Data as Destiny Part 1 and 2

There's enough grad student dropout in me to appreciate a good data set when I see one, and today I have two that explain a few things about politics national and Iowan.

One of my more vivid grad school memories was seeing one of my professors put down a nationally known scholar visiting Iowa for a guest lecture as a "popularizer," meaning the guest had an ability to condense a dissertation into a soundbite and get on TV, thus jeopardizing academic elitism and exclusivity. The University of Virginia's Larry Sabato is definitely a popularizer, but I don't consider that a bad thing.

Sabato looks at census data this week to study each state's "nativity rate."



No, not that Nativity. Definitely not that Nativity.

Sabato's "nativity rate" is the percentage of a state's residents born in the state.

His main fascination with the data is that his own Virginia, over the last century,has taken a huge drop from one of the most "native" states, over 90% in 1910, to one of the least at just under 50. Which explains a lot about the evolution of Virginia from a state that, at the height of the civil rights era and the old Byrd machine, closed its public schools - ALL public schools - for a year rather than integrate, into a state that twice voted for Barack Obama.

However, Sabato finds:

...a weak negative correlation (R = -.235) between a state’s nativity percentage and the percentage of the vote Obama received in the 50 states plus Washington, D.C. The analysis also tells us that nativity rates explain very little of the variation in Obama’s performance from state to state. In other words, a state with a low percentage of native-born residents was not clearly more likely to support the president’s reelection bid.

Me, I find this data set interesting as a non-native Iowan, born in the far off exotic land of Wisconsin. The top nativist state looks to me to be either 1) the racially polarized, lagging behind dregs of the deep South and Appalachia, with post-Katrina Louisiana always a demographic outlier; and 2) places that get very cold in the winter.

But what does it mean politically? There's very red places and very blue places on both ends. What I'm seeing is stability and strong parties in the most nativist states, and more political volatility in the states with the most in-migration. Just anecdotally - I dropped out of grad school before I got regression analysis tattooed on my brain, but then more of you are reading this post than would have ever read my dissertation - the states with the most newcomers are more likely to have swung one way or another recently. You'd likely a higher percentage of independents, or something like a hot primary or an out of nowhere winner. You even see that in high-growth precincts in a very nativist state like Iowa.

The data is 20 years old, but it would be interesting to layer this, or the 1990 equivalent, against Ross Perot's percentages. He did very well in those rootless places.

What I see in the more nativist states is strong party structures, longer incumbency, institutional stability. There's exceptions on both ends, of course.

The other interesting data set comes to us via Brad Plumer at the Washington Post. Filipe R. Campante of Harvard Kennedy School and Quoc-Anh Do of Singapore Management University find that “isolated capital cities are robustly associated with greater levels of corruption.”

That is, if your state capital is your largest city, you're less likely to see corruption than if the center of government is a downstate backwater.

Who tops the charts? Springfield, Illinois, of course, where they had to build a new wing of the state prison just to house ex-governors.

"The authors found that state capitals located in remote areas tend to receive less newspaper and media coverage. What’s more, voter knowledge about the goings-on in these isolated statehouses tends to be lower. And, as a result, voter turnout for state elections tends to be depressed."

Iowa, home of the $3 gift law, is in the clear here with our largest city as the state capital. However, the study just looks at 1976 to 2002. Illinois is still safe, sending two more governors to prison. But Kent Sorenson's presidential campaign shenanigans may move Iowa a notch or so.

Labor on Etheredge's Agenda

Looks like Johnson County is back to square one on the justice center, or if that's a dirty word the jail and courthouse. Most of the ink in the wake of Tuesday's meeting focused on the masterplan offered by the New Guy, Republican supervisor John Etheredge, but another part of his agenda, a cheap shot at organized labor, was overlooked.

Etheredge got elected in March basically to say NO, and he has: to the Newport Road zoning, marriage equality, and Earth Day. If he had kept his remarks short and sweet to "I think we need to build at the county farm, not downtown," he would have been OK. There are a fair of people arguing for a justice center, or at least a jail, at the county farm location. Though it's worth noting that the downtown justice center got roughly 55% of the vote twice, while the jail at county farm plan drew barely a third of the vote in 2000. And as Terrence Neuzil quickly noted, a post-election survey in 2001 showed that the location was a leading reason for the loss.

