Phil Miller, a veterinarian and school board member, easily won Tuesday’s race in a southeastern Iowa legislative district, taking 4,021 votes to Republican Travis Harris’s 3,324. That represented a reversal from 2016, when Trump carried the state’s 82nd House District by 22 points, part of an Iowa landslide that ended Democratic control of the state Senate. “Republicans should have flipped House District 82 with their hands tied behind their proverbial backs,” wrote Carolyn Fiddler, the political editor of Daily Kos, in a memo to the liberal blog’s readers. In the year’s 31 special elections for legislative seats, Democrats have now outdone their 2016 performance 24 times. But in the short term, the Iowa race excited liberals for another reason — the failure of an “identity politics” attack on Miller.

Source: Washington Post August 09, 2017 22:55 UTC