Death Threats And GOP Retribution Drive Kim Weaver Out Of The Race Against Iowa Racist Steve King

IA-04 is a prohibitively red district. It was the only district in the state that Trump won with a majority. In fact, he beat Hillary 60.9% to 33.5%. And the incumbent crack pot, neo-Nazi and racist Steve King (he prefers the term "white nationalist") won reelection with over 60% in 2016 and in 2014 and even built a well-known and well-financed Democrat, for Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack, 53-45% in 2012. But Kim Weaver was well aware of all that when she decided to run against him this cycle. She was the one who challenged him in 2016, with no help from the DCCC, scoring 142,993 votes (38.6%) to King's 226,719 (61.2%). King spent 7 times what she did in the race.

As she explained in a guest post here at DWT in March when Blue America endorsed her, she "knew going into the race that it was a very uphill climb and that I would get very little help from the Party itself, but what I didn’t fully realize was how much I would have to fight just to get basic support on a state and national level." She said that after the 2016 race she had "learned that there are great people in the 4th District who are hungry for a representative who will focus on solutions, not division. During my campaign, I talked about ways we can improve the lives of all our neighbors. I know that this battle won’t be easy, but deeply believe it is one worth fighting and one that we can win if I get the support I need. And she was getting that support. Money poured in after King started going on his crazy racist tirades again.

But this weekend, Kim posted a very disturbing note to her supporters on her Facebook page. She announced she is withdrawing from the race. "One consideration has been raised again by recent events at my home. Beginning during my 2016 campaign, I have received very alarming acts of intimidation, including death threats. While some may say enduring threats are just a part of running for office, my personal safety has increasingly become a concern."

In an interview with the Des Moines Register she added that another consideration was "that the state of Iowa's Office of Long-Term Care Ombudsman, where she is an employee, saw its budget cut this year as 'punishment' for her political candidacy. The office received a $164,000 cut this year-- a 12 percent reduction from the previous year. 'I'm feeling guilty that we lost this funding because I'm running for office,' Weaver said, adding that she was prepared to take a 'voluntary layoff' if the cut requires a staff reduction. Weaver said she was told by her supervisor of the connection between her candidacy and the budget cut, and that the supervisor, in turn, was told by a state legislator."

This story gets even sicker. A tweet from the leader of Iowa's neo-Nazi movement, seems to indicate that he wants to be on the record that the death threats didn't come from him personally, something no one has accused him of. King also says Kim made up the threats... because that's what dirt-bags like Steve King do.

According to ActBlue, Kim had raised over a quarter million dollars by Saturday, of which $179,022.84 had already been reported to the FEC (which also reported $10,276.79 in expenditures). Kim says she plans to use the very considerable left-over funds in IA-04 to help defeat King. Local activists are trying to draft Storm Lake city councilor Sara Huddleston to run. We'll let you know.

And Trump isn't the only fascist piece of shit in the government. I haven't heard any House Republicans rebuking their colleague, Clay Higgins from southwest Louisiana. Higgins is a freshman numbskull who represents a hideously backward red district where Trump beat Hillary 67.3% to 29.2%. Higgins-- generally regarded as a neo-Nazi vigilante-- won a runoff against a relatively mainstream Republican conservative, Scott Angelle. That little Facebook posting below is something he refuses to take down. I think it pretty much speaks for itself-- and the whole Trump-Republican Party.

UPDATE: In Binghampton, New York

It wasn't difficult for Marina, a regular DWT reader, to figure out we would be commenting on Kim's story, so she sent me a similar one about Michael Treiman, a candidate for mayor of Binghampton, New York. Or a former candidate for mayor of Binghampton, New York. The only Democrat running, he withdrew after he, his wife and his children started receiving threatening e-mails. This is Trump's fascist bizarro version of America. It can only get worse from here. As Trump always likes to see, believe me.

Nor was it just threats. Some right-wing thug in a pickup truck threw a full soda can at him in front of his home as he was carrying his 3 year old daughter into the house. The can hit him while he shielded his child. The Trumpist garbage who threw it was screaming "liberal scumbag" as he drove away.

