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Which topics dominated this year's legislative session? Here are some of the top issues that defined a tumultuous season at the Iowa Capitol. Michael Zamora, mzamora@dmreg.com

Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives Linda Upmeyer opens the legislative session Monday, Jan. 8, 2018.(Photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register)Buy Photo

Iowa Democrats are convinced they canflip the Republican-controlled state House on Nov. 6, with a path to victory running through the suburbs around the states largest cities.

Republicans wave off that idea. In the final weeks before theelection, they're highlightingwhat they see as the strength of their candidates and a winningstrategyfor picking up seats.

"I absolutely never take elections for granted, but I feel really good about this year's crop of candidates," said House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, a Clear Lake Republican. "I feel good about theelection."

In the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny, Democrat Heather Matson is also feeling good. She's spending her days organizing an Iowa House campaign race against Rep. Kevin Koester, an Ankeny Republican whos held his district seat for nearly a decade.

In some ways, Matsons bid for thedistrict is a long shot. She unsuccessfully challenged Koester in 2016, when he won re-election with more than 52 percent of the vote against threecandidates.

Matson thinks 2018 will be different, and not just because Democrats could soon have more registered voters in the district.

Its more of a feeling that voters are overall frustrated with whats going on at the Capitol," she said.

Democrats must secure10new seats to overtake the GOP's 59-membermajority. Even reducing the GOP lead could alsogive the minority party more voting leverageon future legislation.

Democrats say their confidence comes from voter registration shifts inareas some nestled around Des Moines and Cedar Rapids that have been trending blue in recent elections. They're also hopeful an exodus of Republican incumbents will create more competitive races. They note inroads with voter turnout in recent special election races.

The minority party also insists theyre just more riled up.

They gave Donald Trump some of the credit or blame for their energy.

But Democrats also say the Iowa Senate, which Republicans flipped in 2016, has inspired them.

The 2016 election brought a GOP trifecta to the Iowa Legislature the first in nearly two decades.

The Republicans used their power to pass:

JenniferKonfrst, a second-time Democratic candidate seeking an open district seat in the Windsor Heights area outside of Des Moines, said there's a theme emerging from herdoor-knocking.

Some voters I've talked with feel that having one party in control of everything has not been beneficial for the state," she said.

Iowa Democrats have 95 candidates a mix ofincumbents and challengersrunning for seatsin the 100-member chamber, the most in at least 30 years. Republicans will have 78.

Speaker of the House Linda L. Upmeyer gavels in the 2017 session of the 87th General Assembly of the Iowa House of Representatives Monday, Jan. 9, 2017, at the Iowa Statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa. Upmeyer's family health insurance plan costs the state $19,788 a year. She pays $240 a year in premiums.(Photo: Rodney White/The Register)

Iowa Republicans, who have controlled the House since 2011, aren't buying the hype. They noteIowa Democrats failed to flip any special election races after the 2016 election.

Upmeyer said GOP-led policies in Iowa on education, health care andtax cutsgive the party a winning message on the campaign trail. She added that Koester, the Ankeny Republican,and other suburban GOP lawmakers have long succeeded among voters with shiftingparty affiliations. Those same legislators have received more votes than national Republicans like Trump and U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst.

They've worked hard, historically, for their constituents, and I don't think their constituents believe there's any reason to make changes there," Upmeyer said.

Republicans also see the possibility to pad their majority in the House.

That hope runs through districts like the one in Fort Dodge,where longtime Democratic Rep. Helen Miller announced her retirement earlier this year.

Ann Meyer, the Republicancandidate and a longtime nurse, believes she's positioned to win against Democrat and physician Megan Srinivas.Meyer has focused her campaign on health care. Srinivas has also made the issue a central topic of her campaign. Meyer estimates she's knocked on thousands of doors, too.

"I feel like I'm in a good position," she said."I don't feel like I have it wrapped it up, by any means, and I plan to continue to work hard."

Thefuture control ofIowa's statehousehas received some nationalattention, a trend around the country thatprobably won't go away after the 2018 election. Former President Barack Obama has publiclyendorsed a handful of Democratic candidates for state House and Senate in Iowa.

