In the governor’s debate, Rob Sand and Zach Lahn shared a stage for the first time. With no time limits, we felt the moderators lost control early, and Lahn ended up talking roughly seven minutes longer. Republicans loved his aggressive style, while Democrats thought the interrupting came across badly. We don’t see a clear winner, and three more debates are still ahead.
In the U.S. Senate race, Josh Turek held his own against the more TV-seasoned Ashley Hinson. She kept hitting him on missed votes, and we explained why a missed vote doesn’t always mean a missed day at work. Turek got her on the record about Iran and Medicaid cuts, and her comments about millennials and savings drew plenty of social media reaction.
In the 2nd District, Joe Mitchell and Lindsay James had a more orderly second debate. We also talked through the steel plant incentives and whether tariffs are really behind the project.
On the horse race, Cook moved the 1st and 3rd Districts from toss-up to lean Democrat, and the 2nd District from lean Republican to toss-up.
The polls disagree. Suffolk had Sand up 55 to 43 and Turek up 48 to 44, while Emerson had Sand up just 49 to 45 and Hinson ahead 47 to 45. We caution against trusting any single poll, since each makes different assumptions about who will turn out in a midterm.
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Auto-generated transcript below:
Kathie: Hello and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast. It’s debate season and we have a lot to talk about, with candidates for governor, U.S. Senate, Congress, and more sharing the stage, some for the first time. There’s also new polling in the top races and some shifts in the political forecast for Iowa’s races. I’m Kathie Obradovich, and with me today is Laura Belin. Hi, Laura.
Laura: Good to see you, Kathie.
Kathie: We’re a smaller crew today. Dave is working on other projects and our conservative friends were otherwise engaged, but we can carry it, right?
Laura: Yeah, absolutely.
Kathie: I still sort of have the crud. If you heard me last week, you’ll know I’m a lot better, but I’ll apologize right now for any Marco Rubio-esque water swigging or cough drop crunching as we go. And I know you’ve been a little under the weather too, Laura.
Laura: I’m feeling a lot better.
Kathie: Just the walking wounded here.
The governor’s debate: Rob Sand vs. Zach Lahn
Kathie: Let’s start with the governor’s debate, which was all the way back on Monday. We’re recording this on Friday. It was in Davenport, hosted by KWQC-TV on the campus of St. Ambrose University. It was the first time on the debate stage for Rob Sand and Zach Lahn. What do you think?
Laura: They didn’t have time limits, and honestly I feel like that debate was a case for having them. I didn’t total up the minutes myself, but I saw some analysis that Zach Lahn ended up speaking about seven minutes longer than Rob Sand. That seems pretty out of balance. I felt the moderators lost control of the debate early and never really got it back.
Kathie: I’ve done both kinds of debates, timed and super formal, and the untimed kind that’s supposed to be more of a conversation. I agree with you, they probably should have timed the answers for this one. If you’re not going to time the answers, the moderators need to step in really early and make it very clear that they won’t let one candidate talk over another, and that they’ll cut in if you abuse the time. They really didn’t start trying to do that until way too late.
It was interesting how Rob Sand responded. You could tell he was kind of annoyed, but he did not reciprocate. You didn’t see him heat up to match Zach Lahn and start talking over him, which not all candidates would do. And I think there was a risk for Lahn in talking over Sand like that.
Laura: The Republican comments I saw online said Lahn absolutely dominated the discussion and got in a lot of zingers. On the Democratic side, people felt it came across very badly, all the interrupting and going on for a long time.
It was interesting to me that near the end, when the moderator was trying to get things back on track, Zach Lahn said something like, “I can go if it’s four on one, I can take on...” He was almost implying the moderators were on Rob Sand’s side, when I felt they had been kind of lenient toward the Republicans.
We’ll see. They have three more debates coming up, and that may be partly why Rob Sand was able to just hang back and wait. I’m curious to see whether the moderators are a little more active in next week’s clash.
Kathie: A couple of things about the content. This is the first time we’ve seen these candidates together, so we saw some rehash of the attack ads we’re seeing incessantly on TV. One that stood out for me was Zach Lahn claiming that Sand’s campaign rhetoric about his time in Kansas was an attack on his kids. That’s the claim that he didn’t move to Iowa until two years before he ran for governor, and that he frequently returns to Kansas. Lahn portrayed it as an attack on his kids because he’s going to Kansas to visit his kids in a blended family. I think it’s a stretch to call it an attack on his kids, but I’m not sure where else he was going to go in trying to defend that.