By the way, this is what early stage fascism always looks like. We can't let this happen to our country. Trump encourages it-- but, by all means, save your scorn for Kathy Griffin's satirical art.

Lamar Smith Leads The Charge, Successfully, In The Republican War On Science

My best friend Roland teaches science to elementary school kids in Compton, California. When he saw this headline Wednesday night he shook his head and asked me if I thought people around the world were going to see it too. Tim Cama's report for The Hill was mind-boggling; what century was he writing about! "The House voted Wednesday," he wrote, "to restrict the kind of scientific studies and data that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can use to justify new regulations. The Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act, or HONEST Act, passed 228-194. It would prohibit the EPA from writing any regulation that uses science that is not publicly available. It’s the latest push by House Republicans to clamp down on what they say has turned into an out-of-control administrative state that enforces expensive, unworkable regulations that are not scientifically sound."

Democrats, environmentalists and health advocates say the HONEST Act is intended to handcuff the EPA. They say it would irresponsibly leave the EPA unable to write important regulatory protections, since the agency might not have the ability to release some parts of the scientific data underpinning them.

The HONEST Act is similar to the Secret Science Act, which leaders in the House Science Committee sponsored in previous congresses and got passed.

This garbage legislation was proposed-- predictably-- by Texas neanderthal Lamar Smith, who was appointed head of the House Science Committee as a GOP in-joke. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the Science Committee’s top Democrat, slammed the committee Republicans for a misguided effort to stop sensible EPA regulations, denying that the EPA is overly secretive with its science, saying it often doesn’t own the information and has no right to release it. "The secret science bills the Republicans tried to enact over the previous two congresses were insidious bills, designed from the outset to prevent EPA from using the best available science to meet its obligations under the law. Those bills were constructed to hamstring the ability of EPA to do about anything to protect the American public... In reality, this bill isn’t about science. It’s about undermining public health and the environment."

The bill passed 228-194, with 7 mainstream conservative Republicans abandoning the lunatic who have taken over the House GOP, crossing the aisle and voting with the Democrats. Of course, 3 of the most corrupt and wretched Blue Dogs shit-eaters-- Collin Peterson (MN), Jim Costa (CA) and Henry Cuellar (TX)-- crossed in the other direction and, as usual, voted with the GOP.

Lamar Smith represents a well-educated, mostly suburban district that stretches from Austin into the Hill Country and down into San Antonio. The district is transitioning in such a way that it will soon be inhospitable for an ignorance-based politician like Smith. In 2012 the district went for Romney over Obama 60% to 38%. Last year Hillary made some significant inroads without once campaigning in the district; Trump won 52.5% to 42.5%. And Tom Wakely, the independent-minded Democrat who took Smith on-- with zero help from the DCCC, needless to say-- did better against Smith than any Democrat had done previously. Tom hopes to finish what he started last year and defeat Smith-- if Smith even dares run for reelection-- in 2018. After the vote we spoke with Tom on the phone.

My first thought when I saw the "House votes to restrict EPA’a use of science" in the subject line of an email I received was-- "fake news." However, it was sent to me by a friend with a link so I went ahead and clicked on it. I expected the link would take me to the Onion, or some similar satiric website but no, it took me to an article written by Timothy Cama, who works for the political website The Hill. My second thought was, "Say it ain’t so, Joe." Well, the story is true and all I can say is "God help us all."

When I told my wife about what the House had just done she just shook her head and said that is exactly what the PRI does all the time in Mexico. She should know; she is from Mexico. Anyway, she said the PRI manipulates the facts; they lie and do whatever was necessary to convince people that they should just trust the government and that is exactly what Lamar Smith is doing right now. When the House passed the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act, or HONEST Act, Smith was front and center leading the charge to deny science, once again?

