Justin's Political Corner

Abortion rights opponent David Leach made news this week when he posted a video of himself on YouTube speaking with George Tiller murder Scott Roeder and threatening Kansas abortion providers.

Leach has a long record of promoting violence against clinic workers and has defended Roeder’s murder of Tiller.

As a GOP state senate nominee in 2010, Leach suggested that HIV/AIDS was divine punishment for homosexuality. He was eventually defeated by Democratic incumbent Matt McCoy, but his candidacy did win the support of one leading anti-choice activist: Personhood USA board member Chet Gallagher.

h/t: RWW

At a social conservative conference this week, Iowa’s Secretary of State argued that Republicans need to pass voter ID in order to advance their top policy goals, including banning abortion and same-sex marriage.

Matt Schultz (R), elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, spoke at length about his support for implementing voter ID in a speech before the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on Monday. In the process he accused the other side of cheating in order to win elections, but provided no evidence to back up this claim.

SCHULTZ: There are a whole lot of issues that we care about, abortion, gay marriage, a whole lot of social issues that we care deeply about. But you have to start caring about voter ID and election integrity as well, because if you don’t have that, you’ll never be able to make a difference in any other issue you care about. Never. Because they will cheat! They’ll cheat. And we need to make sure we stop them. So what do I need you to do? I need you start telling your friends and neighbors that you love voter ID. You love voter ID.

There’s a reason why Schultz couldn’t provide any evidence that people are using voter fraud at the polls to rig elections: none exists. In-person voter fraud is extraordinarily rare; a study in nearby Wisconsin found a fraud rate of 0.0002 percent, far less common than even being struck by lightning. Still, a dearth of actual voter fraud hasn’t stopped conservatives from using it as a phantom menace to gin up support for voter ID.

Schultz isn’t the only Republican official pushing voter ID as a means for enacting the Party’s policy goals. Indeed, because approximately 1 in 10 Americans — particularly young voters and minorities, groups who tend to vote Democratic — lack photo ID, a strict voter ID requirement would help Republicans win more elections. 

h/t: Scott Keyes at Think Progress Justice

Proclaiming he’s “ready to go,” U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, is telling supporters today that he’s forming a campaign committee to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated in 2014 by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin.

Braley is sending the news in an email today, saying it’s a “big responsibility” to try to fill Harkin’s shoes.

“But if you are willing to help me, I’m ready to go,” he said in the email, which was obtained by the Quad-City Times.

The announcement comes about two weeks after Harkin shocked Iowans by announcing he wouldn’t run for re-election in 2014. Since then, Braley, who has long been rumored to be interested in the Senate, has been exploring a potential bid.

In the email, Braley said he would kick off a series of conversations with a Facebook chat in the next few weeks. Link said the conversations would extend for several months.

While Braley is considered by many to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, it’s possible others could run in a primary. If that happens, Link made it clear Braley will be ready for any challenge.

“We’re going to be in the best position when the filing deadline hits,” he said.

Braley has been a proficient fundraiser since kicking off his first bid for the 1st Congressional District seat in 2005. He’s won four races in eastern Iowa since then, with only one, in 2010, a close call.

Now, he faces the challenge of introducing himself to other parts of the state, including a heavily Republican western Iowa.

Link said Braley has been encouraged in particular by two events in the days since Harkin made his announcement: His meeting with Statehouse Democrats in Des Moines and a big labor union event over the weekend in Dubuque, where he appeared with Harkin.

Harkin did not endorse Braley — and he has said that he wouldn’t get involved in a primary — but he generously praised the Waterloo Democrat.

Braley also has met with the political arm of the Senate Democrats.

On the Republican side, Reps. Tom Latham and Steve King have both sent signals they could run.

h/t: QCTimes.com

This just in: 5-term Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (D) will retire at the end of the 113th Congress. He also ran for President in 1992; while he won his home state’s caucus that year, he lost the nomination to President Bill Clinton (D). He also was a 6-term Congressman from 1972-1984.

AP:

CUMMING, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin says he will not seek re-election in 2014.

The 73-year-old Harkin tells The Associated Press in an interview, “It’s just time to step aside,” because by the time he would finish a sixth term, he would be 81.

