Eight classic Claire Celsi moments in the Iowa Senate
A video tribute
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I can’t remember when I met Claire Celsi. It was years before she decided to run for the state legislature. Our paths crossed often at Democratic events, and we knew many of the same people in progressive circles. I valued her take on the latest news and her thoughts about blogging, since she had kept an online journal during the 2000s.
Claire was generous with her time as a volunteer for many Democratic candidates, starting with Tom Harkin’s first U.S. Senate race in 1984. She was one of the early organizers of the West Des Moines Democrats, back when that suburb leaned strongly to Republicans. She managed Mike Huston’s Congressional campaign in 2000 and worked hard in 2017 to help Renee Hardman defeat an incumbent to win a West Des Moines city council seat. (Hardman is now the Democratic nominee to succeed Claire in Iowa Senate district 16.)
Josh Hughes described how Claire was the first “grown up” to take him seriously as a Democratic activist. She enjoyed spending time with people of all ages. Josh took this picture near the Surf Ballroom in August 2018, when he and Olivia Habinck were leaders of the College and Young Democrats of Iowa, and Claire and I carpooled with them to the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding.
Claire was not easily discouraged. She ran against a heavily favored Iowa House Republican incumbent in 2016, even though the Democratic Party was not targeting the race. She lost but outperformed previous challengers in the district despite being outspent by a huge margin.
Many candidates would give up after a tough election. Claire didn’t. Knocking thousands of doors in West Des Moines in 2016 helped her win a competitive Democratic primary for the Iowa Senate seat covering that area two years later. She went on to win the 2018 general election by a wide margin.
After Claire passed away this month, far too young at age 59, many friends and colleagues highlighted her passion and the tenacity of her political work. Iowa Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner described her as a “fearless advocate and truthteller for women, the elderly and public education.”
This weekend, as Governor Kim Reynolds ordered flags lowered to half-staff across Iowa to honor Claire’s memory, I want to let readers see that advocacy in the senator’s own words.
CALLING OUT “THE HEARTBREAKING CRISIS” IN IOWA’S NURSING HOMES
John Hale, Terri Hale, and Dean Lerner called Claire “the undisputed champion for Iowans in nursing homes” and “the elected official who cared the most and worked the hardest to improve quality of care for residents of Iowa’s nursing facilities.” During the 2024 legislative session, Senate Democrats introduced several bills related to the issue.
The majority party doesn’t give Democratic bills any chance for a public conversation at a subcommittee hearing. But Claire was occasionally able to shine a light on the problem during floor debate.
I pulled this clip from April 18, 2024, when the Senate considered the appropriations bill that funded Iowa’s Department of Inspections, Appeals, and Licensing. Claire offered an amendment based on the package of legislation Democrats had offered “to address the heartbreaking crisis happening in Iowa’s nursing homes.”
While researching deaths and other harmful incidents in care facilities, they learned Iowa had a “big shortage” of inspectors working in this area. This amendment would have allowed the state to hire 30 more nursing home inspectors, at a cost of $2.4 million. Claire pointed out that the state agency “has a backlog of inspections,” so “we know that this problem is not taking care of itself, no surprise. […] It’s time to protect our senior citizens and do something about it.”
To no one’s surprise, Republican majority voted down the amendment along party lines. Claire and Weiner introduced a more comprehensive package of fourteen nursing home bills during the 2025 legislative session.
“THE FEDERAL RATE’S TOO LOW, AND THE STATE’S RATE’S TOO LOW”
Claire worked relentlessly to increase the Medicaid personal needs allowance for Iowans, which includes not only many senior citizens in nursing homes but also people in intermediate care facilities, due to an intellectual disability or mental health condition. Those groups have very little political power and no association to lobby on their behalf.
Iowans eligible for this program receive $50 a month to spend on a wide range of personal care items. I pulled this video from Senate debate on a health and human services appropriations bill on April 27, 2023. Claire’s amendment would have increased the personal needs allowance to $85. She pointed out that Iowa has not increased the amount since 2001.
That clip is also a good example of how Claire could be succinct in debate. She made her case in one minute. Republican State Senator Mark Costello argued the proposal would cost too much. He noted that Iowa’s personal needs allowance was already above the minimum level set by federal law.
Claire responded simply, “The federal rate’s too low, and the state rate’s too low, so please vote yes.”
