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♪♪ For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond, celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS.

This is the Friday, November 28th edition of Iowa Press.

Here is Kay Henderson.

Very soon, the calendar will flip to 2026.

And if you have been paying attention, there has been a lot of political happening in Iowa in 2025.

We've assembled a group of reporters to share what they have gleaned on the campaign trail this year.

They are Brianne Pfannenstiel.

She is chief politics reporter for the Des Moines Register.

Dave Price is Iowa political director for Gray Media.

Also joining us Amanda Rooker.

She is the chief political reporter for KCCI TV in Des Moines.

And Erin Murphy is the Des Moines bureau chief for the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

Okay.

Back to April of this past year.

Governor Reynolds kind of shocked everyone with an announcement.

What's been the after effects of that?

Erin?

Well, the After.

Effects is we had a much busier political year than we expected.

Folks might be surprised.

I'm actually 28 years old, but this is the wear and tear from the political year that we just had.

You know?

So so all of a sudden we have an open seat gubernatorial election in 2026.

So all of a sudden we have candidates, especially obviously in the Republican side, but of both parties coming out of the woodwork and, you know, littered throughout the summer to to run and open up and create a second open seat election at the top of the ticket next year, because we're going to talk a little bit about the Senate one as well.

Joni Ernst, obviously telling us in September, confirming what many had been hearing that she will not seek reelection, opening up a Senate race for all of us to cover over the next few months.

Brann on Monday of this past week, you attended an event featuring almost all of the Republican candidates for governor.

What did you learn?

So I drove out to Holstein, which is in Ida County, kind of in northwest Iowa, in the fourth district.

So this is Randy Feenstra home.

He represents this area in his current role as U.S.

congressman.

He's now running for governor against four other Republicans.

And he was the only one not there.

He's entering this race as kind of the perceived frontrunner.

We don't have a lot of polling to back that up, but as a sitting congressman, he's got a lot of access to to big money to put into this race.

He's a well-known entity, but he's not yet fully engaged with kind of the primary field in that way.

So his four challengers were there.

They are Adam Stein, Zach Lane, Eddie Andrews and Brad Sherman.

They were all there, and they took the opportunity to really gang up on him.

And so I think we're seeing these Republican candidates try and draw Randy Feenstra into the primary.

He has not cleared the field in the way that some might have expected.

Is that a surprise, Dave?

Well, two schools of thought, right.

If you're going to have four here and Feenstra here, you're dividing the pot and he's thinking he's got enough to win without really engaging or it totally backfires on you and you're not out at these events like this to really kind of maybe practice up for debates and forums that would be coming up to really start engaging and getting in front of these activists.

He's been representing such a safe congressional seat his whole career, and is this going to bite him in the butt later by not out getting in there, getting everywhere, getting in front of these people.

These are the people who are going to show up on a primary.

Amanda, we're seeing sort of lanes also developing.

You have the Randy Feenstra lane, and then you have three people who are pastors.

They've done other things in their life, but they are pastors.

How is that going to play out?

I think it's interesting because Randy Feenstra also is one to talk about his faith.

If you look at the district, you know that he's currently representing, it's a big evangelical base of Republican voters.

It will be interesting to see, you know, if the four of them start to, you know, if all of the competitors start to take more jabs at each other, where voters will land on faith and be able to identify any separate or distinct differences, because clearly they're we've talked about there are candidates saying that they feel called into the race by God.

Faith has really important to a lot of Republican voters.

But how does that translate to conservative policy?

I think we don't know quite yet.

I'll note real quick to that.

We should mention that Randy Feenstra was at a different event on the same night.

He was in public at an event in Mason city, but still bears noting that he had chosen not to attend the forum.

And Holstein and instead do the separate.

The other interesting thing I think we're watching here is if all of these candidates stay in this primary and it lasts all the way to the June election, and does that group dilute the whole vote in case rubbing her hands, because in the past she has covered contested conventions and the spectacle that those can become and that throws everything upside down and all bets are off.

And that would be fascinating if that happened.

That Randy Feenstra didn't, or whomever is first on June 2nd doesn't have enough votes to lock it in there.

What would happen at a contested convention?

