March 9, 2007
Do you remember the sixties – that carefree era of challenging authority, protests and advancing liberal ideals?
We’re a little more than half way through the first session of the 82nd General Assembly and the new Democrat Majority seems determined to relive, at least through a policy agenda, the 1960s.
After the Goldwater nosedive and overall Republican wipeout of 1964, the Democrats controlled the Iowa Senate, the Iowa House and Iowa Governor’s Office. The Democrats were able to push their agenda with healthy majorities; they controlled the House 101 to 23 (this was a few years before Iowa reapportioned its legislature), the Senate 34 to 25 and the Governor’s Office with the very popular second term Governor Harold Hughes. In fact, these margins worried Governor Hughes who said this about the 1965-1966 Democrat majority:
“In this hour of unlimited promise, no Iowan can afford to be ant business, ant labor, anti-farmer, anti-government or anti-progress.”
This quote appeared in a Time Magazine story suggesting Hughes was worried about a Democrat majority going a little crazy with their agenda.
Luckily for Republicans, Governor Hughes’ worries were well founded. The Democrat controlled 61st General Assembly introduced and passed a very unpopular agenda. They repealed the death penalty, paid back their union friends and political buddies through special appropriations that markedly increased state government spending, made a hard press to repeal Right-to-work laws and passed other anti-business legislation. They were an activist general assembly to the point of alienating small business owners, farmers and voters from all walks of life.
Senator Gronstal and his “lock-step” Senate colleagues are headed in the same direction as their 1960s colleagues with their own version of a special interest legislative agenda.
Last night, Senate Democrats voted to repeal Iowa’s sixty year old Right-to-work law (SF 413), a law that bans forced unionism. Earlier this session the Senate Democrats repealed the ban on human cloning, raised taxes and fees on Iowa’s working families, passed a teacher pay act that will add $200 million to the state budget without teacher accountability or teacher testing, moved a series of anti-business/pro-litigation legislation and a host of other special interest legislation that does little to help all Iowans. No, Senator Gronstal and his “lock-step” senators are helping their political buddies at the expense of most Iowans.
In the 1966 midterm elections Democrats paid at the polls. The Iowa House flipped to 35 Democrats and 89 Republicans. The Democrats held onto the Senate, but just barely, with 32 Democrats and 29 Republicans. In 1968, those partisan Democrats elected in 1966 lost their seats in droves, leaving the Iowa Senate in Republican hands with 45 seats to Democrats 15 seats. Within six years the legislature and governor’s office had completely flipped with Republicans winning both houses and the governorship in the 1968 election.
Is it fair to say that 2007 is looking a little like 1965? You be the judge. However, I, for one, will be fondly recalling the beginning of the end, that wonderful Election Day in 1966.