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.
The chronology of the election returns had it backward.
Early election results showed incumbent Democratic state Reps. Wes Whitead, Roger Wendt and Elesha Gayman losing their seats as the returns rolled in. A buzz of panic rippled through an Iowa City victory party: “Did we lose the House? Did we lose the House?”
Iowa absentee ballot with outer envelope and secrecy envelope.
But the three incumbents had won re-election (assuming Whitead holds his six-vote lead) before the polls even opened. When the absentee results were added in, their early vote totals overcame the Election Day leads of their Republican challengers. It was like watching the second half of a ball game before seeing the score of the first half, making an early lead look like a come-from-behind win.
“We won on election night, and we lost when they opened the mailbox,” House Republican Leader Christopher Rants told the Des Moines Register. “Election Day is no longer 24 hours, it’s 24 days.” 40 days, to be exact, as state law allowed any Iowa to vote early beginning Sept. 25.
Democrats carried a 92,000 voter lead into Election Day out of the record 533,000 absentee and early ballots. In places where absentees were reported first, rather than last, Democrats jumped out to a big lead fast and saw the margin narrow.
The early vote margin was less than Barack Obama’s 160,000 vote margin in Iowa. But fast reporting of early ballots, including Johnson County’s 23,000 vote absentee lead for Obama, may have contributed to the network’s fast call of the state, almost as soon as polls closed at 9 p.m.
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