2018
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Iowans Call Out Young And Blum’s Lies On Pre-Existing Conditions
You can tell that Republican Congressmen Rod Blum and David Young are worried about their votes to kill healthcare reform. All three Iowa Republican Congressman – Blum, King and Young – voted for the Republican health care replacement plan, the American Health Care Act. The GOP plan would have eliminated protections of those with pre-existing…
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How Bad Is Iowa’s Mistaken Felon Disenfranchisement Problem?
Guest post from Adam Kenworthy, chair of Iowa Voting Rights Project KCCI reported on an important story last week regarding a man who was told he could not vote because he was classified as a felon. However, what the reporting revealed was that in fact the man was not a felon and that the Iowa…
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Democrats Dominate First Day Of Early Voting In Iowa
Democrats in Iowa leapt at their first chance to cast a ballot in the 2018 election yesterday, far outpacing the number of Republicans who did the same. The Secretary of State’s office reported this morning that 7,870 votes are already in the bank from the first day and a half of early voting. Of those, 4,421…
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Two Awful Weeks In American Politics; What To Do Next
It is obvious that the past two weeks have generated some very trying times in our political discourse as we moved from political differences into partisan tribalism. That said, we now have a new Supreme Court Justice who has been confirmed, but still has a cloud over his head. As the saying goes, “it ain’t…
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Louie Zumbach Just Making Stuff Up In His Reelection Campaign
Stretching the truth in political ads is pretty run of the mill in today’s campaigns, but State Representative Louie Zumbach of Coggon takes the tactic to an utterly absurd level in his latest mailer. In a direct mail piece that voters in House District 95 (rural Linn County) received recently, the one-term Republican incumbent pitches…
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On Day Of Rage, Cory Booker Preaches Hope, Resilience
When Senator Cory Booker took the stage at Iowa Democrats’ largest event of the year last night, emotions were running high in the room of over 1,100 party activists. Most were still seething or depressed over the Brett Kavanaugh vote that took place just hours earlier. Booker had jumped on a plane immediately after voting…
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Fred Hubbell’s Messaging Is Simple, Substantive and Effective
Democrats are often criticized for lacking a clear, concise message. Gubernatorial candidate Fred Hubbell has overcome that critic by uniting Iowa Democrats by focusing on just a few key priorities. He has made health care reform, jobs and education funding the focus of his campaign. There are certainly a number of other issues that he…
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Ep63: Debunking GOP Ads & Christian Andrews Interview
Iowa Starting Line Podcast host Pat Rynard goes through some of the worst lies and deceptions in the latest Iowa Republican ads. And we interview Christian Andrews about his campaign for House District 95.
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Kavanaugh’s Mouth Is Just As Troubling
It’s confession time: I cannot say with confidence what transpired in that upstairs bedroom in a suburban home in Montgomery County, Md., on that summer evening, apparently in 1982, during a gathering of unsupervised, beer-drinking teenagers. Unless you have just awakened like a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, you know the party in question involved a…
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Statehouse TV Spending Shows Where GOP Is Worried
The battle for control of the Iowa Statehouse is fully underway on the TV airwaves across the state. And who’s spending money where gives us a very good hint of what each party is seeing in their internal polls. House Democrats and Senate Republicans began running positive ads in a number of districts two weeks…