(Hint: If you build a jail other than where a jail is now, there will be people who do not now live near a jail who do not want to live near a jail. And in this case, those people have very big houses and will spend a lot of money on a No campaign. At least that's what happened in 2000.)

But Etheredge, possibly on the fly, rolled that out into a grand long-range vision in which he would sell off all the county's mid-town holdings, including the new HHS Building, and move all county operations to the county farm area. The old courthouse would become a museum run by... someone. (I had the best plan for that.)

County Attorney Janet Lyness did a remarkably polite, diplomatic job informing Etheredge that 1) the county had been through the County Campus discussion circa 2005 and 2) decided to create one, by closing the old Human Services and Health buildings and building the new HHS facility in 2008 across the street from the Administration Building in mid-town Iowa City.

But Etheredge's proposal to sell off a five year old building and a newly remodeled Admin Building aren't the biggest thing wrong with his agenda. I may be coming to this party a day late but I got something everyone else missed. Just to remind folks he's a Republican, he attacked organized labor and buying local.

Here's the audio; discussion starts 5:15 into this clip.

Harney: Anyone that's talked to the unions right now are saying that they are full, they don't have room for any more capacity right now for jobs. They are very busy, there's a lot of construction going on. And that's going to continue with $1 billion of work the University's proposing out there, that's going to continue to happen. Labor's going to be hard to come by no matter what we do. And the other thing I wanted to mention was the modular units. I went through that years ago when they had put those out around the courthouse. They had heating problems, they had water problems, they had all sorts of things out there. Unless you make something nearly permanent, you're not going to have something that's going to be real workable for those units when they're doing...

Etheredge: Well that's what I say, they would definitely be temporary. They're not designed to be there for decades. When you take a look at labor costs, I mean... do we have to go, really, do we have to use unions for everything? Because, I mean to me, that really opens it up. If you don't have to use unions for everything, you can use other businesses who, you know what, put in a lower  bid but the same quality. Again, we'd have to... with every building that goes up you have to have somebody out there to ensure quality. Which...

Sullivan: Well, we will take the lowest bid. I mean, that's... we did that over there (HHS Building) and frankly...

There were a lot of problems and delays that came up in the construction of HHS by low-bidder Tricon Construction of Dubuque, and there were quality issues even after the building opened. Back to the Board already in progress:

Etheredge: ...when he said he talked to the unions, they're full up, you know...

Harney: I'm not saying we'd only use union help. There's non-union help that's busy too, they're doing...

Etheredge: What I'm saying is, we wouldn't necessarily have to use someone who's located in Johnson County because if they're a higher bid, they're a higher bid. I've talked with a number of people, a number of contractors and commercial and industrial builders and they said there are people from even other states that are putting in way lower bids even though they'd have to move a lot of stuff here. Putting in way lower bids than the current in-state operations are. They said it was much greater than 10%. It's because they want the work. To me it's an optimal time to find some of those businesses that, you know, want the work. I see, you know, the economy, I'm forever optimistic, I see it turning around and really increasing and really getting back to what Americans like to do best and that is work.

A bit later, Etheredge brings up another conservative buzzword (start at 7:23)

Etheredge: When I was looking at some of the jail stuff, and I'm going to have to maybe ask Lonny about some of this because he knows a little bit more about it. But I saw there were a few places in Florida and throughout the country that actually taken their jail and essentially the whole operations, internal operations and essentially - you have sheriffs but you drop the prisoners off there and everything else is just privately run.

Pulkrabek: Yeah, the Code of Iowa says that the sheriff will and shall be responsible for taking care of the inmates. And then it also says that the Board of Supervisors shall fund that.

Etheredge: So I just was...

Rettig: So it prohibits outsourcing?

Pulkrabek: It prohibits privatization. 

Worth noting: Those internal jail jobs Etheredge wants to privatize are also union jobs.

There Is No Party

A question I often get: "Why doesn't The Party DO" such and such. Usually it's in the context of "Why doesn't The Party make such and such elected official(s) act in a certain way." Second most common: "How can I get The Party to stop calling me at dinner time?"

Here's the thing about the American system: There is no such thing as THЗ PAЯTУ in the monolithic, Soviet sense. The definition of "the party" depends on the context.

There is a county party and a state party and a congressional district party and a Senate congressional campaign committee and a House congressional campaign committee and a state legislative campaign fund. Not to mention the candidates: local and state and federal all the way up to presidential. (And if you want to stop getting phone calls you have to telll ALL of them... and political groups are exempt from the national Do Not Call laws because, well, who wrote the law?)

