Endorsement Fail

It's endorsement season and Iowa Farm Bureau hit this week with three congressional endorsements. All Republican, natch. The Iowa GOP twitosphere (I smiled when I said that) emphasized the endorsement of Ben Lange in the 1st CD. Me? I found the omission of John Archer in the 2nd District a lot more interesting.

Also interesting is Farm Bureau's reluctance - refusal, actually - to share their legislative endorsements.

When I got the email Wednesday about the congressional endorsements from press flack (I smiled when I said that) Kim Firebaugh, I asked for a list of legislative endorsements. I was hoping to do an article much like this one I wrote two years ago. (It's funny to see how wrong both Farm Bureau and I got some of those races.) Endorsements like these are important to a state-focused journalist, in order to ID priority races.

Response: "Local media will receive a news release with their local Friends of Ag recipients listed." True, I'd seen a couple of those in my news feed, Tom Shaw for one. But a scattershot approach doesn't help me.

Followup: "Could I get a statewide list? Thanks."

Response: "There is not a statewide list available."

Huh? Oh, come ON.

So I offered to do it their way: "Then perhaps you could send copies of all the individual releases and I could compile a list?"

No response to that or a couple more follow-ups over two days. The only thing I heard from Firebaugh was a press release on a different issue, so we know she was at work. If they change their mind, I'll publish the whole thing, but after three days of effort I think it's fair to write Farm Bureau Refuses To Release Candidate List.

It's their right to change their policy, of course, but in the absence of an explanation I'm free to speculate why. My bet is an embarrassing non-endorsement by a local Farm Bureau in some race the state folks had hoped to target. Prove me wrong.