Meet Iowa's new Lt. Gov. Chris Cournoyer

Dec. 16 edition of "KHOI's Capitol Week"

Lieutenant Governor Chris Cournoyer speaks during the event announcing her appointment on December 16 (photo by Laura Belin)

We had to cancel the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative holiday party due to a winter weather advisory on Friday. But the ice had melted by Monday morning, when I climbed the steps to get to the state capitol building for a “special announcement” in Governor Kim Reynolds’ formal office.

Unfortunately, neither Reynolds nor Lieutenant Governor Chris Cournoyer took any questions at the event. But

Spencer Dirks

and I still had plenty to talk about on Monday night’s show.

I’ve attached the audio file at the top of this email. The full archive (going back to February 2021) is available on KHOI Community Radio’s website. If you like the show, please rate or review “KHOI’s Capitol Week” on your favorite podcast platform.

Meet Iowa’s new Lieutenant Governor Chris Cournoyer

After nearly three and a half months, Iowa finally has a new lieutenant governor. We talked about Cournoyer’s background—she was a “computer nerd before it was cool” and a school board president before running for the legislature in 2018.

We also talked about what was and wasn't surprising about Governor Kim Reynolds' choice. In many ways, Cournoyer is the kind of person I thought Reynolds would gravitate toward. But I didn’t expect her to pick someone who endorsed Nikki Haley for president when Donald Trump is heading back to the White House. Reynolds must not be worried about retribution after she campaigned extensively for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis before the Iowa caucuses.

We also talked about some of the bills Cournoyer floor managed in the Iowa Senate, including a consumer data privacy bill (which Reynolds praised on Monday) and this year’s disastrous overhaul of state boards and commissions. The Iowa House version of that bill would have been much less harmful, but Cournoyer pushed hard for the Senate version, which closely matched Reynolds’ initial proposal.

We reviewed some of the political reaction to the appointment from other elected officials. That reminded me: no one ever properly investigated whether there was any legal basis for U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks to claim Cournoyer’s home in Scott County as her residence for voting purposes in 2022.

Jacob Hall of the conservative website The Iowa Standard put up some social media posts on Monday portraying Cournoyer (negatively from his perspective) as an ally of the LGBTQ community. I’m sorry to report that Iowa’s new lieutenant governor voted for every discriminatory bill that came to the Senate floor during her tenure, from the 2019 bill seeking to block Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery to the 2022 transgender sports ban to the onslaught in 2023: a school bathroom bill, a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and a sweeping education bill containing school book bans, “don’t say gay/trans” provisions, and forced outing of trans students.

Special election coming in Iowa Senate district 35

Now that Cournoyer has resigned from the legislature, voters will choose her successor in a special election. Reynolds hasn’t set a date yet, but it will probably happen in January.

We talked about the recent voting history of this district, which (like many of Iowa’s mid-sized cities and Mississippi River communities) has shifted toward Republicans over the past decade. At Bleeding Heartland I covered the political landscape of Senate district 35 in more detail. Click here for a district map, the latest voter registration figures, and votes cast this November for Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Christina Bohannan.

Several well-known Democrats have already taken themselves out of the running for the special election, including Iowa Democratic Party chair Rita Hart (Cournoyer’s predecessor in the state Senate), former State Representative Mary Wolfe, and outgoing Clinton County Auditor Eric Van Lancker.

Impact on 2026 governor’s race

We’d discussed on earlier shows that the lieutenant governor choice would give us some clues about the 2026 governor’s race. I am convinced Reynolds will seek a third term and was looking for someone to be a partner in her administration, as opposed to someone who could be a credible candidate for governor in the next election cycle. (A Haley endorser would never win a statewide GOP primary.)

On the Democratic side, everyone is waiting to see what State Auditor Rob Sand will do. I expect him to run for governor and to announce sometime during the first half of 2025. If he runs, he will probably clear the field.

Earlier this month, Jacob Hall of The Iowa Standard posted on X/Twitter that Republican State Representative Brad Sherman will likely run for governor in 2026. I called Sherman seeking to confirm the rumor, and he had no comment. But I wanted to give listeners a little background on Sherman (a pastor and Trumper who thinks government should declare the U.S. to be a “Christian nation”) in case he does run for governor.

Other state government news

Last week, Reynolds signed a joint statement of 26 Republican governors expressing support for Trump’s deportation plans, including using the National Guard if needed. The statement implied deportation would be targeted at “dangerous criminals,” but of course Trump and his allies have said they will go much further.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette recently published some good reporting about how many undocumented immigrants are living and working in Iowa, and how mass deportation would affect the state.

Reynolds has issued disaster proclamations for five Iowa counties after the USDA confirmed pathogenic avian influenza. So far, Iowa hasn’t had any human cases of bird flu, and the Centers for Disease Control hasn’t found any human to human transmission of this H5N1 virus, but it would only take a few mutations for this virus to become a huge problem.

Speaking of which, state health data shows fewer Iowans have gotten flu shots this year. If you haven’t already, please get a flu shot and a COVID booster. Those are widely available at pharmacies and are usually covered by insurance.

The state’s Revenue Estimating Conference released new projections last week. As expected, Iowa’s revenue is down by around 6 percent this year and will be down by nearly 5 percent next year, mostly because of Republican tax cuts.

The new projections may not change state spending much, since Republican lawmakers have been allocating way less than the 99 percent of projected revenue allowed under state law. But with spending on school vouchers set to explode and federal American Rescue Fund money going away soon, there could be a budget squeeze.

Reynolds and other Republicans have said the state remains in a strong fiscal position, but Democratic lawmakers have sounded the alarm about what Senator Herman Quirmbach called a “structural deficit.”

The Iowa Department of Administrative Services canceled the Satanic Temple’s event at the state capitol, which was scheduled for December 14. State officials claim they made this decision to protect minors, but I haven’t been able to find out specifically why they are claiming the planned activities (Satanic caroling, a costume contest, and coloring pictures) would have been harmful to children.

News about Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird

The attorney general called a press conference last Thursday to announce that she will ask state legislators to approve a state constitutional amendment to allow children to testify remotely at some criminal trials. I explained the background and why this proposal needs to be a constitutional amendment and not a regular bill.

Bird also confirmed she will again ask legislators to enhance criminal penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers and first responders. The Attorney General’s office introduced a bill on that last year, which the Iowa House approved with only one dissenting vote. For some reason, Iowa Senate leaders never brought that bill to the floor.

I asked Bird whether people who assaulted law enforcement on January 6, 2021 should be pardoned. She said, “Well, that’s up to President Trump to decide once he’s in office.” I wrote more about this angle at Bleeding Heartland.

The collapse of bribery claims that Chuck Grassley hyped

On Monday, Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty to federal crimes including making false statements to the FBI. You probably haven’t heard of Smirnov, a longtime FBI informant, but you’ve almost certainly heard about what he told his handler in 2020. That’s because Iowa’s own Senator Chuck Grassley repeatedly publicized the uncorroborated claims, speaking on national television and the U.S. Senate floor about the supposed “high-stakes bribery scheme.”

Smirnov now admits he fabricated the story that a Ukrainian company paid bribes to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden during Barack Obama’s presidency.

I’ve sought comment from Grassley’s office on recent developments. So far, no reply.

Farewell to Jim Leach

Spencer and I spent a few minutes talking about the legacy of former U.S. Representative Jim Leach. We only had time to hit a few highlights. I wrote more about Leach, who was one of a kind, over the weekend.

On Monday I published another essay at Bleeding Heartland, written by his former staffer Tom Cope. One new thing I learned from Tom: “During the years that I worked for Jim, it was common for him to start off a speech by saying, ‘Perspective is always difficult to apply to the events of the day.’”

Notable news from the courts

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this month related to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. You can read more about that case on Chris Geidner’s excellent newsletter Law Dork (see here and here).

The Des Moines Register’s Sabine Martin picked up on a good Iowa angle: Chase Strangio, who argued on behalf of the ACLU in that case, and is the first transgender attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, is a Grinnell College graduate.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled unanimously last Friday that a retired Iowa State University professor can seek damages related to alleged wage discrimination going back to 2009. Silvia Cianzio sued after learning she and other female professors in ISU’s Agronomy Department had been paid substantially less than male peers for decades. The state had argued Cianzio should only be able to seek damages covering the 300 days (or at most two years) prior to her filing her claim. Here’s the full text of the opinion, which could be important for other employment discrimination cases.

We had less than a minute to touch on another story: attorneys for Summit Carbon Solutions have sent “cease and desist” letters to at least six outspoken critics of Summit Carbon’s CO2 pipeline project. You can read more about this troubling development in articles by Jared Strong for The Cedar Rapids Gazette and Cami Koons for Iowa Capital Dispatch.

Thanks for reading or listening! We’ll be back on the air next Monday.