Separately, national Democratic-leaning organizations have announced support for some House and Senate candidates in Iowa. Presidential hopefuls visiting the first-in-the-nationcaucus statehave also scheduled events withstate-level candidates.

It's a pattern that shows the growing political weight of statehouses, saidGreg Shufeldt, an assistant professor of political science at Butler University in Indianapolis. He saidIowa is one of34 states around the country, as of September, where one party has complete a government control. Republicans hold 26of those capitols.

"With increasing gridlock and growing dissatisfaction with the job that Congress is doing, and the level of polarization that we're seeing in Washington, more and more action is happening to the states," Shufeldtsaid."It's increasing the attention that is getting placed onstate government and the battle for control of state legislatures."

In the end, statehouse races could come down to how people feel about Trump. The presidentwon Iowa by roughly 9 percentage points in 2016, after the state had voted for Obama twice. Iowa Republicans have oftenstood behind Trump, even amid a growing trade war that the president has led against China.

LeAnn Hughes, a Republican businesswomantrying to unseat Democratic Rep.Charlie McConkey in a district covering Council Bluffs, says she gets a lot of feedbackabout the presidentwhen she's outdoor-knocking. It's all positive, she said, with a focus on the growing economy and the federal tax cuts.

"The exciting things that the president is getting done right now is one of the things that I hear all the time," she said. "I think it's absolutely going to come down to what the president has accomplished."

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By Barbara Ellestad

For years weve heard all about the republican war on women. It pales in comparison to what democrats are now doing to women.

Barbara Ellestad

The democrats are now taking the pain, the shame, and the horrid memories I have of a lifetime of abuse and weaponized it for their own political gain.

How dare they.

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) withheld, on purpose, an allegation of sexual abuse against a person she and all the other democrats vowed they would fight to the end. She and all other democratic women and all the male democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee vowed from day one, actually before day one, that they would do everything they could to stop any Supreme Court nominee no matter who it was.

It didnt matter if it was female or male. The democrats vowed to bring the nominee down and destroy him/her/it/she/he/who cares.

The democrats have weaponized my personal pain and reduced it to nothing more than a blip on their way to whatever their political goal is.

The party, who for years has touted their being as the party for women and against the party that destroys women, has now taken upon themselves to destroy whichever women they can bring out of the hinterlands, in the name of blocking a persons nomination to the Supreme Court.

Ah, you say. The Supreme Court nominee isnt a woman. Youre right. I wasnt speaking to the high court nominee. The person the democrats are destroying is in fact the female accuser(s). Think about that.

Interestingly, they arent so ready to do that with their own men who have actual evidence of alleged or proved abuse against him. If you are a democrat can you dare say the name Keith Ellison? If youre a democrat can you dare say Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick in the same sentence? If youre a democrat can you dare say the names Harvey Weinstein and Kristin Gillibrand together?

Feinstein held on to information for two months that she knew she was going to use to throw the entire political system into a maelstrom. And, she did it on purpose. At the very last minute. Not to help the abused but to score political gain.

How does that help women?

Feinstein, and other democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, held the most personal, most damaging, charge a person can make against another person until after a fair hearing could be conducted, all the while knowing the individual (the abused not the abuser) would be further damaged emotionally, psychologically, perhaps even physically, when the story came out.

Talk about weaponizing sexual allegations and women!

But the democrats dont care if the allegations are true. If they did care about truth, if they really wanted a fair investigation, Feinstein would have brought it up two months ago. No, her answer now is, lets delay this and delay this and delay All the while holding a woman hostage to the democrats shenanigans.

Feinstein and the female democratic senators from Hawaii and New York and wherever else, dont give a damn about the woman (women) who is (are) accusing a Supreme Court Justice nominee of sexual abuse. The democratic women only care about their political ambitions. Feinstein, in particular, is in a close race for her seat not by a republican, but by a democrat.

If Feinstein and the other female and male democrats really cared about me as a woman, she and the others never would have made the current situation such a political circus.

But she and the other democrats dont really care about me. They care about getting re-elected.

Period. End of story.

