On The Road With J.D. Scholten’s Campaign To Defeat Steve King

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There’s few summer activities more quinesstential than a father/son road trip in an RV. Stopping at small town restaurants. Sleeping in a pull-down bed. Navigating through country roads. But one extra feature of J.D. Scholten and his father Jim’s tour around Iowa in their new RV is that J.D. is also running for Congress. As Scholten was entering the final months of Democrats’ three-way primary to take on Steve King, he faced a difficult problem: Iowa’s 4th Congressional District is a sprawling, 39-county swath of Western and Northern Iowa. Scholten leads the pack of Democrats vying for the nomination in […]

Weekly Round-Up: New Gov Race Opportunities, Fundraising And Endorsements

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So, there was a bit of news that happened in Iowa politics this week. The Des Moines Register story on Nate Boulton and his subsequent withdrawal from the race dominated headlines for most of the week. It shook up a still-fluid primary with less than two weeks to go until the election. And it also overshadowed a key anniversary: Kim Reynolds celebrated her one-year mark as governor on Thursday. Let’s take a look at some of the other storylines that didn’t get full stories from Starting Line this week. Norris Sees New Opportunity To Break Out Starting Line caught up […]

Several Counties See Early Vote Jumps Before Primary

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Woodbury County is voting their butts off. New early vote data from Friday shows a big jump in absentee ballot requests in several counties. The Northwest Iowa county anchored by Sioux City saw a particularly large increase, bringing them to the fourth-most in the state and nearly surpassing Johnson County. (See our earlier post from last week if you want to compare – download our new spreadsheet here.) Here’s the top 10 counties ranked by the raw number of absentee ballots after the second week of early voting:  D Requested Polk  5,348 Dubuque  1,908 Johnson  1,447 Woodbury  1,404 Linn  1,273 […]

New Endorsements, Ads And Trips As Primary Draws Closer

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With just three and a half weeks remaining in the Democratic primary, the candidates are criss-crossing the state and blanketing the airwaves and mailboxes with ads. They’re also rolling out endorsements from late-deciding leaders to project momentum. Here’s a look at some of the key developments from this week and what’s ahead. The First Gubernatorial Debate Make sure to block off some time this Sunday evening for the Democrats’ first gubernatorial debate. All six candidates gather in Davenport for a debate sponsored by KWQC and the Quad Cities Times – it starts at 6:00 PM and you can watch the […]

Report Sees Multiple “Risks” For Steve King’s Reelection

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Is Congressman Steve King at risk of losing reelection? Every single cycle, Democrats hope and pray that this will finally be the year that the reviled Republican will go down in electoral defeat. And every cycle, the conservative lean of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District dashes those hopes. But this year at least one major political ranking site is starting to see some danger signs for King. The Cook Political Report saw four risk factors for King, which showed he may not be fully prepared in his reelection campaign “to withstand a hostile political environment.” Cook laid out seven potential risk […]

Steve King Posts Photo Of A Nazi On Hitler’s Birthday

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Congressman Steve King’s social media team is at it again. The official Facebook page of Iowa’s 4th District member of Congress has long been a pit of childish and bizarre right-wing memes and petty insults against liberals. But today King had a particularly foolish Facebook post up with what looks to be a photo of a Nazi soldier. And, of course, it just happens to be Adolf Hitler’s birthday. King’s staff shared a version of a popular meme that makes fun of young people, as seen below: Former 4th District candidate Kim Weaver and her PAC for POWER organization noticed […]

4th District Dem Leann Jacobsen Calls For Boycott Of Sinclair Stations

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The fallout for Sinclair Broadcasting stations continue after a viral video showed them all reading from the same script about “fake news.” Leann Jacobsen, one of the Democratic candidates looking to take on Steve King in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, is calling for a boycott of all the Sinclair stations that cover the Western Iowa seat. She’s also pledging to not run campaign TV ads on any of them and is encouraging her two Democratic primary opponents to do the same. “The behavior and actions taken by Sinclair Broadcast Group hit at the very core of a free and independent […]

Corbett, Caligiuri Booted From Ballot, Greenfield Still Going

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The state’s three-person elections commission met this afternoon in a lengthy hearing to consider eight objections to various candidates’ ballot petitions. It was the most challenges anyone could remember there being in a single year, and it included several major candidates like Kim Reynolds, David Young and Steve King. They also addressed the major situations with Ron Corbett, Ginny Caligiuri and Theresa Greenfield. The election commission is made up of Secretary of State Paul Pate, Attorney General Tom Miller and State Auditor Mary Mosiman. Their decisions caused major shake-ups in Iowa politics, knocking off Kim Reynolds’ only primary challenger – […]

How Congressional Primaries Stack Up With New Fundraising Numbers

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Federal candidates’ campaign finance reports for 2017’s 4th quarter were due this past week, and they once again give us a sense of where the money aspect of Iowa’s congressional races stand. The dynamics of the 1st District primary largely stays the same, while the numbers cast a slightly new light on the 3rd and 4th District contests. Starting Line will take a brief look at each district. 1st Congressional District Abby Finkenauer’s $302,000 haul didn’t just surpass all the Democratic candidates in her race and the other districts – she out-raised every single incumbent member of Congress in Iowa, […]

With Zach Wahls And More, Iowa Dems’ Future Is On The Ballot In 2018

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Few elections have ever held more longterm consequences for a state than the upcoming 2018 races in Iowa. A few of the issues at stake: the survival of public unions and Planned Parenthood, the existence of mental healthcare services, and the state’s own political identity as a purple or red state. Iowa could soon become the next Kansas for decades to come, or a Democratic wave could return balance to the Statehouse. But for the Democratic Party here, 2018 presents one more opportunity that could outlive all of those outcomes: the chance to vote into office a raft of young […]