Call it Iowa's way of rotating the crops: every ten years, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency draws new Congressional districts that rarely bear resemblance to their predecessors and force incumbents to meet lots of new voters. The agency cannot take incumbents’ residences or political data into account, and the legislature and governor then approve the agency’s design or send it back to the drawing board. In the Hawkeye State, this system is a point of pride.
Most states dealing with a loss of a House seat are in the midst of bare-knuckled brawls over who will get squeezed. But in mid-April, Iowa became the third state to complete redistricting when GOP Gov. Terry Branstad signed off on a Congressional map that paired two sets of incumbents and state legislative maps that threw 41 state legislators together. Guess what? Close to 95 percent of legislators approved the proposals too. Only in Iowa.
Branstad's signature hasn't even dried on Iowa's new maps, but the new four-seat Congressional map has already produced two of the marquee House races in the country: a
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