Midterm Madness

The 2022 Midterm Election will test the power of incumbency in Iowa.

bY PAUL brENNAN

It’s a truism of American politics that with rare exceptions, incumbents always have a big advantage in an election. And nowhere is that truism truer than Iowa.

Chuck Grassley has been in the U.S. Senate longer than all but one of his colleagues—Democratic Patrick Leahy, who is retiring this year—and longer than most Americans have been alive. According to the Census Bureau, the median age in the United States is 38.8 years. In November, it will be 42 years since Grassley was elected to the Senate, following six years in the U.S. House and 16 years in the Iowa House. When Grassley won his first election in 1958, there were 48 states, not 50.

In terms of years in office, Gov. Kim Reynolds is a newcomer compared to Grassley. Her career began when she was elected treasurer of Clarke County in 1994, three and a half decades after Grassley’s first win. But Reynolds is, in many ways, an extension of Terry Branstad, who holds the record as the longest-serving governor in American history.

It’s impossible to imagine Reynolds being governor in 2022 if Branstad hadn’t come out of retirement in 2010, run for governor again and selected her as his running mate. At the time, Reynolds was not an obvious choice. She was in her first term in the state Senate and had no notable accomplishments since arriving in Des Moines. If Reynolds stood out at all, it was because she had a dynamic personality and was a loyal team-player. She was also a social conservative, and Branstad needed to reassure his party’s social conservatives who did not trust him.

Lieutenant governors in Iowa typically have little to do except stand near the governor at news conferences, be a smiling face at events the governor doesn’t attend and chair meetings in which they provide little input. That’s basically what Reynolds did until Branstad resigned in May 2017 to become President Trump’s ambassador to China.

As governor, Reynolds has loyally served the interests of the coalition of supporters Branstad built during his decades in office. The advantages of incumbency and being Branstad’s designated successor helped Reynolds in her race for governor in 2016. She defeated Democrat Fred Hubbell by less than 3 percentage points.

As governor, Reynolds has also opened her door wide to what were previously fringe ideas among conservatives in the state. Most notably, she’s made a voucher-style program that would channel public school funds to private schools a priority, going so far as to endorse the primary opponents of some Republican lawmakers who opposed her because they thought it would damage their already struggling rural school districts.

Polling shows a majority of Iowans oppose the plan to divert public school funds to private schools, but there’s no evidence it has hurt Reynolds’ chances of reelection. An Iowa Poll conducted in July showed the governor with a 17 percentage point lead over her Democratic opponent Deidre DeJear.

Of course, it isn’t just Republicans who enjoy the advantages of incumbency in Iowa. Both of the state’s senior Democrats, Attorney General Tom Miller and Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald, were first elected to their offices in 1978. But neither of those positions has much power to set policy. Governors and U.S. Senators do that.

As the election approaches, Iowa is facing an uncertain future. From the pro-corporate agricultural policies, which have led to a hollowing out of rural Iowa and environmental degradation, to the prospect of the state and federal governments further eroding reproductive freedom, the past clearly shows what Reynolds and Grassley will do to shape the state’s future. Their opponents, Deidre DeJear and Mike Franken, neither of whom have held elected office before, are basing their campaigns on the belief that Iowans want to go in a different direction.

It’s a truism of American politics that the next election is always the most important election. And nowhere is that truism truer than in Iowa.

living in Oklahoma, had decided to start a home healthcare business in that state.

DeJear was used to spending summers in Yazoo long before the campaign.

“I volunteered to assist my grandmother, every summer she taught summer school,” she recalled.

Washington’s summer sessions went beyond the classroom. DeJear said her grandmother organized field trips for students to such places as New York and Washington D.C., so they could see more of the world beyond the rural corner of Mississippi.

Those summers with her grandmother also opened her eyes to the challenges of life in rural area, DeJear explained.. The Howards had lived in Jackson, Mississippi’s capital and the state’s only large city. Her time in Yazoo helped acquaint her with life in rural America, especially the challenges faced by rural families in need.

Mattie Washington spent her career making sure the basic needs of the kids she taught were met, both in and outside school.

Worth the Work

Republicans’ campaign coffers overfloweth, but Deidre DeJear hopes a “new energy” against extremism in Iowa will make the difference on Election Day.

