Tag: Iowa Democratic Party

When Republican power-brokers formed the Draft Branstad PAC last month, I assumed that the entity was a political action committee, as implied by the name “PAC.” However, the Draft Branstad PAC registered with the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board as a 527 committee. The distinction is important, because unlike PACs, 527 groups do not have to disclose their donors and are not allowed to advocate for candidates.

Today the Iowa Democratic Party caught the folks in charge of the Draft Branstad effort running their 527 group like a PAC.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 9, 2009

DRAFT BRANSTAD GROUP IGNORES IOWA ELECTION LAW

DES MOINES, IA -The political action group called Draft Branstad, formed to promote Terry Branstad’s candidacy for Governor before he became a declared candidate, is ignoring Iowa ethics law and engaging in express advocacy for Branstad, who became a candidate on Wednesday, Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan said Friday.

• FACT: Last night Draft Branstad hosted an event at Graze restaurant in West Des Moines.  The event included Branstad campaign paraphernalia and free drinks.  It was paid for by Draft Branstad and apparently the materials came from the same group.

• FACT: Draft Branstad continues to advertise on conservative websites.  Screen captures made Friday showed activity on multiple sites.

“This Draft Branstad group has spent funds directly benefiting the Branstad campaign,” Kiernan said Friday.  “That’s a blatant violation of Iowa campaign ethics law.”  Iowa election law prohibits 527 groups from engaging in express advocacy on behalf of any candidate or candidate’s committee.  

“Branstad should either embrace the spending of this group, since it’s a group designed by him to promote his candidacy, or publicly disavow it,” Kiernan said Friday.

Iowans know better.  They aren’t confused by the tactics being used to avoid both the letter and the spirit of campaign ethics law.  They know Branstad was behind the “movement” to draft him – and he knows why.  This campaign-that’s-not-a-campaign is a mockery of our system of democratic government and a slap in the face to Iowa’s bipartisan tradition of clean elections.

Now, we call upon Terry Branstad to:

1 Call upon the Draft Branstad group to cease and desist public statements and representations in his favor;

2 Disavow any expenditures already made by the Draft Branstad group after Tuesday, Oct. 6;

3 Call for the immediate disbanding of the Draft Branstad group based on Branstad’s decision to become a candidate on Wednesday, Oct. 7.

The leaders of the Draft Branstad PAC should know better than to make this kind of mistake, and Iowans should know better than to elect Terry Branstad again.

Senator Chuck Grassley is seeking a sixth term in 2010, and Iowa Democrats have never managed to give him a tough re-election race before. However, today Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan spoke confidently about a “first-round draft pick” who is ready to run against Grassley, Kay Henderson reported for Radio Iowa.

“I’m going to tell you here today that Chuck Grassley is going to be in for the race of his life.” […]

“You’re just going to have to wait to find out,” Kiernan said this morning during taping of this weekend’s “Iowa Press” program.  “We want to wait ’til, obviously, after Terry Branstad announced his candidacy for governor.”

Kiernan isn’t revealing the characteristics this phantom candidate may have either. “I’ll just wait for the announcement,” Kiernan said.  “You will be impressed.” […]

“I’m here to tell you today that it will be the toughest race that Chuck Grassley has faced since John Culver,” Kiernan said.

Grassley defeated Senator John Culver (Governor Chet Culver’s father) in the 1980 Reagan landslide.

Speaking to reporters after today’s taping, Kiernan said the big-name challenger is “100 percent committed” to this race.

Your guess is as good as mine. A retired politician? Former first lady Christie Vilsack? A celebrity in a non-political field? Someone from the business world? (Retired Principal Financial Group CEO Barry Griswell has ruled out running, as has Fred Hubbell, the incoming interim director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development.)

Grassley’s approval rating has fallen this year, but it’ll take a lot to convince me that we can defeat him. He’s still got a strong brand name and 30 years of constituent service behind him.

It’s the third year that Democrats control both chambers of the Iowa legislature as well as the governor’s chair, and party leaders want to seize the opportunity to pass some good labor legislation. In 2007, Democrats controlled the Iowa House 53-47 but couldn’t find enough votes to pass a “fair share” bill that would have forced individuals represented by unions to stop being “free riders.” In 2008, Governor Chet Culver angered labor activists by vetoing a bill that would have expanded collective bargaining rights. That prompted several major labor unions in Iowa to stop giving to Culver’s campaign committee.

This week a “prevailing wage” bill dominated debate in the Iowa House. It’s one of organized labor’s top legislative priorities for this session. Democratic leaders want to pass this bill, and Culver, who wants to heal last year’s wounds, has spoken out strongly on the issue.

Although Democrats now have a 56-44 majority in the lower chamber, they were unable to find a 51st vote for the prevailing wage bill during five hours of debate on Friday. Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy now plans to keep the vote open all weekend, sleeping in the chamber, until some Democrat’s arm can be twisted on this issue.  

I don’t want to wade too far into the Iowa weeds here; I’ve written more on this mess at Bleeding Heartland.

I’m bringing this to the attention of the Swing State Project community because it underscores the cost of the inadequate get-out-the-vote effort last year on behalf of our statehouse candidates.

Last summer Barack Obama’s campaign took over the “coordinated campaign” role from the Iowa Democratic Party and promised to work for candidates up and down the ticket. But staffers and volunteers in the unprecedented number of Obama field offices didn’t even collect voter IDs for our state House and Senate candidates. Our legislative candidates weren’t usually mentioned in scripts for canvassers and rarely had their fliers included in lit drops. After the election, Rob Hubler, the Democratic candidate in Iowa’s fifth Congressional district, took the unusual step of publicly criticizing the GOTV effort.

In the end, Obama carried this state by 9 points, but we lost several excrutiatingly close races in the Iowa House (more details on that are at Bleeding Heartland). If even one of those races had gone the other way, we would have the votes to pass the prevailing wage bill without the fiasco that is now unfolding.

The Iowa Democratic Party must run a better coordinated campaign in 2010 and must insist that the GOTV in 2012 is about more than re-electing President Obama. Even Obama’s general election campaign director in Iowa, Jackie Norris, admitted that more could have been done for the down-ticket candidates:

I also think that a lot of the people who voted were new voters and while we educated them enough to get them out to support the president they need to now be educated about the down ballot races.

I have stopped donating to the Democratic National Committee for now, because I am concerned that new DNC chairman Tim Kaine plans to replace efforts to strengthen state parties across the country with a 50-state strategy to re-elect President Obama.

We need better coordinated campaigns to GOTV in 2010 and 2012, because even if Obama remains as popular as he is now, support for him will not magically translate into votes for other Democratic candidates.

As the fate of the prevailing wage bill in Iowa shows, lack of attention to down-ticket races will affect what Democrats can achieve long after the election.