The other thing that strikes me, Brianne, is that there's at least one, if not two, of Randy Feenstra, Republican competitors who are criticizing him for the record of the Republican Congress for being on vacation during the fall and not running.

As aggressively as they are.

Do you think that resonates with voters?

Well, I think, you know, as we've seen, the shutdown is broadly unpopular.

And so they've criticized him saying you were on vacation for all of these days.

What were you doing while we were out here campaigning?

And so to Erin's point, Randy Feenstra is campaigning.

He's going to events, but they're not, you know, the events with all of these other candidates.

He's really focusing on his own own issues.

And so to the degree that they're able to make that a narrative, right, that people that voters, primary voters here, that can be really troubling for him.

If people don't think that he's getting out and doing the work, because we'll hear this over and over in Iowa, that voters expect the candidates to do the work, even if they are in frontrunner status.

And so at this point, he has said he will commit to a debate with his primary competitors.

We'll see how this all plays out, where he will have to engage it at some point.

But they're they're very clearly trying to draw him into this race, because they do know that they need to to build up some, some, some name recognition and some idea in the media.

The other thing that strikes me about the gubernatorial race is how closely it hews to the policy agenda that Kim Reynolds is pursuing.

At the end of her tenure as governor.

They're all talking about property tax reform.

They all have different ideas that they're throwing out there.

And then the other issue that really animates many in the Republican base, especially in Randy's district, Randy Feenstra, is district is eminent domain, which has been a dominant, if you will, policy.

Dave.

Can I do property tax first?

Sure.

The thing that's fascinating to me, to your point, they're all talking about property taxes.

And that's the thing that's one of the big things in that maybe in their primary core voters.

But we're about to have a legislative session that will happen before the campaign or maybe during the campaign.

It's a big thing for Governor Reynolds.

The House and the Senate are doing their own things, too.

They maybe maybe they could end up doing something which might kind of take a little of the oomph out of the what the candidates are saying.

And jumping in on the eminent domain carbon capture pipeline front.

One thing that I think is interesting, when you when you back to the lanes conversation, Randy Feenstra has been in Washington, D.C.

that's an issue that is a very state level issue.

When you look at some of the other Republican candidates for governor that have been in the legislature, this issue has been front and center for them.

They've had to stake out a lane.

You know, Eddie Andrews, Brad Sherman, even Adam Steen, who wasn't in the legislature, but at the state level, they've all been, you know, dealing with the decision making process of should the state take action on this or not.

Randy Feenstra, although, you know, western Iowa, northwest Iowa, this is a huge issue to them.

He is kind of been able to to skate past and say, hey, you know, I have my own thoughts on this.

However, this is something that the legislature will tackle.

Now he's got to, you know, face some some questions on this.

And Randy Feenstra, I think, would argue that he has been very clear on where he stands.

You know, he recently said eminent domain should not be used for the construction of carbon capture pipelines.

But that's still left an opening for his competitors at this forum on Monday.

You know, people were still calling him out.

And Zach Lane was saying, that's not strong enough.

We need somebody who will say, this absolutely cannot happen and will take over the Iowa Utilities Board if we have to.

So again, this is this is a place where perhaps Randy Feenstra, you know, avoiding some of these these meetings allows himself to be opened up to these attacks.

He was not there to defend himself on that attack in a room where this really matters to those voters.

Before we move on, Dave, we have a new entrant that we have not talked about at this table.

And for thank you for being an Iowa Press viewer.

You've seen four of the candidates at this table who are seeking the Republican nomination.

You haven't seen Randy Feenstra and you haven't seen Zach Lane, who is the new entrant.

How does he change the dynamic of this race?

Would you say what lane is he?

That was very Erin the dad joke king over there.

I went to his launch in Belle Plaine and he had probably 225, 250 people, something like that, kind of in their farm, right in front of their farmhouse, there on a super windy day.

But I'm wondering how he gets in on this.

And to an earlier point, if does he become one of four?

This sort of we're not Randy Feenstra, candidate, which likely would not be very effective when you're trying to divide the pie here.

But, you know, he brings a business background, a little bit of farm background, started a school in Kansas earlier in life with his with his now wife, and he perhaps has the personal family money to help get over a hurdle to get out there and campaign in a different way than maybe, perhaps those other three can.

I mean, money matters and he could use it to his advantage if he's willing to go out there and do it.

And he's kind of been taking a more populist tone with some of these issues.

He's been going out and saying one of the major issues facing Iowans is, is hedge funds buying up things like single family homes, Iowa farmland.

And he's been really aggressive in saying the state has to do something to address those issues in a way that, you know, he's carving out some different issues than we're hearing.

Everybody's talking about property taxes, right?

He's finding a way to talk about something else.

And if I might inject I covered Rob sand the day after.

Please add the day after the election.

Rob Sand had an event at a farm and you were there and he proposed a property tax idea that Zach Lane sort of proposed on the the next day on Thursday.

And now you have Republicans saying, oh, this is so stupid of Rob sand.

What if Zach Lane is their nominee, right.

And they're both talking about potentially taxing out of state landowners in a different way than in state landowners as a way to incentivize state based land ownership in Iowa.

And this is something that I think resonates with a lot of Iowans, you know, who maybe aren't familiar with the, you know, the constitutional ins and outs of how that would work.

So when you hear them bring these things up at events, it's received very well by by people in the room.

And so whether or not it's something they actually move forward with in a formal kind of proposal capacity, it's something that they're talking about in, in a way that that taps into kind of that populist mentality of voters.

During the past several months, Rob Sand has completed the full Grassley, the 99 county tour.

Amanda, you were out with him for a whole day.

I don't know how many stops you were.

I think it was five.

Maybe that day, which is how it goes in Iowa.

But man, that's a long day.

So what did you learn about that campaign?

Very interesting.

The way that Rob sand is approaching this campaign, I think is very intentionally trying to be different than any sort of candidate that that Iowans have seen in recent years.

He starts every town hall with asking everyone there to sing America the Beautiful.

After asking people to raise their hands and identify if they're Democrats, Republicans or independents.

And he strikes this tone to me.

What I noticed right off the bat, usually you go to one of these events and the candidate introduces themselves and they tell you where they were born, and they walk through their bio.

Rob Sand doesn't start with that.

He gets up and he immediately is tapping into this divisiveness that everyone seems to be feeling right now and trying to really connect with the people in the room.

Who are you first rather than who am.

I, exactly?

And he he really leans into telling people, you know, I'm sure you've never seen this before.

I know this feels so different.

I mean, he's he's really actively trying to make a contrast between, you know, what what you've seen and you know who I am.

Also, something that I've found very interesting is we talk about faith.

You talk about, you know, these Republican candidates that are all very much so leaning into their faith.

So is Rob sand on the campaign trail.

I mean, he's he's quoting scripture.

He's talking about how faith has led him into this race.

I mean, this is going to be interesting as we we get down the road.

And I'll say, Amanda, you tell me, us all if if you saw something wildly different.

I covered some of his events, too.

I intentionally picked some events in more rural areas of the state.

This is resonating with people who come to these events.

They are responding to his message.

They like what they're hearing.

They he talks a lot about, you know, neither party is completely doing right by Iowans right now.

And he's getting he's getting good sizes of crowds coming out.

And the people who are coming are liking what they're hearing.

I'm not predicting anything to stop people's emails ahead of time, but but Iowans are liking what they're hearing from Rob sand at these events.

I think it's really interesting to see him because at this point, he's finished his 99 county tour, right?

And he's planning to do another one.

He's doing what Democrats in this state say that they have to do to win, right?

They say go everywhere, talk to everyone.

And as reporters, I think, you know, it's fair to say we don't always see that in action.

Right?

People are holding different types of events.

They're not they're not wide open.

They're not everywhere.

And he really is putting his money where his mouth is there.

And he's told me in interviews that that's kind of a gamble in some ways, right?

Because you're going to these rural towns and people are asking you questions that you may not want to answer.

And they may they might not like the answer.

But it is interesting to see him really commit to that, and we'll see where it goes next year.

We have about ten minutes left shifting now to the U.S.

Senate race.

We have Joni Ernst not running.

Dave, what's happening on the Democratic primary front?

