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Politics the Iowa way

Photo by Kelcy Gatson on Unsplash

Sometimes, watching the Iowa Legislature can tell you a lot about how this state works.

It’s not pretty sometimes, but it is instructive.

I’ll start at the beginning.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how the state Senate voted to change the way county supervisors are elected in Iowa’s five largest counties. Instead of voters electing supervisors at large, they’d be chosen by district. The Senate sponsor said it was a matter of "adequate representation.”

In Scott County, some of the Republicans who dominate the board were not happy at this turn of events.

They don’t want to run by district.

Well, now they don’t have to worry.

The Republican-run Legislature now appears ready to move forward with a plan that only changes the rules for three counties — as it happens, counties dominated by Democrats.

It’s good to have friends. As an old political reporter in Iowa often said, “politics ain’t beanbag.”

Nobody’s admitting this is a nakedly partisan exercise, of course. That’s not the Iowa way. The language in the bill, presented on the House floor, says the only counties that would have to change are the ones where Regents universities are located – that is, Johnson, Black Hawk and Story counties.

Because, for some reason, counties with big state-run colleges are the only places where “adequate representation” is lacking.

Rep. Dave Deyoe, a Republican from Story County who spelled out this plan last week, explained that rural folks in these counties – the minority, as he put it – don’t feel like they have a voice on their county boards.

Changing the system so boards are elected by district would give those rural folks a fighting chance.

I’ve heard this argument before, and it makes a certain amount of sense.

In counties where cities dominate, rural people can feel overwhelmed by at large elections.

For years in Scott County, there was sometimes just one “rural” supervisor on the board – Bob Petersen, a farmer from Walcott, or Otto Ewoldt, of LeClaire. The others tended to be from Davenport or Bettendorf, which make up the vast majority of the county’s population.

This year, there is only one person from Davenport on the Republican-controlled board, even though these urban voters make up almost two-thirds of the county’s population.

So, why not change the rules for Scott County, too? Running by district would make it more likely that an underrepresented urban dweller could get a seat on the Scott County Board.

That’s how the Senate bill had it, after all.

For that matter, why not have every county supervisor in the state run by district? That’s the way legislators are elected.

Democrats liked that idea so much they even offered an amendment to that effect.

Deyoe liked the idea, too. He said he prefers that all of the counties elect supervisors this way.

So, naturally, he urged his fellow Republicans to vote against the Democrats’ amendment.

Why?

Because if the bill was applied to everybody, it wouldn’t get enough votes to pass. And it didn’t. It lost.

That’s also the reason Scott County was carved out of the plan.

In other words, Republicans in the Legislature will change the rules so rural voters have a better chance of winning in Democrat-dominated counties, but they won’t change the rules so urban voters have a better chance of winning in a Republican-dominated county.

Perhaps the most striking part of the debate on the House floor was this: A Democratic lawmaker asked Deyoe if the rules could be changed to help a rural minority win elections why not do the same for black and brown voters, or for the disabled?

You know … minorities?

Deyoe’s response was clear: “That has nothing to do with this at all,” he said.

The Iowa Legislature has a funny way of defining what constitutes a minority.

Eventually the bill was deferred. Republicans weren’t forced to go on the record endorsing this scheme; not yet anyway.

Still, the session isn’t over yet.

Look, I realize there are a lot bigger issues going on in the Legislature now than how county supervisors are elected.

The Legislature has approved funneling hundreds of millions of dollars a year away from the 95% of Iowa kids who go to public schools, so they can give it to private school accounts; a select group of politically-connected, conservative parents are driving state policy for how schools teach American history and human development; meanwhile, lawmakers are moving toward a tax policy that increasingly siphons money away from the middle class and hands it off to the wealthiest Iowans in the state.

Still, it’s instructive to watch how power is exercised in the small corners; where the powerful don’t think anybody is watching, or where they think their supporters won’t care about fair play but only that their side is winning.

I’d like to think Iowa isn’t at that point. Of course, after 30 years of watching politics, I’m not naïve about the temptations of power, here as elsewhere.

We already are seeing in ways big and small how Republicans in Des Moines are tossing aside the virtue of moderation that has long characterized this state in favor of consolidating power, rewarding allies and punishing enemies – not to mention the poor and vulnerable.

I’d like to think that at least some sense of honor and fair play abides in Des Moines. But I suspect when this issue comes up again, as with so many others, I’ll be disabused of that notion.

Along the Mississippi is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please check out the work of my colleagues and consider subscribing to their work.

Laura Belin, Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

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

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Fern Kupfer and Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Tar Macias, Hola Iowa, Iowa

Kurt Meyer, Showing Up

Pat Kinney, View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Kyle Munson: Kyle’s Main Street, Iowa

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: Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Macey Spensley: The Midwest Creative

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices

Cheryl Tevis, Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

Also, please check out our alliance partner, Iowa Capital Dispatch. It provides hard-hitting news along with selected commentary by members of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.