Iowa Statewide Races Megathread 2022: The (Former) Elastic Heartland

[Perlen vor den Schweinen]

Only 700-some days until the next installment of elections from Atlas's favorite swing state!

Democrats had a bad night in this year's 2020 election cycle. They lost seats in the State House of Representatives, but managed to not have a net loss in the State Senate (The Democrats and Republicans both defeated an incumbent senator).

Iowa's statewide offices are up for reelection in 2022. The Republicans hold the offices of Governor/LG (Kim Reynolds/Adam Gregg), Secretary of State (Paul Pate), and Secretary of Agriculture (Mike Naig). Democrats hold the offices of Attorney General (Tom Miller), State Auditor (Rob Sand), and State Treasurer (Mike Fitzgerald). From how we can expect midterms to go, we can probably predict that the Republicans will have an advantage in their chances at reelection with a Democratic President Biden in office (and a better shot at gaining the Democrat-held offices).

If Democrats want to prove that Iowa is still competitive (and on the flipside, if the GOP wants to prove that Iowa is a "red state" now), they will need to display some strength in these statewide races. If Miller and Fitzgerald run for reelection and are defeated, even though they have served for 40 years each in their respective offices while surviving several GOP wave years, that would be a very telling sign that the Iowa Democrats are not going to have much of a chance in Iowa's near political future. If Miller and/or Fitzgerald were to retire, the GOP would have some excellent pickup opportunities.

Rob Sand - I don't know what he might be running for in the 2022 elections. He is attacking the Governor often in his position as State Auditor, so he may be gearing up for a run for governor. However, he may also run for reelection - that would probably a safer bet, seeing how Iowa voted this past year. Regardless, Republicans will try to take him down.

[VAR]

Let the slaughtering begin.

In all seriousness, why would the Democrats make a comeback in 2022 after failing this year?

[Perlen vor den Schweinen]

Let the slaughtering begin.

In all seriousness, why would the Democrats make a comeback in 2022 after failing this year?

I never said they will. Could they? Perhaps, but as said, history and trends are very much against them.

The expectations in a "good election" for Iowa Democrats in the midterm of a Democratic president at this point would merely involve reelecting Miller and Fitzgerald - and it is easy to see them retiring or envisioning a defeat for them in 2022 anyway.

[jamestroll]

Rob Sand would be smart just to run for reelection and actually be able to win.

He has a chance unlike the state auditor one state south of him.

[Heebie Jeebie]

Iowa Democrats are facing some headwinds, but the situation isn't as bleak as a lot of you make it out to be.  Cindy Axne just proved that Dems can still win even in areas that are demographically unfavorable.  There's still a chance that Rita Hart might win once the recounts in IA-2 are completed (I desperately hope she pulls that off!).  What's more, Kim Reynolds has handled the Covid disaster about as terribly as any governor could.  Plus, without Trump on the ballot, a lot of low-engagement voters won't turn out, and the Democratic base (as whittled down as it is) is still fairly engaged and organized.  There's a decent bench of candidates, and I think Democrats can win.

Governor:  Rob Sand
Senator:  Hart if the recount is favorable, Axne otherwise
Lt. Governor:  Quentin Hart
Attorney General:  Tom Miller, though he's getting a little long in the tooth
Treasurer:  Michael Fitzgerald
Secretary of State:  Sarah Trone Garriott

[KaiserDave]

Waste of time and money most likely

Lord knows I hate trends

[Heebie Jeebie]

Rob Sand would be smart just to run for reelection and actually be able to win.

He has a chance unlike the state auditor one state south of him.

The thing is, Sand wants to be governor, and there's no reason to think he'll get a better shot at it than in 2022.  If he runs and comes up short...well, he's young.  Plenty of time to regroup and take another shot at office down the road.

Bottom line:  There's a good chance that 2022 won't be as terrible a national environment as people are predicting.  There won't be any protracted legislative fights in Washington (nothing like Obamacare in '09/'10) to inspire a frenzied backlash.  As we emerge from the Covid crisis, Biden's economy should be doing well; at the same time, all these nihilist Republican governors (like Kim Reynolds) are going to be stuck with massive casualty lists to answer for.  Sand is a relatively popular anti-corruption figure who's shown an ability to win statewide.  I like his chances!

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Rob Sand would be smart just to run for reelection and actually be able to win.

He has a chance unlike the state auditor one state south of him.

The thing is, Sand wants to be governor, and there's no reason to think he'll get a better shot at it than in 2022.  If he runs and comes up short...well, he's young.  Plenty of time to regroup and take another shot at office down the road.

Bottom line:  There's a good chance that 2022 won't be as terrible a national environment as people are predicting.  There won't be any protracted legislative fights in Washington (nothing like Obamacare in '09/'10) to inspire a frenzied backlash.  As we emerge from the Covid crisis, Biden's economy should be doing well; at the same time, all these nihilist Republican governors (like Kim Reynolds) are going to be stuck with massive casualty lists to answer for.  Sand is a relatively popular anti-corruption figure who's shown an ability to win statewide.  I like his chances!

It's a Democratic midterm. There will one day be a Republican midterm to run in instead against someone who hasn't already won an Iowa gubernatorial election.

That could be as early as 2026.

[Heebie Jeebie]

Rob Sand would be smart just to run for reelection and actually be able to win.

He has a chance unlike the state auditor one state south of him.

The thing is, Sand wants to be governor, and there's no reason to think he'll get a better shot at it than in 2022.  If he runs and comes up short...well, he's young.  Plenty of time to regroup and take another shot at office down the road.

Bottom line:  There's a good chance that 2022 won't be as terrible a national environment as people are predicting.  There won't be any protracted legislative fights in Washington (nothing like Obamacare in '09/'10) to inspire a frenzied backlash.  As we emerge from the Covid crisis, Biden's economy should be doing well; at the same time, all these nihilist Republican governors (like Kim Reynolds) are going to be stuck with massive casualty lists to answer for.  Sand is a relatively popular anti-corruption figure who's shown an ability to win statewide.  I like his chances!

It's a Democratic midterm. There will one day be a Republican midterm to run in instead against someone who hasn't already won an Iowa gubernatorial election.

That could be as early as 2026.

I don't think it being a Democratic midterm is going to be that much of a problem--certainly not to the extent everyone here seems to think it will.  Regardless, we don't know what 2026 or after will be like, but we do know that there's an opening in 2022, Reynolds may be vulnerable, and the state's Democrats need a leader to rally around.  It'd be foolish to wait.  You don't win by not running.

Also, no gubernatorial term limits in Iowa, so no reason to think that Reynolds won't keep running in 2026 and beyond.

[MT Treasurer]

Nice, easy GOP pick-up in the Auditor's race while Republicans still hold the GOV mansion

This is doubly discouraging news for Republicans as he’s also considering a run for Senate. So even if the Fink (for whatever reason) doesn’t run....

JOHNSTON --- Rob Sand, the Democratic Iowa state auditor, said Friday he is considering three options for next year’s elections: run for re-election as auditor, run for governor or run for the U.S. Senate.

Followers of Iowa politics have suspected Sand, a former staffer in the Iowa Attorney General’s Office who was elected state auditor in 2018, was likely to run for governor or the U.S. Senate seat in 2022. [...]

Sand is considered a rising star among Iowa Democrats. The 38-year-old attorney in 2018 joined Attorney General Tom Miller and state Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald as the only Democrats to win a statewide election in the past 13 years.

https://www.thegazette.com/state-government/state-auditor-rob-sand-considering-run-for-iowa-governor-or-u-s-senate/

[President Johnson]

Likely Republican -> Likely Republican

[pbrower2a]

Let the slaughtering begin.

In all seriousness, why would the Democrats make a comeback in 2022 after failing this year?

1. Donald Trump is even more toxic after the 2020 election than before. Ordinarily, approval ratings for a retiring or defeated President rise after the defeat. Trump claimed that he could lose only because of electoral fraud, and got people to storm the Capitol to thwart a formal counting of the electoral vote. There's much more of a suggestion that Al Gore got cheated in 2000 than Trump got cheated in 2020, yet Gore accepted the results because he could not prove some conjecture based on electoral behavior.

2. The GOP is still loyal to Donald Trump in a way that it had abandoned Dubya after the 2008 election. The Tea Party is much like what Donald Trump would be in ideology six years later, and not a resurgence of Dubya. Any attempt to have a Tea Party-style attempt to restore pure Reaganomics or some other romantic treatment of plutocracy will be hard to separate from Donald Trump. Tea Party ideology has strong support among about 45% of the American public, but that is it. Right-wing authoritarianism connected closely with Tea Party politics, but it is the essence of Donald Trump.

Democrats can use Donald Trump against right-wing authoritarians in marginal districts as they could not use Dubya against the Tea Party. 

3. The American economy in 2010 was in a recovery from a terrible downturn, and improvements in most people's lives was slow. Republicans in 2009 were able to insist that Big Business get some of what it wanted in 2009, like cuts in corporate taxes, and those slowed the recovery. The opposite is happening. The recovery beginning in the early spring of 2009 allowed Corporate America to get the funds for lavishing on right-wing pols willing to do the bidding of tycoons and executives who supplied those funds. So the recovery did not solve all the problems that Americans endured after a year and a half after the economic meltdown. A house can burn down in twenty minutes, but one cannot rebuild that house in twenty minutes. Twenty months, maybe. People may be clueless about a heart attack until it happens, but the recovery in the event of survival is slow. It takes more time to build a car than it takes to total a car in a crash as the result of a moment of inattention.  The defensive driving course that your insurer may ask you to take so that you can keep your insurance rate from skyrocketing will take much more time (a few hours) than the time in which the car is ruined.

The economic hardships relating to COVID-19 are not structural faults within the economy. The stresses from COVID-19 will vanish fast. The economic effect of the end of COVID-19 will be more like the recovery after a war (585 thousand Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19, which is a scale of mass death in America not known in wartime since the Civil War). 

4. There aren't that many vulnerable Democrats. Democrats lost a huge number of seats in 2010 following two wave elections that put marginal Democrats in seats that Tea party pols won. Those were hold-overs from the Carter-Clinton era of the Democratic Party, mostly in the Rural South (Mountain and Deep), The huge margins against Obama in the 2008 Presidential election in the arc from Louisiana to West Virginia should have suggested the potential for extreme vulnerability of moderate-to-conservative Democrats  who were destroyed by the politicians who promised Hard Right ideology.

Democrats had a wave election in the House in 2018, but Republicans pared that back in 2020. Because of gerrymandering in 2010, Representatives largely fit their districts.

5. Newer voters of 2022 have a very different ideology than those of 2010. Generation X was still the bulk of young voters in 2010, and its ways were much more amenable to pro-business ideology unless they were scared of an economic collapse. Scare them of a repeat of the 1930's and they will go liberal. But once the danger is over their materialism comes to the fore. Supply-side economics based on cheap labor (even if they are the cheap labor), low taxes, lax regulation, and crony relations between government and Big Business have their promises, and believing that is a good idea if one wants to get and hold a job.  They may believe that being overworked and underpaid is necessary for creating the job-creating capital. The Millennial generation mostly knows one consequence of such economic policies, and that one consequence is poverty.

Generation X is about 5% more R than D, largely reflecting urban-suburban-rural and ethnic divides; the Millennial Generation is about 20% more D than R. The urban-suburban-rural divide has basically become the urban-rural divide (the once powerful distinction between urban America and suburban America has weakened greatly as much of what used to be 'classic' suburbs have lost whatever rural characteristics they once had and have become more urban), with the ethnic divide much weaker.

Tea Party pols used covert racism, and Trump turned up the volume. The successors of the Tea Party of 2010 will have to do much to cover the racist consequences of a rehash of Tea Party - Trumpism.

6. We are on the brink of seeing the Millennial Generation gaining high public office. The oldest will be 40 in 2022, and if Millennial pols are slow in achieving high office it is because the older generations have more political durability. We still have plenty of Silent (well, at least the latter part of a generation born from 1925 to 1942) in high positions...  What used to be the Baby Boom is now old, and plenty of political careers come to ends in the seventies and late sixties. Boomers as replacements  of other Boomers? Forget it. 

Many of the Tea Party pols were Silent and Boomer pols who are now approaching the end of the line in political life. Sure, we elected Joe Biden, but note that he is one of the most savvy pols ever, so age may be unimportant until the Inevitable.

OK, so if Iowa is tending R based on 2016 and 2020 Presidential politics, should that not continue?

Maybe not. Iowa really can swing. Maybe Donald Trump is more successful in Iowa than elsewhere because he does less to offend Iowa sensibilities than to offend those in others. 2018 was a great year for Iowa Democrats, so I am not ready to write Iowa off. Trump paid attention to Iowa and Biden didn't. Wisconsin, which did matter, got Biden's attention, and Iowa didn't.

This state voted decisively for Obama in 2008 and 2012. The only trend in Iowa that helps Republicans is the non-growth or even decline of its urban areas. Des Moines is growing, but what other metro area in Iowa is? Omaha is growing, but Council Bluffs isn't.

[S019]

Other than Miller and Fitzgerald, no statewide Iowa Dems will win. Sand will be running in a much more Republican national environment, I don’t see him surviving.

[Spectator]

Sometimes I think people are still going to be calling Iowa an elastic swing state at the end of the decade when Democrats still won’t have won a Presidential or Senate race in the state since 2008.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

If the Covid restrictions are over by the time Election 2022 is around D's win IA, we can't predict the Future, but in this Environment, yes it's an R state

[MT Treasurer]

Sometimes I think people are still going to be calling Iowa an elastic swing state at the end of the decade when Democrats still won’t have won a Presidential or Senate race in the state since 2008.

*Since 2012 (2008 if we’re only considering Senate races), but agree with your point. I think this will drag on even longer than the VA episode and might even develop into something of a WV-style obsession, if it hasn’t already.

There’s something about this state (yet not OH, interestingly enough) that just makes people lose their minds. It’s somewhat analogous to the 2000s/2010s, when people were much more fixated on/invested in WV than AR for some reason.

No one denies that IA Democrats could win one or two statewide/non-federal races under the right conditions (even Fitzgerald and Miller could win reelection in 2022, although they’re definitely in big trouble), but at the federal level, I’m 99.5% sure that this administration will prove to be the last nail in the coffin. If we get two terms of Biden/Harris, they’ll win a high-profile race in MO before they win anything in IA & there’s a very good chance D statewide wins in IA will become as rare as Republican wins in NJ or MD for the foreseeable (medium-term) future.

[JMT]

https://twitter.com/maryfrancesmcg/status/1404768060653854722?s=21

[SnowLabrador]

Who cares, all the big races are Safe R.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Who cares, all the big races are Safe R.

Wave insurance, we didn't win 33 H seats in 2017, we won them in add in 2018 and Rs are -9 on Generic ballot and Biden has better Approvals than Bush W did

You are a naysay because you don't believe in waves, we haven't had a duplicate Election map 2xs in a row

ENDORSED

[NewYorkExpress]

Ras Smith is a pretty good recruit, especially if Sand decides to run for reelection (I don't think he'd run against Finkenauer for Senate).

It's probably still a Likely R race, but Smith could pull off an upset if the stars align for him.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Fully plan to donate to Gov Smith he has Unbeatable Fink

[2016]

New Des Moines/Register Iowa Poll has bad Numbers for President Biden:
https://twitter.com/AlexThomp/status/1407336482705133588
Safe to say that Reynolds is SAFE and so is the Iowa Senate Race regardless if Grassley retires or not!

[Mycool]

can’t believe Biden’s approval is nearly mirroring his vote share in a state he lost in the high single digits!!!

[Matty]

can’t believe Biden’s approval is nearly mirroring his vote share in a state he lost in the high single digits!!!

 I get this is sarcasm, but the poll (by the gold standard of iowa)shows that the national polls showing biden at double digit approval margins are complete bunk.

Biden is at +4 nationally right now, if I had to guess.

Not bad by any stretch, but hardly some historically good ratings either.

[2016]

can’t believe Biden’s approval is nearly mirroring his vote share in a state he lost in the high single digits!!!

 I get this is sarcasm, but the poll (by the gold standard of iowa)shows that the national polls showing biden at double digit approval margins are complete bunk.

Biden is at +4 nationally right now, if I had to guess.

Not bad by any stretch, but hardly some historically good ratings either.

If Biden is at 43 % in Iowa come E-Day 2022 Democrats will lose IA-GOV, IA-SEN and Cindy Axne will be thrown out as well. It also could bode very bad for MI-GOV, WI-GOV and OH GOV & SEN!