Group denies aiding passage of new Iowa elections law, despite leader’s previous claim

DES MOINES — An attorney for the conservative advocacy organization whose leader claimed heavy involvement in the writing of Iowa’s new elections law has now told state regulators that the group did not work with state lawmakers in crafting the legislation.

Heritage Action on Tuesday responded to the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, which had requested more information on the group’s lobbying of Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Christopher Byrnes, Heritage Action’s chief legal counsel, wrote to the state board that the group’s staff has had “no communications with any members of the Iowa Legislature relating to legislation over this past year.”

That response to state regulators stands in contrast to previous comments made by Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action and a former official in President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Iowa is the first state that we got to work in, and we did it quickly and we did it quietly,” Anderson said in a leaked video published by the progressive investigate news site Mother Jones.

“We worked quietly with the Iowa State legislature. We got the best practices to them. We helped draft the bills. … And we were able to get three provisions in the larger election integrity bill that were directly written by the Heritage recommendation.”

It is not uncommon for an organization to assist it or even write proposed legislation. But any organization engaging in that type of activity must register with the state, and Heritage Action is not registered as a lobbying organization in Iowa.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board oversees lobbying of the state’s executive branch. Any investigation into potential rule-breaking in the Iowa Legislature would fall to the Legislature’s ethics committees, which are chaired by majority Republicans.

While those Republican leaders have not yet stated any intention to investigate Anderson’s comments, Democrats this week filed two complaints in the Iowa House for potential violation of Iowa ethics and lobbying laws.

“The two ethics complaints filed today aren’t about politics. They’re about transparency and stopping corruption,” state Rep. Todd Prichard, leader of the Iowa House Democrats, said in a statement. “When special interest groups from Washington, D.C. secretly write legislation and spend millions to influence Iowa lawmakers, they must be held accountable and follow our laws and rules.”

All complaints must be considered by the House ethics committee.

The legislation, approved by the Republican-majority Iowa Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, includes myriad new statewide elections policies. Among the most contentious were provisions that constrained early voting by reducing the time period for early voting and adding constraints to early voting programs like ballot drop boxes and satellite early voting locations.