Grassley All In For Grandson

Grassley All In For Grandson

From a reader, this flyer is of great interest. Note location:

Please join REPRESENTATIVE PAT GRASSLEY

Thursday, September 1st
from 4:30PM–6:00PM
for a reception with special guest U.S. SENATOR CHUCK GRASSLEY

$1000 Host
$500 Sponsor
$250 Partner
$100 Supporter

Make Checks Payable to:
Citizens for Pat Grassley
30601 Deer Trail Drive
New Hartford, IA 50660

Where:
Republican Party of Iowa
621 East 9th Street
Des Moines, IA

Not so remarkable except, as anyone who reads this blog knows, Grassley the Younger is one of two GOP incumbents in House District 50, and both are staying and running.

One would think, or hope, that RPI might make the HQ available if Annette Sweeney's grandpa wants to host an event, but the key here is: Grandpa Grassley is all in for what should be the hottest legislative primary since Dave Mulder knocked off Ken Veenstra in 2004.

Cityview's Civic Skinny looked at this race last week and noted: "Chuck Grassley, who is worth somewhere between $2 million and $6 million, has never contributed anything to his grandson — or, for that matter, to any other candidate for state office in recent years."

But making things more interesting, it turns out Sweeney has friends in high places too: "(Bruce) Rastetter and Sweeney have known each other since they were young. He gave Sweeney $500 last September and another $500 when she ran two years earlier."

Sounds like an intense surrogate war, and Terry Branstad will have to be really crafty if he wants to stay out of it...

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For all the fans of yesterday morning's post, here's a firsthand account of CCI's tantrum in Carroll.

One Retirement, One Train Wreck

Districts Revisited: One Retirement, One Train Wreck

With the quadruple-overtime legislative session finally over, we're seeing the campaign announcement and retirement fallout from The Map. Two updates from districts where two Republicans are paired up: one smooth retirement and one train-wreck primary.

The fratricidal face-off that looked like a map-killer on Map Day seems like it will actually happen. Annette Sweeney has announced for re-election in House District 50. She's paired up with our next United States Senator, Pat Grassley, who also announced for the same seat last month.

Is this a game of chicken, with one of them veering off at the last minute? Or will they actually settle this at the polls? There's usually one where one of the parties can't work it out: Bill Brand vs. Jane Svoboda in 1992, Rick Larkin and Phil Wise in 2002.

Republicans have settled things more smoothly in House District 79. Oskaloosa freshman Guy Vander Linden is running, and Jim Van Engelenhoeven of Pella is retiring after seven terms.

Both these seats are solidly Republican. There is some good news for Dems, though: Vander Linden, who knocked off Eric Palmer last year in a swing district that went north to Grinnell, is staying with the House race instead of challenging a very vulnerable Democratic senator, Tom Rielly.

District of the Day: Senate District 25, House Districts 49 and 50

District of the Day: Senate District 25, House Districts 49 and 50



Two pair makes for a full House, and Senate, in the worst redistricting headache for Republicans.

Senate District 25

Registration: D 9411, R 15497, N 15165, total 40105, R+ 6086
Incumbents: Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock and Rob Bacon, R-Maxwell

UPDATE September 9: Bacon moving to House 48, where he'll have a rematch with Olive.

Bill Dix and Rob Bacon both knocked off Democratic incumbents in 2010, when their districts didn't even border each other. Both live at the very edge of this district. If one backs down, the other holds over in a solidly Republican seat. Neither has a good option to move.

Bacon, who vanquished Landslide Rich Olive, looks like he keeps the larger home turf, the non-Ames part of Story County. The old Bacon district went north and west: Hamilton, Wright, and a little of Webster, all of which he loses. His Maxwell home is maybe a couple miles north of Democrat Dennis Black's swingy district, but that has no overlap with Bacon's old seat which had the same south line. A couple of his old townships overlap with Herman Quirmbach, but that's a good Democratic district.

