Julian Garrett, Republican member of the Iowa House from the 25th District (all of Madison and parts of Warren County) has won the special election for Senate District 13, previously held by Kent Sorensen who resigned in early October.  Garrett was opposed by Democrat and former Iowa House Member Mark Davitt.

In a release from Iowa Republican Party Headquarters, Chairman A. J. Spiker said: “Julian Garrett worked hard to win this election and I’m pleased to hear of the results, ” said Spiker. “We were excited to work with him over the past month’s campaign and look forward to having him in the State Senate.”

Garrett’s win was important for Republicans who already need to win 3 seats in 2014 to regain control of …

State Senator Kent Sorenson (R-Milo) has been busy so far this session making an aggressive public push to have Iowa reinstate the death penalty.  The main impetus for this was the horrifying double murder of two young cousins in Evansdale last year—an act that certainly justifies the punishment.  Having said that, now is not the time to suck up energy and oxygen on something that even Sorenson himself agrees will not make it to the Governor’s desk.

The Death Penalty As An Issue

The issue itself has two main facets—the morality of capital punishment and the legal system which weighs the evidence and carries out the sentence.  The morality concerns in my view are simply ridiculous, as the idea in principal that someone guilty of …

It has been difficult to follow the Republican Presidential Campaign this year to the depth that I would like to, partly because of my own time constraints and partly because there is just so much happening all the time.  It seems like every week there is a new bomb-shell to analyze, a new complaint by one campaign about either another campaign or the press, stumbling by candidates on the debate stage or in an interview or just in general campaign failures such as the Virginia debacle.  And the mud contains so much manure that I’m glad I have iTunes to purchase much of my television programming from so I don’t even have to fast-forward past the political ads.  And don’t get me …

Kim Pearson, who is running for Iowa House in district 42, will be holding two fundraisers this week.  Both look to be great events and opportunities to meet the candidates before the election:

The political fallout continues for Democrats as they try to fend off criticism for Pat Murphy’s behavior Tuesday evening.  A letter to the editor in this morning’s Des Moines register lays it out pretty succinctly: characterizing the behavior of the public at Tuesday night’s public meeting prior to being expelled as anything more than brief expressions of disapproval or aproval (granting the first speaker deserved to be treated better) is spurious at best.  And Kiernan’s accusations that the public’s actions were orchestrated by Republican leaders is an outright lie; I was there during the preparatory time and there was nothing more than providing people with shirt and buttons… no direction to behave in any way.

If you watched KCCI news on Tuesday night (or the …