I, and all other women, am just a pawn in their game.

I intentionally didnt use the name of the current Supreme Court Justice nominee because it doesnt matter who the individual is. Throw the name Betsy Jones, Sally Smith, Judy Walker in there. It wouldnt make a difference. All that matters to the democrats is delaying, preventing, winning.

I have survived a lifetime of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse from men. I didnt win my war because some politician said she was on my side. I won the war because I believed in myself.

I find it extremely offensive that the democrats, especially democratic women, now want to use my pain, my horrid experiences, my lifetime of recovery to politicize their run for the power.

All the democrats want to do now is make women a part of the same beaten down, you-cant do this-on-your own-class that they have done to so many others. You need me to win your battles, the democrats say.

No. I dont.

I need me and I need my higher up. Whomever I want that to be.

The female senator from Hawaii went on national television and said to the effect these men (republicans) are not protecting us.

Thats when my head twirled a good 360 degrees.

Wait, wait, wait a minute. Here you democratic women are trying to tell me that I dont need a man to tell me how to vote, and if I listen to my father, husband, brother, boss, telling me how to vote (that would be Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama) well, see, theres the problem with you damn women who think you can think for yourself.

I rarely ever listened to my father, I dont listen to my brother about anything, I havent had a boss is 25 years, and my husband died four years ago. Now what is my excuse for thinking on my own?

And then, the same democratic women turn around and tell me that as a woman I need a man to protect me.

Didnt you democratic women just tell me that men are the problem?

And then you turn around and tell me that I need a man to protect me?

Jeezo, peezo.

I guess thats the way the democratic war on women works.

Im smarter than that.

If the democrats really cared about me as a woman, they would never, ever think about weaponizing sexual abuse as a way to get their way.

Barbara Ellestad is a reporter for the Mesquite Local News. She is the former owner and publisher of the Mesquite Citizen Journal. She is a retired active duty U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sergeant (E-9).

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Column: Democrats war on women

For awhile now, one of the Republican Partys greatest assets has been the Democratic Party. The GOP nominates perhaps the most controversial presidential candidate in modern history, Donald Trump, and the Democrats respond with Hillary Clinton, who neglects to campaign in key states like Wisconsin. This pattern seems to be continuing with the Supreme Court confirmation battle over Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as a new poll shows the Democrats enthusiasm advantage for the midterm elections being almost entirely wiped out.

The live landline and cell phonepoll, conducted on October 1 of 996 registered voters by National Public Radio, PBS News Hour, and Marist University, asked both Democrat and Republican voters how important they viewed the upcoming November midterm elections, a measure of enthusiasm often viewed as affecting how hard each partys voters will work to turn out their base at the polls.

Back in mid-July, there was a ten-point enthusiasm advantage for the Democrats, 78 percent to 68 percent. The new October poll dropped that down to two points (82 percent for Democrats and 80 percent for Republicans), within the polls 4.2 percent margin of error. In other words, the enthusiasm level between the two parties is a statistical tie.

Part of the Democrats vulnerability on this enthusiasm issue stems from weaknesses among some key segments of their base: only 60 percent of Democrats under 30 and only 61 percent of Latino Democrats say they view the November elections as very important.

The Democrats are also losing ground regarding which party Americans want to have the majority control in Congress, slipping from a twelve-point advantage in September to only six points in this latest October poll.

Andrew Clark, who was part of the digital communications team for Mitt Romneys 2012 presidential campaign, noted that Democrats could plausibly argue that the Kavanaugh hearings had energized their base too, but Democrats enthusiasm for opposing excuse me, resisting Trump has been baked into the cake for polls for months.

To be fair, the poll did not dive into the reasons why these numbers might be shifting, but with the Kavanaugh hearings dominating the news for the past few weeks, its a logical conclusion that they had an effect. Many Republicans remain skeptical, if not outright opposed, to Trump, but watching Democrats and the media engage in absurd attempts at character assassination may be galvanizing Republican voters to strike back in November.

Read my RedState article archive here.

Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.

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POLL: Kavanaugh Backlash Wipes Out Democrats' Enthusiasm Edge ...

Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer indicated his party could revisit the option of changing the process to confirm a Supreme Court justice.

Following the controversy which has surrounded the nomination process of Brett Kavanaugh, Schumer said if Democrats retake majorities in November, then they could restore the 60-vote threshold to confirm a justice to the nations highest court.

This would require an additional 9 votes from the rules today which require a simple majority (51 votes) of the legislative body.

From Washington Examiner:

When asked by a reporter Tuesday if Democrats might make that change, the New York Democrat said his conference would have to look at that.

The bottom line is that the Republican leader moved it down and the bottom line is that well have to look at that should we get back into the majority, Schumer said during his weekly press conference.

The decision to lower the vote-requirement to 51 votes was made by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell during the confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

McConnell exercised what is called the nuclear option to bypass Democrat efforts to delay, obstruct, and resist the nominee.

From the report:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., changed the rules in 2017 to allow Justice Neil Gorsuch and future Supreme Court nominees to advance to a final vote with a 51-vote majority, instead of the 60-vote supermajority that had been in place.

McConnells move came four years after then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lowered the same cloture threshold for lower court nominees to 51 votes, known as the nuclear option, in order to bypass a GOP blockade on nominees.

As Washington Examiner also reports, some people could interpret the comment as Schumers belief that no Democrats will support Kavanaughs confirmation, limiting his vote tally to 51 votes.

It is believed that the decision will largely fall along partisan lines with some red-state Democrats jumping sides to vote in favor of the former D.C. appellatecourt judge.

Lets not forget where so many of us objected to Judge Kavanaugh, what many of the Democrats are looking at, Schumer added. 1.) Will he protect womens health? 2.) Will he make sure that pre-existings in healthcare is preserved, and 3.) will he serve as a check and balance to a president who often overreaches. If people are convinced on any of those three, I believe that we will have a bipartisan majority to defeat Judge Kavanaugh.

Schumer also called for the release of the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh a full 24 hours before the Senate is scheduled to vote on him.

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After November, Democrats Might Change The Rules Entirely For ...

Senate Democrats gave Mick Mulvaney until Oct. 22 to answer a handful of pointed questions about his vetting process and when he was made aware of the provocative posts.

Senate Democrats blasted Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for giving a top job to a political appointee who has admitted to writing racially incendiary blog posts in the past.

In a letter to Mulvaney today, 13 Democrats, led by Senate Banking ranking member Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), described Eric Blankenstein, the associate director overseeing supervision, enforcement and fair lending, as one of your hand-selected political appointees.

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Blankenstein wrote in the 2004 posts that the use of racial slurs isnt necessarily racist and suggested that many hate crimes are hoaxes. The issue has roiled the consumer bureau since it was uncovered by The Washington Post last week, with the head of the employees' union calling for him to be fired.

The Democratic lawmakers demanded to know why he was hired in the first place.

It is unclear whether his appointment is due to a failure to investigate Mr. Blankensteins background prior to his appointment, Mr. Blankenstein withholding information from you and the CFPB, or an informed decision on your part to ignore his public comments, they wrote.

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In a floor speech on Tuesday, Brown decried the disgusting, bigoted language, adding that placing Blankenstein in charge of fair lending was a serious moral and managerial failure, and he needs to be fired immediately.

In a Tuesday email to staff that was obtained by POLITICO, Mulvaney wrote, I hope everyone understands that this a unique circumstance from a management perspective and that this matter needs to be handled with the utmost professionalism."

Acknowledging the internal uproar over the matter, Mulvaney said two sharply critical emails from officials to other employees raised various issues that I have already started to explore. Those efforts are continuing. I plan on proceeding with the utmost respect for all of those involved.

Mulvaney added that he would not reverse his decision to reorganize the agencys fair lending office.

It is outrageous that Mr. Mulvaney would stand by Mr. Blankensteins appointment when in any other administration someone who defends the use of racial slurs or calls hate crimes hoaxes would immediately be terminated, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who signed todays letter, said in an emailed statement to POLITICO.

Senate Democrats gave Mulvaney until Oct. 22 to answer a handful of pointed questions about his vetting process and when he was made aware of the provocative posts.

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