The closest thing to The Party, a national convention, is just once every four years and really just for a couple narrow and frankly antiquated purposes; the last time we went into a national convention with any legitimate doubt as to who would be nominated was the `76 Republican convention.

The issue came up in a now-deleted Facebook thread: Will "The Democratic Party" support Candidate X, described charitably as "outside the party mainstream," if she's nominated? Can't The Party DO something? (Not naming any names but her initials are Swati Dandekar.)

Nomination politics are the broadest definition of "the party" we have. The party is anyone who chooses to vote in the primary. In an open primary state (which Iowa de facto is) that includes a certain number of crossover Republicans, independents, Greens, Libertarians, Whigs, Know Nothings, Bull Moosers and members of the Silly Party. The other levels of The Party are charged with electing the primary winner, but can't really control that process.

The ultimate job of a party is to elect its candidates. To a certain extent, a person who buys into a political process buys into the outcome. That's why it's so controversial for party activists to reject a primary nominee to openly support a different candidate. There's even rules against it at some levels.

Ironically, one of the few times I've seen a political party scuttle its own nominee was in Swati Dandekar's first race in 2002. Her opponent was caught sending emails with ugly racial undertones, and the Iowa GOP pulled the plug. Dandekar deserves to be bashed for a lot of things, but her heritage isn't one of those things.

Sure, a lot of people quietly leave a line blank on a ballot or silently vote for someone else. But some folks aren't satisfied with that. That's why some people are better suited to help individual candidates or for issue activism.

But with the white Southern realignment to the Republicans now complete, there are no more truly conservative Democrats or truly liberal Republicans. The bluest blue dog Democrat is more progressive than the RINOest Republican.


As for me, the Democratic Party isn't perfect. The social movements of the 60s dragged us kicking and screaming sometimes. But with that important caveat, the Democratic Party has been the most substantive force for progressive change in America for the last 80 years, and that's why I put my efforts into a party. Whatever a party is.

Opening the Hatch in Johnson County

In a night dominated by old stories of lost tools of the trade like walking decks and index cards, Senator Jack Hatch came the closest to making actual news Saturday night at the Johnson County Democrats Hall of Fame dinner.

Hatch acknowledged that recently leaked news that he'd formed an exploratory committee for governor, and he pledges to stand on principle. "For the first time in 8 years, we'll have a governor who won't make decisions based on polls," he said, in an implied shot at Chet Culver. "Democrats win when we vote with our heart."

Health care, now stalled in the legislature, has been Hatch's signature issue. "Iowa has highest percentage of children with health insurance in the country," but calling the Republican proposal "the most cynical legislation I've ever seen. It would cost more money and provide less care."

"We learned from 2010 that we can't sit on our hands and be disaffected," Congressman Dave Loebsack told the crowd. "We can't afford it. Our future is at stake. When I was a political science professor I used to hate when politicians said things like 'our future is at stake,' but this time it's really true."

Also on hand were Iowa Democratic Party chair Tyler Olson and his predecessor, Sue Dvorsky, who spoke on behalf of an absent Bruce Braley.

"This state is not going to just automatically replace Tom Harkin with Bruce Braley," Dvorsky said in one of her trademarked motivational speeches. "Bruce will need an effort out of here beyond what we now expect. It'll be our job to start right now."

While the early speakers looked forward, most of the evening was spent looking back by the night's lifetime achievement award winners. Sadly, one was absent; disability advocate Lori Bears died in March, far sooner than expected at age 50. "I don't think there was a more dogged activist for her cause than Lori Bears," said Loebsack.

The honorees were all female and appropriately for Mother's Day weekend, the theme helped tie the night together.

At long-ago JCDems fall barbecues, "the women were clearing the tables and the guys were out clearing out the kegs," said Anita Sehr.  Anita, who with her late husband Don, a longtime county supervisor, hosted countless Sharon Center caucuses in their home, told tales of the Carter, Glenn, Gore, and Bill Clinton campaigns.

"I'm a product of a broken home... politically," said Sehr. "My mother was a Democrat and my father was a Republican. Dad always said 'know something about the person before you vote.' Mom, not so much."

The honor to Jocye Carman also tacitly acknowledged a deceased spouse, law professor David Baldus. Carman is "a quiet progressive voice who never sought the limelight," said Sue Dvorsky, and that modestly was reflected in the speech.