The amendment failed, but bills increasing the personal needs allowance to $85 were part of the packages Claire introduced in 2024 and again this year.
HARSH WORDS FOR THOSE WHO “DEVASTATED PUBLIC SCHOOLS”
Supporting public education was one of Claire’s core values. It was a big reason she decided to run against a well-funded Republican incumbent in the 2016 election cycle. She entered that House race a few months after Governor Terry Branstad item vetoed nearly $56 million in K-12 education funding and around $9 million more for higher education.
In addition to her legislative work, which kept her very busy, Claire was an administrator of the large and active Iowans for Public Education Facebook group.
During her first year as a state senator, Republicans increased state aid to K-12 schools by 2.06 percent. As the governor signed the bill in the capitol rotunda, Claire stood to the side, holding a sign that read, “2% is not an investment!” My friend Tanya Keith recently posted a picture from that day in February 2019:
The following month, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos quietly visited Iowa for a private meeting with the governor, some Republican legislators, and representatives of private schools and the business community. No Democrats were invited to the meeting, but Claire came to a capitol on a Friday (when legislators are usually at home) and made her views known in the hallway outside the governor’s office.
She delivered a point of personal privilege about the secretary’s Iowa trip a few days later (March 18, 2019).
According to Claire, just “one public school advocate” was present for the meeting with DeVos. “And she was very, very embarrassed and uncomfortable to be there, because she was the only one who said, ‘What about parents? What about teachers? What about students?’”
She went on: “In case you don’t know anything about Betsy DeVos, she devastated the public schools in Michigan with her policies, and her money, and her influence. Absolutely devastated them.” She assailed people making decisions about schools “without Iowans in the room who would be affected.”
“POINT OF ORDER!”
Claire could be blunt. After she passed away, several friends and candidates she had mentored recalled how she wasn’t afraid to let them know when they needed to do something differently. In her legislative work, she didn’t sugarcoat it when denouncing Republican policies. Some found her manner abrasive.
I haven’t tracked this statistic, but I would guess Claire was the Iowa Democratic senator with the second-most “points of order” called on her during floor debate, after State Senator Tony Bisignano. (Both grew up in Italian-American families on the south side of Des Moines.)
When the Senate debated a proposal to overhaul Iowa’s Area Education Agencies in March 2024, Republicans called two points of order in a single speech. Here’s the first segment. Tying the AEA bill to the broader Republican agenda to “privatize public education,” Claire described the Betsy DeVos visit from 2019. Republican State Senator Chris Cournoyer interrupted to complain that she was not talking about the bill.
Debate resumed after a few minutes, with Senate President Amy Sinclair directing Claire to confine her remarks to the bill and not discuss “personalities” or alleged motives. Claire denied she was talking about “personalities” and went on to say the bill would essentially privatize services the AEAs now provide in a public setting.
One reason so many of her constituents were worried: “They don’t trust the leadership of the Iowa Department of Education.” Claire then explained why the agency’s director, McKenzie Snow, was not qualified for that job, at which point Republican State Senator Ken Rozenboom interrupted with another point of order.
“THERE’S NO NUMBERS IN OUR BUDGET!”
Claire excelled in calling out the absurdities as well as the tragedies. This next clip from an Appropriations Committee meeting is one of my all-time favorites.
Senate Republicans abandoned decades-long state budgeting practices in 2021. Over time, they shared less and less about their spending plans with the public. They hit a new low for transparency in April 2023, when GOP appropriators advanced spending bills with blank spaces where dollar amounts and staffing numbers would normally be listed. The plan was to fill in the blanks with amendments published a few hours before floor debate.
Appropriations Committee chair Tim Kraayenbrink called up each blank bill for a “subcommittee of the whole” and invited members of the public to comment. Naturally, there was no feedback, because no one had any clue how much the majority planned to spend on any line item. (The subcommittee is usually the only opportunity for ordinary Iowans to speak about a pending bill or ask questions in a public setting.)
The committee Republicans just sat there, as if this were a normal way to do business. When Kraayenbrink invited senators to comment, the ranking member on the Administration and Regulation Appropriations Subcommittee had a few things to say.
She observed, “Probably the reason there’s no comment from the public is because there’s no numbers in our budgets. It’s kind of hard to comment on stuff that has blanks in it. So in case you all are wondering, most of you probably already know, there’s no numbers in our budget!”
This may seem like inside baseball, but it shows how much the substantive legislative work mattered to Claire.
