This is a great conversation between Laura Belin of Bleeding Heartland and Joe Trippi, who Iowans might know best as Howard Dean’s presidential campaign manager.  This podcast marks the premiere episode of Trippi’s On The Ground series at Lincoln Square Media. There were some lively exchanges and interesting insights shared. Trippi indicated he plans to interview U.S. Senate candidates Zach Wahls and Josh Turek, so we’ll be looking forward to that.

There was much of interest here.  The senate race and all of the congressional races were covered. One highlight was around the question of why Joni Ernst decided not to run for a third term.  The obvious reasons she decided against were discussed – the infamous “we all are going to die” town hall, and her hesitation on the Hegseth nomination resulting in her being the target of a crazed MAGA backlash, were two.  Belin noted the Pro Publica report about possible ethics issues  due to questionable relationships could have been in the mix as well. See Ethical Concerns Surround Sen. Joni Ernst’s Relationships With Top Military Officials Who Lobbied Her Committee.

Kudos to Belin who mentioned that except for her, the Pro Publica story got no Iowa press coverage that she knew of and she seemed perplexed about why the Iowa press didn’t touch it.  She noted that in any event, Ernst would have been forced to confront the issue on the campaign trail once the opposition ads began to air.  Blog for Iowa has been opining about the Iowa press failure to appropriately cover Republican electeds for years.  Dave Bradley posted about the Pro Publica story here.

And lastly, on the reasons why Joni Ernst declined to run for a third term, Belin had this to offer about the Hegseth backlash:  “I don’t think anybody enjoys being the target of that much MAGA hate.”

For sure.