It seems everyday now, Smith and Trump are doing everything they can to destroy our world. Pesticides once banned because they were found to damage children’s brains have been given the green light under Trump’s and Smith’s watch. Scientific data is being deleted from government websites. I close my eyes and I can see the clock being turned back, not by a day, not by a month, but by a century or more.

I have accepted the reality that Donald Trump is President. I know things are bad and I know that they will only get worse but I am reminded of something that LBJ once said: "Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose." Those words are what have given me hope. We must continue to fight Trump and Lamar Smith and the best way to do that is by electing a brand new Congress in 2018. Something I hope to be a part of next year.

Kim Weaver ran against Iowa bigot Steve King last year-- also with no assistance from the DCCC and also going to a rematch in 2018-- and she wasn't surprised to see backing Smith's anti-science/anti-EPA legislation. "It's disappointing," she told us, "to see Steve King and House Republicans continue to follow Donald Trump's lead in dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency. Steve King claims that climate change is 'more of a religion than a science.' At a time when we desperately need to address climate change, our country is being led by a party that refuses to even acknowledge that it exists. We have an obligation to protect our environment for future generations, and if House Republicans refuse to step up to that challenge, we need to replace them with people who will."

Replacing Lamar Smith and Steve King with candidates of the quality of Tom Wakely and Kim Weave is an endeavor-- a crusade-- worth participating in. Except for people who abhor fact-based reality and think our approach to Climate Change should be ostrich-like. Please consider tapping the ActBlue thermometer on the right and contributing whatever you can to these two excellent candidates-- or any of the other pro-Science candidates on the page. Whoever thought our politics would come down to contrasting candidates by noting who is pro-science and who is anti-science! But the records of these crackpot Republicans can't be denied. And we need people in Congress who will stand up to their ugly, willful ignorance and their reactionary worldview.

It's Not Happenstance That Americans Pay So Much For Prescription Drugs

A few weeks ago Digby and I went to dinner with Ted Lieu and Ro Khanna, two of Congress' most dedicated legislators-- guys actually looking for ways to make people's lives better. We asked David Dayen to come as well so he could explain the intense research he has been engrossed in involving pharmacy benefit managers. His piece, "The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices," is running in the new issue of the American Prospect and it's worth reading in its entirety. But first a 101 definition for those who may not have heard of a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), simply "a third-party administrator of prescription drug programs for commercial health plans, self-insured employer plans, Medicare Part D plans, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and state government employee plans. 266 million Americans are dependent on them doing a good job, which the American Pharmacists Association says includes "contracting with pharmacies, negotiating discounts and rebates with drug manufacturers, and processing and paying prescription drug claims.. striving to maintain or reduce the pharmacy expenditures of the plan while concurrently trying to improve health care outcomes." Sounds powerful, right? And that kind of power inevitably leads to abuse including lawsuits involving fraud, deception and antitrust claims.

Dayen pointed out that most people blame insurance companies and/or pharmaceutical companies for raising costs in the health-care system. He wants you to know how the PBMs have "morphed from processors to predators... Over the past 30 years, PBMs have evolved from paper-pushers to significant controllers of the drug pricing system, a black box understood by almost no one. Lack of transparency, unjustifiable fees, and massive market consolidations have made PBMs among the most profitable corporations you’ve never heard about."

Americans pay the highest health-care prices in the world, including the highest for drugs, medical devices, and other health-care services and products. Our fragmented system produces many opportunities for excessive charges. But one lesser-known reason for those high prices is the stranglehold that a few giant intermediaries have secured over distribution. The antitrust laws are supposed to provide protection against just this kind of concentrated economic power. But in one area after another in today’s economy, federal antitrust authorities and the courts have failed to intervene. In this case, PBMs are sucking money out of the health-care system-- and our wallets-- with hardly any public awareness of what they are doing.

Even some Republicans criticize PBMs for pursuing profit at the public’s expense. “They show no interest in playing fair, no interest in the end user,” says Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, one of the industry’s loudest critics. “They act as monopolistic terrorists on this market.” Collins and a bipartisan group in Congress want to rein in the PBM industry, setting up a titanic battle between competing corporate interests. The question is whether President Donald Trump will join that effort to fulfill his frequent promises to bring down drug prices.

