Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Opponents of same-sex marriage say they will continue to fight to overturn last week’s Supreme Court ruling, but they admit the chances of action this year are slim.
“It appears unlikely,” said Danny Carroll, a former Republican legislator from Grinnell who serves as chairman of the Iowa Family Policy Center Action Board. “The legislature can still take it up in the 2010 session, but that may be difficult to accomplish as well.”
With Democratic legislative leaders coming out in support of the ruling, and Gov. Chet Culver saying he would be reluctant to amend the state’s constitution, same-sex marriage foes are left with few avenues for change in the short term.
State Reps. Dwayne Alons, a Hull Republican, and Dolores Mertz, an Ottosen Democrat, introduced a bill last month that would amend Iowa’s Constitution and define marriage as being between a man and a woman. In order for the bill to be debated this late in the legislative session, however, Democratic legislative leaders would have to introduce it to the floor, something Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, a Council Bluffs Democrat, flatly rejected earlier this week.
A public push against the ruling has been slow going, Carroll said, because a lot of people around the state had forgotten the issue was even before the Supreme Court.
“It takes so long for the court to issue a decision; I mean [Polk County Judge Robert] Hansen made his ruling in August 2007,” he said. “It’s been almost a year and a half. That’s a long time, so the ruling caught a lot of people by surprise. They had forgotten it was even there.”
Iowa’s social conservatives will be aided, however, by the National Organization for Marriage, a group that last year helped in the passage of California’s ballot initiative amending the state constitution to eliminate same-sex couples’ right to marry. The organization is launching a $1.5 million ad campaign in several states, including Iowa, hoping to energize opponents of same-sex marriage by making the case that it will directly affect their lives.
Several House Republicans have privately discussed using a procedural move to bring an amendment to the floor without legislative leadership’s approval. The move, called House Rule 60, allows any bill to skip the committee process and go directly to a floor debate if a majority of legislators support it. Former House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, a Sioux City Republican, attempted the same thing last year, falling two votes short in a much more narrowly divided House.
Ultimately, though Carroll said opponents would have to work to change the legislature if they hope to change the constitution, and with so much time before the 2010 elections, it is unclear if that will happen.
“With the passage of time, things have a tendency to cool off,” he said. “Whether or not the people of Iowa will see this as a priority leading into November of 2010 I’m not sure.”
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