Carman was one of several speakers who mentioned the unsuccessful 1980 Iowa ERA campaign. "In this community, it is the women who make things happen," she said. The ERA also fell short in 1992; a much abbreviated version that simply added the words "and women" passed in 1998.

Maureen Donnelly was one of the first people I met when I moved to town in 1990 and has been an omnipresence at campaign headquarters to the present day. Donnelly cut her teen in Connecticut town hall politics: "Where I grew up IrishCatholicDemocrat is one word." After moving to Iowa she found that the caucuses worked a lot like those town meetings. By coincidence Saturday was Maureen's birthday so we all sang.

"The Johnson County Democrats got me out of the laboratory and gave me many other experiences in life," said honoree Rebecca Reiter, who served as party finance chair for many years among other roles. "Central committee meetings can be a surreal experience. I remember a long discussion of the rights of lobsters," she said, though she did not remember how the lobsters came out in the debate.

Several of the honorees expressed a similar sentiment summed up by Donnelly: "Moving to Johnson County was the best thing that ever happened to me."

And all urged activists to keep working. "Time flies whether you're having fun or not!" said Sehr. "So have fun, get involved, you'll be really pleased with yourself if you can."

Rand Paul Hints At 2016

Senator Rand Paul offered just a hint, but the 2016 buzz was in the air at a Republican breakfast this morning in North Liberty.

"You want people who represent what you stand for," said the Kentucky Senator, "but also can talk to people who don't understand yet." The "here I am" went unspoken.

"Deb (county GOP chair Thornton) said I can speak as long as I want," Paul began, "and I can speak quite a long time," alluding to the 13 hour filibuster he gave in March against drone strikes. He managed to keep the talk to about 45 minutes including a few audience questions.

Senator Paul, son of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate, seemed more linear than his father, with fewer tangents into gold standard types of issues. The senator focused on foreign aid and tax policy in a very casual speech, wearing jeans and boots and leaning against the side of the podium.

"We should not give one penny more to nations that are burning our flag," he said to applause from the crowd of about 100. "It's pitiful to pay people to be our friends." However, Paul emphasized US-Israeli friendship, an issue he's been criticized in the past.

On tax policy, Paul favors a 17% flat income tax rate.  "We should not be for revenue neutral tax reform, we should be for cutting taxes," offering praise for Calvin Coolidge's policies. "It is not inherently unfair" for millionaires and their secretaries to pay the same percentage rates.

However, Paul did offer some criticism or large corporations, particularly the auto bailout, arguing that big business shouldn't get more help than small business.

"I may not agree with everything (Paul) says," said county supervisor John Etheredge in an introductory speech, " but he has some great core principles. When you run as a Republican there are some core principles associated with that." Those principles weren't elaborated much in his speech but seemed tacitly understood by the crowd; Etheredge did note as he began that he'd been shooting assault rifles with some military friends last night.

Etheredge, a local GOP hero after breaking the Democratic Party's 50 year monopoly on the Johnson County Board of Supervisors in a March special election win, was the only local elected official on hand. Rep. Bobby Kaufmann and Sen. Sandy Greiner had personal commitments. The event, piggybacked on last night's state party Lincoln Dinner in Cedar Rapids, was put together on relatively short notice.

Senator Paul working the crowd before the speech.

The four audience questions focused on marriage, taxes, Benghazi, and Audit The Fed (a signature issue of Paul's father).

"I believe in traditional marriage," said Paul, who said the issue should be left to the states. But he cautioned the questioner, who by implication seemed to be against marriage equality, "if you leave it to a national referendum you're probably going to lose."

"It's troubling to me that when they asked for help" in Benghazi, "somewhere up the chain they said no,"Paul said of the GOP's latest bugaboo issue.

Bob Anderson, state central committee member and immediate past chair of the county party, hinted at the divisions between old guard mainline Republicans (like himself) and the "liberty" faction that supported Paul's father in 2012 and took over much of the state party machinery. "You set a good example for unity," he told the senator, who met with his primary rival for breakfast immediately after his 2010 nomination.

A mix of "regulars" and "Liberty" folks were present this morning. I looked like the only Democratic mole, but I spotted Steve Sherman, who ran against Sally Stutsman for the state house last fall, and Christopher Peters, who challenged Bob Dvorsky as a Libertarian in 2010.