Dr. David Gill is a policy-driven progressive candidate running for Congress against a backbench garden variety Republican incumbent, Rodney Davis, in a central Illinois swing district, IL-13. (Blue America has endorsed him and you can contribute to his campaign here.) This morning, after reading Dayen's article, he told us that as an emergency department physician he doesn't have direct dealings with pharmacy benefit managers. "However," he added, "it comes as no surprise to me that such abuses take place. Given that the benefit managers are subcontractors of insurance companies whose primary mission is to maximize their profit, it should be no surprise to anyone that these benefit managers are also largely focused on maximizing their own profit, and that the well-being of patients is of secondary importance. Until we finally adopt a single-payer healthcare system administered by the federal government ('Medicare for all'), such abuses will continue within many different layers of healthcare here in America. Uncle Sam does not run Medicare in order to make money; if only the rest of our healthcare system was run with such noble intentions."

Jason Westin is a first time candidate, a cancer researcher specialist and physician in Houston, who's running against reactionary GOP incumbent John Culberson, a long-time-corporate puppet. We turned to Jason immediately when Dayen made us aware of the PBM problem. He told us that as a cancer doctor he has "seen first hand the hard choices that patients are often forced to make when it comes to medications. Many of the newest and most promising new anti-cancer medications are also the most expensive due to unregulated pricing by Pharma and by the hidden charges of the pharmacy benefit managers (PBM). This predatory pricing puts desperate and vulnerable patients between a rock and a hard place. If they purchase the drug and it works, they will need to decide if they can continue to pay for it longterm and face financial ruin, or quit after a while and take their chances. If they do not purchase the drug, their families may long wonder 'what if?' As PBMs no longer provide any real benefit to patients, loosening their stranglehold on prescription medications should be a bipartisan issue. Many uninformed GOP members of Congress, like John Culberson of TX-07, think drug pricing would be solved if we could 'open up purchasing across state lines' (actual quote from 3/25/17 Town Hall). Their ignorance on the insidious effects of PBMs on drug pricing means they are completely incapable of regulating them: how can you fix what you do not understand?"

Like David Gill and Jason Westin, progressive candidates Tom Guild in Oklahoma and Kim Weaver in Iowa are running against extreme right wing incumbents, respectively Steve Russell and Steve King. Both had the same reaction to the GOP attack on Americans' privacy yesterday. "It's disappointing and disgusting that Big Corporate donations of nearly $100 million doled out  to members of Congress," said Tom, "including my opponent incumbent Clyde 'Steve' Russell, carried the day. Russell joined the list of U.S. House Members who were all but bribed to vote to take away Americans internet privacy, to the extent that even our browsing history can be peddled to the highest bidder, like a cyber-Snickers bar. As they say about Clyde and other career politicians who voted for this outrageous legislation, they can’t be bought but they can be rented for long periods of time. I’m looking forward to defeating Wall Street lackey Russell in November of 2018, and taking back our rights and freedoms, including the right to privacy, that Clyde blithely sells to the highest Wall Street and Big Corporate Bidder. Has he no shame? Apparently, not!"

"Once again Steve King showed that his loyalty rests with his corporate sponsors rather than with the people of Iowa," Kim told us. "I'm appalled that he thinks it's okay for cable and internet companies should have the right to sell our private information. The people of this district will be outraged when they see this vote-- American's privacy should not be for sale!"

Back to Dayen's piece, which doesn't end quite as bleakly as it starts. He's looking for a way to solve this mess:

Amid frustration on all sides of the market, some private-sector actors are attempting to break the PBM stranglehold. A group of 20 large employers representing four million patients, including Coca-Cola, Marriott, and Verizon, have formed the Health Transformation Alliance, seeking to break away from the “patchwork of complicated, expensive, and wasteful systems” in modern health care, including the pharmaceutical supply chain.