Harkin said it would also allow a new generation of Democrats to seek higher office.

The announcement comes as a surprise, considering he had $2.7 million in his campaign war chest and was planning a fundraiser next month.

Who will run for both the Dems and the GOP now that Harkin will retire?

I believe this race is (depending on the candidates in both parties) rated Tilt D in an open seat situation. 

Is one of the quirkiest rituals of the Republican presidential election calendar heading for the grave?

It is, if Iowa’s Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has his say.

Eyeing the wreckage of the 2011 Ames Straw Poll, which Rep. Michele Bachmannwon only to fizzle as a candidate soon after, Mr. Branstad wants to do away with the whole thing.

“I think the straw poll has outlived its usefulness,” Mr. Branstad said of the 33-year-old GOP ritual. “It has been a great fundraiser for the party but I think its days are over.”

Going back to 1979, Republican presidential contenders have flocked to Ames, Iowa, in August to eat fried food, dance to country bands and wheedle votes from the party faithful in what amounts to an overblown party fund-raiser disguised as a trial run for the real Iowa caucuses early the next year.

Its track record as an anointer of GOP nominees falls far shy of impressive. Only two victors, Bob Dole in 1995 and George W. Bush in 1999, went on to win the Iowa caucus the next year and then the nomination in November. And only one, Mr. Bush, went on to become president.

Still, other top Iowa Republicans bristled at Mr. Branstad’s suggestion that the sun had set on Ames.

In an interview, Gov. Branstad pointed to Ms. Bachmann’s rapid rise and fall in 2011 as Exhibit A for why the straw poll no longer makes sense. The Bachmann campaign invested heavily in the one-day event, busing in thousands of supporters from around Iowa and hiring singers like Randy Travis to entertain them in a huge tent.

The Minnesota Republican beat libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas by 150 votes, but never caught fire in Iowa. She came in a very distant sixth in the January Iowa caucuses, getting just 5% of the vote.

h/t: WSJ.com

There are 12 battleground states that deserve close attention as Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney go head to head in Tuesday’s historic election:

– THE BIG THREE –

OHIO (18 electoral votes)

Perhaps the crucial battleground, the state ravaged by industrial decline has trended Democratic after narrowly deciding the 2004 election for George W. Bush. But Romney has made a strong play for white, working-class voters. No Republican has claimed the White House without also winning Ohio.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 2.3 percent.

2008: Obama 51 percent, McCain 47 percent.

FLORIDA (29 electoral votes)

The biggest battleground of all, the Sunshine State had the starring role in the chaotic 2000 election and is now struggling to handle large numbers of early voters. State voter ID laws, which required a photo ID to vote, limited some early voting, but parts of the laws have been curtailed by federal courts.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Romney up 1.2 percent.

2008: Obama 51 percent, McCain 48 percent.

VIRGINIA (13 electoral votes)

2008 saw Virginia vote Democratic in a presidential election for the first time since 1964. The state’s affluent and populous north next to Washington has turned blue, but a battle rages in the area around Norfolk, home to several large military bases. With military cuts looming, Romney may have an edge.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Romney up 0.5 percent.

2008: Obama 53 percent, McCain 46 percent.

– THE CLOSE CALLS –

COLORADO (9 electoral votes)

Fueled by an influx of migrants from liberal California and elsewhere, the traditionally Republican mountain state has been trending Democratic. It voted for Obama in 2008, but the incumbent is finding it hard to hold together his winning coalition of women, youth and minorities here.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 0.5 percent.

2008 result: Barack Obama (D) 53 percent, John McCain (R) 45 percent.

NEW HAMPSHIRE (4 electoral votes)

With the race on a razor’s edge, even tiny New Hampshire is getting extra love from both candidates wooing notoriously independent Granite State voters. Obama has campaigned here this year at least six times, and Romney eight.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 1.0 percent.

2008: Obama 54 percent, McCain 49 percent

IOWA: (6 electoral votes)

America’s bread basket took Obama to its heart in 2008, when he won the Iowa caucuses to launch his Democratic juggernaut. Romney won this year’s Republican contest — until a recount declared Rick Santorum the winner. Romney is holding tough; its top newspaper just endorsed him, after backing Obama four years ago.