In general, the local activists seemed ready for the 2016 cycle to begin. "A lot of people ask, does it ever end?" said party activist Jason Glass of the long pre-caucus season. "But why does it have to?"

In strictly local stuff, county chair Thornton claimed some credit for Tuesday's defeat of the justice center. "In two votes in a row we've defeated the cathedral, Cadillac jail," she said of the issue. Republicans donated to the NO campaign and the Democratic Party endorsed yes, but activists from both parties were involved in both campaigns.

The Republican-led petition drive for a special election on a districting system for the Board of Supervisors went unmentioned, either from the podium or in any chatter I heard, and no petitions were seen. Has this issue slipped off the priority list?

City Gets Last LOL on Red Light Cameras

I am outraged, yet in awe, at the evil genius of Iowa City Attorney Eleanor Dilkes.

Dilkes has finally offered her opinion on the red light camera petition, now that City Clerk Marian Karr has finally finished her legally questionable micro-review of the second batch of signatures. One petition supporter, who actually thanked Karr on Facebook, said four clerks were reviewing the signatures in addition to the rest of their work.

Predictably, Dilkes determined that: 

the portion of the petition dealing with traffic-enforcement cameras is a referendum and is untimely, because the City Charter says a referendum petition must be filed within 60 days of the adoption of the measure in question or not until two years after adoption.

Dilkes said the sections on drones and license-plate readers were initiatives and timely, but the council has not authorized the use of those technologies and the city does not use them.

But here's the M. Night Shyamalan twist ending:

However, Dilkes, City Manager Tom Markus and other staff whose departments are affected by the matter are recommending the council repeal the camera ordinance anyway and adopt one similar in substance to the initiative portion of the petition.

Their reasoning is that the city has no immediate plans to install red-light cameras because the Iowa Department of Transportation is developing guidelines for the use of those and speed cameras on state routes, a process expected to last through the end of the year. Most of the intersections where Iowa City wants the cameras are state roads.

I see dead petitions. 

The idea behind the petition process - I'm just a clerk not a lawyer so I'm not going to argue initiative vs. referendum - is that you either get the council to do what you want or you get a vote. And Dilkes just pulled the rug out from under the petitioners... by giving them just what they asked for and nothing more.

Well, technically, it's not Dilkes giving them what they asked for. The council has to vote yet, but come on. This is Iowa City government. The council just does what the staff tells them. Gregg Hennigan finds a gem at Herteen and Stocker:

At least one council member who strongly supports the use of red-light cameras – the city had no plans to use speed cameras – said he’d follow that recommendation, albeit reluctantly.

“The biggest reason I hate to repeal it is I get tired of about being run over every time I go to the post office,” said Terry Dickens, adding he’d still like red-light cameras to eventually go up at Iowa City intersections.

Because for Terry, it's all about Terry.  Remember how his first priority after getting elected was to pass an ordinance to keep the homeless from begging in front of his diamond store?

By repealing, at least temporarily, red light cameras, the city loses no revenue. They can just pass it later after the DOT figures out the rules.

They also avoid a couple legal arguments. They still stand on their position that the red light camera part was a non-timely referendum, yet the supporters don't have anything to sue about if they get the ordinance repealed anyway.

More important, for me anyway, they avoid a showdown over Karr's definition of the "qualified electors" eligible to sign petitions. She has always contended that it means registered to vote at current address, and she aggressively strikes those who aren't. But in the election day registration era, any non-felon, of age U.S. citizen with an Iowa City address can, with documents, register and vote.

I would really, really, REALLY like to see Karr's definition tested and tossed out. But if the council incumbents can stop laughing long enough to pass the "drones" part of the petition, there's no ballot issue and no way to force the qualified elector definition to the test.



But the most important thing Dilkes' opinion accomplishes: it takes these questions out of the November election. The other two petitions - marijuana and 21 Bar Round 3 - are unlikely to qualify. I've been begging for a week to sign them and no one has contacted me.

So without the ballot issues for motivation, the petition supporters are less motivated to vote. Adopting the proposals will keep those unwashed heathens and (shudder) students from voting in the all-important re-election of Terry Dickens and Susan Mims. Now all people will have to vote on are candidates, and historically it's been much harder to get non-traditional voters out in the city election without ballot issues.

They council did the same thing in the 80s. You all know those Nuclear Free Zone signs at the city limits. That was a petitioned issue, too. The council passed the symbolic yet toothless measure to keep the issue off the ballot and keep the No Nukes folks from getting out to vote for Karen Kubby.

