Last September, I interviewed my former Des Moines Register colleague David Yepsen for a Closer Look article after he returned to run the “Iowa Press” show on Iowa Public Television. 

Yepsen mentioned in the interview that Iowa has sidestepped the kind of full-throated, party line, gerrymandering, professional wrestling political smackdown that happens in some other states. 

Now, the Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement and Cook Political Report are staging a panel with Yepsen and others at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to discuss Iowa’s 1980 law that sets up an effort by a nonpartisan state agency to lead redistricting. You can watch it on C-SPAN at 1:30 p.m. today. 

In addition to Yepsen, who lives in Des Moines and is semiretired, the panel also includes these Iowans: Jean Lloyd-Jones, who was president of the Iowa League of Women Voters when that organization challenged the state’s redistricting plan; Joe O’Hern, former chief clerk of the Iowa House, who was involved in the legislation; Kay Henderson, news director for Radio Iowa and a longtime statehouse reporter; and Ed Cook, attorney for the Iowa Legislative Services Agency, which oversees the redistricting process.

More details are here.