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SIOUX CITY, Iowa Sioux City native J.D. Scholten was bound for distant Cerro Gordo County and handled media calls in a car Tuesday after announcing his candidacy for Iowas 4th Congressional District seat held by U.S. Rep. Steve King.

Scholten's announcement was posted Tuesday to his campaign website, which said an official launch event will be held at an unspecified date. Scholten is a Democrat who becomes the partys sole candidate after Kim Weaver of Sheldon dropped out of the 2018 race.

In a phone interview, Scholten, 37, said he has little name identification in his first run for elective office as he adjusts to his new life after returning to Iowa in June. Scholten also noted that he has ties all over the 39 counties of the 4th District; his parents hail from Larchwood and Lake Mills, and he lived in Nevada and Sioux City over his years of being raised with Iowa values, he said.

Scholten was on his way to speak to three groups in Clear Lake, then was headed back to Siouxland for stops in Le Mars on Wednesday and in Sioux City, prior to a weekend fundraiser in Minnesota, the state he most recently lived in. He's pointing toward the November 2018 election for the chance to beat King, a person Scholten didn't name in the interview.

"I am dedicating the next 17 months of my life to traveling and meeting as many people as possible," he said. "I am asking a lot of my little Nissan Altima."

Scholten, in a website statement, said politics have become too divisive and divorced from the lives of people.

"I was raised to believe that hard work, civility and community are the values we should all aspire to, and Im committed to bringing the same values and a new energy to this campaign," Scholten said. "The 4th needs a voice that cares more about building our districts future than it does about dividing us apart."

King has won seven elections to the U.S. House, beginning in 2002. King defeated Weaver in 2016.

Scholten graduated from Sioux Citys East High School, then played baseball at Morningside College and the University of Nebraska before graduating from Nebraska. He played baseball for several years in the U.S. and overseas, including for the Sioux City Explorers. He also worked as a paralegal.

He is a son of Jim Scholten, who retired in 2011 after 28 years as Morningside baseball head coach.

Scholten said he bought his childhood home and will work remotely as a paralegal and technical consultant. He said the fact that he is single will give him plenty of time to campaign.

"I have to show who I am," he said.

His biography notes that Scholten is a lifelong Democrat who took a 20-hour, one-way bus ride to protest the war in Iraq and has volunteered on local, state and national campaigns.

Scholten said health care will be a key issue, saying the Affordable Care Act enacted by Democrats should not be completely repealed by majority party Republicans. He said the health care law should be amended to cover as many people as possible, while care should be given as efficiently as possible.

"Medicare for all is what I am leaning toward," he said.

If other Democrats enter the Iowa 4th field, a party primary in June 2018 would determine the nominee.

Read the original post:
Democrat announces candidacy in Iowa's 4th District - Quad City Times

Senate Democrats could do little to stop the GOP from pushing ahead to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they could voice their frustration.

As the Senate voted Tuesday to begin debate , members of the Democratic minority were harshly criticizing the legislative maneuvers behind it.

"I've never seen or read in the entire history of the United States anything as rushed as this that has such an impact on Americans," said Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey.

The vote is the culmination of a seven-year long push by the GOP to repeal President Obama's signature achievement. Democratic lawmakers said that it's currently unclear what the vote would lead to.

"I don't know," added Booker on what he thinks about Senate Republicans' latest effort. "I don't know if they have a bill. I don't know if they have the votes. But the nation is in peril."

The difficult path to passing a replacement bill may give Democrats hope. But as long as the dismantling of Obamacare remains a possibility , they will be critical.

"I think they're making a terrible mistake," said Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii. "It's going to rip health care from tens of millions of Americans and whichever version they vote on [will trash] the American health care system."

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Senate Democrats Appalled by Vote to Begin Debate on Health Care - TIME

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Senate votes down broad effort to repeal Obamacare

Brown signs climate change bill

At SRJC camp, teens learning to fight against hacking

Final Ironman Santa Rosa prep underway

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RANDI ROSSMANN

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | July 25, 2017, 12:41PM

| Updated 3 hours ago.

Santa Rosa police arrested the father of a 4-year-old boy Monday afternoon on suspicion of felony child abuse after witnesses reported the man yelling obscenities at him and putting his hands around the childs neck.

Robert Flett, 31, was arrested at a Barham Avenue convenience store about 1:20 p.m. after a caller reported the suspected abuse of a child, said Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Jeneane Kucker.

The caller and other witnesses said the man was yelling and screaming and had put the boy roughly into the drivers seat, causing him to hit his head on the center console, she said.

Officers detained Flett while paramedics examined the boy, who had two minor head injuries. The boy was taken to a hospital for an evaluation and placed in protective custody, Kucker said.

Flett was booked into the Sonoma County Jail.

In 2013, Flett pleaded no contest to two counts of misdemeanor battery for his role in a June 2012 attack of a family at Youth Community Park in west Santa Rosa, according to a Press Democrat news story. He was sentenced to six months in Sonoma County Jail and then two years probation.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 707521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@rossmannreport.