RealClearPolitics polling average: Obama up 1.3 percent.

2008: Obama 54 percent, McCain 45 percent.

NEVADA (6 electoral votes)

America’s gambling capital was sucker-punched by high unemployment and the mortgage foreclosure crisis, and while jobless numbers have improved, they remain high. Obama has built big leads among Hispanic voters, but many Nevadans say he has not turned the economy around fast enough.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 2.4 percent.

2008: Obama 55 percent, McCain 43 percent.

NORTH CAROLINA (15 electoral votes)

Obama won this traditionally red southeastern state by just a few thousand votes in 2008. The president came out in support of gay marriage this year, while North Carolinians approved an amendment banning it. The issue simmers.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Romney up 3.8 percent

2008: Obama 50 percent, McCain 49.5 percent.

WISCONSIN (10 electoral votes)

Long in the blue column, Wisconsin is now in play, following a tumultuous recall battle over the Republican governor that forced the party to build up a vast political machine there. It’s paying off. Obama’s comfortable lead has shrunk. And Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, is from the Badger State.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 4.0 points.

2008: Obama 56 percent, McCain 42 percent.

– POTENTIAL SURPRISES –

PENNSYLVANIA (20 electoral votes)

Polls in this rust-belt state like next-door Ohio showed a safe bet for Obama six weeks ago, but the race has narrowed. Pennsylvania elected a Republican governor and Republican senator in 2010, and support for fracking for natural gas, which Romney advocates, is high in western Pennsylvania.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 4.6 percent.

2008: Obama 55 percent, McCain 44 percent.

MICHIGAN (16 electoral votes)

Nominally Romney’s home state, Michigan hasn’t voted for a Republican since 1988 and Obama is still the strong favorite here despite recent polls suggesting a tight race. Obama’s bailout of Detroit auto giants GM and Chrysler, opposed by Romney but credited with saving the key industry in the state, could be the deciding factor.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 3.0 points.

2008: Obama 57 percent, McCain 41 percent

MINNESOTA (10 electoral votes)

One recent poll raised eyebrows when it showed Obama leading by only three points in the normally safe blue territory of Minnesota. There is little doubt the state has moved more to the center from the liberal left in recent election cycles but the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” hasn’t voted for a Republican since the Richard Nixon landslide of 1972.

RealClearPolitics.com polling average: Obama up 5.0 points.

2008: Obama 54.1 percent, McCain 43.8 percent

h/t: The Raw Story

A new report today reveals that approximately one of ten dollars spent by Iowa congressman Steve King’s re-election campaign goes to him and his family members, who have together collected close to half a million dollars out of his $5.5 million campaign war chest. The review of his campaign expenditures, conducted by CREDO Action, found that King, along with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, have been paid handsomely by his campaign, which has been a trend in King’s campaigns. This lucrative nepotism is nothing new: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington points out that King’s family members have received tens of thousands of dollars during the last two campaign cycles. And when King isn’t using campaign money to boost himself and family members, he is using taxpayer dollars to help his own business.

Such nepotism isn’t exactly surprising coming from King, who often appears to be more concerned with making headlines with shocking statements than actually proposing meaningful legislation.

Just this year, King has accused President Obama of breaking his oath of office and destroying the Constitution while claiming that a Romney election would be a victory for God; lamented that states cannot ban contraceptives and doubted that rape can lead to pregnancy; defended dogfighting, compared same-sex marriage to desecrating the Eucharist; and sat on a panel with White Nationalists Peter Brimelow and John Derbyshire, who was subsequently fired by the National Review for his racist writings.

King claims that his first priority in the 112th Congress will be to abolish birthright citizenship, a right plainly established in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. He said that his legislation will attempt to end what he calls the “anchor baby industry” and that if his bill is ruled unconstitutional he will move to amend the Constitution to repeal birthright citizenship. 

King, who has appeared with violent vigilante groups, defended his proposal to have electrified wire on border fences by saying on the House floor, “We do this with livestock all the time.” He erroneously claimed that illegal immigrants kill 25 Americans each day, and referred to all immigrants as criminals and disease-carriers. King compared illegal immigration to a “slow motion Holocaust” and a “slow-motion terrorist attack on the United States.” Opposed to a pathway for citizenship for illegal immigrants working and residing in the country, he said that he would only support comprehensive reform if “every time we give amnesty for an illegal alien, we deport a liberal.” 

