In addition to his website, Albrecht has acted as communication director of the conservative group American Future Fund for more than a year. He has also served as an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign and to Chris Rants when he was Iowa House speaker. Rants is also running for governor in 2010.

Albrecht’s wife is communications director for House Republican Leader Kraig Paulsen.

Albrecht said TheBeanWalker.com will continue under a new publisher to “maintain the integrity and independence of the site throughout the primary and general elections,” although he did not name who his successor would be.

The ad, which will run throughout the week, focuses on the governor’s record, saying he “cut taxes and balanced the budget,” “helped make Iowa education among the world’s best” and “guided Iowa through the farm crisis of the 1980s.”

The Draft Branstad PAC, which is paying for the ads, was organized earlier this month by former Republican state Rep. Sandy Greiner of Washington.

Greiner also serves as president of the American Future Fund, a politically active conservative nonprofit who last week launched ads attacking health care reform legislation in the districts of conservative Democratic members of congress around the country.

The group launched the ads one week after Des Moines Register columnist Marc Hansen wrote about the reasons he feels it is a mistake for Branstad to jump into the gubernatorial campaign, pointing to polls back in 1997 that showed 55 percent of Iowans did not want him to run for another term in office. He also pointed to the 1994 GOP gubernatorial primary, where Branstad was almost defeated by U.S. Rep. Fred Grandy. That raced focused on the state budget, with Grandy calling Branstad the “MasterCard governor” because of allegations of fiscal mismanagement in his administration.

Here is the Draft Branstad PAC radio ad:

The American Future Fund has strong ties to the strategists behind the 1988 "Willie Horton" ad and the 2004 "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads. (Sources: AmericanFutureFund.com, Wikipedia, SwiftVets.com)

The ads, which focus on comments made about Blue Dog Democrats by U.S. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., will air in the districts of Reps. Mike Ross, D-Ark., Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Baron Hill, D-Ind. The ad will also appear on television stations in the Washington, D.C., area.

All three congressmen have voiced concern about Democratic health care proposals, and AFF hopes to reinforce their opposition with their ads, which end with “Tell Congress: No government-run health care.”

American Future Fund is a 501(c)4 non-profit that advocates nationally on behalf of “conservative and free market ideals.” It received a lot of attention during 2008 after it spent millions in congressional and Senate races around the country supporting Republican candidates, mostly unsuccessfully. The group’s communication director told supporters shortly after the November elections that his organization could be the conservative response to the “permanent [President Barack] Obama campaign.”

This year, it has garnered attention by bring several prominent speakers to the Hawkeye State, many of whom had presidential aspirations in 2012. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is scheduled to speak in Iowa on Oct. 1 as part of the group’s lecture series.

This ad campaign will not be the first time the group has had a presence in Minnesota. One of the races it focused on during the 2008 campaign was the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging AFF violated federal election law by failing to register and report as a political committee. The FEC ruled in AFF’s favor.

Grassley will be in Winterset, Afton, Panora and Adel Wednesday to meet with his constituents. The August recess has been marked by protesters repeatedly disrupting town hall events in the hopes of killing proposed health care reform legislation. Critics of the protests describe them as “astroturf, ” or fake grassroots efforts, motivated by the insurance industry and its lobbyists.

Iowa’s senior senator has been taking heat for his work on the health care bill, with many Republicans saying it could cause him to face a primary in 2010. At least two organizations are calling on reform opponents to attend Grassley’s town halls and demand that he abandon his efforts to craft a bipartisan bill.

Conservative non-profit American Future Fund, based in Des Moines, is asking its members to call out Grassley at the town halls for “looking at the health care debate with visions of polls and politics in his head, not with the patients in mind.” As evidence, the group’s spokesman, Tim Albrecht, points to a recent quote from Grassley saying Republicans will get punished by voters if something isn’t done to reform health care.

Another group, The Des Moines Tea Party, is looking directly at Grassley’s event in Adel, his closest to Des Moines, and asking members to attend. The Tea Party movement has long been criticized as a faux grassroots uprising sponsored by conservative organizations like former Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks.

Grassley said the calls for him to abandon the process of crafting a bipartisan bill are silly.

“I think they need to appreciate the fact that my being at the table is going to make sure that we don’t end up with more of a government-run health care system,” he said.

Without Republicans getting involved in the process, any reform legislation could be damaging to the health care system, he said.

“My view is that America’s health care system has real problems that need to be fixed, but Congress could make things a whole lot worse rather than better if we don’t handle it responsibly,” he said. “I’ve been working this year to make sure that government-run takeover of health care doesn’t become law.”

He has held more than 2,800 town hall forums during his time in office, Grassley said, so he has no apprehension meeting with voters Wednesday.

“I’ve found town meetings, whether people agree or disagree with me, are very, very important instruments of representative government,” he said.

In addition to conservative opponents of health care reform, Democratic-leaning organizations are also encouraging supporters to attend Grassley’s events.

This will mark Ensign’s first trip to Iowa, and despite being more than 2 years away from the Iowa Caucuses, the trip is garnering a lot of attention. Ensign has admitted several times that he is contemplating a run for president in 2012.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza points out the obvious:

No politician — NOT ONE — goes to Iowa by accident.

Ensign will be speaking in Sioux City, located in the Republican stronghold of northwest Iowa. He will also meet with people at an ice cream parlor in Le Mars and tour a plant specializing in breeding prize cattle.

Ensign was invited to Iowa by the American Future Fund, a non-profit conservative advocacy group based in Des Moines. Tim Albrecht, the group’s communications director, said C-SPAN will be taping the speech but has not made it clear when it will air. Fox News anchor Carl Cameron interviewed Albrecht about the event this morning.

Ensign is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m.

