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 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.

As fundraising totals continue to rise, campaigns for the Iowa House of Representatives are getting increasingly negative.

The State House elections of 2008 are on track to be the most expensive in the state’s history, and along with the increased spending, Iowa is seeing a wave of negative television, radio and mailed advertisements.

While negative advertising in Iowa is nothing new, observers point out that the size and scope of the negative ads is bigger than the Hawkeye State has ever experienced.

In Davenport, incumbent Democrat Elesha Gayman ran a 60-second television advertisement accusing her opponent, Ross Paustian, of being sentenced to jail in 1993 for failing to pay child support. Paustian held a press conference calling the ad “an outright lie.” Republicans later paid for a mailer against Gayman (and several other Democrats) that featured pigs on the cover with the text “These little piggies went to Des Moines.”

In district 58, Republican Chris Hagenow has run television ads (paid for by the Republican Party of Iowa) accusing his opponent, Jerry Sullivan, of raising taxes five times while he was the city’s mayor, though records show he only voted once to raise taxes.

Democrat Tim Hoy, running in district 44, has sent out a mailing accusing his opponent, Republican Annette Sweeney, or favoring a 30 percent sales tax, something she denies. The state Republican Party responded with a television ad saying Hoy gave city officials raises while mayor of Eldora, citing it as one of the reasons the city’s citizens “fired him.”

Iowa Progress Project, a conservative nonprofit, produced a radio ad calling out Democrats for appropriating $300,000 to the City of Dubuque for an Amtrak depot despite the fact that Amtrak doesn’t service Dubuque. Democrats have responded by saying the money is to establish a rail line between Chicago and Dubuque, which House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Debuque, said would be an economic development boost for the state.

Republicans ran a radio ad that implied that potheads from California would move to Iowa if Democratic challenger John Beard were elected in district 16.

The list goes on and on.

“In the past, campaigns relied on mailings if they wanted to attack their opponent,” said John Norris, chairman of the Iowa Utilities Board and former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “If candidates could purchase television time, they only had the resources available to do positive, biographical ads. More money means that campaigns can afford two sets of television advertising – the personal ad and the attack ad.”

While Norris said he hasn’t followed this year’s state campaigns closely enough to say whether 2008 is more negative than year’s past, more money means more options for ads, he said, which can translate into more negativity.

“If a candidate sent out a negative mailer, only those in their district would see it,” Norris said. “If they put out a negative television ad, all the sudden you are spreading that message to a lot more people.”

Spending has certainly gone up, and not just from candidates. Independent expenditure groups, including political action committees (PACs), 527s, and the Republican and Democratic parties, are adding to the fundraising totals by pumping millions of dollars into the quest for control of the House.

“State races are becoming increasingly professionalized,” said Christopher Larimer, a professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. “More money is getting pumped into the campaigns and it is still too early to know if that will lead to better candidates or just uglier campaigns.”

Two Des Moines-based 527 organizations, the Iowa Leadership Council and Midwest Enterprise Group, have taken in nearly $1 million this year alone, spending money on mailers and Web sites criticizing legislative candidates. American Future Fund, a conservative nonprofit that had previously focused on races outside Iowa, recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television advertisements attacking Democratic candidates in battleground legislative districts. And a series of new PACs have sprung up this year supporting both Democrats and Republicans.

“I think this election could really make people start looking at campaign finance reform,” Larimer said. “Other states have done this with the hopes of limiting this type of activity on the state level.”

Fundraising has gotten much more sophisticated, Norris said, and both parties have developed better strategies to find donors.

“And there are more special interests getting involved,” he said. “All this makes a great case for public financing.”

Commenting on Democratic leadership’s decision to turn over a dossier of opposition research on Republican candidates to The Des Moines Register, Steve Grubbs, a Republican strategist and former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, said the high stakes of this year’s election, and the ramifications of its outcome, could also be a factor in the negative campaigns.

“If Republicans make big gains, someone in [Democratic] leadership is going to lose their job,” Grubbs said. “Scouring public records for misdoings and then turning them over to the media in one lump sum, I’ve never heard of anything like that happening before in Iowa, and I think it’s a sign of fear on the part of Democratic leadership.”