The alliance has expressed interest in a “transparent PBM” model, which takes a flat administrative fee on each prescription, with all rebates and discounts fully disclosed and no hidden spreads. Transparent PBMs only have a sliver of the market, but they can get results: A hospital nonprofit network named Meridian Health Systems claimed to Fortune magazine that a transparent PBM saved it $2 million in the first year, about one-sixth of its total drug costs.

But many employers don’t know enough about the system to go outside the Big Three, says Susan Hayes. “They’re trying to manage something they don’t understand. If you put blinders on, and hire one of the Big Three, you won’t get in trouble with the boss.”

Another model would empower pharmacies. A 2016 report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance highlights a quirk of law in North Dakota, which only allows drugstores to operate if owned by pharmacists (similar laws exist in Europe). The law prohibits chain pharmacies from entering the state. Not surprisingly, North Dakota’s independents deliver among the lowest prescription drug prices in the country, along with better health outcomes and more drugstores per capita than any other state. This flies in the face of industry claims that big chains and giant conglomerates save consumers money or improve services.

Why can’t this successful model be replicated elsewhere? “The answer is PBMs,” says Stacy Mitchell, the report’s author. “Because in North Dakota, independents are the only game in town, PBMs have to negotiate with them. In other states, they have no leverage.” Unsurprisingly, PBMs and chains want the North Dakota law overturned rather than adopted in other states.

For a more immediate impact, we must turn to Washington. And there, solutions often emerge when one large industry starts pointing the finger at another. Under fire for their many drug-pricing scandals, from Martin Shkreli to Valeant, the pharmaceutical industry has tried to deflect blame by citing PBMs. GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty said in a February conference call that so much of the list price on the company’s drugs went to “non-innovators in a system which thinks it’s paying high prices for innovation,” a veiled reference to PBMs. An industry-funded report in January asserted that manufacturers took only 63 percent of gross drug revenues, attributing the decline to discounts and rebates paid to PBMs. (Of course, this hasn’t stopped pharmaceutical companies from earning higher profit margins than any other industry.)

For their part, PBMs insist that drug prices would be even higher without them, arguing that they deliver broad access to medications and 90 percent customer satisfaction rates. But in an industry-on-industry arms race, the millions of dollars that leading PBMs and their trade groups spend each year on lobbying would be no match for the pharmaceutical industry. That creates opportunities for longtime PBM opponents in Washington, which include several Republicans representing rural districts, where independent pharmacies are getting crushed.

Doug Collins, a third-term House member, experienced the PBM issue personally, when his mother couldn’t get her regular medications and her plan had no substitute on the formulary. “I am a free-market person, as conservative as they come,” Collins says. “When dealing with this, it’s not a free market.” Buddy Carter, his colleague, has worked in independent pharmacies since 1980, and sees himself as their voice in Congress. I asked him if he had difficulty explaining the PBM market and its problems to his colleagues. “Heck, it’s difficult for me to understand and I’ve worked in the industry over 35 years!” Carter says.

Watch some hearing soundbites from these two and you’d think you’re seeing the second coming of William Jennings Bryan. “Who will my folks in my district of Georgia call, when they need someone at night and their local pharmacist is the one they trust?” Collins asked two PBM representatives in 2015. “They’re going to try and find their local pharmacist, who has been closed because of the anti-competitive nature of this field.” Carter grilled top PBM lobbyist Mark Merritt in 2016: “I notice that the profits of the PBMs have increased enormously over the past few years. In fact, almost doubled. And I find that very disturbing.” These are conservative Republicans!

What can Congress do to reform PBMs? More than 20 states have passed laws to require more frequent MAC list updates, so PBMs can’t drag their feet and generate large pricing spreads. But PBMs started to circumvent the laws, in one case by eliminating the term “maximum allowable cost” from contracts. Collins’s bill, the MAC Transparency Act, would take care of this at a federal level, to stop the game-playing.