Laura: Rob Sand said the reason you’re in Kansas doesn’t matter, what matters is that you’re not in Iowa all the time. Lahn’s campaign has never really explained how this is going to work. He said that’s private, they have a blended family, and they’ll work it out like blended families do. But if his kids are being raised and going to school primarily in another state, it does seem like something he’ll need to contend with.
Kathie: Lahn also pressed attacks on Rob Sand’s family wealth. He has repeatedly called Sand a billionaire in his ads. I didn’t think Sand engaged with that very much or tried to rebut it. He talked about family and mansions in other states and spending time there, but I didn’t think he rebutted much.
Laura: The main thing he pushed back on was the nitrate fertilizer claim. He said his wife’s third-generation family company doesn’t produce nitrate fertilizer, that they produce other things from byproducts.
Kathie: Maybe that was the most important thing, considering water quality is a big concern to voters. At the bottom line, unless there are giant gaps or big things that turn into campaign commercials and rhetoric through the rest of the campaign, I usually don’t see debates moving the needle much. They reinforce what people already think about the candidates. But did you think there was a winner here?
Laura: I don’t think so. It depends on whether you care a lot about demeanor. But I think it fired up Zach Lahn’s supporters. In that sense he can feel it was successful, because he showed he was being very aggressive. I don’t know who was watching, or whether swing voters are watching these debates. And it’s different since this is the first of four rather than the only debate they’re having, so I want to reserve judgment until after they’re all over. But the Republicans seemed extremely pleased with the performance.
Kathie: It’s a good point about who’s watching. A lot of times the effect of a debate isn’t the night of, it’s the media, and especially the social media, that rolls out afterward. We see that over and over. With this debate I didn’t see anything like that, but time will tell.
Laura: What I saw from Rob Sand and other Democratic accounts was that they were sharing clips of things Sand said. They weren’t sharing anything Lahn said as a gaffe, but more like Sand’s line that you’re not going to be a stronger advocate for public schools than the guy who lives here and sends his kids to public schools.
U.S. Senate debate: Ashley Hinson vs. Josh Turek
Kathie: Exactly. This week was also the first time sharing the stage for Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek. That debate was on Iowa Press, so no time limits, but they weren’t at a table, and I thought it was a lot more orderly than the governor’s debate. What were your first impressions?
Laura: I thought Turek really held his own. With Hinson having so much more experience on television, as a TV reporter and anchor and then in public life for a long time, I felt this format would really favor her. It struck me as kind of a draw. Turek looked more comfortable than he did in the primary debates against Zach Wahls.
Kathie: For sure. He was a lot better than in the primary debates, and more prepared for the attacks he was expecting. Hinson was absolutely polished and on message. She continued to skewer Turek on his missed votes, and I thought mostly successfully.
Turek did try to make the case that the work he did behind the scenes at the Capitol was significant, that he worked across the aisle and had an impact on legislation. But he still hasn’t scratched the fallacy the Hinson campaign is perpetuating with this line of criticism, that every vote missed somehow represents a missed day on the Hill. She’s talking about him wasting his per diem, taking money out of taxpayers’ pockets. The reality is that multiple votes happen on a single day, and you can be at the Hill without taking a vote except maybe for adjournment. So every missed vote does not represent a missed day in the Capitol. Maybe Turek doesn’t want to go too far down the road of defending that, but it seems to me he could at least correct that misconception.
Laura: Sorry, my dog is weighing in. I actually researched the per diem question in the past, because of Zach Nunn. I think it was 2021, there was a year when he missed the entire session because he was deployed out of state, and I got a tip that he collected his per diem. What I learned is that under the law they just get the per diem. It’s not like the mileage reimbursement where you can claim it or not. It’s paid to them by law even if they’re absent.
I also remember some of those days, because some of the missed votes they’re talking about, like the vote on the veterans budget, and a few other things, happened right at the end. There was one day before that long marathon weekend where Josh Turek was there for most of the day, through these long caucuses, and then he left to go to an evening event. They came back on the floor and debated a bunch of bills after he had left. But he had been there expecting to debate that day, and things were delayed. So it goes to your point that a missed vote doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t show up for work.
Kathie: Right. And like I said, he may not want to spend a lot of time on it. He knows it’s a bad look, that he probably should have been there for some of those votes. But on Turek’s side, he did succeed in getting Hinson to say that, despite her recent statements about wrapping up the war in Iran, she still wouldn’t support a resolution forcing the president to come to Congress to keep pursuing it. He also had her defending the One Big Beautiful Bill and its cuts to Medicaid, which have been costly to rural hospitals in Iowa. So I think he did get in some of his shots.
Laura: One moment I’ve seen a lot of people commenting on on social media was Hinson’s comment that millennials aren’t saving enough and are the worst group for savings. She also said something about when she was in sixth grade and her dad taught her about compounding and saving for retirement. Not that there’s anything wrong with teaching your kid about compounding, but that’s something that only happens in a well-off family. A family living paycheck to paycheck isn’t teaching their sixth grader about compounding. I think a lot of people, particularly millennials, felt that was very insensitive. I’m Gen X myself. But wages have been stagnant and the costs of everything, housing especially, have gone way up. That’s why they’re not saving as much as earlier generations.
Kathie: Turek probably could have done more to exploit that moment on the screen rather than waiting until after the debate. But again, I didn’t really see this debate moving the needle. The fact that Turek held his own against, like you said, a very experienced opponent matters, but if you were leaning toward either Hinson or Turek, you probably didn’t hear anything in that whole debate that changed your opinion.
2nd District debate: Joe Mitchell vs. Lindsay James
Kathie: Next, the Joe Mitchell and Lindsay James debate in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District. That was Thursday night on Iowa Press. Again, no time limits on answers. This was the second debate for these candidates. Did you see significant differences between the two?
Laura: I did. The previous week’s debate, on KGAN, I felt the moderators lost control, or you could say the candidates kind of walked all over the moderators. The candidates weren’t always answering the question or doing what the moderators wanted. This one was a little more orderly in the Iowa PBS studio. Maybe the format lends itself to that.
Kathie: I don’t know. If I was a candidate, would I want to cross Kay Henderson? I don’t think so. She has control of the venue there.
There was an interesting contrast in demeanor, since we’ve been talking about that. Lindsay James comes off as very warm. She smiled and seemed to project caring. I lost count of how many times she said she was a mom. At one point she even said she was a mom to children, in case we thought she was talking about being a pet mom. And Mitchell I thought might have been a little tense. He was a lot more serious and didn’t smile as much.
They did get into it toward the end. They started calling each other liars, especially when Mitchell accused James of never seeing a tax increase she didn’t like, and of not supporting tax cuts. Her argument, I think, was that she supported tax cuts, just not the ones the Republicans were proposing.
For people who haven’t seen these candidates, at a time when the political forecasters are suggesting this race is tightening, you could get a pretty good sense of where they stand.
Laura: In the first debate there was much more of them calling each other liars. I felt they were both pretty on message, with a lot of repetition. I don’t know who is watching, but anyone who has been following these races probably didn’t hear any surprises, because it was very consistent with what I’ve heard them say before.
James had Mitchell defending the war and defending the tariffs, and he was able to explain why he supports those things. I didn’t think she was entirely prepared to discuss AI. That question came up and she was a little fuzzy about her own plan, let alone a broader statement about AI. Mitchell pretty smoothly defused the attacks on his family wealth.
Kathie: One thing, though. The first debate happened right before the special session on the steel plant and up to $1.4 billion in incentives for it, which Lindsay James voted for. I thought it was interesting that Mitchell accused her of... [transcript is garbled here] ...when you talk about a steel plant that’s not going to be operational until 2030, you have to question whether a project that size would really depend on something that could be so easily changed as a tariff scheme. And he didn’t really explain why he thinks this project wouldn’t even be happening if it weren’t for Trump’s tariffs on steel.
Laura: I don’t know about the tariffs, but doesn’t the project depend on support from the U.S. Export-Import Bank? A lot of people have asked me why they would build this plant in Iowa instead of Minnesota, next to where they’re mining the ore. I think part of the answer is that the Trump administration would never give federal support to a project like this in a Democratic-controlled state. At the White House event the previous week, they were saying things like, if there weren’t a Republican governor or Republicans running the state of Iowa... So I do think it’s possible it wouldn’t be happening without some kind of Trump policies. But I’m not sure it’s the tariffs specifically that it depends on.
Kathie: Good points. Anything else you want to mention about the debates before we go on to some pure horse race?
Laura: Yeah, we can go on.
Horse race: Cook Political Report shifts
Kathie: All right, horse race. This week the Cook Political Report moved Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, Mariannette Miller-Meeks versus Christina Bohannon, from toss-up to lean Democrat. It also moved the 3rd District, Zach Nunn versus Sarah Trone Garriott, from toss-up to lean Democrat. And the Joe Mitchell and Lindsay James race in the 2nd District moved from lean Republican to toss-up. It’s pretty shocking in Iowa to see congressional races anywhere in the state rated as lean Democrat. What did you think?
Laura: I’ve been saying, particularly about the 3rd District, that it’s been leaning Democratic. I was saying that six months ago. I’m sorry, my dog is weighing in here.
Kathie: We always welcome pets. My dog is joining the podcast now.