Deidre DeJear worked on her first campaign while she was still in high school. Her grandmother, Mattie Washington, was running for a seat on the Election Commission in Yazoo County, Mississippi, and a young Deidre Howard spent the summer of her sophomore year helping with the campaign.

Washington already had a long history as a public school teacher and community organizer in that rural Mississippi county when she decided to run for office. She was then, and remains today, a major influence on her granddaughter.

“She really instilled in me the value of doing for others,” DeJear told Little Village. “ Her empathy towards individuals was contagious, and it still is.”

By the time her grandmother ran for office, Deidre’s family had moved from Jackson, Mississippi to Tulsa, Oklahoma following the death of her mother, shortly after Deidre turned 8. Her father and his brother, who was already

“I came to Iowa to go to Drake, and I ended up choosing Iowa as my home. I just love the state and love what it has to offer to people.”

“She was creating safety nets for her young students,” DeJear said. It was an example she would follow after enrolling at Drake University.

As an undergraduate, DeJear co-founded the Back 2 School Bash, which collected school supplies for students at Des Moines-area schools who would otherwise have trouble affording them. The annual event evolved into the nonprofit Back 2 School Iowa.

DeJear had never spent time in Iowa prior to enrolling at Drake in 2004. She’d developed an interest in broadcast journalism in high school, and was impressed by Drake’s program. She was also interested in politics, and Iowa offered the promise of a parade of national politicians during caucus season.

“I came to Iowa to go to Drake, and I ended up choosing Iowa as my home,” she said. “I just love the state and love what it has to offer to people.”

Although DeJear majored in broadcast journalism and politics, she turned to business when she graduated in 2008, setting up Caleo Enterprises. Caleo, which is Latin for “ignite,” started with a focus on providing marketing support for small businesses, and has expanded to offer business development support and financial coaching for entrepreneurs.

Starting her business led to an important moment in then-Deidre Howard’s life. It’s how she met Marvin DeJear.

“My husband was one of my first clients,” DeJear said, smiling.

Marvin, who earned an MBA and Ph.D. in Higher Education, Community College Leadership at Iowa State University, is currently senior vice president of talent development at the Greater Des Moines Partnership.

Also in 2008, DeJear began volunteering as an assistant coach for the girls’ basketball team at East High School in Des Moines. It evolved into a full-time position, and DeJear served as an assistant coach for the Scarlets through 2014.

“That was an outlet for me,” DeJear explained. “I’m a creative person, and while some people may not recognize it, basketball is a very creative game.”

She’d grown up in a sports-loving family, and played basketball in high school. But it was more than love of the game that made DeJear want to volunteer at East. It was also the opportunity to work with students.

“I am inspired by our youth,” she said, regarding her decision to take the coaching position. “I’m inspired when I know we can create opportunities for our young people.”

DeJear was coaching during 2011, when the girls’ team at East capped a perfect season by winning the state championship. Shareece Burrell, now an assistant coach for the women’s basketball team at Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, was a freshman player on the 2011 squad.

According to Burrell, “Coach Deidre” had a big impact on her and her fellow players.

“She was someone who would push us to be better each and every day,” Burrell told Little Village. “She wasn’t just coaching us, she was always encouraging us to be better individuals.”

DeJear worked with the players both on and off the court, helping them with their studies, organizing community volunteer opportunities for team members, assisting them with the college application process.

She also served as a role model for the young players. During Burrell’s four years on the team, DeJear was the only woman on the coaching staff.

“That representation meant so much to us,” Burrell said, “because we had a Black woman as a role model to look up to. She helped us see that we could potentially be where she’s at one day.”

After Burrell graduated from East, she played Division I basketball at Bradley University in Illinois, where she earned a degree in sports communications. She then attended the University of Northern Iowa, completing a master’s in women and gender studies. In addition to her coaching job at Mount Mercy, she recently started a nonprofit in Cedar Rapids, Restore the Millenials, to provide mentoring and support to young adults who feel disconnected from their communities.

DeJear stayed in contact with Burrell throughout her college career, offering encouragement and support, and the two remain in touch today. DeJear has stayed in contact with most of her former players.

“All of them are productive citizens, doing amazing work,” she said proudly.

While coaching and building up Caleo, DeJear became more active in politics. She worked on Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign in Iowa. She also managed campaigns for two local school board candidates. In 2018, DeJear decided to run for office for the first time.