The complaint alleged the conservative non-profit aired a television advertisement advocating the re-election of former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. Under federal election law, the organization is prohibited from engaging solely in “express advocacy,” which would include asking voters to vote for or against a certain candidate.

The ad in question didn’t ask voters to vote for Coleman, but rather asked voters to “call Norm Coleman and thank him for his agenda for Minnesota.”

If it was found to have been engaging in “express advocacy,” American Future Fund would have been forced to file an independent expenditure report and publically name its donors.

The FEC, however, rejected the complaint and ruled the group did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act with its TV ads.

In an interview with the Iowa Independent last year, Paul S. Ryan, FEC program director for the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization, said as long as an organization is careful about how it writes the script of its ad it can fly under the radar or stay outside of the net of campaign finance activity.

The American Future Fund touts itself as the conservative answer “[President Barack] Obama’s “fundraising machine.” In 2008, the organization spent millions of dollars for advertising in competetive Senate races around the country. Its leadership includes former state Republican lawmaker Sandy Greiner and former Republican Party of Iowa executive director Nicole Schilnger.

The organization also has ties to national Republican figures who played key roles in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads in 2004 and the Willie Horton ad in 1988.

Tim Albrecht – who has served as spokesman for the Republican Party of Iowa, Mitt Romney’s Iowa Caucus campaign and former Republican House leader Christopher Rants – is launching TheBeanWalker.com tonight. The site promises to be a news aggregator in the spirit of The Drudge Report, but with a focus on Iowa politics and news. Albrecht has registered the his new venture as a limited liability company with the Iowa Secretary of State. A launch party to raise funds for the site will be held tonight at Dos Rios restaurant in downtown Des Moines.

Currently Albrecht also serves as director of communications for American Future Fund, a conservative 501(c)(4) non-profit organization based in Iowa.

Later this week, former Republican Party of Iowa Political Director Craig Robinson will launch TheIowaRepublican.com, which is being called a conservative version of the Huffington Post that will focus on Iowa politics. Robinson has already enlisted the help of anonymous blogger “Krusty Konservative,” who announced today that from now on he would publish exclusively on Robinson’s new site.

A spokesman for Culver said the allegations fall “somewhere between nonsense and paranoia.”

One set of e-mails from June involves Culver’s then chief of staff, Patrick Dillon; then head of the Department of Management and current chief of staff Charles Krogmeier; and chief legal counsel James Larew. The subject is tax policy and ways the government could restructure tax code in response to flooding, an idea Krogmeier calls “All the more reason to avoid a special session.”

The second e-mail exchange from September shows Rebuild Iowa Office Chief of Staff Emily Hajek saying she was “relieved” no special session would be called.

The e-mails exchanges took place while Culver was saying publicly that there was still a chance a special session could be called to deal with flood recovery. Iowa Progress Project President David Kochel said he believes they show that the administration was never considering calling legislators back to Des Moines.

The e-mails “raise many new questions about the [Rebuild Iowa Office], its leadership, competence of bureaucrats, and the intentions of those who wanted to block a special session that would give relief to flood victims,” Kochel said in a press release.

Troy Price, Culver’s press secretary, said the group’s allegations don’t merit a response.

“The so-called Iowa Progress Project is nothing more than a secret political slush fund that lacks the honesty or integrity to reveal their campaign contributors,” Price said. “They are quick to make negative, dishonest, political attacks but are apparently too cowardly to reveal their true identity.”

Because IPP is organized as a nonprofit it does not have to reveal its donors and is not governed by Iowa campaign finance law.

The group shares an organizational history with American Future Fund (AFF), a conservative nonprofit that works on the national level. Iowa Progress Project was originally named Iowa Future Fund. Leadership in both organizations is made up of several former leaders of the Republican Party of Iowa and Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful Iowa Caucus campaign.

Both AFF and IPP are registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(4), a section of federal tax code that exempts them from federal income taxation if they operate primarily to promote social welfare. Both organizations have been accused of violating their tax-exempt status by trying to influence elections.

“The real issue is how an organization that does nothing other than make political attacks against Gov. Culver and other Democrats can continue to flout and ignore the intent of Iowa’s campaign finance laws,” Price said.

The group has launched a Web site, Watchin’ Reid, with the goal of ousting the senator from his seat in 2010.

AFF’s spokesman, Tim Albrecht, told The Washington, D.C., Examiner that the site will highlight Reid’s public gaffes and “demonstrate that he’s taking the Senate down a much more liberal path that does not line up with the rest of the country.”

American Future Fund spent about $10 million targeting Democratic Senate candidates across the country during the 2008 election cycle, with limited success. Because it is organized as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, it does not have to disclose its donors and is not subject to oversight by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

Its political action committee (PAC), which is officially operating the Reid Web site since nonprofits are barred from directly advocating for or against a candidate, had a little more than $1,000 cash on hand and $2,000 in debts as of Jan. 1, according to documents filed with the FEC. During the 2008 cycle, the PAC never raised more than a few thousand dollars.

An Iowa Independent investigation last year found that the group is led by a cadre of of influential Iowa Republicans as well as media consultants who played key roles in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads in 2004 and the Willie Horton ad in 1988. The group is also mainly comprised of former aides to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign.

The Iowa Progress Project, a politically conservative non-profit based in Des Moines, commissioned Duffy to draw a cartoon critical of Gov. Chet Culver’s ties to labor unions, specifically the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. The group believes non-union state employees will be asked to sacrifice more than their union counterparts during the upcoming budget discussions.

Iowa Progress Project (IPP) was formerly known as Iowa Future Fund and shares an organization history with American Future Fund, a conservative non-profit based in Des Moines that operates on the national level. Since changing names, IPP has run several radio ads critical of Culver and Democrats in the legislture.