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Early voting in Iowa's June 7th primary has now been underway for a week. Iowans can vote in person at their county auditor's office or by an absentee ballot at home. The number of those absentees are always a very interesting thing to track (especially to this former...
Iowa Starting Line will be doing a series of posts where we follow along a major primary candidate for most of a day as they campaign. We hope it gives a different, unique look into who the man or woman running for office is, beyond just their stump speeches and...
It's Teacher Appreciation Day today, where we thank the committed professionals who get up each day to prepare our state's children for the future. And many of them in Iowa could probably use an extra reminder of how grateful we really are for all their hard work....
Tornadoes to the southwest of Des Moines threatened to cut short the 3rd District Democrats’ forum in Johnston on Wednesday night, but the candidates in the room were at least all blowing in the same direction on policy issues. Meanwhile, the 1st District forum proved...
Coming soon to a byline near you... Student journalists got a front row seat to national politics during this past year's Iowa Caucus. The access and opportunities they had to interview presidential candidates and break news on the most fascinating campaign in decades...
If you're a Democrat who's ever had the slightest bit of interest in running for public office, I'm telling you: 2016 is your time. With Donald Trump almost certain to be the Republican nominee, it's entirely possible this year's election will produce a massive wave...
While the Iowa political world was abuzz late last week about former Lt. Governor Patty Judge jumping into the race to unseat Senator Chuck Grassley, the three other Democrats in the race reminded people that they've been running for quite some time too. State Senator...
Only a few weeks ago Democrats' dreams of up-ending Chuck Grassley in his reelection campaign was just that: a hopeful, unrealistic dream. But now Grassley finds himself in the middle of the national firestorm over the looming Supreme Court nomination battle that...
Time to throw out the old campaign playbooks for 2016. With Donald Trump the likely nominee for the Republicans, and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, we're entering the most unpredictable election year in a very long time. As such, campaigns in Iowa need to be very...
Chet Culver's back, apparently. The former Governor popped back onto Iowa's political radar last week by holding a series of public forums on opposing current Governor Terry Branstad's Medicaid privatization plan. Just yesterday he held his fourth town hall meeting on...
There's still four months to go in the Democratic primary for the 1st District, but party leaders seem to see Monica Vernon beginning to pull away in the race. Late last week the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee named Vernon to their targeted Red To Blue...
As the final rumblings over the caucus process slowly die out, Democrats have a chance to regroup and refocus on what their priorities moving forward must be. Iowa Democrats are at their weakest point in years after two consecutive midterm blowouts, but there's plenty...
The Iowa Caucus is done and over with, but the ramifications of the final results will live long for the national campaign, but also on what happens in Iowa after. Reputations have been made and tarnished during the caucus every cycle, and consequences over who backed...
Here we are: the final few days of the Iowa Caucus. How a candidate spends their time in the precious waning hours says a lot about the state of the race and what each feels they still need to accomplish. The three Democrats plan on barnstorming the state, with...
Bernie Sanders has talked to a whole lot of people in Iowa. On Sunday he passed the big milestone of combined Iowa turnouts of 50,000. It happened at a notably smaller and more subdued conference room at Upper Iowa University, filled with about 300 people. But, true...
Rand Paul's presidential campaign hasn't exactly gone as planned. Once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, many saw him as poised to capitalize on his father Ron's libertarian base of support and build upon it with Rand's more conventional policies and a...
Who will union members back in the Iowa Caucus? On paper it would seem like Hillary Clinton will enjoy the overwhelming percentage of labor support in her corner on caucus night. Clinton has racked up endorsements from 17 national labor unions, representing more than...
First and second place in the Iowa Caucus appear to largely be set at this point, with Ted Cruz and Donald Trump far ahead of the rest of the Republican pack. But what about third place? That may end up as the real prize here. There's a fascinating and competitive...
Climate change activists cheered last week as the Paris Climate summit produced a pact between 195 countries that aimed to reduce greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. But they were also cognizant of just how long it had taken the world to get to this point,...
Most Iowa Republicans scoff at the idea of Democrats eager to take on Chuck Grassley in 2016. They're probably right, but the election is going to get held anyway, so we're still writing about it. Grassley easily won in 2010, the year after he began to take much...
Good morning readers! Sorry about that Iowa game, but at least we got a hilariously incorrect Joni Ernst tweet out of it. It was a busy week on the Iowa Caucus trail, so let's get right into it: Reporting On The Boring This weekend seven Republican candidates were in...
Good morning readers! Starting Line is back after a couple days off for the Thanksgiving holiday and to attend to newly-arrived Baby Starting Line. We're now looking at the final two month sprint heading to the Iowa Caucus on February 1st. In these next two months,...
Hillary Clinton scored a major victory this past week by gaining the endorsement of SEIU, the healthcare workers union that represents over 2 million workers. That bumped the total membership of unions backing her candidacy to nearly 11 million. With the endorsements...
Guest Post from Climate Reality Project Wednesday afternoon students, professors, and activists gathered in the Biorenewable Complex at ISU to kickoff Senator Hogg’s Climate Solutions Tour and open a discourse around the UN Climate Negotiations in Paris this December....
He hasn’t broken into the double-digits in state or national polls. He failed to ignite a spark after the first national Democratic debate or Iowa’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. He has yet to dominate a news cycle in the national media. But Martin O’Malley is holding his...
Usually when a campaign puts together a memo for their top donors you try to highlight your accomplishments and project momentum. Perhaps that's what Jeb Bush's top advisers thought they were doing with the internal campaign briefing that got leaked to U.S. News and...
A crowd of thousands erupted in cheers for underdog U.S. Senate candidate Tom Fiegen when he took the stage at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner on Saturday night - not so much for him, but for the Bernie Sanders sign he hoisted into the air. Fiegen says it was unplanned...
After serving Cedar Rapids as a State Representative and a State Senator for 13 years, Senator Rob Hogg now sets his sights on the U.S. Senate seat up in 2016. “We badly need Congress to work again,” he explained as his motivation to run. “For our state, our people,...
Now that we're 4 months out from the Iowa Caucus, and the political silly season of summer has finally dissipated, all eyes turn increasingly to Iowa. But who really has the advantage here? Who's connecting with caucus-goers and who's just coasting on publicity? The...
When Miyoko Hikiji's friends first suggested to her that she run for office, she was hesitant. Am I really qualified for this? Would I be prepared? Those were the questions that went through her mind before she realized how silly the doubts were. "I've done a lot of...