It's I'd say it's active right.

And, you know, when you when I was listening to you talk about Rob sand, it reminds me of some different in different ways about Nathan Sage, the former Knoxville Chamber of Commerce executive director.

Thank you.

Kind of being a nontraditional way going after this.

So, you know, he talks about his military service.

He may drop an f bomb or some other similar word or barnyard word.

That's thank you for that.

This is public television.

Thank you.

Sort of very nontraditional.

Right.

And when we're talking about lanes, he sort of brings that outsider's perspective to this.

And he has the benefit of coming from a news and sports background.

He knows how to give you some passion.

He knows how to give you a sound bite.

And I think he knows how to communicate with people, too.

Right.

And then contrast him to Zach Wahls coming from the legislature and, you know, may have some support out in DC as he lays his out.

Josh Turek, the Council Bluffs state rep.

So I mean, you have different dynamics about this one.

The sort of lane argument is fascinating to me about how they would divide up the pie.

And bran.

You have a candidate and Josh Turek, who's in a little bit of a way, making the same argument that Rob sand is that we need to win over Republicans and independents.

And look at what I did in Council Bluffs, the district I represent in the in the Iowa House.

That's right.

And I think we're going to see this argument kind of play out across the state, because Democrats know that they are starting from behind the eight ball.

Here.

They are nearly 200,000 active registered voters behind where Republicans are starting this election.

So they know that they need to convince some Republican, some independents.

And so we're seeing that in the Senate race as well.

And I think, you know, Josh Turek is making this argument that I, I am somebody who's won in a purplish district.

I can go out and I can appeal to people.

He's a he's a Paralympian.

He's got a great personal backstory that I think resonates with a lot of people.

But I think Zach Wahls is also making a similar argument.

Right.

He's going after kind of the working class in the same way that Nathan Sage is, that we need to talk about wages.

We need to talk about affordability.

We need to talk about health care.

And so those issues really seem to have dominated the Senate primary so far.

And Amanda, they're also making a generational argument.

Absolutely.

I, I also think it goes to show kind of the fracture or differences within the Democratic Party.

Right now.

There is there are some that are saying, you know, hey, we need to reach across the aisle.

We need to turn down the temperature we need to to come together.

And then you also have people that are watching, you know, their party in Washington and feeling like they're they're not being fought for.

And so I kind of see that difference between in this primary between Zach Wahls saying, you know, we need to get rid of the Democratic Party leadership.

It it may help these Iowa Democrats that there are no current Iowa Democrats in Washington because they can say to their, you know, their base or voters who may be frustrated and say, we can bring something fresh and new up there, but you also have others that maybe more like Josh Turek that are saying, hey, in order to get stuff done on Capitol Hill, I can reach across the aisle and I can, you know, be the bridge.

So which tone do voters prefer?

So Nancy Pelosi is not seeking reelection.

Is Chuck Schumer the new Nancy Pelosi, Erin.

To a certain degree.

And what's interesting about it is it's now within the party.

Now, it's not the cross party attacks.

It's it's kind of what Amanda was alluding to here.

It's a dividing line within the Democratic Party.

Do you support current leadership, especially in the Senate, but also in the House or or do you think a new generation and some of them been on the record?

I know Zach Wahls very early on stated he believed that Chuck Schumer should no longer be the Senate Democratic leader.

So, yeah.

Will we get and I'm stealing from our from Amanda here in our pregame discussion.

But are we going to go so far as to have primary ads labeling a fellow Democratic primary opponent as, as aligned with Chuck Schumer?

That would be fascinating if it went that far.

Because we used to see ads that had Nancy Pelosi in it.

Right.

So we'll Chuck Schumer take that spot.

Can we have on the Republican side, we have Congresswoman Ashley Hinson seeking Joni Ernst seat.

She has the endorsement of Donald Trump, which should be a relief.

Yeah, I think that's that's a big relief to her campaign.

And I think they're very pleased with that endorsement because she from the get go has has come out and say this is going to be an America First kind of campaign, that if you elect me, I will help support Donald Trump's agenda in Congress.

I will bring that home to Iowa.

She has made no bones about her association with the president and what she wants to do with that campaign.

