Just about the time polls close in Iowa tonight, a prime political event in the neighborhood will be wrapping as well. A forum for GOP gubernatorial candidates will be held about five miles southeast of Ida Grove, where the Ida and Crawford County Republican Parties will be cooperating to host five candidates in a Morton building on an acreage. The field includes everyone who plans to run for governor save former Gov. Terry Branstad — Bob Vander Plaats and Chris Rants of Sioux City, state lawmakers Jerry Behn and Rod Roberts and Cedar Rapids insurance exec Christian Fong. And the political parties landed a nice ‘get’ to moderate the event, as Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn will handle those duties.

The event is called Barn(get it?)storming for Governor, and Rachel Law of rural Correctionville is pleased she’ll be able to take it in. Law, who’s on the Ida County Republican Party Central Committee, said she hasn’t settled on a candidate she’d like to see win the governorship a year from tonight. She particularly wants to hear the five men talk about taxation, education and their views of the 10 percent across-the-board budget cut for Iowa agencies, as recently ordered by Democratic Gov. Chet Culver.

You might recall a week ago tonight, four of the five candidates (Roberts, Vander Plaats, Behn and Rants) shared the stage for a governor debate at the Sioux City Convention Center.

UPDATE: Behn had farmwork to do — given the wet weather, the harvest  has been very slow — and did not attend the Ida/Crawford GOP event.

In the midst of a weeklong news cycle over mismanagement of the Iowa film tax credit, a poll of 500 likely Iowa voters indicated vulnerability for Gov. Chet Culver (pictured above). A new Rasmussen Poll shows Culver trails a few Republicans in possible 2010 matchups. The guy still on the sidelines, former four-term Gov. Terry Branstad, blasts Culver by 20 points (54-34 percent), while Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats, who is definitely in the race, also leads Culver by a four-point margin (43-39).

Culver delivered one of his more memorable quotes when he concretely responded to the film credit troubles (after a long weekend with no contact with reporters). He said Iowans won’t be played for suckers, so an investigation into where the tax credits have been directed is underway. Three officials in the Iowa Department of Economic Development and connected with the film tax functioning are no longer employed.

This provides yet another campaign cudgel for Republicans to wield over the next 13.5 months. In a YouTube video, Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn says the film credit episode is another case of Culver not providing executive leadership.

For journalistic digging into the state’s tax credits — there are 28 — read this blog post from yesterday by Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa. Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican did research as well, turning up the interesting stat that in spring 2007 only three of the 150 Iowa lawmakers voted against establishing the film tax credit to spur more movies to be made in the Hawkeye state.

Two more brief bits this morning relating to the 68-hour failure of Iowa House Democrats to push through the prevailing wage measure that was in their 2009 arsenal of labor issues. House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, talked about why he left the voting machine on from Friday to Monday in hopes of getting the 51st vote to pass the prevailing wage bill.

“I really just had my Irish temper up and I wanted to pass the bill, so I decided I’d sit here all weekend. I’m not saying I would do it again but I don’t have any regrets about it,” Murphy summarized yesterday.

Also, Murphy gave some insight into how he wasn’t the only state Dem political leader working the process of passing the prevailing wage bill, or the job-killing bill, as Iowa Republicans call it. Murphy noted Gov. Chet Culver “did give 100 percent on this one.” Culver was at a national governors association meeting for most of the time while the voting machine was kept open, but if he was working the phones, he joins Murphy as another political loser in this scenario.

In the barbed words of Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn: “It’s about time (Culver’s) failure to produce actually does Iowans some good.”

Really, what this is all about is that a half-dozen centrist Democrats, who are moderate on fiscal matters, voted their conscience and couldn’t be moved by their leadership. State Rep. Christopher Rants of Sioux City and others can gloat all they like, but when Republicans were in leadership they also used lots of “persuasion” to get members to fall into line. Simply, that’s the process of power politics.

The headline is not what you think. Certainly some think politicians are twittering fill-in-the-blanks, but the social networking means of Twitter is getting acceptance among some of the biggest names in Iowa politics. Stately U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has started Twittering – whereby what you’re presently doing is related in short lines like “Just sat down for Gran Torino flick” or “introduced the bill destined to cure nation’s fiscal woes!” — and there are others.

This morning, State Sen. Christopher Rants, R-Sioux City, who’s always been technologically savvy, announced he’s Twittering.

This is the future of lawmakers and candidates reaching out with the latest technology. The new Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn said these newer technologies, like YouTube and Facebook, should be a means to try to grab voters. Like Rants said, it might be beyond the grasp of most over 30, but some people certainly like to Twitter. Whether they care what elected officials are Twittering about, their status updates as it were, is another matter.

Here’s one of Grassley’s latest, from Jan. 14 — “In few Minutes I will b on Fox Business Channel.”

If you’re an Iowa Barnstormers indoor football fan, which weekend news has you most excited? Are you gratified that former QB Kurt Warner (above) has led the unheralded (OK, laughed at) Arizona Cardinals to a second consecutive playoff win? The lowly Cardinals now are a win away from the Super Bowl.

Or are you pleased that one of the Barnstormers owners, Matt Strawn, has been picked to be chairman of the Iowa Republican Party for the next two years?

Strawn has a salty background in politics, working as a congressional aide and then for John McCain’s Iowa presidential campaign. He worked the new technology (OK, new to the most mossback of Republicans) of YouTube and Facebook to get his message out there. He defeated former state legislator Danny Carroll in the final RPI chairman vote.

Strawn knows there are challenges with the commanding voter registration lead Democrats have seized in the last few years. But he likes the chances of rebounding, given some hard work and connecting to voters through means such as Twitter.

And Strawn wasn’t the only tri-state GOP leader picked on the weekend. The Nebraska Republican Party selected Lincoln attorney Mark Fahleson as the new chairman.