The Democratic research turned up mostly minor criminal charges in the background of several Republican House candidates.

After a 14-year reign in the Iowa House, Republicans lost the majority in 2006. Democrats now have a slim majority, as well as control of the Iowa Senate and the governor’s office.

So by the same token that Democratic losses could spell trouble for party leadership, another year of Democratic gains could signal changes in at the top of the state Republican Party.

“This is a good year to be a Democrat,” Larimer said. “They have a number of advantages, and Republicans may have to do some soul searching when this is all said and done to overcome those advantages.”

House candidates had raised about $8 million for this election cycle and had spent $6 million as of mid-October, according to the latest campaign disclosure reports.

In the 2006 election cycle, candidates raised $8.3 million and spent $8 million through Election Day.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver

The organization, Iowa Progress Project (IPP), has run two previous radio ads criticizing Culver and Democratic lawmakers this year. The group’s president, David Kochel, did not respond to requests to comment for this story, but in a statement he said the group launched the new ad “to highlight the absolute absurdity of the Culver administration by committing to pay consultants $3 million while a city remains unsafe and caught in the bureaucratic inaction of Des Moines and Washington, D.C.”

The ad, called “Floods,” accuses Culver of paying consultants instead of investing money in rebuilding damaged homes in Cedar Rapids. Troy Price, Culver’s interim communications director, released a memo refuting the claims in the ad line by line, including the number of homeless and jobless the group cites as being affected by flooding.

The ad says one consultant hired by the state will be paid $6,500 per day, which Price said is “grossly misleading, if not outright false — no one, from either state government, or any consultant in this project, is getting paid $6,500 a day.”

Price said consultants were hired because no state can be expected to have the personnel necessary to manage a disaster of this size.

“The cost of doing so would be prohibitive in all times except the actual disaster period,” he said.

The ad is also critical of the Rebuild Iowa Office (RIO), established by Culver to direct the rebuilding efforts, saying it will employ 47 full-time staff but has been allocated no budget.

“RIO has no permanent staff; it has drawn on current state employees who possess specific areas of expertise who are on loan from their agencies,” Price said. “Most state employees who were working at RIO assisted the Rebuild Iowa Advisory Commission in their efforts to gather information and make recommendations on Iowa’s disaster recovery. With the completion of the commission’s initial report, many have already returned to the duties they performed before their temporary assignment to the RIO. Less than one dozen remain in the RIO office.”

Iowa Progress Project is linked to the American Future Fund (AFF), another conservative non-profit group which has run advertisements supporting Republican candidates in competitive Senate races around the country. An Iowa Independent investigation found that the group’s leaders include two media consultants who played key roles in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads in 2004 and the Willie Horton ad in 1988, both of which helped defeat Democratic presidential candidates.

Both organizations essentially were spawned from the Iowa Future Fund (IFF), which came to fame during the 2008 state legislative session when it ran a series of television and radio ads criticizing Culver.

The Iowa Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board (IECDB) in March to determine whether the IFF ads constituted political advertising, which would require disclosure of the group’s donors. The complaint has not been fully settled. Charlie Smithson, executive director of the IECDB, said at the board’s most recent meeting last week the matter was deferred pending further investigation.

“There are a couple of other questions/areas of concern that [the Ethics Board Chair] wants addressed,” he said.

Many believe IPP was started out of fear that IFF would be forced to reveal its donors if the IECDB ruled it violated campaign law.

Before becoming president of IPP, Kochel served as spokesman for IFF and AFF. Earlier this year, Kochel and Nicole Schlinger, president of AFF, registered Mission Control Partners Inc., a political consulting firm,with the Iowa secretary of state. Both are also former executive directors of the Republican Party of Iowa.

Price said that while Iowa Progress Project says it is an issues advocacy organization, the only work the group has done is attack Culver and other state Democrats.

“Though the group has been in existence under various names for several months, the group refuses to release their list of donors, denying Iowans an opportunity to see who is behind this shadowy organization,” he said. “Iowans deserve openness and full disclosure in politics, so they are able to make a fair and informed decision on who is trying to influence state policy which can directly affect their lives.”