Lynda Waddington

New Journalist Fellow

Lynda Waddington is a New Journalist Fellow with the Center for Independent Media. She and her husband live in eastern Iowa with their three children, two cats and dog. She worked for a decade as a print journalist before beginning her own communications consulting business. When writing annual reports and building web sites failed to placate the printer's ink still pumping through her veins, she and two friends launched Essential Estrogen, a blog that focuses on women in politics with a special emphasis on Iowa women. As a New Journalist Fellow, Lynda is a regular contributor to Iowa Independent.

Iowa Law Won’t Protect Kids from Sex Offenders

Lynda Waddington

Was the opinion issued Friday by the Iowa Supreme Court an expansion or a clarification of the state's existing residency requirements for sex offenders? At the end of the day, according to some members of law enforcement, it doesn't matter one way or another.

Iowa Teens Make Case for Comprehensive Sex Ed

Lynda Waddington

It isn't unusual for Iowa high school students Stacey Hoch and Venessa McDole, both peer advisors, to speak with their classmates about sensitive subjects. Thursday morning, however, they took their advocacy one step further by speaking in front of policymakers to encourage them to reject federal abstinence-only funds.

Iowa Reconsidering Abstinence-Only Funding

Lynda Waddington

At a state policy briefing on Thursday morning, Iowa legislators were asked to end federally funded abstinence-only sex education in the state. The move would make Iowa the seventeenth state to reject Title V abstinence-only funding.

Planned Parenthood to Iowans: $1 Now or $4 Later?

Lynda Waddington

Iowa has roughly 100,000 low-income women -- 12.3 percent of all women of childbearing age -- who need, but are not receiving, publicly assisted family planning services. The lack of access has been costly to Iowa, a state where half of all pregnancies are unintended.

Zero Percent Reporting in Arkansas for Clinton?

Lynda Waddington

Chris Matthews on MSNBC just moments ago: "The polls have just closed in the state of Arkansas... and we're predicting Hillary Clinton to be the winner there."

At the end of his words, a pretty graphic flipped and spun into the middle of the screen showing an outline of the state and photo of Clinton with a checkmark at her side. In smaller text at the bottom "0%" -- as in, zero precincts reporting.

MSNBC is projecting Hillary Clinton to be the winner in Arkansas before a single vote has been counted and reported. Hasn't the media learned anything since Florida in 2000? I guess, at least this time, the network doesn't have to worry about a competitive network making the opposite call for a Republican.

Huckabee Wins WV, Team Romney Ignores

Lynda Waddington

The presidential campaign for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney must be stinging a bit on the news that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee carried West Virginia today, but you wouldn't know it from the latest supporter email.

Just a few moments ago, the Romney campaign sent out an email message to supporters highlighting the differences between its candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain. While McCain, who has been downing the poli-vitamins sans water since his Straight Talk Express was nearly pronounced dead-on-arrival in Iowa last summer, is arguably the Republican frontrunner and deserving of Team Romney's scrutiny in these final hours, the email is notably silent when it comes to Huck. He's not mentioned.

The loss of all of West Virginia's 18 Republican delegates has to hit the Romney Campaign hard as it struggles to sustain viability - especially since the candidate himself addressed the convention. Those on the ground in West Virginia are reporting that McCain supporters, following a miserable first-round showing, threw their support to Huckabee in an effort to deny Romney the delegates.

Here in Iowa, a national loss by Romney, the Republican candidate who tossed millions of campaign dollars and untold hours of time into the state, to McCain, a candidate who largely ignored Iowa, doesn't bode well. The same holds true on the Democratic side of the coin if New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is named the Democratic nominee. The conventional wisdom is neither Clinton nor McCain would be strong supporters of Iowa's traditional role as first-in-the-nation.