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Santa Rosa police arrest man suspected of child abuse - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Suffolk Legis. Monica Martinez, who two years ago lost the Democratic ballot line in a petition battle, is facing a new petition challenge from backers of her primary foe Angela Ramos who say she lacks the minium 500 signatures.

But Luis Montes, Islip Democratic chairman, said Ramos petition challenge is a lot of nonsense. Montes said the cover sheet cites only 523 objections to Martinezs 1,046 petition signatures adding thats not enough to knock her off the ballot.

A spokesman for Ramos campaign later acknowledged there may have been a mistake on the cover sheet filed with the Suffolk Board of Elections. He claimed the correct number of objections listed in the challenge itself totals more than 550, enough to have Martinezs petitions disqualified. The spokesman added the campaign was looking for a way to rectify the problem, but could not assess its chances.

Zachary Perez and Rose Rodriguez, Ramos supporters who filed the objections, said the county lawmakers petitions included signatures that were improperly witnessed, and others from people who live outside the district or are not voters.

Ramos, whose husband is Assemb. Phil Ramos (D-Brentwood), filed more than 3,200 signatures. Ramos has raised $84,300, but $60,000 came from personal loans she and her husband made to the campaign. She has spent $49,740 for political consultants, the Advance Group, for campaign work including collecting petition signatures.

Ramos challenge comes after Martinez in 2015 as a freshman lawmaker, was forced to withdraw from the Democratic line after opponents claimed she and her aides personally witnessed petition signatures where individuals signed for themselves and family members. Critics at the time said Martinezs actions should have led to fraud charges. Martinez won running on the Working Families and Independence Party lines.

Before the error was discovered, Ramos acknowledged that Martinez did not personally witness any petition signatures this year. She learned her lesson, but added, Due to her track record, I think theres a good chance we can knock her off the ballot.

Montes, a former Ramos aide and now Martinezs campaign manager, said the challenge shows they are not ready for prime time to take on Monica. He said the partys petitions for Martinez were gathered by committee members with years of experience who know how to do the job correctly. Martinez also is running on the Independence Party and Womens Equality Party lines.

See more here:
Suffolk Democrat Martinez faces petition challenges - Newsday

Somewhere between Alaska and West Virginia, theres an invisible line dividing the Republican Party.

Not literally, of course or, for that matter, even figuratively. But in the highly contentious battle over whether the Senate should move forward in its pursuit of an overhaul of Obamacare, the ideological gulf between Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) was what separated a yes from a no.

The motion to proceed vote was decided when Vice President Pence broke a 50-50 tie on Tuesday, a tie that resulted from two Republicans joining 48 Democrats and the Senates two independents to stop the health-care bill (or, really, the concept of a bill) from moving forward. Those two Republicans were Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the two most moderate members of the Republican caucus according to data compiled by VoteView.com.

Visually, it looks like this. The higher the dot, the more conservative the senator. Dots farther to the left mark senators who represent states that backed Hillary Clinton last year by a wide margin; those farther to the right backed President Trump.

The line were talking about is the dashed one running horizontally between the black Murkowski dot and the red Capito one the split. Every senator under that line voted no. Every senator above it voted for the motion to proceed.

Capito seemed like she was likely to vote no until Tuesday morning. A week ago, she publicly declared her opposition to pressing forward without a bill she could support. When push came to shove, that promise fell by the wayside. That her dot is so far to the right might help explain why: West Virginia was a fervently pro-Trump state in 2016, unlike, say, Maine. But, then, her fellow senator, Joe Manchin III the uppermost dot/most conservative of the Democrats voted no.

Also highlighted are three senators whose votes seemed particularly important on Tuesday. Nevadas Dean Heller had publicly wavered on backing the Republican bill; he voted with his party. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was one of the final two senators to vote, playing coy with the media and then casting a yes, as could have been predicted. Likewise John McCain (R-Ariz.) who cast the other of the last two votes. Each of those three senators are from states that voted fairly purple last year, but ideologically, they were more in line with the rest of their caucus than were Collins or Murkowski.

We dont know that the split line itself is particularly important or wedded tightly to the result of the vote. But we will note that the number of Republican senators as moderate or more moderate than Murkowski is lower in the past three congresses than at any point prior, with most of the partys caucus being at least as conservative as or more conservative than Capito. A similar vote in past congresses, we might assume, would have yielded much different results.

Where the line may become important is once the Senate figures out what its actually voting on. Nearly any legislation that will be offered will end up offering a more conservative choice than simply whether to proceed with debate. In other words, the line will theoretically move up. Will Capito still back it? Will McCain, after offering hints on Tuesday that he might not? This is where other factors come in Hellers 2018 reelection, for example, or that pro-Trump fervor in West Virginia.

In this first vote, though, the line fell in just the right place for Senate Republicans to claim victory. As the president put it in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday afternoon:

Its a very, very difficult situation, he said, because you move a little to the left, and you lose four guys. You move a little bit to the right, and all of a sudden you have a bloc of people who are gone. You have a one-inch road and it wheels through the middle of the valley.

On Tuesday, that road actually ran somewhere between Juneau and Charleston.

See the rest here:
Where the ideological line was drawn in the Republican health-care vote - Washington Post