year. In the Republican watershed year of 1994 Boswell, then a state senator, was the lieutenant governor running mate on Bonnie Campbell’s losing ticket. He came back from that loss to win his Congressional seat in 1996. Fred Schwengel, first elected to Congress in 1954 after a decade representing Davenport in the state legislature, lost his seat to Democrat John Schmidhauser in the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964. He then came back to beat Schmidhauser in a 1966 rematch.

David Stanley, like Ed Fallon, raised his profile by giving up his legislative seat and losing a statewide race. In Fallon’s case, it was the 2006 gubernatorial primary, where he finished third but won a surprisingly strong 26 percent, and actually won the area that makes up the 3rd Congressional District where he’s running now. Stanley lost a 1968 U.S. Senate race to Harold Hughes, but came within 5,000 votes — 1/2 of 1 percent — of upsetting the popular sitting Democratic governor.

Stanley’s Muscatine-based legislative district, like the turf Fallon represented in inner-city Des Moines from 1993 to 2006, was safe for his party. Stanley served in the state House from 1959 to 1964 and moved to the state Senate for one term. He won that state senate race with 60% in the Democratic landslide year of 1964. With a safe seat, a candidate can take positions that excite activists who vote in primaries, rather than compiling a middle-of-the-road record that draws moderate votes in general elections.

Fred Schwengel, 1970
“Schwengel, 63, ran as an experienced and moderate legislator who, as a member of the Committee on Public Works, had been attentive to his constituents and their needs,” wrote Johnson and Gibson. “Stanley, 42, campaigned vigorously from house to house and in frequent professionally made television announcements. He stressed his own state legislative record and invariably charged that Schwengel was insufficiently regular as a Republican — that his party unity score was lowest among all of Iowa’s congressmen.”

Stanley’s charges are echoed today by Fallon, who argues that Boswell’s voting record, particularly his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war, is too conservative for a Democrat. But in one key difference between the 1970 race and this year’s contest, Boswell has hurled the party loyalty issue back at Fallon, citing his 2000 support for Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader over Democrat Al Gore.

Another difference between the 1970 battle and this year’s contest is that only one party has a primary contest in 2008. Democrats know that either Boswell or Fallon’s Republican opponent in November will be former congressional staffer Kim Schmett. But in 1970, 1st District Democrats also had a spirited primary. State representative Ed Mezvinsky, an attorney and consumer advocate, prevailed over anti-Vietnam War professor William Albrecht and law-and-order sheriff William “Blackie” Strout. Mezvinsky’s campaign featured distinctive ads showing voters butchering his name that later became literally textbook examples of name-ID ads.

Johnson and Gibson surveyed activists in both parties before the primary and again just before the November general election. They found that most established Republican activists had backed incumbent Schwengel, just as the establishment of the Democratic Party is backing Boswell this year. In their post-primary study, they found that 60 percent of the respondents who backed primary losers intended to vote split tickets in the fall, compared to only 31 percent of the activists who had backed winners Schwengel and Mezvinsky. “There was no intensive or comprehensive effort made by the winners to recruit people who had been active for the opposition in the primary,” wrote Johnson and Gibson. “Only a few, possibly no more than three to five, Stanley workers volunteered to work in the Schwengel campaign; most of those who continued their political work did shift to other campaigns.”

While Schwengel prevailed over Mezvinsky in November 1970, Mezvinsky came back and finally ended Schwengel’s career in 1972. Schwengel went on to serve as U.S. Capitol historian before his death in 1993.

Before founding Iowans for Tax Relief in 1978, Stanley returned to the state House for one term in 1972, and lost another close U.S. Senate race, this time to John Culver, in 1974.