Iowa caucus race, next steps in abortion lawsuit, a RAGBRAI arrest, and more

July 31 "Capitol Week" is online

August is going to be a big month for special elections in Iowa. Today, voters in Pottawattamie County (containing Council Bluffs) will decide whether to elect their five county supervisors by district, rather than in at-large elections. Progressive and labor groups led the effort to put this measure on the ballot. On August 29, voters in Warren County will elect a county auditor, choosing between a Democrat who has worked in the office for seven years and a Republican who pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and has never worked in election administration.

Dennis Hart and I will get to those topics next week, but this week, the Iowa caucuses and Republican presidential race dominated our conversation. Audio from the latest show, which KHOI broadcasts live at 7 pm on Mondays.

Topics we covered on July 31:

• I don’t write much horse race coverage, but we felt we needed to talk about the latest NYT/Siena poll of the Republican campaign. This is a nationwide poll, not specific to Iowa caucus-goers, but it illustrates the depths of Donald Trump’s dominance. Incidentally, while Dennis and I didn’t talk about this, NYT/Sienna finds Trump and Biden tied in a potential general election match-up;

• We talked about why Ron DeSantis has failed to mount a strong challenge to Trump. There’s been lots of reporting on his shortcomings as a candidate and his operation’s poor spending and communications decisions. But in fairness to DeSantis, GOP primary voters just don’t seem to want any alternative to Trump;

• Federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment last week related to Trump’s possession of classified documents and obstruction of justice;

• We spent a fair amount of time talking about the Republican Party of Iowa’s Lincoln Dinner fundraiser last Friday, where 13 candidates each had 10 minutes to make their pitch to about 1,000 GOP activists. We didn’t have time to discuss every speech, but I wrote a deep dive that covered them all and included C-SPAN video for those who would like to watch;

• Dennis and I focused on the remarks by Trump, DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Will Hurd, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, and only briefly touched on Perry Johnson, Larry Elder, and Ryan Binkley;

• The Iowa Democratic Party brought Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to Des Moines on Friday to bash the Republican agenda ahead of the big GOP fundraiser. We talked more broadly about the challenges facing Iowa Democrats with no competitive presidential race to generate media coverage regularly;

• We previewed candidate visits to the Iowa State Fair; Dennis and I were both surprised that ten of the GOP presidential candidates will appear on the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox, as well as Governor Kim Reynolds’ invitation for “fair-side” chats. For those who want to time their state fair visits with presidential candidate appearances, here is the Soapbox schedule (which also includes Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson), and here is the schedule for candidate chats with Reynolds;

• Brianne Pfannenstiel wrote a good piece for the Des Moines Register on how the Republican National Committee’s criteria for the televised debates has changed how presidential candidates are trying to win over voters. I understand why these donor thresholds are in place, but I don’t think they are having the intended effect of restricting the debates to candidates who have significant popular support;

• Moving to other topics, we talked about the timeline for the Iowa Supreme Court to consider the state’s appeal of the injunction blocking enforcement of the near-total abortion ban. I want to emphasize that the standard for review of this kind of action is deferential to the lower court. So even if the Iowa Supreme Court allows the injunction to remain in place while litigation proceeds (on the grounds that the Polk County District Court’s order wasn’t egregiously wrong), that doesn’t mean the Supreme Court justices won’t later uphold the abortion ban;

• Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird was on “Iowa Press” last week and told the Iowa PBS panel she intends to permanently stop reimbursing sexual assault victims for emergency contraception or abortion services. But her spokesperson later walked that back, telling the Des Moines Register no final decision had been made. Dennis and I talked about the mystery surrounding the supposed “top-down, bottom up audit” Bird ordered regarding victim services;

• Vice President Kamala Harris came to Drake University last week to highlight the threats to reproductive rights. She’s held similar events in other states where Republicans are trying to ban abortion. We talked about how Democrats seem generally more eager to keep this issue at the center of political discourse, while Republican presidential candidates have mostly highlighted other topics;

• Finally, we talked about Republican State Senator Adrian Dickey getting arrested last week on RAGBRAI. I was first to report that story at Bleeding Heartland and have updated the post several times since last Wednesday.

Thanks for reading or listening! Remember, the full archive of more than 130 episodes of “Capitol Week” is available online for free.

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