Other bills in the House and Senate would prohibit retroactive DIR fees on Medicare Part D plans, stopping the after-the-fact clawbacks on pharmacy reimbursements. A separate bill would allow any willing pharmacy to participate in a PBM’s preferred pharmacy networks if they agree to the terms, increasing access in communities without chains. All of these bills would add transparency to the system, and reduce the incentives to constantly jack up prices. And they all have bipartisan cosponsors.

...The wild card in all this is Donald Trump. At his one and only pre-inauguration press conference, Trump singled out drug companies for “getting away with murder,” vowing to create “new bidding procedures” for Medicare and earning praise from the likes of Bernie Sanders. But when Trump met with pharmaceutical executives two weeks into his presidency, he focused more on speeding up new drug approvals from the FDA and cutting regulations than on reducing industry profits. This lines up with the perspective of a key aide, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who wants to overhaul the FDA process. (In fact, the Republican Congress just overhauled the FDA process in one of the last bills signed by Barack Obama.) Trump doesn’t appear to understand the cost excesses in the supply chain.

Trump did say in his address to a joint session of Congress that he would “bring down the artificially high price of drugs.” And in his confirmation hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, discussing Trump’s idea for competitive bidding in Medicare, said that “right now the PBMs are doing that negotiation… I think it is important to have a conversation and look at whether there is a better way to do that.”

But where Trump’s team will ultimately land is unknown. “We need to get to a point of clarity about whether the administration is serious,” says the NCPA’s John Norton. Furthermore, any attempt to move forward legislatively on any part of health-care policy will run headlong into the deeply polarized debate over the Affordable Care Act. While a bipartisan alliance appears possible on the PBM issue in isolation, it will be difficult to separate anything health-related from the Obamacare vortex.

The PBM industry’s leading trade group isn’t sleeping on the possibility of an attack. Days after Trump met with pharma execs, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association issued an internal memo leaked by Buzzfeed, stressing the need for “building a political firewall” in Congress to stop any legislative action.

Frightened about drug manufacturers highlighting a “bloated supply chain,” PCMA CEO Merritt laid out a six-point strategy that included meetings with White House staff and key members of Congress, a digital ad campaign targeting congressional leaders, partnerships with right-wing think tanks like the American Action Forum, and working groups to shape regulatory changes that make PBMs the savior instead of a villain. “We will continue to show how competition—not government intervention-- is the way to manage high drug costs,” Merritt wrote, apparently without irony. Merritt even scheduled a meeting with the main health insurance lobby, AHIP, “to make sure the payer community is aligned and coordinated.”

With drug companies on one side and PBMs and insurers on the other, both camps will have plenty of resources. In that environment, is bipartisan action possible to break up a powerful monopoly? “My answer would be absolutely,” says Representative Carter. “Everyone is impacted by prescription drug prices.”

The DCCC Has Nothing To Do With Defeating Steve King-- Kim Weaver Does

Maybe you got an email filled with outrage over Steve King's latest racist statement this week. The DCCC sent one out, asking for contributions. There's a problem with that though. Steve King isn't just some loud-mouthed crackpot and bigot; he's also an actual congressman from western Iowa. The DCCC doesn't use the contributions they solicit to beat Steve King. They use the contributions to help elect more Blue Dog and New Dem garbage-crats like Josh Gottheimer (NJ), who they spent $3.5 million on and Tom O'Halleran (AZ) who they spent $2.6 million on.

Last year there was a progressive Democrat running against Steve King, the O'Brien County Democratic Party chairwoman, Kim Weaver. How much help did the DCCC give her out of all the money they collected by sending out e-mails telling Democrats how horrible Steve King is? ZERO. They did nothing to help her at all. And even with that Kim got more votes than Hillary Clinton in every single county in IA-04-- all 39 of them-- and even won the biggest county in the district! And Kim out-performed Chuck Schumer's handpicked corporate conservative Senate candidate, Patty Judge, in all 39 counties as well.