Laura: One thing to remember about the 1st District is that Miller-Meeks is one of the worst-performing House Republicans in the country relative to how Donald Trump did in her district. Trump carried her district by about eight and a half points, and she won by 0.2. So in any kind of more favorable environment for Democrats, and with the turnout operation they have, it makes sense to see Miller-Meeks as slightly favored to lose. There’s also an independent candidate, Michael Bridgeford, and it’s not clear what impact he’ll have. His campaign released an internal poll by a pollster I’ve never heard of, so I can’t vouch for it, but it showed Christina Bohannon with a fairly significant lead.
I think Zach Nunn’s problem is that Trump only carried the 3rd District by four points, about the same as Nunn’s margin of victory. Trump has to be very unpopular right now in that district, where 75% of the vote is going to be Polk County and Dallas County. I think the Democrats have a stronger turnout operation than they did two years ago. And for a Republican in a district like this to survive a year like this, they would need a history of over-performing the top of the ticket. Ashley Hinson was an over-performer in her district, but Zach Nunn is not. So I agree with those ratings.
As for the 2nd District, it’s an open seat. Joe Mitchell is fairly new to Northeast Iowa, so he’s not deeply rooted there. It’s a district Ashley Hinson won comfortably, but now it’s open, and Trump’s approval is probably underwater in Northeast Iowa even though the district voted for him by a 10-point margin. So I think it’s very reasonable to look at it as a toss-up. I think Republican internal polling even suggests that.
Kathie: Thank you for talking while I’m having a coffee.
Laura: Sorry, I’ve been there.
New polls
Kathie: In addition to the shifts in the forecasting, we’ve seen some new polling this week in the governor’s race and the U.S. Senate race. What have you seen?
Laura: There were a couple of new polls this week. Suffolk had very favorable numbers for Democrats: Turek ahead by four points, 48 to 44, and Rob Sand ahead by 12, 55 to 43. Then just today, as we’re recording on Friday, there was an Emerson poll with a more Republican-favorable sample. It had Ashley Hinson ahead 47 to 45, with 2% for Thomas Lahn, the Libertarian, and Rob Sand leading, but only by four points, 49 to 45. That’s giving Republicans a lot of encouragement, because it’s the smallest lead for Rob Sand we’ve seen in an Iowa poll against Zach Lahn. We still haven’t seen Zach Lahn leading in any poll since the primary, though.
Kathie: These polls have been going back and forth. You’re right that we haven’t seen Lahn leading, but the margins have shifted. To me it underscores, especially this close to the election, that the polls can’t tell you who will win. Terry Branstad always liked to say the only poll that counts is the one taken on Election Day. We worry sometimes about people jumping on the bandwagon and wanting to vote for whoever is ahead. In this case I don’t think you can really trust the polls to tell you who’s going to win. All of these races are very close, and it’s about who goes out and votes.
Laura: I flat out don’t believe that Rob Sand is leading by 10 or 12 points. That seems highly implausible to me. I think he is leading, since all the polls show him leading, but we don’t know what the electorate is going to look like. All of these polls make different assumptions about how many Democrats, independents, and Republicans there will be.
The Emerson poll, I noticed, weighted its results to what the Iowa registered voter list looks like. I would argue they probably have too many independents in the sample and not enough Democrats, because we know that in midterm elections turnout for Republicans and Democrats is a lot higher than turnout for no-party voters. There are hundreds of thousands of no-party voters who participate in a presidential year and not in a midterm. There are Democrats and Republicans like that too, but the relative turnout rate is just not going to look like the registration list.
We also know some of these polls weight to recall of the 2024 presidential vote. Emerson has Trump plus 10 over Kamala Harris. You could say Trump carried Iowa by 13, so it should be Trump plus 13. But there’s no guarantee that this November’s electorate will be Trump plus 10 or plus 13. It could be, but we don’t know. The 2014 electorate was very different from the electorate that had Barack Obama defeating Mitt Romney two years earlier.
Kathie: And you just don’t know what the electorate is going to look like. I know we all like to know who’s ahead, and that’s part of the news. I don’t criticize news organizations for publishing polls. Mine does it on occasion. But when that becomes the sole focus, I think you’ve lost track.
Sign-off
Kathie: Well, we’ve made it to the end of our time here. I just barely made it, but I’m surviving. Thanks to everyone tuning in, and thanks to those who like, share, and subscribe. That’s how we keep growing week after week. And to those who have become new or continuing financial supporters, you’re the ones helping to cover our production costs, so thank you. If you’ve been thinking about supporting the show, that’s how you keep us coming back week after week. Have a great week ahead, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Laura: Good to see you.
