Stories

The incumbent ran as an experienced, moderate congressman, attentive to his district’s needs. The younger, issue-based activist challenger, coming off an unsuccessful statewide race that nevertheless raised his profile, stressed his own legislative record and said the incumbent’s congressional voting record was insufficiently loyal to the party.

Leonard Boswell and Ed Fallon? Nope. Hop in the [...]

Iowa and Mississippi remain the only two states which have never elected a woman either to Congress or as governor. Iowa has come close a few times — Lynne Cutler’s congressional race in 1980, Roxanne Conlin’s gubernatorial race in 1982, and Elaine Baxter’s run for congress in 1992.

Ottumwa doctor Mariannette Miller-Meeks “absolutely” believes she can [...]

Republican legislative goals for 2008 seem modest: holding their own in the state senate while focusing on the House.

“The battle’s in the House, that’ll be the hot one,” said State Rep. Jeff Kaufmann of Wilton at last weekend’s 2nd Congressional District convention. Kaufmann’s state senator, Jim Hahn, was standing alongside him and didn’t dispute that [...]

“Nobody wonders where I stand,” Congressman Steve King told 2nd Congressional District Republicans Saturday, making a detour out of his own 5th District to rally the eastern Iowa GOP troops at their district convention in Iowa City.

In a brief Iowa Independent interview, King stood behind the rhetorical style that’s earned him scorn from liberals [...]

[Commentary] The poll tax in the South was abolished decades ago. It’s a measure of the bizarre character of the presidential nominating system that a key event in Iowa’s pivotal first-in-the-nation caucuses features a close cousin of the poll tax, a $35 charge to cast a ballot in the straw poll Iowa Republicans will stage [...]

A well known and controversial conservative – or, rather, “konservative” – blog went the way of the dodo Wednesday, as the man known online only as “Hershel Krustofski” (the name of the clown on Fox TV’s The Simpsons) announced the closing of his Krusty Konservative blog.
Krusty was the conservative muckraker of the Iowa blogosphere, frequently [...]