House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Creative Commons photo by Cosmic Smudge via Flickr)

WASHINGTON — How effectively will the U.S. House health care bill cover children? Turns out, it depends on where they live.

The $894 billion health reform bill working its way toward a House vote this week would repeal the Children’s Health Insurance Program, shifting some low-income kids into Medicaid and others into private plans that would both cost more and guarantee fewer benefits. Which program the youngsters tumble into hinges, not on need, but on the state where they live — a design some advocates call “the lottery of geography.”

Read more at The Iowa Independent’s sister site, The Washington Independent.

Iowa social conservatives have attempted to introduce a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage for several years, but Democrats have successfully blocked it from coming up for a full vote.  Supporters of same-sex marriage rights say that Iowa’s relatively difficult amendment process helps ensure that, if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that is favorable to same-sex couples, a constitutional amendment that would reverse the ruling would take years to write into law.

But not every constitutional amendment becomes such a political hot potato, and some constitutional amendments move forward with almost no controversy attached.

Just this week, a proposed amendment that would devote a portion of a future sales tax increase to natural resources projects received its second round of approval from the state legislature, winning by wide margins in both the House and Senate.  In 2010, it will be on the general election ballot for voters to approve.

And just last year, Iowans approved the so-called “idiot” amendment, which removes the word “idiot” from the state constitution’s voter eligibility requirements.  That may not have been the most cleanly executed example of passing a constitutional amendment in Iowa, but the actual amendment did not spark much controversy.

In addition to defending his plan to cut the state’s budget in light of economic woes, Culver confirmed he would likely run for reelection in 2010, he begged off a question about Postville, and he agreed with the idea of raising the compulsory school attendance age to 18.

The program airs tonight at 7:30 and again on Sunday morning at 11:30.

Update: The Register’s Jason Clayworth emphasizes a different part of Culver’s interview, in which he said that the state should consider taking on debt.  I wasn’t there, but it sounds like that’s probably the big story based on what Culver said.

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.

“Obama has the right vision for a new national politics and a new global reputation,” wrote the editorial board.  “Obama stands tall among this already strong group as both the candidate of hope and the candidate of change we can believe in.”

Reviewing the rest of the field, the paper adds:

The more Biden, Dodd and Clinton draw upon their experience in the internecine personal battles within Washington or between world leaders, the more voters identify them with the broken political system in which they have gained their experience. And the more Richardson and Edwards lay claim to an outsider status, the more they risk having their call for change get lost in their rhetoric — which is what seems to have happened especially to Edwards in this campaign.

“We are left wishing more Republican candidates had been willing to make time for local editorial boards — and for Johnson County in general,” wrote the Press-Citizen.  Despite its heavily Democratic vote percentages, the People’s Republic is in the top ten Republican counties in the state based on number of registered Republicans, and in the Republican’s simplified caucus process, raw numbers are what matters.

The Press-Citizen limited its choices to only those candidates who talked with the editorial board.  “Invitations were extended to every presidential hopeful visiting Johnson County for an in-person or conference-call interview with the board,” the paper wrote.  Nearly every GOP candidate has visited Johnson County; the exceptions are Duncan Hunter and Alan Keyes. 

John McCain appears to have missed an opportunity: “We wish that Arizona Sen. John McCain had taken us up on our offer for at least a conference call,” the paper wrote.  “Viewing McCain from afar, we find him to be the Republican candidate with the most moral authority and foreign policy experience to lead the nation.”

Only two Republicans met with the Press-Citizen editorial board: Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul.

What makes Huckabee still an attractive choice to us is that he has a fairly pragmatic record during his years governing Arkansas. Despite his earlier ideological statements, he proved willing to work with the opposition party — a necessary decision in a state in which 85 percent of all the elected officials are Democrat — and proved to be a “compassionate conservative” in word as well as deed.

It’s for that reason that we’re endorsing Huckabee as opposed to Paul — who, despite his consistent devotion to the U.S. Constitution, hasn’t demonstrated the type of executive experience or potential for cooperation necessary to function as the nation’s chief executive.

The Press-Citizen did note its concerns about Huckabee’s statements on HIV/AIDS in his 1992 Senate race, and over his doubts about evolution.

The Press-Citizen’s corporate parent is the Gannett Corportation, the same owner as the Des Moines Register.  On Sunday, the Register took a different path and endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain.