Iowa caucus takeaways, governor's big speech, notable court rulings

Jan. 16 "Capitol Week" is online

I am running on fumes today after getting up early on Sunday for a segment on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, earlier on Monday for a segment on CNN This Morning with CNN’s Kasie Hunt and Shelby Talcott of Semafor, and early again on Tuesday to join Dennis Hart for a live broadcast of “Capitol Week.” Did I mention I’m a night owl?

Normally KHOI rebroadcasts our Monday night show at 6:00 am on Tuesday, but we couldn’t do that this week because we needed to report on the Iowa caucus results.

We did our usual 30-minute show on Monday. If you want to hear our coverage of the final stretch of the Iowa caucus campaign and Ann Selzer’s last Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register, give it a listen. Also worth your time: Dan Guild’s analysis regarding late surges before the Iowa caucus, the final Selzer poll, and Iowa caucus expectations games.

Our Tuesday morning show led with the Iowa caucuses. For the last 20 minutes or so, we covered other political news from last week. Here’s the audio from the January 16 program (we ran for about 49 minutes rather than the usual half-hour):

Topics we covered on Tuesday morning:

• As expected, the weather depressed Iowa caucus turnout. Around 110,000 people showed up to the precinct caucuses, way below the record turnout of around 187,000 from 2016, and even below the 2012 turnout of just under 122,000;

• We all knew Trump would win by a large margin, and he did crack the 50 percent mark, finishing with 56,260 votes (51 percent). He also carried 98 of the 99 counties, losing Johnson County to Nikki Haley by just one vote;

• I expected Haley to do better in the counties Marco Rubio had carried in 2016 (Polk, Dallas, Story, Johnson, and Scott); if she had performed better in those counties, she would have been the runner-up. Instead, Ron DeSantis finished second with 23,420 (21.2 percent), and Haley had 21,085 (19.1 percent);

• The Trump campaign had a weak ground game in 2016 but was operating on a completely different level this past year. That helped him win by a record-setting margin, despite weather conditions that kept many thousands of people home;

• Dennis and I talked about how Trump upended the usual Iowa caucus playbook: retail campaigning with many events all around the state. That’s not to say future candidates will be able to replicate his model; Trump was running as the de facto incumbent and was already extremely well-known and well-liked among GOP base;

• The DeSantis ground game seems to have worked fairly well, and I think that’s why he was able to finish ahead of Haley. But his big bet on evangelicals (banking on the Bob Vander Plaats endorsement) didn’t pan out. Exit polls showed the same thing we saw in pre-caucus polling: evangelicals strongly favored Trump;

• In retrospect, I think Americans for Prosperity Action (which was basically running the ground game for Haley) made a strategic error by not targeting more independent voters;

• As many others have observed, Haley and DeSantis spent much of the last two months attacking each other, rarely making any serious case against Trump. DeSantis would occasionally criticize the front-runner for not campaigning in all 99 counties, or not showing up for debates. But those are process arguments that few voters care about;

• The DeSantis campaign and Iowa GOP state chair Jeff Kaufmann were very unhappy with the Associated Press decision to declare Trump the winner before many caucus-goers had voted. I tend to agree with them. For what it’s worth, here’s how the AP explained their editorial decision;

• DeSantis has also complained that the media wrote his obituary months ago. It’s a fair point, but they had good reason. On Monday, Raw Story published my own take on why DeSantis fared so poorly in Iowa;

• It helped Trump that DeSantis and Haley were clustered close together, rather than one of them becoming the clear runner-up with 30 percent of the vote;

• Many people found this Iowa caucus campaign boring, and the Des Moines Register reported that the economic boost for the capital city was far smaller than it was in 2020;

• Moving on to other topics: devastating news out of Perry on Sunday morning, as high school principal Dan Marburger died of injuries sustained during the school shooting on January 4. Marburger put himself in harm’s way to try to distract the shooter and help other children escape;

• Hundreds of people turned out last Thursday for the funeral of 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff, who was shot to death that morning;

• Governor Kim Reynolds delivered her Condition of the State address last Tuesday evening. If you missed it, you can watch the video here or read the transcript;

• Reynolds spent much of the speech on education-related topics. She wants to spend $96 million to raise teacher pay to a minimum of $50,000 for starting teachers and $62,000 for those with twelve years of experience;

• The governor’s plan to revamp the Area Education Agencies has raised the alarm for many Iowans, especially in the disability community. I am going to publish several posts about the AEAs at Bleeding Heartland this week. What particularly struck me: the Iowa Department of Education is already advertising more than two dozen positions for a new Division of Special Education, even though the enabling legislation hasn’t moved forward yet in the state legislature;

• Reynolds also wants to speed up the income tax cuts Republicans have enacted in recent years;

• The governor has proposed extending Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to twelve months. Iowa is one of only a few states that hasn’t already done that; advocates are concerned that Reynolds wants to pay for the program by reducing the number of pregnant Iowans who qualify for Medicaid coverage. Rachel Bruns wrote about this in more detail at Bleeding Heartland;

• Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen pleaded for more understanding and more funding for the judicial branch in her annual address to state lawmakers. I am following this topic closely, because Reynolds is not on board with increasing funds to raise salaries for Iowa judges;

• Major General Stephen Osborn, the adjutant general of the Iowa National Guard, asked state lawmakers to make some changes to a scholarship program;

• Attorney General Brenna Bird announced Friday that the state will appeal the federal injunction blocking enforcement of school book bans. Her staff have not clarified whether the appeal will also ask the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate the ban on teaching related to gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through sixth grade;

• U.S. District Court Chief Judge Stephanie Rose ruled last week that Iowa’s gender balance requirement for the State Judicial Nominating Commission is unconstitutional. Although the state has a legitimate interest in maintaining diversity on the panel, Judge Rose found the law is not appropriately tailored or substantially related to that purpose. You can read the decision here. The governor has asked legislators to repeal the 1987 law requiring gender balance on state boards and commissions, and this ruling seals the deal in my view;

• Reversing lower court rulings, panels on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that two of Iowa’s “ag gag” laws do not violate the First Amendment. Here is background on the 2019 law creating the new crime of “agricultural production facility trespass,” and the ruling upholding that statute. Here is background on the 2021 law creating a new crime of “trespass-surveillance,” and here is the ruling upholding that statute;

• Iowa Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum announced last week that she will not seek re-election in November. Jochum has represented Dubuque in the Senate since 2009 and previously represented part of the city in the Iowa House for sixteen years. The district leans Democratic but is not as solidly blue as it once was. One Democrat has already declared: Tom Townsend, president of Dubuque Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO;

• Finally, some legislative campaign news relevant to the KHOI listening area. Republican State Representative Dave Deyoe is not seeking re-election this year, and two candidates are set to compete in the primary to represent House district 51: former Story County Supervisor Marty Chitty, and Story County GOP chair Brett Barker.

Thank you for reading or listening! If you enjoy our show, please consider making a donation to support KHOI Community Radio. It’s a non-commercial station, so has no advertising revenue, and offers diverse music and talk programming.

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Nicole Baart: This Stays Here, Sioux Center

Ray Young Bear: From Red Earth Drive, Meskwaki Settlement

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Tory Brecht: Brecht’s Beat, Quad Cities

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Jane Burns: The Crossover, Des Moines

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Steph Copley: It Was Never a Dress, Johnston

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca: Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

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Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Letters from Iowans, Iowa

Darcy Maulsby: Keepin’ It Rural, Calhoun County

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Alison McGaughey, The Inquisitive Quad Citizen, Quad Cities

Kurt Meyer: Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Vicki Minor, Relatively Minor, Winterset

Wini Moranville: Wini’s Food Stories, Des Moines

Jeff Morrison: Between Two Rivers, Cedar Rapids

Kyle Munson: Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen: The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Dave Price: Dave Price’s Perspective, Des Moines

Macey Shofroth: The Midwest Creative, Norwalk

Larry Stone: Listening to the Land, Elkader

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

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Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Kali White VanBaale, 988: Mental Healthcare in Iowa, Bondurant

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