Dix, who defeated Bill Heckroth, keeps only part of Butler County: Aplington, Parkersburg, New Hartford and his Shell Rock home. He used to go east to Bremer, most of Fayette, and north rural Black Hawk. A lot of that turf to the east is in new Senate 32, now a swingy district held by Democrat Brian Schoenjahn.

Dix gave up his House seat to run Congress in 2006 when Jim Nussle retired, but lost in the primary. Unfortunately for Dix, this area is NOT in Bruce Braley's district; it's in that little easternmost extension of Steve King's.

Bacon and Dix could just duke it out in a primary on relatively neutral ground. Half the district is Hardin and Grundy counties, which neither had before.

House District 49

Registration: D 4999, R 6948, N 7788, total 19755, R+ 1949
Incumbent: Dave Deyoe, R-Nevada

Deyoe was a late starting candidate in 2006, and the only Republican winner in the game of musical chairs that started with Stew Iverson dropping out of his race after being deposed as Senate leader. He won a solid 62% in 2010 against 2006 congressional candidate Selden Spencer (the one the entire Iowa lefty blogosphere kept talking up while ignoring Dave Loebsack).

Deyoe is also the only legislator in the neighborhood who gets lucky in redistricting. This remains a Nevada and rural Story based district, with a couple townships shifting and Story City staying. He sheds southeast Hamilton County and gets the southern half of Hardin, with little impact on the party balance.

House District 50

Registration: D 4412, R 8549, N 7377, total 20350, R+ 4137
Incumbents: Annette Sweeney, R-Alden and Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford.
UPDATE July 7: Both have now announced in this district.

In this corner, a rising star of the legislature. In that corner, a U.S. Senator in waiting. This is one of the two seats, along with the triple-up in House 8, that nearly put the whole Map at risk. And while we have some ideas what could happen in 8, there's no clue yet as to how this one gets worked out.

Since the day Pat Grassley announced for the legislature in 2006, when Bill Dix left to run for Congress, I've been saying The Masterplan is for him to take over for Grandpa in 2016. No one ever denies this. If he comes out of this map alive, he turns the magic Senator age of 30 during the next term, in 2013. He shared the ballot with Grandpa for the first time last year, and no Democrat was up for that challenge.

Sweeney was first elected in 2008. Democrat Tim Hoy had given Polly Granzow a scare in 2006, and Granzow retired. Hoy tried again but Sweeney won by 1000 votes, then scored a two to one win in 2010. Sweeney carried the ball on the no videotaping of farms bill (taking matters into her own hands on one occasion).

The old Sweeney and Grassley districts met at a corner. Grassley had all of Butler, then went east into Bremer to pick up Waverly. Sweeney's old 44th district had all of Hardin (this map has just the north half), then went south to pick up rural Marshall. The 2001 mappers also looped the Wright-Franklin county line around the city of Dows to keep it together. Since precincts can't be divided between legislative districts, and since it was the only part of Franklin in old district 44, the Franklin County part of Dows was the smallest precinct in the state at 40 voters. This cycle, it doesn't seem like there's anything that small.

Whoever stays, or wins, gets a more Republican district than they had before. Grundy County is new to both. Both representatives are farmers, making moving more difficult than, say, buying a house in a different part of West Des Moines or Iowa City.

Grassley has definitively said he's not moving, though that doesn't stop Tyler Mills at Des Moines Free Press from speculating about a move into Waverly-based House 63. It's empty, but Bill Heckroth is on the comeback trail and has already announced.

Sweeney was one of the seven no votes on the map, saying districts were not compact enough and citing the split of Hardin County.

My prediction? Look for Terry Branstad or Bill Northey to offer Sweeney a job sometime around the filing deadline.

New Map | New Map (Insets) | Old Map

District of the Day: Senate District 4, House District 7 and 8

District of the Day: Senate District 4, House District 7 and 8



Senate District 4

Registration: D 11,890, R 14,602, N 15,880, total 42,381, R+ 2712
No Incumbent

Five whole counties- Emmett, Kossuth, Winnebago, Hancock and Wright-with no senators. This turf was split between Jack Kibbie, Merlin Bartz, and Rob Bacon in the old map. No one county dominates geographically as all are of similar size, between 10,000 and 16,000 population in a 61,000 body district. That's a lot of parades.

Last year Bacon knocked off Democrat Rich Olive, who won in 2006 when Stew Iverson quit his re-elect race after being deposed as Senate Republican leader. Iverson, of course, made a comeback last year when he defeated Six Pack Democrat McKinley Bailey in a Wright-Hamilton district.

Iverson is part of the triple-up in House 8 (see below) which is partially resolved by his likely run in this seat. There's not a lot of overlap between new senate 4 and the old Senate 5 that he held. Wright is the south end of the new seat that borders Minnesota. The old one went south from Wright instead, through Hamilton, wrapped around Ames to take in most of geographic Story, and ended way down at the Polk County line. The old seat was a few hundred voters more Republican, but Olive still managed to squeak through by 61 votes in a Democratic landslide year.

House District 7

Registration: D 6526, R 6405, N 8514, total 21,450, D+ 121
Incumbent: John Wittneben, D-Estherville

Day Four and finally our first House Democrat. Wittneben was one of the D's few bright spots in 2010, holding an open lean-Democratic district by just 32 votes when Marcy Frevert retired. But the new district loses 1200 Democrats to become a swing seat. Wittneben loses the Frevert base of Palo Alto but keeps his own Emmet County base and rural north Kossuth. But significantly, he adds the city of Algona.

House District 8

Registration: D 5364, R 8197, N 7366, total 20931, R+ 2833

Incumbents: Linda Upmeyer, R-Garner, Stew Iverson, R-Clarion, and Henry Rayhons, R-Garner

UPDATE July 14: Upmeyer officially announces move to House 54.

UPDATE August 10: Rayhons staying and running.

For a few hours on March 31, it looked like this was the seat that could have scuttled the whole plan. With Upmeyer and Rayhons both carrying Garner addresses, it would have been hard for the map geeks to keep them apart; Iverson was just one more wrench in the works.

Early reports were that Upmeyer would be the one who stayed, but now it seems she's looking at open House 54 to the north. Rayhons is 75 and was pegged as a retirement, but if Upmeyer does move he could stick around. Iowa Politics offered a good summary on April 20:

Upmeyer has said she might move from her longtime farm in Garner to a condominium in the Clear Lake area. But if she doesn’t, Rayhons said he’ll retire instead of running against his fellow Republican.

“It’s going to all depend on what Representative Upmeyer does,” Rayhons told IowaPolitics.com. “I would guess that I would probably run for that House seat if Representative Upmeyer decides to move. However, I will not interject if Representative Upmeyer stays where she is and wants the seat. I would quit the Legislature, probably.”

As for Iverson, speculation is that he might run for a state Senate seat that’s vacant due to redistricting. Iverson is a former Senate majority leader. However, he said Tuesday that he hadn’t made up his mind on his political future.

“I have absolutely made no decisions yet,” Iverson said. “The House district looks pretty good. The Senate district looks pretty good. There happens to be three Republicans in the House district. Representative Upmeyer, Representative Rayhons and I have not sat down. We have not talked about anything. I have to tell you, I’ve made no decisions yet whatsoever, and I probably won’t make a decision until next fall.”

However, Iverson is sure about one thing.

“I am not moving,” he said.

If Upmeyer stays she gets a slightly more Republican district. She'd lose Winnebago and Worth to the north and east. This seat instead goes south to Iverson's Wright County base and gets southern and western Kossuth, but not the city of Algona.

Rayhon's old turf went to the east in Franklin and picked up the Clear Lake part of Cerro Gordo, which is specifically where Upmeyer is taking about moving. Open House 54 could also have been the escape route for Annette Sweeney, who drew the short straw in the pair with Pat Grassley. But it's starting to look like she drew the short straw here, too.

New Map | New Map (Insets) | Old Map