On the House floor, King blasted the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus as “separatist groups,” and suggested that a “very, very urban senator, Barack Obama” provided “slavery reparations” through the USDA Pigford II settlement with black farmers.

During the presidential election, King maintained if Obama won that Al-Qaeda “would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror.”

King said that it was “bizarre” for Obama to say his middle name “Hussein” during the inauguration, and asserted that the President “has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race - on the side that favors the black person.” He also dubbed the President a “Marxist” who “doesn’t have an American experience” and is in “violation of his oath of office.” When asked at a rally in support of Arizona’s draconian SB 1070 immigration law if Obama was “bringing small quantities of Muslims into this country,” King replied that he “wouldn’t be surprised that that is the real factual basis.”

On Glenn Beck’s show, King declared that Democrats were trying to “take away the liberty that we have right from God” by having members vote on the health care reform bill on a Sunday.

A fierce opponent of LGBT equality, King strongly opposes the Uniting American Families Act, which allows U.S. citizens and legal residents to petition for their permanent partners (including same-sex partners) to obtain U.S. residency or citizenship. He told the Family Research Council that gay Americans should stay in the closet if they wanted to avoid discrimination, andequated gay rights with rights for “unicorns and leprechauns.” After the Iowa Supreme Court said that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, he claimed that Iowa could soon become a “gay marriage Mecca due to the Supreme Court’s latest experiment in social engineering.” King has compared homosexuality to incest and described marriage equality as “a purely socialist concept.”

King was also the only member of the House to vote against a plaque commemorating the slaves who helped build the Capitol, which he said waspart of a plot “by liberals in Congress to scrub references to America’s Christian heritage from our nation’s Capitol.”

An Iowa pastor who has called for an Iowa judge to be removed because he voted to legalize same sex marriage recently used a sermon to castigate a woman for objecting to political activism at his church.

The Associated Press reported on Sunday that City Church of Burlington Rev. Steve Youngblood had acknowledged wanting to “slap” the woman in his Oct. 7 sermon after she raised objections to fliers that were being distributed at the church on the grounds that it was illegal for tax-exempt organizations to promote political candidates or causes.

The fliers backed the removal of Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins, one of the justices who joined in a unanimous decision that overturned a law banning same sex marriage in the state. The woman contacted the group Vote Yes To Retain Iowa Supreme Court Justices, which later filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service.

In the Oct. 7 Sermon, Youngblood lashed out at the woman, saying that he would “like to slap her” and that her husband should “correct her.” The pastor added that the woman’s actions were “not Christian behavior.”

“What makes me madder is that this person’s husband won’t correct them,” he ranted. “I don’t like rebellious women. I don’t like rebellious men, either. They’re even worse.”

The pastor went on to urge the 150 attendees to pick up one of the fliers before leaving the church.

“He read from that pamphlet during the sermon and encouraged people to pick it up after church and in my opinion that is a direct violation of the law, which prohibits houses of worship and nonprofits from endorsing candidates,” Interfaith Alliance Executive Director Connie Ryan Terrell told the AP.

H/T: The Raw Story

Anti-gay activist Bob Vander Plaats, who was labeled the Iowa GOP’s “kingmaker” after Republican presidential candidates lined up to pay homage to him, was the architect of the successful effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices, and he’s now spearheading a new effort to remove a fourth justice. All four of the justices Vander Plaats opposes joined the state supreme court’s unanimous opinion recognizing that the Iowa Constitution does not permit marriage discrimination against gay couples.

At a rally last month, Vander Plaats explained why he is so offended by the targeted justices’ application of the state constitution. And then he compared marriage equality to slavery:

We must get back to the constitution… . It is the court that should be independent — free of politics — to uphold the constitution, not to trample on the constitution, not to insert politics in the constitution, and not to run the leftist agenda through the court system. That’s not their role.

