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Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal announced that all committee and floor action in the Senate on Wednesday has been canceled so that senators and staff may attend Sen. Mary Lundby’s funeral, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. Wednesday at St. Joe’s Catholic Church, 1790 14th St., in Marion.
Lundby died Saturday after a long battle with [...]

Marion, a suburb of Cedar Rapids, has lost two former female legislators in as many days.
Rosemary Thompson, who was elected into the Iowa House during a 1995 special election, suffered a stroke last week that left her comatose. She held her seat until 2000, when she fulfilled a campaign promise of self-imposed retirement after three [...]

Republican state Sen. Mary Lundby, 60, lost her long-fought battle with cancer today. Iowans mourn a state legislator who served for more than two decades, a female pioneer who paved a way for the next generation.

The Sioux City Journal today reports that leading Republican veterans in Iowa are troubled that social conservatives have key positions in the party during an election year in which household economic matters could prove decisive.
Here Is The Journal:
Mary Lundby, former Iowa Senate Republican leader from Marion, said many GOP voters in the state are more [...]

Gamblers who are banned for life from Iowa casinos could soon hear the dinging of the slot machines again — without having to sneak around.

Gamblers can irrevocably ban themselves for life from Iowa casinos by joining the statewide self-exclusion program, which is mandated by Iowa law. But under the proposed legislation, SF 2062, gamblers would [...]

Iowa Sen. Tom Courtney, D-Burlington, wasn’t necessarily surprised when a letter critical of him appeared in the Burlington Hawkeye. The newspaper, as far as he knows, prints “pretty much every letter they receive” and criticism, he says, is just a part of political life. While he found the content of the letter questionable, it wasn’t [...]

If the crowd at the announcement reception for Rep. Swati Dandekar is any indication, her upcoming pursuit of a seat in the Iowa Senate will continue to be as bipartisan as her past successes in House District 36.

Dandekar’s special guest at the reception in a Cedar Rapids home was Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal. He [...]

Iowa Rep. Swati Dandekar, D-Marion, made it official this morning by announcing she will seek the state Senate seat currently held by Mary Lundby. Lundby announced Wednesday that she would seek a position on the Linn County Board of Supervisors instead of running for re-election.
“I know that I have some big shoes to fill,” Dandekar [...]

(Editor’s note: This post was updated at 5:45 p.m. to include an interview with Sen. Mary Lundby.)
In a move that won’t surprise many in eastern Iowa politics, Iowa Senate Minority Leader Mary Lundby announced today that she would not seek re-election to the Legislature and instead will run for a seat on the Linn County [...]

During the last legislative session, the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections bill saw a little life when it passed out of the State Government Committee, only to die in a House Appropriation’s subcommittee. The Democratic leadership, however, said the Clean Elections bill is not dead. Though the bill was not assigned to an interim study committee [...]