☑️ Due diligence in IA-02
February 5, 2021 | Letter No. 30
I hate being scooped. I hate it. But when scooped, I try to have the humility to admit it and celebrate the reporter who done good. I celebrate and then I spend the next 24 hours using my reporting to overcompensate.
Back in December, U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks visited the P-C office for a post-election interview. After a long recount, this was the first time Miller-Meeks had taken a live question from me since before the election.
At that point, we knew Democrat Rita Hart was appealing her six-vote loss to Congress. We’d also heard Hart repeat lines about ballots that went uncounted, these went on to become the 22 she brought to Congress. And Miller-Meeks was prepared.
"That's why I will repeat: Every legal ballot was counted, every legal vote was recounted and, at every juncture, I was ahead."
This line was dissonant with her own Dec. 4 comments during a PBS’ Iowa Press discussion when she said, “there were votes that were cast that were for me also that were not counted and that I did not receive." But in terms of a legal strategy, her side had been consistent.
Miller-Meeks legal team voiced their preference for the state’s election contest system, that they believed Hart should have to exhaust her state options before going federal. As the Hart campaign has been quick to point out, the Federal Contested Elections Act does not include any requirements for exhausting the state’s options.
The mention of Hart’s 22 ballots was limited to an argument that because they could not prove that those were the only ballots, that those ballots shouldn’t be considered.
But on Wednesday, Tom Barton of the Quad-City Times had an excellent scoop showing Alan Ostergren, legal council for Miller-Meeks was in Appanoose looking for rejected absentee and provisional ballots that might keep Miller-Meeks ahead should Congress decide to review these ballots.
While Ostergren didn’t respond, Eric Woolson, the spokesperson for the Miller-Meeks campaign said it was simply a matter of “due diligence.”
“Because no one can have confidence that the Hart campaign will fairly and neutrally portray what occurred during the election, it is necessary for us to gather all of the relevant information ourselves,” Woolson wrote in an email.
Here is where the overcompensating comes in: I spent a long Thursday morning contacting all 24 auditors representing the 24 counties in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District because I—and probably just me—wanted to know what Ostergren found.
What I learned was, Ostergren’s “due diligence” was only four counties deep.
Friday morning on Press-Citizen, I got a story coming out looking at his probe, where it went and importantly where it didn’t.
Your friendly neighborhood reporter,
Zachary Oren Smith
Take Five
💉 ‘I feel good’ - The state's 1B phase, which includes people 65 and older and essential workers, including firefighters, child welfare workers and educators, were getting vaccinated Wednesday.
😷 5,000 deaths; 3rd lowest vaccination rate - Iowa has received 446,825 doses of vaccine and has administered 266,777 doses, or just under 60% of vaccines received, the CDC reported Thursday. The state has the sixth-lowest rate of administered vaccine per capita in the nation.
💸 Got a dollar? - Yi Zhang spent $95,000 acquiring and remodeling Lark and Owl, at 221 S Gilbert St. But as the brilliant Brooklyn Draisey reported in The Gazette, it’s on sale for just $1.
🏚️ Iowa OK with refuse to rent to people on federal assistance - A quiet bill that shouldn’t be would allow landlords to discriminate against people who receive federal housing assistance. Paul Brennan wrote in Little Village that SSB 1079 would strip all local governments in the state of the power to enact or enforce ordinances that prohibit landlords from rejecting potential renters just because they will use a federal housing choice voucher, often referred to as Section 8 vouchers, to help pay their rent. Only three cities in Iowa currently have such ordinances.
⭐️ Llama break - It’s been a heavy week (^^ just by looking at these). Take a break and read about Earl, the three-year-old therapy llama who went viral on Twitter this week.
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Also, dear reader, I was attacked:
Zachary Oren Smith writes about government, growth and development for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Reach him at zsmith@press-citizen.com, at 319 -339-7354 or on Twitter via @Zacharyos.