Your "2016 Election is Here" Senate Race is gathering steam

[bedsitter23]

Check out any of my recent posts on the 2016 Iowa US Senate race, and you know that I think this could have national implications.

First and foremost, Joni Ernst, a state senator, has risen to national prominence based on tv ads that look like Tina Fey skits.  It's the Sarah Palin playbook, but taken to parody-like extremes.

But it worked.

Mark Jacobs, former CEO of Reliant Energy, looks on paper as the favorite, but has seen a double digit lead over Ernst in February, go the other way, and the 11 point deficit looks insurmountable.

Jacobs, who has a resume like Romney, an easygoingness like Dubya, and looks like Robert Vaughn should have won.  He's not going to, and after months of feel good ads, he's finally forced to fight dirty. His newest ad starts "Some people will do anything to be elected" and shows Ernst putting on her motorcycle helmet, trying to get some "Dukakis in a tank" mojo coming.  He also attacks Ernst vote on raising state fuel taxes (Iowa actually could use the boost in infrastructure revenues, but I am a tax-and-spend liberal) and her biggest weakness (missing 40% of the Iowa Senate's votes.)

(Let t be said, Jacobs is likeable, but if you invested $100 in stock in his company when he took over CEO, you would have $13 when he exited).

Still, Ernst's move has paid big dividends.  If anything, maybe she should have tok it to even more ludicrous extremes.

This being Iowa, there's a Presidential politics component to this. 

The most obvious one is Ernst's turnaround is directly related to the involvement of Sarah Palin.  I think drawing conclusions from here is risky.  I don't know that Palin is even interested in a run, or that this translates into meaningful support, but it is to her credit.

Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney (who has expressed some interest in another run) have also suppored Ernst, though I am not sure there will be meaningful gains from it.

The race got another headline last week when Rick Santorum stepped in to give support to Sam Clovis.

Clovis is a conservative radio show host, and the kind of candidate that is down Santorum's alley.  Clovis seems like the type of person who wil max out at 10-15% of the vote, but Santorums are gonna Santorum, and it's the kind of move that sets up Rick for 2016.  (If you think Santorum can't win Iowa, it might be time to recall that he did win the 2012 caucus).

I don't know Clovis (He's based in a different part of the state) though he looks right out of central casting for 'Conservative talk show' host and he says things like "America is not ready yet for a Black President to get impeached."   See what he did there.

There is a fourth- Matt Whittaker- who is just starting to run ads and who seems to be topping out at 8-10% in polls.  Whittaker is a former college football star turned US attorney- although he is not half as charismatic as that sentence sounds.

Whittaker has received the endorsement of Rick Perry- which may play out well for Rick- as Jacobs's numbers go south and if Ernst would start to tank.

Jacobs has sinced tried to counter these endorsements by making a 'major announcement" of his own last week.  This ended up being the endorsement of Bil Northey is the Secretary of Agriculture (an elected office in Iowa).  You can make an argument that Northey is the most well-liked Republican in the state; though if that 'big announcment' sounds underwhleming, it surely was.