Another Day, AnotherMap Roundup

Another Day, Another Map Roundup

First public hearing last night in Council Bluffs, with some grumbling from PottCo GOP. tl;dr version: we want to be in King's district. Other complaints: The Central Iowa Coalition Conspiracy. (At this point in 2001 Map One the phrase was "urban-rural mix.") Quote of the night: “If Mike Gronstal is in favor of this, that’s all I need to know. I cannot support this.”

But that's 30 party activists who went to a meeting. What's REALLY happening? Politico:

But privately, some top Republican officials say legislators are increasingly heading toward a grudging acceptance of the congressional plan because they don’t want to roll the dice on a plan that could end up with much less favorable state legislative district maps.

Also talk in the Politico article of Christie Vilsack running in the 4th.

And yesterday afternoon, a fundraising email from Gronstal began with this very presumptive sentence: "Late last week, the new map of Iowa legislative districts was made public, and with that, the 2012 Election Cycle is underway."

Some local stories from mid-sized papers: The Marshalltown Times-Republican mentions that Lance Horbach is retiring and the Sweeney-Grassley pair. So many papers have "Democrat" or "Republican" in their name, a holdover from the old days of the partisan press that I firmly believe will return as journalism moves from an advertiser supported model to an interest group supported model. [/tangent]

Also checking in: Carroll, Ft. Dodge (Tjepkes predicting passage, Beall predicting failure), Newton (Black noting that his is one of the two Senate districts split between congressional districts because 50/4 = 12 1/2) and Denison. Wednesday and Thursday tend to be publication days for the small town weeklies, and I'll be matching for those to see how some of those rural pairs shake out.