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A guest post from State Representative Liz Bennett. Nothing says quintessential Iowa summer quite like candidates and corn. Every year Progress Iowa, a statewide advocacy organization, hosts their Corn Feed, a fun-filled event featuring progressive speakers. This year...
With a presidential field that now numbers 23, Democratic candidates need every tiny advantage they can find in Iowa to deliver them delegates on caucus night. For a lucky few contenders, they come to the state with a special connection in their pocket thanks to...
In a May 5th guest article in the Des Moines Register, Senator Joni Ernst blamed the Army Corps of Engineers for lack of timely warning prior to the epic Missouri River flooding. She claimed we need better communication and warning about potential flood risk. Ernst’s...
A nonstop parade of presidential candidates has visited the good people of Iowa nearly every day this year. Turn around any weekend in a major Iowa county and you're likely to bump into a White House hopeful. However, not every corner of the state has received the...
He's back. Embarking on his third attempt to win the presidency, former Vice President Joe Biden returned to Iowa this week for public events in Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Iowa City, and Des Moines. He enters the incredibly crowded 2020 Democratic primary as the clear...
Iowa is heaven on earth for political junkies, especially so for the Democratic activists who are closely following this year's historically large field of candidates. But if you live outside our great state, do you ever watch the TV clips of presidential contenders...
Places like Iowa Falls feel a long way away from the national discussion on the Democratic primary. An Iowa town of 5,000 people, it's a long drive away from any county that even used to vote regularly for Democrats, and the kind of place where Fox News is the default...
Congressman Dave Loebsack will retire after his current term comes to an end, reported the Quad Cities Times this afternoon. He has served in Congress since his 2006 election when he won in a surprise upset, and was Democrats' lone federally-elected member from Iowa...
Senator Kamala Harris is running for president, but an event of hers in Des Moines yesterday was focused on other candidates - women running or thinking of running for local offices. She spoke with a group of about 125 women at an Emerge Iowa house party, where she...
Back during Elaine Baxter’s childhood, party loyalty was a simple matter. “When I was growing up, it would be unthinkable if you worked in a factory and were a Republican,” Baxter explained to Starting Line last week. “The two didn’t go together.” Now 86, Baxter, who...
The first in a series of 2020 candidate book reviews from Iowans, led by IDP Vice Chair Andrea Phillips. I should have known when I decided to start the 2020 Book Club, where we read the books of the Democratic presidential candidates, there would be a lot of interest...
Democratic candidates running for president are increasingly talking about the rights of transgender Americans while out on the campaign trail. Two contenders who traveled through Iowa this past week - Senators Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand - both had extended...
Senator Bernie Sanders continues to build out his Iowa Caucus team, one that will likely end up as one of the largest of the 2020 field. The campaign tells Starting Line that they have hired Michael Fasullo to serve as their Iowa field director and Tony Anthony as the...
In many ways, it felt like Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign never ended. At his stops in Iowa this week following his official 2020 launch, Sanders rallied the faithful in packed rooms to get on board with his second run for the White House. In speeches that clocked in...
Former Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper was back in Iowa, and now it’s official – he’s a candidate for president. He joins 11 others who have filed, including other moderate candidates like Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Representative John Delaney. Dividing...
Sunshine Week will be observed across the nation next week. The week shines a spotlight on the important role open government and citizen accountability play in our democracy. Open meetings and open records are the tools that enable the public to know what their...
A very small but vocal group, Coalition for Rural Property Rights, is attacking Iowa’s clean renewable wind industry. This coalition of anti-wind energy fanatics have convinced some Republicans in the Iowa Senate to sponsor a bill that could severely damage Iowa’s...
A guest post from Ashley Burns. Senator Joni Ernst is bad for Iowa women. Aside from being the first woman elected to the Senate from Iowa, she has done little to advance the progress of women in our state. In fact, Senator Ernst actively uses her legislative power...
It's Iowa Caucus season, which means all of the top political staffers in the country have begun their migration from D.C. and battleground campaigns out to the Hawkeye state. Presidential candidates have aggressively courted campaign operatives with Iowa ties for...
Last week’s news put furrows in my brow. As I ruminated on the headlines and details in the news accounts, I came away convinced something is out of whack somewhere. One of the reports was that Amazon, the online retailing behemoth, cancelled plans to build a...
Guest post from Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio and the co-chair of the Committee to Draft Sherrod Brown for President 2020. She visited Iowa last week. When my friend Sherrod Brown was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, he joked that his new chamber was...
For those who have been involved in multiple caucus cycles, you know that the campaign process in Iowa often takes on its own unique character. Every cycle, there are a new group of key local players, issue groups, favorite hang-out spots, and campaign strategies that...
Does Cory Booker want to ban the eating of meat? No, of course not. And it's such a preposterous suggestion, most people would roll their eyes and ignore it. But that didn't keep a local Iowa TV station from running a story based on the fake controversy that generated...
Republicans have long preached that the best government is the one closest to the people. Based on this basic conservative principle, one might expect that they would promote the autonomy of local governments from the overreach of federal or state rules and...
Democratic State Senator Jeff Danielson is resigning effective immediately from both the Iowa Senate and the Cedar Falls Fire Department, Starting Line has learned. That will trigger a special election for Danielson's Cedar Falls-based Senate District 30 in the middle...
The Iowa Democratic Party unveiled their long-discussed plan to reform the Iowa Caucus process yesterday, laying out what would be the most significant changes to the caucus since its creation. They included a new virtual caucus option, an important tweak to viability...
It's a little under a year out from the Iowa Caucus, and presidential candidates are already inundating the state to make their pitch to local activists. What's particularly fascinating from these initial visits is that the Democrats' campaigning and event styles are...
Even in an incredibly crowded 2020 field, there’s plenty of ways that Pete Buttigieg, mayor of a mid-sized Midwestern city, stands out: he’s young, gay, and an Afghanistan War veteran. But his first appearances in Iowa after his presidential campaign announcement were...
This week’s Moral Monday at the Capitol focused on several proposed Republican gun bills as well as the consequences of the ones they passed in 2017. The discussion was led by Representative Tim Kacena (D-Sioux City) and Scott Peterson, Chair of Iowans for Gun Safety....
Senator Cory Booker is beefing up his caucus operation in advance of his first trip to Iowa as an official presidential candidate. He's secured several additional experienced Iowa operatives to his team, and the previously-announced staff now have official job titles....