And the red light camera folks can't complain, because they got what they asked for. Do you think they realize they just got played?

The Masterplan

In my sleep deprived post election daze I've solved all our problems in one masterplan.



A certain faction of yesterday's No vote was persuaded on the merits of the justice center but disliked the architectural specifics of a new wing attached to the old courthouse. Don't damage the view, they said.

What no one was willing to say, very openly anyway, is that old courthouse is a white elephant, both beautiful and useless. Occasionally folks would say "it should be a museum."

Which is fine. But who pays for it to be a museum? Here's where we get creative.

Last week FEMA put the last nail in the coffin for funding of a new UI Art Museum. The federal actuarial tables say the current art museum can be repaired. Problem is, no one will insure the $500 million art collection in a building on the flood plain. See where I'm going yet?

The old jail is landlocked and can't expand. Who owns the land around it, that big flat parking lot? The University.

So the University owns a big flat lot, below the skyline, downtown. The County owns a building better suited to a museum than a courthouse on the top of a hill. The county needs a place, the university needs a museum. Deal? Wouldn't the Pollock look nice in the big courtroom? And the old flood zone art building could be repurposed as the Wendy O. Williams Memorial Department of Performance Art.

I don't have all the little details like, oh, square footage. And there's a contingent arguing for a non-downtown justice center, though I think a move from downtown costs more support than it gains (the lawyers want it downtown because that's where their offices are).

This is more an excercise in creativity than an actual plan. But I'll say this: Before we try this again the county needs more buy-in from University. And the city, and the state and federal legislators. Especially the city. They all need skin in the game, they all need to spend a little political capital.

Who Really Won?

It feels kind of weird to, for the second time, come out of the justice center vote with significantly more votes than the other side, yet lose. Clearly, a majority of the community is convinced of the need for this plan. Maybe even a super majority is convinced of the need for this plan, but just enough withheld their votes to protest other issues.

But when I headlined this "Who Really Won?" I wasn't grouching about Iowa's super majority law. Both sides went into tonight knowing the rules: Yes needed 60 percent to win.

I'm talking about strategy and rhetoric. The progressive message carried the day -- it's just that there were two progressive messages.

The Yes side offered tangible near future benefits. More space for classes and courts, speedier trials, keeping inmates closer to home. And we had a precision-targeted campaign focused on people who frequently vote in local elections. We were the "insiders," the "power elite," though I still don't know how I count as a member of THAT bunch.

No seemed to be targeting new voters, young voters, atypical voters, with stuff like cold-leafletting cars downtown, an effort 90% wasted on international students and shoppers from West Branch and Illinois voters. They portrayed themselves as a ragtag underfunded band of left and right outsiders. The message was almost exclusively left, focused on (very real) racial arrest disparities.

The No side lost the strategic war. There was no massive surge of student registrations or absentee ballots. 90-odd voters showed up at the IMU satellite site (which both sides worked hard) and that's OK for a local race. But in the only local race that's ever been swung by non-typical voters, the 2007 21 Bar vote, over nine HUNDRED showed up at Burge, and that was just one of several good days.

(Speaking of which: It's been almost a week and STILL no one has asked me to sign the Repeal 21 petition.)

So the voters were Yes voters. They just didn't vote Yes. No won the message war.

There were some murmurs last week about the No campaign finance report. It showed just over $2000 raised and only $75 spent between January and last week. There was a fair amount of No literature and signs around town. A lot of it did not include campaign disclaimers ("Paid For By Vote No New Jail.") What looked from a distance like a disclaimer and a union label on the No yard signs was in fact just a squiggly line and a .org at the end, which you wouldn't know unless you walked right up on one.

The donors listed were an interesting mix, more right than left. Of the $2000, $1000 came from a single donor: Michael Woltman, a doctor from rural Swisher and frequent GOP donor. Another $300 came from the Johnson County Republicans and $100 more for longtime local conservative donor Willis Bywater. The rest was a mix of small donations from the left voices who were most prominent in the campaign.

A little while after the last votes came in, this tweet showed up:

@afpiowa helped defeat this $50 million taxpayer boondoggle in JoCo this evening #afphqthegazette.com/2013/05/07/res…
— Mark J. Lucas (@markjlucas) May 8, 2013

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is an American conservative political advocacy group headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. AFP's stated mission is "educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing citizens as advocates in the public policy process." The group played a major role in the 2010 Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives, and has been called "one of the most powerful conservative organizations in electoral politics."