The Iowa State Bar Association, they’ll tell you — they’ll say “Bob, this is only one opinion. It’s only one opinion. You can’t be that upset at a court because of one opinion.” One opinion: Dred Scott — blacks are property. One opinion: Roe v. Wade — we’ve killed sixty million babies off a court’s opinion. One opinion, the Varnum opinion and you are now seeing same-sex marriage infiltrate this state. One opinion, where a court legislates from the bench, when a court executes from the bench, when a court tries to amend the constitution from the bench, and when a court tries to do that, it is our responsibility as the people — the final arbitrators — to kick them off the bench.

So when Vander Plaats tries to take revenge against these justices by tossing them out of office, he is the one who injecting politics into the constitution and he is the one who is trying to run his agenda through the court system. Vander Plaats’ campaign is nothing less than an effort to make judges too scared to follow the law when the law conflicts with conservative views.

H/T: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

The election could be won or lost weeks before Election Day thanks to early voting that has now spread in one form or another to more than half the states. With early voting kicking off Thursday in the critical swing state of Iowa, and with more swing states following close behind, including Ohio next Tuesday, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will be banking real votes long before the frenetic final days of the campaign.

“I am forecasting in this election cycle that about 35 percent of the vote will be cast before Election Day,” George Mason University professor Michael McDonald, who researches early voting behavior, told TPM. “We know 78 percent of all votes in Colorado were cast prior to Election Day in 2008, and it probably will be around 85 percent in 2012. The election will essentially be won or lost before Election Day unless it’s a tight, narrow, razor-thin margin.”

With more than one-third of the votes nationwide expected to be cast early, Romney’s already shrinking window to erase President Obama’s current lead in public opinion polls before Election Day is closing even faster. While the presidential debates, for instance, remain Romney’s last best hope to shake up the current dynamics of the race, many voters will have already cast their ballots before all the debates are held. Time is running out.

The prevalence of early voting in 2012 — either via in-person early voting or no-excuse absentee voting — continues the modern trend. Some 30.6 percent of the electorate voted early in 2008, but the percentages were much higher in battleground states like Florida (51.8 percent), Nevada (66.9 percent), and North Carolina (60.6 percent).

Ohio, where Obama is surging in public opinion polling, is poised for the biggest boost. Recently the Obama campaign successfully blocked the state in federal court from eliminating three early voting days. But the bigger news is that election officials, for the first time, are sending every single registered voter in the state an absentee ballot request form.

One exception where the rules have moved in the opposite direction is Florida, which cut its number of early voting days from 14 to eight. The effects of the change are still unclear, however, especially as individual counties might offer longer voting hours.

Democrats dominated early voting in 2008 thanks to high enthusiasm among the base, an unprecedented ground game, and a huge cash advantage over John McCain. This time around, Republicans say things will be different: They have vastly improved resources thanks to stronger fundraising and more assistance from outside groups.

The Romney campaign says it has met many of McCain’s 2008 grassroots benchmarks weeks ahead of schedule. Among the stats cited, officials say they’ve knocked on one million more doors already than in the entire ‘08 campaign and made seven times as many phone calls as Team McCain volunteers had at the same point in the race. Conservatives groups and Republicans also ran successful early voting programs in victories across the country in the 2010 elections, though it should be noted that the midterm electorate is demographically much more conservative than the expected presidential electorate.

For its part, the battle-tested Obama campaign is counting on its own turnout operations to counter the expected advantage in late advertising dollars from Republicans and their allies.

There are early indications in first-to-vote Iowa that the Obama campaign’s work may be paying off. While the GOP has made gains in voter registration since 2008, Democrats have made five times as many absentee ballot requests, a figure that is alarming some state Republicans.

Former Iowa Republican Party chair Craig Robinson, who now observes politics in the state closely as editor of The Iowa Republican blog, said Romney’s early vote efforts in the Hawkeye State so far fall far short of where John McCain’s were four years ago.

“There was quite a bit of mail being sent out,” Robinson recalled Tuesday. “The McCain campaign was fundamentally sound. I don’t have evidence of that yet from the Romney campaign.”

Robinson said he’s seen no early vote mailers from the Romney campaign so far. He fears Romney has missed the boat on early voting, leaving the Democrats to bank perhaps thousands of votes weeks before Election Day.

h/t: Benjy Sarlin at TPM