One Iowa in the News: Senate seat in Iowa is up for grabs, but so much more is at stake

from The New York Times.

By any standard, the midterm election had been a landslide for Iowa Republicans. Last November, the party won back the governorship, gained a majority in the General Assembly and nearly took the Senate, leaving a perilous 26-to-24 edge there as the Democrats’ sole claim to power.

But, as frustrated Republicans would soon discover, that sliver of a majority was enough to halt much of their conservative legislation from ever being debated, let alone voted on, including bills on property taxes, business regulation, education, abortion and, most controversially, a ballot measure to reverse the state’s distinction as one of the few to permit same-sex marriage.

Now Republicans see a second chance to resuscitate their agenda. In a move his opponents call both shrewd and cynical, Terry E. Branstad, the Republican governor, pushed aside more than a dozen applicants for a high-paying post on a state board and instead recruited a moderate Democrat, Swati Dandekar, who happened to be a state senator from a Republican-leaning district.

...The appointment has set off a fiercely fought, unusually expensive contest to secure Ms. Dandekar’s seat in a special election on Tuesday, an election that will determine whether the Democrats maintain a majority or whether the Republicans advance to tie. In that case, Republicans say they would be in a much stronger position to bring a backlog of bills already passed by the Assembly to a vote in the Senate.

...Troy Price, executive director of One Iowa, a gay rights organization, said that if Republicans took the seat, a statewide vote on banning recognition of same-sex marriage would become more likely, though Mr. Price noted that such a referendum could take place no sooner than 2014.

“We recognize the importance of this race,” he said, “and we’re doing everything we can to help the fair-minded majority that has stood for equality and against discrimination.”

Help us keep the majority and protect marriage equality in Iowa!

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