Iowa politics

In short, Eastern Iowa votes for Democrats.  Des Moines also votes for Democrats but western Iowa is very, very Republican.  With that in mind here is a look at the proposed new congressional districts:

Incumbent Democrats will go for re-election in District 1, 2, and 3.  Two Republicans live in District 4.

Now for the rest of the story...

This map was drawn by a non-partisan body that has the goals of making the districts as compact as possible and as evenly populated as possible.  With this map they scored on both counts.

If the legislature or the governor veto it the non-partisan group goes back to the drawing board.  If it keeps getting shot down it ends up with the Iowa Supreme Court, an option no politician wants.

Iowa is losing one congressional seat because the state didn't grow in the past ten years while the rest of the nation did.  There are five incumbent congressman - 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans.  Before the new map was released it seemed likely that one of the Democrats (Bosswell in Des Moines) would get thrown in a district with one of the Republicans (Tom Latham from northern Iowa).

Instead the new map put Latham in the same district as Steve King.  King is a tea party hero and would easily crush Latham in a Republican primary.  Latham is well liked by the powers that be in Washington.  I assumed they'd push the state legislators to come out against this map.  

They haven't and by most accounts it looks like this map will be adopted.  Poor Congressman Latham.

This does not mean the Democrats will retain 3 seats and the Republicans lose one.  Congressman Boswell's new district (district 3) still includes Des Moines (good for a Democrat) but every other county in the district is very Republican.  He's not a good campaigner and always underperforms (which means he gets less votes than other Democrats - that's OK if you are in a very Democratic district but he won't be.)

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For the first time in my lifetime my home of Benton county will be in the same district as Linn county (Cedar Rapids).  It's been weird for 40 years to have Iowa's second largest city right next door but in a different congressional district.

OK, weird for me.  99% of the rest of the people probably couldn't care less.

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Tomorrow I will be doing back-to-back training sessions followed by 2 classes.  Teaching/training is like performing on stage;  it takes a lot of energy to be "on"... and I will be on from 8 am to 5 pm tomorrow.  I didn't even schedule time for lunch.  I have nobody to blame.  I actually proposed the back-to-back trainings.