AFP was founded with the support of David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch, both of Koch Industries.

So the right wing money lets the left wing carry a Screw The Racist Cops message, because in Johnson County that plays better than anti-tax boilerplate. 20 or 30 percent of Johnson County voters will automatically vote against any spending issue, so that message wasn't needed.

But with the voting safely over, AFP swoops in and claims a Taxpayer Revolt Victory in the People's Republic. Shamelessly brilliant. It will be interesting to see what gets listed on the No team's post-election campaign finance report.

I'm too beat - and yes, bummed - to crunch the numbers by precinct or compare to November. Will do that in upcoming days. Just a little bit short everywhere. I saw a lot of low 50s that needed to be high fifties, high fifties that needed to be low 60s, low 60s that needed to be low 70s. There's also that rural Mad At The County factor that everyone now sees but no one can quite define.

Meanwhile, the battle for justice in Iowa City continues. For the second time, over-enthusiastic and racially questionable arrest policies by both the ICPD and Campus Security have cost the county a needed facility.

The next front in that battle is this fall's city elections. If I still have friends on the No side - and I fear my flip on this issue cost me a few - it's time to work together. If red light cameras are your thing, fine. But if you're going to change the ICPD you need to change their bosses on the city council and that means recruiting and electing candidates. We are a college community and a racially and economically diverse community and our government needs to respect and reflect that.

In any case, tonight's real losers are the ones in jail. The ones shipped out to Muscatine, away from their visitors and their attorneys and waiting longer for trial and not getting in-house drug counseling and batterer's education - because someone's ideology is more important than their reality. Feel good, "progressives?" At least you really told the cops off.

Election Morning Notes

My traffic always spikes on Election Day, in part because people don't realize that because of my job I'm not available to write anything till very, very late.

So here's the drill for the day. The office gets turnout updates from the polling places at 9 AM, 11 AM, 3 PM and 6 PM. Those will be here.

Then at closing time - 8:00 for this one - we start putting the results up soon as they come in. Those will be here. Once that's all done we have a bunch of clean up and put away type work. By this time the victory party (Bob's Your Uncle on North Dodge for Yes) is long over. So I come home and write, depending on mood and exhaustion level.

Lowcountry Nation in SC's 1st District: Go Vote Tomorrow! Whoever the winner is, I wish her luck. #SisterPower
— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) May 7, 2013

Not gonna lie: Our little justice center vote is NOT the day's most interesting election. That would be the South Carolina special election where both candidates have serious negatives. Mark Sanford is a national punchline, philanderer, and serial liar; Elizabeth Colbert Busch is a Democrat.

Warren County is also voting, in a hot and divisive casino election. Is there any other kind of casino election? The Linn County casino vote on the same day as Johnson County's March supervisor election probably had a vote-reducing factor. There are only about eight paid journalists in the Corridor anymore and the casino vote overshadowed us. (Plus: everyone knows what a casino is and not a lot of folks know what a "supervisor" is.)

This time, Johnson County was the only game in eastern Iowa and the election got more coverage, especially at the beginning of early voting. We saw early voting levels more than double from the March vote, even though this is our third election of 2013, in what's supposed to be our off-season.

Because of this vote I'm a day or two behind the curve on Republican US Senate developments. “It’s almost like a play-in game to the NCAA Tournament,” TheIowaRepublican's Craig Robinson is quoted in USA Today. Perhaps that's because the candidates are all 16th seeds.

Matt Whitaker has the early post position, though Kim Reynolds, and by extension her boss, are openly backing Reynold's state senate successor Joni Ernst. It would drive us Dems insane to see Iowa get out of the Mississippi No Women club with a Republican. (Though I hear a promising female rumor from the 1st CD.)

But I have a soft spot for the first Officially announced Republican Paul Lunde. We last heard from him ten cycles ago and he has a long c.v. of defeats. His first race was a 1988 congressional loss to Neal Smith. He lowered his ambitions to the legislature in 1990, lost that. In 1992 he tried again against Smith, and as I recall the party pretty much scuttled him. Lunde's last run was for Congress again in 1994 when he lost the primary to Greg Ganske, who went on to upset Smith.

That's below Some Dude. That's Perennial Candidate. Compared to Lunde, Bob Krause for Governor looks serious.