After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, she felt a new urgency to work to protect access to the ballot box. The Secretary of State is, of course, Iowa’s chief election official. But the office also provides important services for entrepreneurs starting new businesses. The Secretary of State’s duties combined DeJear’s interest in ensuring voting rights and fostering business development.

DeJear campaigned on expanding access to voting, and expanding outreach to potential entrepreneurs to make sure they understood how the Secretary of State’s office could assist in new business ventures.

In the primary, DeJear faced Jim Mowrer, who was the better known candidate. Mowrer had twice been the Democratic nominee challenging the incumbent congressman Steve King

Deidre DeJear at the James theater in Iowa city, March 2022 Chad Rhym / Little Village

in western Iowa. DeJear won. But in the general election, she fell to Republican incumbent Paul Pate by almost 8 percentage points.

Even though she lost, DeJear made history in 2018. She was the first Black candidate to win a major party’s nomination for a statewide office in Iowa.

Campaigning as the Democrats’ candidate for governor, DeJear is impressive. She has an engaging personality, is an excellent speaker, has outlined policies to address many of Iowa’s most pressing problems and can draw on a compelling life story when trying to connect with voters.

“If my story is possible, then all our stories are possible,” DeJear often says at events. But most Iowans who aren’t active in Democratic Party politics have never heard her story.

DeJear’s campaign has been limited due to limited success in fundraising. As of the end of September, there had not been a single campaign commercial on TV, despite the fact she was the presumptive nominee all year long.

There was another Democrat running last year. Ras Smith, who represents Waterloo in the Iowa House, declared his candidacy in June 2019. He quit the race at the beginning of January, citing a “drastic disconnect between the current political system and the people.”

Smith explained what that meant in a post he’d published on Bleeding Heartland two weeks earlier: “I never expected to be given as equal a shot as my white counterparts,” Smith wrote. “Because that’s reality. I’ve been a Black man in Iowa my entire life. What I didn’t expect was to be treated as insignificant by the donor class of my own party.”

Smith, who received the Iowa Democratic Party’s Rising Star award earlier in 2019, wondered if donors would have been so reluctant “if the front runner for the Democratic nomination for governor of Iowa were white.”

According to DeJear, she is receiving adequate support from the Iowa Democratic Party, although she acknowledges that her campaign is having to do more with less. Fundraising started off very slow, but has improved over the course of the campaign. In July, the DeJear campaign had $505,315 on hand. The Reynolds campaign, however, had $5.2 million in the bank at that time.

Reynolds began spending some of those millions on TV ads in September. Neither of the two campaign ads that debuted that month mention DeJear.

The only Democrat even mentioned in the first ad is President Biden. The second does feature a Democrat, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, although the commercial never tells viewers who she is.

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“And defunding the police has to happen,” Bush says in a brief clip showing her standing in front of the Capitol steps in Washington D.C., followed by a montage of images that frighten Fox News viewers. Then Gov. Reynolds smiles reassuringly at the camera. “Aren’t you glad you live in Iowa?” she asks, implying she is all that stands between viewers and the fears she is trying to stoke.

The only reason for Bush, whose district is nowhere near Iowa, to be featured prominently in the ad is because Bush is a Black woman with shoulder-length hair and Deidre DeJear is a Black woman with shoulder-length hair.

Reynolds apparently expects viewers to be so blinkered they can’t tell the difference between two Black women, or so racist they assume all Black people secretly agree with each other and can’t be trusted to protect “real” Americans, or be willing to ignore the non-subtle racist appeal.

DeJear has never supported defunding the police. But people who watch the ad probably don’t know that, because the Iowa Democratic Party hasn’t aired any TV commercials promoting its candidate or challenging Reynolds.

Except for Steve King, no leading Republican in Iowa has ever paid a price for pandering to racism. And it was national Republicans who rejected King, not Iowa Republicans.

After remaining silent during King’s eight terms in Congress, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) decided four years ago that King’s white nationalist language and connections were just too odious to tolerate and cut off funding for him.

“We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn [King’s] behavior,” the committee’s chair declared on Oct. 30, 2018.

Iowa Republicans continued to support King. Three days after the NRCC condemned King, Chuck Grassley issued a new video endorsement for him. (“Iowa needs Steve King in Congress. I also need Steve King in Congress.”) Reynolds kept King as co-chair of her 2018 election campaign, and he was on stage as a featured speaker at her final campaign rally that year.

