A Democrat congressional candidate who trailed by six votes after a recount says she will forgo further legal challenges in the state and appeal directly to the U.S. House of Representatives for further review. Rita Hart’s campaign had until yesterday to contest the election under Iowa law following Monday’s certification of results in which Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks was declared the winner of the closest House race in decades. Hart’s campaign said the quick timeline for a contest in Iowa would not allow enough time to review the ballots, including thousands of unexamined undervotes and overvotes. Instead, the campaign says Hart will file a challenge with the House under the Federal Contested Elections Act in coming weeks.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-New Hartford) says he supports a federal funding package for coronavirus relief but clearly stated he doesn’t support large amounts of money to shore up state and local government budgets. The influential chair of the Senate Finance Committee talked to reporters yesterday as negotiations picked up speed in Washington. Grassley said Congress must pass long overdue relief to help families, businesses, schools and communities. He says he could support a bill with items that have bipartisan support at around $500 billion and that he’d consider something less than $1 trillion. He resisted spending a massive amount of money for state and local government budget relief but said it likely wouldn’t cause him to reject a package including it.
A woman has been arrested for her role in the robbery of a Waterloo man who was fatally shot in August. 40-year-old Tonkeya Vaniece Jackson of Waterloo was arrested and charged with one count of second-degree robbery. She is accused of helping plan an armed robbery that ended in the shooting death of 49-year-old Vincent Hemenway. She is the third suspect arrested in the case. Court records say police found evidence that Jackson’s cell phone had been used to plan the robbery, sending a map of the target area and a message to bring guns.
Sioux City police say they are investigating a death inside an apartment used by transients as a homicide. The victim’s body was found Tuesday. Police did not release the gender of the victim, who appeared to have signs of blunt force trauma. The person appeared to have been deceased for a week. A medical examiner has not yet determined the cause of death. The apartment is part of a complex where 33-year-old Solomon Blackbird was shot on Nov. 1. He later died. Police say the two deaths do not appear to be related.
