Stories

Campaign contributions to individual political candidates would be limited under a bill before the Senate State Government Committee.

The state’s $600 million budget shortfall creates “an urgency to reform government, to sharpen the saw, to get rid of the waste and really focus on our priorities,” GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bob Vander Plaats said in an interview with the Iowa Independent.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 28 Republicans who voted against the economic stimulus bill last week in the U.S. House with radio ads in their districts. Iowa 4th District Rep. Tom Latham made the list.

For the third time in as many election cycles, Bob Vander Plaats will run for the GOP’s nomination for governor in 2010.
The Sioux City Republican will make the announcement official on today’s Jan Mickelson show on WHO Radio.
Vander Plaats finished third in a three-way primary in 2002. In 2006, he withdrew his from the primary [...]

The announcement that Ohio Sen. George Voinovich and Missouri Sen. Kit Bond will retire instead of running for re-election in 2010 has the pundits once again whispering about Iowa’s senior senator.
Charles Grassley, who will be 77 in 2010, is being frequently included in lists generated by political prognosticators like NBC’s Chuck Todd, The Washington Post’s [...]

Matt Strawn, a former congressional aide and co-owner of the Iowa Barnstormers Arena Football team, has been elected chair of the Republican Party of Iowa.
Strawn, 35, also served for a time as director of John McCain’s Iowa presidential campaign. His selection as leader of Iowa’s GOP follows a long, and occasionally ugly, few weeks of [...]

Veteran Iowa journalist Chuck Offenburger, formerly with The Des Moines Register and now managing his own Web site, has publicly endorsed Ames businessman Matt Randall in the race to lead the Republican Party of Iowa.
It’s a good field of candidates for the chairperson position, but I think there’s a clear choice here. I believe the [...]

“We are waiting for others to fail so that we can succeed. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but that’s the way it’s working right now,” said Gopal Krishna, once thought to be a frontrunner for the job of state GOP chair. Krishna says he was never a candidate for the position.

There are 111,000 more registered Democrats in Iowa than Republicans, according to data released by Iowa Secretary of State’s office.

President-elect Barack Obama today released a list of 53,853 people who donated money to the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition.
The transition raised a little more than $3.8 million dollars between Election Day and December 15, with an average donation of about $70, according to a press release.
The list can be searched by donor name and sorted [...]