March 2015

Starting Line will be live-blogging Bruce Rastetter’s Iowa Ag Summit happening today at the Iowa Fair Grounds. A long list of potential Republican presidential candidates, along with many Iowa leaders, are slated to speak to the crowd. About 200 national and Iowa press are here. I’ll update this with the most-recent speakers at the top:…

The next great Republican cattle call is this weekend at GOP mega-donor Bruce Rastetter’s Ag Summit in Des Moines. The event will discuss issues affecting Iowa and the nation’s agriculture with a number of likely Republican presidential candidates and other Iowa politicos. It was not meant to be a Republican affair, but only one Democrat,…

Democrats on the House Labor Committee fought back against a new Republican proposal during a marathon meeting on Wednesday night. On Monday House Republicans had introduced without warning a bill to change collective bargaining rights for public school teachers. The proposal would weaken teachers’ negotiating abilities during contract disputes by giving more power to an…

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday afternoon that Matt Paul will run Hillary Clinton’s Iowa operations for the caucus. Paul was the communications director for Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack until today. Paul will return to his home state where he has long been involved in Iowa politics, government and campaigns. He has been a…

For a couple hours there on Monday, it looked like Democrats might really not have any race at all for their nomination. Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, the longest-serving woman in Congressional history, announced she will be retiring after her current term that ends in 2017. That move ignited speculation that Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland…

Legislation isn’t the only thing being talked about under the golden dome these days. It’s that time in the campaign cycle when potential candidates are sizing up the competition, while incumbents are deciding whether they really want to go through another campaign. Inevitably, those plans get around, and Starting Line is often in the right…

If you’re not in the room where decisions are being made, you might not like what choices others are making for you. That’s the advice a Cornell College professor gave Liz Bennett about eight years ago. “Women your age take for granted all of the things that you have,” she recalls as the words the…