Early voting for the Nov. 2 election began on Wednesday, as county auditors started mailing out absentee ballots requested by voters, and opened their offices for in-person early voting. This is the first election since Gov. Kim Reynolds signed new restrictions on voting into law in March. Iowa was one of 19 Republican-controlled states to […]
Election Coverage
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Donald Trump lies, stokes xenophobia and endorses Chuck Grassley in speech at Iowa State Fairgrounds
When Donald Trump finally began speaking at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Saturday night, it took him less than two minutes to get to his central message: “The election was rigged.” He was lying, but about an hour into his speech, the former president did say something true about the 2020 election. “I never conceded. […]
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Democrat Bob Krause, who served in the Iowa House in the ’70s, is running for U.S. Senate
Bob Krause, who represented Burlington in the Iowa House in the 1970s, announced on Thursday he is running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate to challenge seven-term incumbent Sen. Chuck Grassley in next year’s election. “Win or lose, I will elevate the battle of ideas,” Krause said, standing near the Mississippi River as […]
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Democrat Liz Bennett kicks off campaign for state Senate, reflecting on the less-divided Iowa of decades past
“I’m running for state senate to make sure that every single Iowan gets a fair shot in Iowa,” Liz Bennett told the people crowded into a room at The Bohemian in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday night for her campaign kick-off event. The Cedar Rapids Democrat is in her fourth term representing Cedar Rapids in the […]
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Chuck Grassley, in elected office since 1959, is running again
Chuck Grassley, who has spent his career presenting himself as a regular Iowa farmer and not a politician, has decided six decades in elected office is not enough. On Friday, one week after his 88th birthday, Iowa’s senior senator announced he is running for an eighth six-year term in the U.S. Senate. “I’m running for […]
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The map whisperer: A conversation with Cory McCartan, winner of the 2021 Iowa redistricting challenge
Every 10 years, the political commentator Dave Wasserman holds an “Iowa redistricting challenge.” The goal of the challenge is to use new census data to draw a congressional map of Iowa distributing the population as equally as possible into districts. This year, the challenge was won by Cory McCartan, a Grinnell College graduate currently pursuing […]
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Democrat Christina Bohannan is running for Miller-Meeks’ seat in Congress
State Rep. Christina Bohannan announced on Tuesday she is running for U.S. Congress. Bohannan, who represents Iowa City in the Iowa House, is the first Democrat to announce a challenge to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the Republican who won the seat in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District by six votes in 2020. “I really think that we […]
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The conspiracy-theory influence on Iowa’s laws and lawmakers
Donald Trump was not welcomed back into the Oval Office on Friday, Aug. 13, as some MAGA loyal predicted. But the failure of such Trumpian prophecies usually does little to dull the fervor of right-wing conspiracy theorists. Encouraged by online influencers and politicians who stand to benefit from the spread of misinformation, an array of […]
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‘Iowa is worth the work’: Deidre DeJear officially launches her campaign for governor
Deidre DeJear made it official on Saturday — she is running for governor of Iowa. DeJear’s announcement came just over a month after she announced a listening tour of the state to help her decide whether to run, and three years after her first campaign for public office. DeJear made history with her 2018 run […]
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Retired Admiral Michael Franken says he will run for Senate
Retired Navy Admiral Michael Franken told the Carroll Times Herald on Monday he will run for the U.S. Senate. Franken is the fourth Democrat to declare as a candidate for the seat currently held by Sen. Chuck Grassley. “I think it’s very clear looking across the national scope of things that the nation has a […]
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‘We deserve Medicare for All’: Glenn Hurst announces he’s running for U.S. Senate
On Thursday, Glenn Hurst, a doctor and the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Rural Caucus, became the third Democrat to enter the 2022 race for the U.S. Senate seat Chuck Grassley has held for four decades. “Iowa’s senior senator is stuck in a vision of our past when what we need is a vision […]
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Improv, politics and nonprofit law collided to create a small scandal in Cedar Rapids
Anthony Jensen didn’t know who Amara Andrews was when her name first came up during an Improv Incubator brainstorming session, as the group was trying to figure out potential guest performers for an upcoming show at CSPS in Cedar Rapids. Jensen, who co-founded the improv group in 2018, told Little Village he googled her name […]