So that makes it very clear for voters, including in the primary, she does face a primary challenger from Republican Jim Carlin.

She is seen as the faraway favorite there.

And the endorsement certainly helps.

And she really you were talking about Feenstra and the pushback against him about being on vacation and the shutdown and all of that.

Look at her travel schedule during the shutdown, where she was out going nonstop all over the place in this Senate race.

I was just listening to what you were saying.

If this ends up being a I don't want to skip ahead on our our chat here, but looking ahead to 2026, if this does be if this the midterms are a huge referendum about Donald Trump.

She has very closely aligned herself to him, which could either be a good thing for her or a tough thing for her.

If the state's competitive.

Erin Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa's first congressional district had a town hall, will it make a difference?

I don't know that it will.

The one thing that one way it was different.

It was very raucous, much like some of the other ones that we've seen with Senator Ernst and Grassley.

It a lot of angry people, a lot of shouted questions.

The one thing that was different was Mariannette Miller-Meeks didn't come out of that with a viral moment in the in the wrong way, like Senator Ernst did with her now infamous, well, we're all going to die, quote Mariannette Miller-Meeks seems to have sidestepped that particular town hall landmine.

And the third Congressional District.

You have a different approach from a Republican candidate, right?

I think all of these Republican candidates are trying to figure out the calculus on does a town hall help or does it hurt?

You know, I open myself up to more questions, but then I'm also more accessible.

And I think they're figuring that out.

Zach Nunn, in my conversations with him, has told me that he he's not holding town halls because he doesn't feel like he wants to make space for people who just want to come and yell and not actually have a dialog or a discussion on working towards policy.

If I'm characterizing his comments to me correctly, but he said, you know, hey, I'll, I'll talk to people if they want to come to my office or if they want to set something up.

I'm happy to have a conversation.

What's striking about that calculus he's making is that Zach Nunn?

If you look at Iowa's four Republican members of Congress, Zach Nunn seems to be the most moderate and the most, you know, usual.

We talk about maybe his stance on the the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

He's been, you know, forthcoming in talking about potential of extending them.

You know he seems maybe the most willing to to break with the president or have kind of a more moderate stance on things.

But on the town hall issue, he's the only one that said, I'm not going to hold these town halls.

He is also, though, maybe running in the most competitive congressional race.

So it may also be a calculus of I don't want to open myself up to difficulty.

Bran, when you look at the primaries in one, two, three, four, what do you see?

They're shaping up.

Are people paying attention?

Is it a free for all?

Does anybody have a leg up in any of those primaries?

Well, the first thing I think about with all those primaries is how many people are running, you know, and you can compare that to, to I think any year I've been been covering politics in Iowa so far.

It's just an extraordinary number of candidates.

And I think that speaks to the energy in, in these races and also the opportunity that exists in Iowa.

All of these wide open races that we started off the show talking about this being a midterm year as as Dave alluded to, where there could be big gains for for Democrats, potentially.

And and just as a reporter, often I spend a lot of time in this off year telling campaigns, nobody's paying attention yet.

You got to you got to cool it just a little bit until next year.

And then I will write all of these stories that you want us to do.

But that has not been the case this year.

We are hearing from readers.

We are seeing them at these events.

People seem very engaged in a way that isn't always the case.

We were.

I mean, it's fascinating, obviously, for all of us at the table to cover all of this, right?

But if you.

Start exhausting, right.

Those could be one the same.

But, you know, you start with the Reynolds decision and the Ernst decision.

We waited for Brenna Bird everything.

Just Zach Nunn.

Which way are you going to go then?

Feenstra doesn't do reelection.

Goes for governor.

Hinson doesn't do reelection.

Although she clearly seemed to know what was going on with Ernst.

But you know, one thing after another.

And then I think there is more than there normally would be in a midterm, because we they are competitive all in their own ways, maybe slightly differently with with the fourth.

But man, that the Republican won in the fourth.

Like I think there's a lot more energy and discussion because you have so many candidates found out.

Well, we have no more time for this discussion.

A Celsius drink for everyone at the table.

We hope you have enjoyed your Thanksgiving break.

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Thanks for watching today.

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