King was reelected in 2018, but national Republicans stripped him of all committee assignments in Congress, setting the stage for Iowa Republicans to abandon him during the 2020 primary. Iowa Republican leaders never had to explain the decades of support they provided for King. There’s no reason to think any of them will criticize the governor’s “Scary Black Woman” ad.

Polls showed Reynolds with a double-digit lead over DeJear as the campaign entered its final stretch, but DeJear says there’s momentum the polls haven’t captured, and there’s a focus on the Reynolds administration’s failure to address Iowa’s problem that she didn’t see during her 2018 statewide campaign.

“We’re not talking about the political headlines this time. We’re talking about bread-andbutter issues that impact everybody—rural, urban, suburban, Black, white, LGBTQ.”

DeJear said she sees “new energy” among voters—young and old, Democrats and Republicans—who are opposed to Reynolds’ intention to impose a six-week abortion ban and divert public school funds into a voucher-style program to pay private school tuition.

“This governor has gone too far,” DeJear said. “This type of extremism doesn’t sit well in our state.”

DeJear talks about creating a more inclusive approach to governing, in contrast to Reynolds’ focus on the coalition of corporate interests Terry Branstad created, and the social conservatives Reynolds appeals to by banning transgender girls from school sports and supporting rightwing efforts to ban library books of which they disapprove.

“If we want people to be their best, we have to set them up for success,” DeJear said. “When we talk about education, healthcare, mental healthcare access—these are basic components, fundamentals things. There should be a pathway for people to enter in order to get access to those things.”

“And that pathway is getting smaller and smaller for the vast majority of Iowans. Why? Because our current leadership is not working hard enough.”

As she enters the final month of the campaign, DeJear acknowledges there’s still much work to do to get her message out. But then she refers back to what she said at the beginning of the campaign, “Iowa is worth the work.”

wanted them to be, both economically and for the future,” he said to the crowd gathered for a campaign event on the patio of Tic Toc, a neighborhood bar in Cedar Rapids the week the first attack ads launched. “And I’m sorry if the truth hurts so much. But we need to identify the problem before we proceed to a solution.”

He pointed to the decline of his own small hometown in northwest Iowa as an example of the decline of rural Iowa. When Franken was growing up near Lebanon in Sioux County, the town had a population of approximately 50.

“I think there’s 12 there now,” he said.

Mike Franken is the youngest of nine children. His father, a World War II vet, ran a oneman machine shop; his mother taught at the local one-room schoolhouse. As a teenager, Franken worked construction jobs on neighbors’ farms, and later spent three years working in a Sioux City meat-packing plant to earn money to cover his tuition at Morningside College. Then he applied for a Navy scholarship.

That scholarship led to a career that ended when Franken retired in 2017, having reached the rank of three-star admiral. He moved back to Iowa in 2020.

Franken’s life story has been the major focus of his campaign commercials so far, and the results of the June primary showed the impact that

Franken’s Time

Polls suggest the pro-Roe retired admiral is closer to unseating Sen. Grassley than any Democratic challenger before him.

Things were different 42 years ago. Chuck Grassley, then a three-term congressman looking to move up to the Senate, declared himself an opponent of negative political ads. Grassley devoted his opening statement in the Iowa Public Television’s Republican primary debate in 1980 to complaining ads targeting him.

Grassley called his primary opponent Tom Stoner a “negative candidate” who “spends his time and money attacking his opponent, distorting his record and making innuendo about his character.” Grassley demanded Stoner “apologize to the voters” for his ads.

The 1980 version of Grassley could have been describing the senator’s 2022 reelection campaign. Grassley has launched a series of negative ads attacking his Democratic opponent Mike Franken. He’s even tried to make Franken’s naval career a liability. More than one ad has claimed “Mike Franken can’t represent us. He doesn’t know us,” insinuating Franken’s 39 years of service around the country and the world has erased his Iowa roots.

Franken shrugs off Grassley’s ads.