“THAT’S PATHETIC”
Like most lawmakers, Claire typically prepared remarks when she was going to speak on a bill. But she wasn’t just waiting for her turn to read from her notes. She was listening and engaging with comments from the other side. One example of thinking on her feet happened during the Senate’s April 2024 debate on a measure to grant pesticide manufacturers immunity from lawsuits over their product’s impact on human health.
Moments earlier, Sinclair had touted the work of Iowa farmers and the supposed need to protect their “partners” in feeding the world. Before getting to what she had planned to say about the pesticide immunity bill, Claire began, “Iowa feeds the world, except for kids who need food in the middle of the summer. We can’t manage to do that. That’s pathetic.”
She was alluding to Governor Reynolds’ decision to reject federal funds that could have provided $120 over the summer months to families for every child who qualified for free or reduced-price school lunches. Democrats introduced bills that would have required the state to use those funds, but GOP lawmakers declined to advance them.
Turning to the matter at hand, Celsi read a letter she had received from a constituent, about lawsuits Iowa farmers or agricultural workers had filed after developing cancer or Parkinson’s disease. “No state has given these foreign chemical corporations liability protections from the harm they cause. […] Shielding these foreign chemical giants from a tiny fraction of lawsuits doesn’t change things for them. But it changes everything for the farmers and ag workers who have been given a death sentence due to exposure.”
The pesticide immunity bill would send “one message: that farmers and ag workers in all 49 states retain their legal rights. But in Iowa their lives are worth zero dollars.”
“DISRUPTING LIVES AND USING TRANSGENDER PEOPLE AS PAWNS”
Claire was a fierce ally for LGBTQ equality and stood in solidarity with trans and non-binary Iowans targeted by numerous Republican bills during her time in the legislature.
She said she was “ashamed” in 2023, when Republicans passed an education bill including school book bans, “don’t say gay/trans” teaching restrictions, and provisions that forced staff to out transgender students to their parents. The same year, she opposed bills banning gender-affirming care for minors and prohibiting transgender people from using school facilities that align with their gender identity.
Here is one of her floor speeches against that “bathroom bill.” She highlighted the fact that “any random Iowan, who is not even a member of the school community,” could report a “bathroom violation” to the Iowa Attorney General’s office for investigation. “This bill is about disrupting lives and using transgender people as pawns,” she asserted.
Claire noted that similar bills in other states had produced “disastrous results.” Children who have been bullied are more likely to drop out of school, become homeless, harm themselves, or worse. “Why would the Iowa Senate take part in this heinous bullying? It’s at the behest of party leadership, who have no problem using trans kids as their latest punching bag.”
“THE STATE SHOULD NOT FORCE BABIES TO BIRTH BABIES”
Vulnerable children were also top of mind for Claire when Republicans passed a near-total abortion ban during a one-day special legislative session in July 2023. Senate Democrats offered numerous amendments to address problems with the bill.
Claire’s amendment would have created an exemption for any pregnant Iowan under age 16. This video combines her opening and closing remarks in support of the idea.
She emphasized that predators “are actively seeking out this age group” and said it’s not fair to put the burden on a minor to sort out so many weighty things on their own: determine if they’re pregnant, tell a trusted adult (many teens don’t have one), and report to the proper authorities (to qualify for the rape exemption).
“Not to mention that no one in this age group is capable of raising a child on their own. The state should not force babies to birth babies.”
In her closing remarks, Claire noted that Democrats were unable to get the bill’s floor manager (Sinclair) to define certain terms in the anti-abortion bill. She characterized the discussion as what her dad would have called “Mickey Mouse BS,” which didn’t answer the basic question:
Does a child in this state—who may or may not have been sexually assaulted, who may or may not have been raped, who finds themself in a difficult situation, without the faculties of an adult—should that person be held to the same standard as an adult under the law?
I think all of us who have had 16-year-olds—I’ve had two—would say no, that is not possible, to be holding them to the same standard.
When the Iowa legislature gets back to work in January, other Democrats will speak out on the issues that mattered most to Claire. But no one will say it quite like she did. She will be greatly missed.
Feel free to share any of your own favorite memories in the comments.
Thank you for this wonderful tribute to Senator Celsi. We need more elected leaders like her!
Incredibly courageous legislator! Thanks for this tribute, Laura - the world could use hundreds more just like her.