And this year Kim is taking on King again. And what is the DCCC doing? You probably guessed it-- sending out more letters demonizing King and collecting cash to use to elect more conservaDems while offering nothing at all to Kim Weaver. We're sick of it. Blue America endorsed Kim this week and we're asking our members to contribute directly to her campaign.

Kim told us that "the most disappointing aspect of the campaign was being told time and again that although I was a 'great candidate,' various organizations declined to support me because I wasn’t 'viable.' Most organizations didn’t even respond to my applications for assistance. Additionally, whenever my opponent would say some new horrific thing, I would get emails after emails from organizations asking for money to 'help defeat Steve King.' Not a single one of those organizations passed along any of that support. King was a big money maker for them, and it appears that he still is."

The DCCC doesn't want to understand that it takes real effort and investment over time to defeat entrenched incumbents like King. It's beyond their scope of endeavor, which is why the House Democrats have hemorrhaged dozens and dozens of members since Rahm Emanuel set his reactionary strategic and tactical ideas into stone. 2018 is the greatest opportunity to defeat Republicans in Congress in decades. But, please, when you want to defeat a Steve King, contribute to his Democratic opponent, Kim Weaver. And when you want to defeat a Darrell Issa or a Lamar Smith, donate to Doug Applegate or Tom Wakely, not the a DCCC that will just waste the contributions on their own questionable agenda.

And how do we know how candidates-- like Kim Weaver, for example-- are going to behave once they get into Congress? Is a candidate like Kim-- who has no voting record to examine-- going to be more like Pramila Jayapal and Elizabeth Warren? Or more like Kyrsten Sinema and Debbie Wasserman Schultz? One way is to watch closely what they say when they campaign. In explaining the difference between how she and Steve King approach government expenditures-- which, is, after all, one of the most important things a Member of Congress does-- Kim stated that "in supporting a budget that will drastically reduce funding for programs like Meals on Wheels and funding for school lunches, Steve King is once again showing how out of touch he is with the people of Iowa. As an advocate for seniors, I know personally how vital Meals on Wheels is to the seniors who make up a large portion of this district. And cutting funding for school lunches? Someone needs to remind Rep. King that he represents a district where one out of every four children rely on that assistance just to eat every day. Standing up for those most vulnerable in our society is a part of who we are as Americans." The difference couldn't be any clearer.

Can We All Agree That Steve King Is The Most Odious Member Of Congress? Let's Get The DCCC Involved With Defeating Him

Kim Weaver is the chairman of the O'Brien County Democratic Party in the northwest corner of Iowa, close to where Minnesota, South Dakota and Nebraska abut her state. In 2016 she took on the thankless tasking of running against her notoriously bigoted congressman, Steve King. And she's working towards a re-match for 2018. Trump won the district last November-- 60.9% to 33.5%. In 2012 it was the only Iowa district Obama didn't win. Romney took it 53.4% to 45.3%. In November Trump won all the Iowa districts, even the blue-leaning ones. There was a real red tide in Iowa last year. At the top of the ticket, Hillary and Patty Judge, two extremely disliked establishment politicians, dragged the whole party down with them. Kim did better than either though, winning 38.6% compared to Hillary's 33.5% in the 4th. She also won the biggest county in the district (Story County, which includes Ames), 25,785 to 21,202-- slightly better than Hillary. Judge-- who was shoved down Iowa voters' throats by a clueless Chuck Schumer-- lost Story County 25,020 to 20,934. In fact, Kim beat Hillary and beat Patty Judge in every single one of IA-04's 39 counties. With no support from the DCCC whatsoever and very limited fundraising-- she spent $148,531 to King's $954,150-- her grassroots campaign spent $1.22 per vote for about the same result the 2014 candidate, Jim Mowrer, got when he outspent King ($2,167,517 to $1,983,501)-- almost $20 per vote.