“Perhaps you’ve seen an ad done by my opponent that hits me for saying something about aspects in rural Iowa that are not what we

Unlike Grassley, Franken frequently speaks in detail about what he wants to accomplish in the Senate, including capitalizing on Iowa’s progress in shifting to wind energy and promoting further growth in solarpower generation to make the state a major center for clean energy.

story can make. He swept almost all the counties in the media markets where his commercial was broadcast. His main opponent, former Rep. Abby Finkenauer, won counties where Franken wasn’t on the air. He won the primary with 55 percent of the vote and carried 76 counties around the state.

Starting the general election campaign with negative ads gives Grassley a chance to try to define Franken for voters who may not have been paying attention during the primary. They also allow Grassley to avoid addressing the biggest unanswered question of his own campaign: Why is the 89-year-old running again?

In the video announcing his reelection run, Grassley said he had “a lot more to do for Iowa,” but didn’t explain what that meant, and has remained vague on what he believes he can accomplish in an additional six years in the Senate that he hasn’t been able to do in the last four decades.

In his speeches, Franken notes that Grassley’s years in office have coincided with the decline of rural Iowa, as people continue to leave and small businesses struggle to survive.

“He has had the opportunity to help us, and he has not,” Franken said. He directly connects Grassley’s policies to the money the senator has collected from corporations over the years. Franken has made not accepting corporate PAC contributions a centerpiece of his campaign.

Unlike Grassley, Franken frequently speaks in detail about what he wants to accomplish in the Senate, including capitalizing on Iowa’s progress in shifting to wind energy and promoting further growth in solar-power generation to make the state a major center for clean energy.

“We have a great opportunity to have the cheapest electrical power in the nation,” he said.

Franken sees the potential for Iowa to become the center of a low-carbon regional energy grid that would help address climate change and provide the infrastructure for new economic growth in rural parts of the state.

Franken also favors working towards a single-payer healthcare system by gradually expanding Medicare, in order to remove the profit motive for essential care. He wants to ensure the solvency of Social Security by eliminating the income cap. Currently, only income below $147,000 is subject to Social Security taxes. Franken, along with many groups who work on senior issues, wants personal income above the current cut-off to be taxed at the same 6.2 percent rate income below it is. He also has proposals regarding criminal justice reform, including the legalization of marijuana.

In addition to commanding a ship, the destroyer USS Winston Churchill, and Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa, serving as flag

charles Grassley and tom Stoner debate, 1980. Screenshot from Iowa Public Television

officer in U.S. Central Command’s Planning and Strategy Office, and as the first director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Franken had years of directly dealing with Congress as chief of legislative affairs for the Navy under President Obama. He’s well aware of the Senate’s reputation as the place where legislation goes to die, he says, and would come to the job with experience of how the chamber works and how it fails to work.

This isn’t Franken’s first run for the Senate. He entered the Democratic primary in 2020, but that year’s primary was largely decided in advance. Before any candidates publicly declared their intentions, national Democrats were lining up behind Theresa Greenfield and trying to discourage others from entering the race.

The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) issued its endorsement of Greenfield three days after she declared, even though there were already two other Democrats in the race. Franken, who entered the race later, finished a distant second to Greenfield. Sen. Joni Ernst easily beat Greenfield in the general election.

This year, the big national Democratic groups have largely ignored Iowa. “The DSCC is not involved in this race,” a committee spokesperson told Politico in response to a question about Iowa.

That’s understandable. Grassley has compiled an impressive record in his six previous runs for reelection. He’s never won less than 60 percent of the vote. In three races, he won all 99 counties, and in the other three he won 98. But this year may be different.

In 2021, before Grassley announced he was running again, the Iowa Poll found that only 27 percent of Iowans thought he should seek another term. Three months ago, an Iowa Poll found Grassley leading Franken by only 8 percentage points. That’s closer than any opponent has been to Grassley in 42 years.

The conventional wisdom at the beginning of this year’s Democratic Senate primary was that Finkenauer, because she was a former member of Congress and had greater name recognition, would win.

“We’re cresting at the right time,” Franken told audiences of enthusiastic Democrats during his final cross-state campaign swing before the primary. His strategy was to create an expectation—“I believe Mike Franken will defeat Chuck Grassley” was his first campaign slogan—use his biographical ad to introduce himself to voters, and then build momentum through in-person events. But in September, something happened that might interfere with the campaign’s momentum.

On Sept. 19, Iowa Field Report, an online news site associated with the state’s Republican Party, broke a story about a former campaign worker accusing Franken of committing assault by grabbing the collar of her vest and kissing her.

