Money and Elections: The Iowa State Legislative Elections of 2008.

This is the sixth in a series of papers based on a project examining the interplay of party, interest groups and money and their influence on elections and health care policy in the state of Iowa. This particular paper will focus on the 2008 state legislative elections. It will examine the spending patterns of the Iowa Democratic and Republican Party legislative caucuses, as well as the six groups I have been following (The Iowa Federation of Labor, The Iowa Federation of Independent Businesses, The Iowa Medical Society, The Iowa Health Care Association, The Iowa Hospital Association, and Wellmark, Iowa's Blue Cross/Blue Shield Provider). Data will come from both campaign finance reports filed with the state and from interviews with legislative leaders, with a particular focus on the role of health care issues in the election and how the election results might impact the future of legislation in this area in the state. The research design for the project, which began with the 2004 state legislative elections, has this election as the endpoint of data collection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]