Friends of mine in Iowa have told me that the DCCC doesn't even want to defeat King because they raise so much money from his regular insane outburst (like the ones earlier this week). Kim, on the other hand, cares very much about working to retire this crackpot. I asked her how she thinks she can win in such a red district against someone who is so entrenched. Although, as a county chair, she was heavily pressured to caucus for Hillary, her issues are Bernie's issues and she told me that she's tremendously encouraged by grassroots activity in the district from Indivisible groups, from Our Revolution and from a group called No More King. I asked her to introduce herself to DWT readers with a guest post. Please give it a read and if you like what you see, please consider contributing to her campaign by tapping the thermometer on the right. And remember, when you give money to outfits like the DCCC, the DNC or Emily's List falling all over themselves to "defeat Steve King," they have done nothing to defeat Steve King at all and just use the money for their own lousy conservative candidates in other parts of the country and give nothing-- ZERO-- towards Kim Weaver's campaign.

Can Steve King Finally Be Repealed And Replaced?
-by Kim Weaver

In April of 2015 I informed the Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party that I had decided to run against Representative Steve King in the 2016 race. Her response was a look of relief as well as a big hug. I’m pretty sure she had been worried that no one would step up and take him on and now, at least we had someone who was sane and articulate who could be the sacrificial lamb for the Party. I knew going into the race that it was a very uphill climb and that I would get very little help from the Party itself, but what I didn’t fully realize was how much I would have to fight just to get basic support on a state and national level.

Prior to running I had a lot of experience as a campaign volunteer with my union, as well as in my role as Chair of the O’Brien County Democrats. With the help of the Osceola County Chair, Kathy Winter, I co-founded a group we named the SOLO Democrats. This group was made up of four of the reddest counties in the state, Sioux, O’Brien, Lyon, and Osceola. Until 2012 it was almost impossible to get a national candidate to that area of the state, but we were able to organize an event for the congressional candidate, Christie Vilsack with a turnout of over 100 people. This was pretty much unheard of in this part of the state. As a result of my organizing work, in late 2014 the Des Moines Register named me one of the top 50 Democratic activists in the state.

Because I’m a single mom with two kids still in college, it was impossible for me at the time to quit my job which made fundraising very difficult. The majority of my funding came from small dollar donations, mainly through Twitter, Facebook, emails, and small private fundraisers. I got by with a team of only two paid staffers. Thankfully a good friend volunteered full time and drove me throughout the district from soup suppers to parades to county central committee meetings. In all, I put on over 48,000 miles on my car over a fifteen month time period.

I lived on about four hours of sleep a night, but as exhausting as it was, I truly enjoyed getting out and talking with people about the issues that were important to them. We discussed health care, expanding Medicare, a volunteer program for people with student loan debt, and innovative ideas to improve water quality. People were listening and supportive of my ideas.

The most disappointing aspect of the campaign was being told time and again that although I was a “great candidate,” various organizations declined to support me because I wasn’t “viable.” Most organizations didn’t even respond to my applications for assistance. Additionally, whenever my opponent would say some new horrific thing, I would get emails after emails from organizations asking for money to “help defeat Steve King.” Not a single one of those organizations passed along any of that support. King was a big money maker for them, and it appears that he still is.

At the end of the campaign I started getting phone calls and messages from supporters, telling me that the coordinated campaign in several offices wouldn’t give out my yard signs unless the person who wanted one would sign up for a volunteer shift. I had to call one office to tell them to give my literature to a volunteer because they refused when she first came in, telling her that she had to carry lit for everyone. She refused and left.

I don’t want to give the impression that I had no assistance from the Party. I received numerous donations from county committees, even ones outside my district. Additionally, Governor Martin O’Malley, Congressmen Eric Swalwell (CA-D), IA State Senator Jack Hatch, IBEW, NEA, and SEIU were generous and supportive. I am deeply appreciative of their help. 

In the end, the lessons I’ve learned are many. I’ve learned that there are great people in the 4th District who are hungry for a representative who will focus on solutions, not division. During my campaign, I talked about ways we can improve the lives of all our neighbors. I know that this battle won’t be easy, but deeply believe it is one worth fighting and one that we can win IF I get the support I need.