The alleged incident happened in March, but Kimberly Strope-Boggus didn’t file a report with the Des Moines Police Department until the following month. According to the report, Strope-Boggus didn’t allege Franken acted in an aggressive or sexual manner, but instead attributed his actions to what she claims are his “1950s interactions with women.” After reviewing the

police report, the Polk County Attorney’s Office determined the case was “unfounded” and closed it without further investigation or contacting Franken.

Strope-Boggus, who was fired by the Franken campaign in the month before the alleged incident, told the DMPD she met with Franken at the Dam Pub on March 18 at his request to discuss her possibly returning to the campaign. It was after leaving the pub Strope-Boggus said the kiss happened. According to the police statement, after she pulled away they went their separate ways without speaking. Strope-Boggus said she had had subsequent text interactions with Franken, mostly about campaign matters, but never mentioned the alleged kiss in any of them.

Strope-Boggus did not resume working for the Franken campaign. In April, after receiving a complaint from a Franken staffer about something she tweeted, Strope-Boggus told her wife about the alleged kissing incident, and her wife encouraged her to file a police report.

After Iowa Field Report published its story, Franken told reporters he had met with StropeBoggus in March, but flatly denied grabbing her collar or kissing her.

“It never happened,” he said.

The Grassley campaign immediately called on Franken to release Strope-Boggus from the non-disclosure agreement she signed when she left the campaign in February. (NDAs are common in political campaigns to protect confidential information.) Franken agreed to do so and said Strope-Boggus is free to discuss her allegations. Strope-Boggus has declined to make any further statements.

It’s possible the allegation could discourage some people from voting for Franken, but it’s unlikely that anyone concerned with women’s rights would be moved to vote for Grassley instead, given his voting record. Franken describes himself as pro-Roe, and says that decisions made between a pregnant Iowan and their doctor are “none of [his] business.” Grassley was the rightwing Republican candidate in 1980, a bad year for moderates, and Grassley’s fiercely anti-abotion stance helped him first win the primary against Stoner, and then the general election against first-term Democrat Sen. John Culver. But in 2022, the electoral energy on the issue of abortion appears to be going the other way, It would be ironic if the issue that helped Grassley get to the Senate defeated him this year.

After 42 years, things are different in Iowa. How different won’t be clear until after Election Day.

One-Sentence Profiles of Statewide Candidates

bY PAUL brENNAN, ILLUStrAtIONS bY EMMA MccLAtcHEY

Attorney General

Auditor of State

tom Miller, (D-incumbent) agreed in 2019 not to pursue any legal actions outside of Iowa without first getting Gov. Reynolds’ permission, but in Iowa, he’s still free to do the things he’s been doing during his last 40 years in office.

rob Sand (D-incumbent) has infuriated Iowa Republican politicians by publishing a report on Gov. Reynolds misusing federal funds, and another one when she did it again, and promises to keep doing it as long as she keeps doing it.

Secretary of State

Joel Miller (D) says Secretary of State Pate has introduced and backed unnecessary restrictions on voting.

Secretary of Agriculture

John Norwood (D) wants to encourage farmers and corporations posing as farmers to voluntarily engage in better and environmentally sound farming practices, while protecting the flow of state and federal tax dollars that support the status quo. brenna bird (R)’s main campaign promise is that she will be ready as AG to sue the Biden administration at any time for any reason, especially for reasons that might get her name mentioned on Fox News.

todd Halbur (R) plans to bring “common sense” to the auditor’s office, and according to Gov. Reynolds, that apparently means not publishing reports about her misusing federal funds.

Paul Pate

(R-incumbent) says he’s introduced and backed necessary restrictions on voting.

Mike Naig (R-incumbent) wants to encourage farmers and corporations posing as farmers to voluntarily engage in better and environmentally sound farming practices, while protecting the flow of state and federal tax dollars that support the status quo.

treasurer

Mike Fitzgerald

(D-incumbent) has been in office for 43 years and 10 months, but the average Iowan could not tell you the name of the state’s treasurer, and it’s not clear if that says more about Fitzgerald or the average Iowan. roby Smith (R) made headlines last year by reportedly pressuring state regulators to allow a dogbreeder accused of animal welfare violations to stay in business, and telling a reporter who asked about it, “I don’t work for you.”